The Duchess Diaries: The Diplomat's Pregnant Bride / Her Unforgettable Royal Lover / The Texan's Royal M.D.. Merline Lovelace
her purpled head drop onto the seat back.
“Next time I tell you I’m helping with a birthday party for a slew of eight-and nine-year-olds, be kind. Just shoot me right between the eyes.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Worse.”
“Guess that means you’re not up for a stroll down Fifth Avenue.”
“Do I look like I’m up for a stroll?”
“Well...”
She angled her head and studied him through a thick screen of purple-tipped lashes. “You, bastard that you are, appear relaxed and refreshed and disgustingly up for anything.”
Jack laughed and decided not to bore her with the details of his day, which had kicked off at 4:32 a.m. with a call from the State Department’s twenty-four-hour crisis monitoring desk. They reported that an angry crowd had gathered at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, and a debate was raging within the department over whether to reinforce the marine guard by flying in a fleet antiterrorist security team. Thankfully, the crowd dispersed with no shots fired and no FAST team required, but Jack had spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon reading the message traffic and analyzing the flash points that had precipitated the seemingly spontaneous mob.
Although the crisis had been averted, Jack knew he should have jumped a shuttle and flown back to D.C. His decision to remain in New York another night had surprised him almost as it had his chief of staff, Dale Vickers.
Jack had first met Dale at Harvard, when they both were enrolled in the Kennedy School of Government. Like Jack, Dale had also gone into the Foreign Service and had spent almost a decade in the field as a Foreign Service Officer until increasingly severe bouts of asthma chained him to a desk at State Department headquarters. Chained being the operative word. Unmarried and fiercely dedicated, Vickers spent fourteen to sixteen hours a day, every day, at his desk.
Jack appreciated his second-in-command’s devotion. He didn’t appreciate the disdain that crept into Vickers’s voice after learning his boss intended to stay another night in New York.
“We’ve kept your relationship with Ms. St. Sebastian out of the press so far, Ambassador. I’m not sure how much longer we can continue to do so.”
“Don’t worry about it. I don’t.”
“Easy for you to say,” Dale sniffed, displaying the prissy side he didn’t even suspect he possessed. “Media relations is my job.”
“I repeat, don’t worry about it. If and when the story breaks, Ms. St. Sebastian and I will handle it.”
That was met with a short, charged silence. Jack had worked with Vickers long enough now to know there was more to come. It came slowly, with seeming reluctance.
“You might want to discuss the slant we should give Ms. Sebastian’s pregnancy with your father, Ambassador. He expressed some rather strong views on the matter when he called here and I told him you were in New York.”
“First,” Jack said coldly, “I don’t want you discussing my personal affairs with anyone, including my father. Second, there is no slant. Gina St. Sebastian is pregnant with my child. What happens next is our business. Not the media’s. Not the State Department’s. Not my father’s. Not yours. Got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. I’ll let you know when I book the return shuttle to D.C.”
Fragments of that conversation played in Jack’s mind now as he studied the purple-tipped lashes framing Gina’s eyes. When his gaze drifted from those purple tips to her hair, he found himself repressing an inner qualm at the prospect of bumping into some member of the paparazzi. Jack could only imagine his father’s reaction to seeing Gina splashed across the tabloids in her manga persona.
John Harris II still mourned Catherine’s death but in recent years he’d turned his energy to finding a suitable replacement. Preferably someone with his daughter-in-law’s family wealth and political connections. He would accept an outsider if pushed to the edge. But Gina...?
“What are you thinking?” she asked, yanking Jack back to the present.
Everything fell away except the woman next to him. He relaxed into a lazy sprawl, his thighs and hips matched with hers. “I’m thinking I skipped lunch. How about you? Did you scarf down whatever you ordered up for that slew of eight-and nine-year-olds?”
“Puh-leez.” Her shoulders quivered in an exaggerated shudder. “My system can only take so much sugar.”
Her system, and her baby.
Only now did Gina appreciate the 180-degree turn her diet had taken. She’d cut out all forms of alcohol the moment she’d suspected she was pregnant. After her initial appointment with Dr. Martinson, she’d also cut out caffeine and started tossing down neonatal vitamins brimming with iron and folic acid. She hadn’t experienced any middle-of-the-night cravings yet but suddenly, inexplicably, she had to have a foot-long smothered in sauerkraut.
“How does a picnic sound?” she asked. “One of my favorite street vendors works a corner close to Bryant Park. We could grab a couple of fat, juicy hot dogs and do some serious people watching.”
“I’m game.”
* * *
Bryant Park encapsulated everything Gina loved about New York. Located between 5th and 6th Avenues and bounded on the eastern side by the New York Public Library, it formed an island of leafy green amid an ocean of skyscrapers. On weekdays office workers crowded the park’s benches or stretched out on the lawn during their lunch hours. If they had the time and the ambition, they could also sign up for a Ping-Pong game or backgammon or a chess match. Out-of-towners, too, were drawn to the park’s gaily painted carousel, the free concerts, the movies under the stars and, glory of glory, the superclean public restrooms. Chattering in a dozen different languages, tourists wandered the glassed-in kiosks or collapsed at tables in the outdoor restaurant to take a breather from determined sightseeing.
This late in the afternoon Gina and Jack could have snagged a table at the Bryant Park Grill or the more informal café. She was a woman on a mission, however. Leaning forward, she instructed the cab driver to cruise a little way past the park and kept her eyes peeled for an aluminum-sided cart topped by a bright yellow umbrella.
“There he is. Pull over.”
Mere moments later she and Jack carried their soft drinks and foil-wrapped treasures into the park. Gina had ordered hers doused with a double helping of sauerkraut. Jack had gone the more conservative mustard-and-relish route. The scent had her salivating until they snagged an empty bench.
“Oh, God,” Gina moaned after the first bite. “This is almost better than sex.”
Jack cocked a brow and paused with his dog halfway to his mouth.
“I said ‘almost.’”
If she’d had a grain of common sense, she would have left it there. But, no. Like an idiot, she had to let her mouth run away with her.
“Not that I’ve had anything to compare it to in the past couple of months,” she mumbled around another bite.
“We can fix that.”
Jack tossed the words out so easily, so casually, that it took a second or two for his meaning to register. When it did, Gina choked on the bite she’d just taken.
“I’ve been doing my assigned reading,” he said as he gave her a helpful thump on the back. “A Father’s Guide to Pregnancy says it’s not uncommon for a woman’s libido to shoot into the stratosphere, particularly during the first trimester. It also warned me not to feel inadequate if I don’t satisfy what could turn into an insatiable appetite.”
He didn’t look all that concerned about the possibility. Just the opposite. The wicked glint in his brown eyes positively challenged Gina to give him a shot.
She