* * *
The drive back to D.C. took considerably less time than the drive down to Richmond. No cutting off to ramble along Route 1. No stops at picturesque cafés. Jack stuck to the interstate, and Gina used the time to check airline schedules. She confirmed a seat on a 7:20 p.m. flight to New York. It was a tight fit, but she could make it if she threw her things in her weekender and went straight to the airport.
“You don’t have to wait,” she told Jack as he pulled into the parking garage at L’Enfant Plaza. “I can grab a cab.”
“I’ll drive you.”
She was in and out of TTG’s guest suite in less than twenty minutes. A quick call ensured the cleaning crew would come in the following day. The key cards she sealed in an envelope and slid under the door to the main office. Elaine Patterson, manager of the Washington venue, was due back tomorrow. Gina would coordinate the after-event report with her and tie up any other loose ends by email.
Her emotions were flip-flopping all over the place again when Jack pulled up at the airport terminal. Part of her insisted she was doing the right thing. That she needed to pull back, assess the damage to her heart done by the nights she’d spent in his arms. The rest of her ached for another night. Or two. Or three.
If Jack were experiencing the same disquiet, it didn’t show. He left the Range Rover in idle and came around to lift out her weekender. His expression was calm, his hand steady as he buried it in her hair and tilted her face to his.
“Call me when you get home.”
“I will.”
“And get some rest.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll see you at our next doctor’s appointment, if not before.”
Before would be good, she thought as she closed her eyes for his kiss. Before would be very good.
* * *
When she climbed out of a cab outside the Dakota almost seven hours later, her ass was well and truly dragging. Her flight had been delayed due to mechanical problems before being canceled completely. The passengers had sat for well over an hour on the plane before being shuffled off and onto another. She’d called Jack once she was aboard the alternate aircraft so he wouldn’t worry, and again when she landed at LaGuardia.
Since they’d touched down at almost midnight, she didn’t call her grandmother. The duchess would have gone to bed hours ago and Gina didn’t want to wake her. Feeling dopey with exhaustion, she took a cab into the city. Jerome wasn’t on duty and she didn’t know the new night doorman except to nod and say hello. Wheeling her suitcase to the elevator, she slumped against the mirrored wall as it whisked her upward.
The delicate scent of orange blossoms telegraphed a welcome to her weary mind. She dropped her purse and key next to the Waterford crystal bowl filled with potpourri. Her weekender’s hard rubber wheels made barely a squeak as she rolled it over the marble tiles.
She’d crossed the sitting room and was almost to the hall leading to the bedrooms when she caught the sound of a muffled clink in the kitchen. She left the suitcase in the hall and retraced her steps. Light feathered around edges of the swinging door between the dining room and kitchen. Another clink sounded just beyond it.
“Grandmama?”
Gina put out a hand to push on the door and snatched it back as the oak panel swung toward her. The next second she was staring at broad expanse of black T-shirt. Her shocked glance flew up and registered a chin shadowed with bristles, a mouth set in a straight line and dark, dangerous eyes topped by slashing black brows.
Everything Gina had ever learned or heard or read about self-defense coalesced into a single, instinctive act. Whipping her purse off her shoulder, she swung it with everything she had in her.
“Hé!” The intruder flung up his arm and blocked the savage blow. “Várj!”
“Várj yourself, you bastard!”
Gina swung again. This time his arm whipped out and caught the purse strap. One swift tug yanked it out of her hands.
“If you’ve hurt my grandmother...”
She lunged past him into the kitchen. Her fingers wrapped around the hilt of the largest knife in the upright butcher-block stand.
“Jézus, Mária és József!” The stranger chopped his hand down on her wrist, pinning it to the counter. “Stop, Eugenia. Stop.”
The terse command pierced her red haze of fear but her heart still slammed against her chest as the questions tumbled out. “How do you know my name? What are you doing here? Where’s my grandmother?”
“The duchess is in her bedroom, asleep, I presume. I am here because she invited my sister and me to stay. And I know your name because we’re cousins, you and I.”
“Cousins?”
“Of a sort.”
When she tugged her wrist, he released his brutal grip. A smile softened the stark angles of his face. “I’m Dominic. Dominic St. Sebastian. I live in Budapest, but my parents came from Prádzec. Your grandmother’s home,” he added when she looked at him blankly.
It took her a moment to recognize the name of the town on the border between Austria and Hungary, in the heart of what was once the Duchy of Karlenburgh.
“I don’t understand. When did you get here?”
“This afternoon.” He gestured behind him to the coffeemaker just starting to bubble and brew on the counter. “It’s midnight in New York, but morning in Hungary. My body has yet to adjust to the time change and craves its usual dose of caffeine. Will you join me for coffee and I’ll explain how Anastazia and I come to be here, in your home.”
“No coffee,” Gina murmured, her hand fluttering to her stomach as she tried to absorb the presence of this dangerous-looking man in her grandmother’s kitchen.
He was as sleek and as dark as a panther. Black hair, black shirt, black jeans slung low on his hips. The T-shirt stretched taut across a whipcord-lean torso. The hair was thick and razored to a ragged edge, as though he didn’t have time or couldn’t be bothered with having it styled.
“Tea, then?” he asked.
“Tea would be good.” Slowly getting her wind back, Gina nodded to the cabinet behind his head. “The tea caddy is in there.”
“Yes, I know.” His smile reached his eyes. “The duchess told me to make myself to home. I took her at her word and explored the cupboards.”
Whoa! This man’s face cast in hard angles and tight lines was one thing. The same face relaxing into a lazy grin was something else again. Gina had a feeling Dominic St. Sebastian could have his pick of any woman in Budapest. Or pretty much anywhere else in the world.
The fact that he knew his way around a tea caddy only added to the enigma. While the fresh-made coffee dripped into the carafe, he brewed a pot of soothing chamomile. Moments later he and Gina were sitting across from each other with steaming mugs in hand.
“So,” he said, slanting her a curious look. “The duchess never spoke to you of me or my family?”
His speech held only a trace of an accent. A slight emphasis on different syllables that made it sound intriguing and sexy as all hell. Wondering where he’d learned to speak such excellent English, Gina shrugged.
“Grandmama told my sister and me that we had some cousins, four or five times removed.”
“At least that many times. So we could marry if we wished to, yes?”
The tea sloshed in her mug. “Excuse