The Duchess Diaries: The Diplomat's Pregnant Bride / Her Unforgettable Royal Lover / The Texan's Royal M.D.. Merline Lovelace
Especially when clients walked in waving a checkbook and orders to pull out all the stops for their big event.
She was so good, in fact, that she intended to support herself and her child by coordinating soirees for the rich and famous. But first she had to convince her baby’s father that she neither needed nor wanted the loveless marriage he was offering.
“I appreciate your concern, Jack, but...”
“Concern?”
The handsome, charismatic ambassador kept his voice down as she’d requested, but looked as though he wanted let loose with both barrels. His shoulders were taut under his hand-tailored tux. Below his neatly trimmed caramel-colored hair, his brown eyes drilled into her.
Gina couldn’t help but remember how those eyes had snared hers across a crowded conference room six weeks ago and signaled instant, electric attraction. How his oh-so-skilled mouth had plundered her throat and her breasts and her belly. How...
Oh, for pity’s sake! Why remember the heat that had sizzled so hot and fast between them? That spontaneous combustion wouldn’t happen again. Not now. Not with everything else that was going on in their lives.
“But,” she continued with a forced smile, “you have to agree a wedding reception is hardly the time or place for a discussion like this.”
“Name the time,” he challenged. “And the place.”
“All right! Tomorrow. Twelve noon.” Cornered, she named the first place she could think of. “The Boathouse in Central Park.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Fine. We’ll get a table in a quiet corner and discuss this like the mature adults we are.”
“Like the mature adult at least one of us is.”
Gina hid a wince. The biting sarcasm stung, but she had to admit it wasn’t far off the mark. The truth was she’d pretty much flitted through life, laughing at its absurdities, always counting on Sarah or Grandmama to bail her out of trouble every time she tumbled into it. All that changed about ten minutes after she peed on that damned stick. Her flitting days were over. It was time to take responsibility for herself and her baby.
Which she would.
She would!
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Chin high, she swept around the bank of gardenias.
* * *
Jack let her go. She was right. This wasn’t the time or the place to hammer some sense into her. Not that he held much hope his calm, rational arguments would penetrate that thick mane of silvery blond curls or spark a glimmer of understanding in those baby-doll blue eyes.
He’d now spent a total of five days—one long, wild weekend and two frustrating days in Switzerland—in Gina St. Sebastian’s company. More than enough time to confirm the woman constituted a walking, talking bundle of contradictions. She was jaw-droppingly gorgeous and so sensual she made grown men go weak at the knees, but also friendly and playful as a kitten. Well-educated, yet in many ways naive beyond belief. And almost completely oblivious to the world around her unless it directly impacted her, her sister or her dragon lady of a grandmother.
Pretty much his exact opposite, Jack thought grimly as he tracked her progress across the crowded room. He came from a long line of coolheaded, clear-thinking Virginians who believed their vast wealth brought with it equally great responsibility. Jack’s father and grandfather had served as advisors to presidents in times of national crisis. He himself had served in several diplomatic posts before being appointed the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism at the ripe old age of thirty-two. As such, he’d traveled to some of the most volatile, violent trouble spots in the world. Recently he’d returned to State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C., to translate his hard-won field knowledge into policies and procedures that would improve the security of U.S. diplomatic personnel around the world.
His job demanded long days and long nights. Stress rode on his shoulders like hundred-pound weights. Yet he couldn’t remember any issue, any recalcitrant bureaucrat or political pundit, who frustrated him as much as Gina St. Sebastian. She was pregnant with his child, dammit! The child he was determined would carry his name.
The child he and Catherine had tried so hard to have.
The familiar pain knifed into him. The feeling wasn’t as vicious as it had once been, but was still ferocious enough to carve up his insides. The lively conversation around him faded. The flower-bedecked room blurred. He could almost see her, almost hear her Boston Brahman accent. Catherine—brilliant, politically savvy Catherine—would have grasped the irony in his present situation at once. She would have...
“You look like you could use a drink, Mason.”
With an immense effort of will, Jack blanked the memory of his dead wife and turned to the new groom. Dev Hunter held a crystal tumbler in one hand and offered one to Jack with the other.
“Scotch, straight up,” he said dryly. “I saw you talking to Gina and figured you could use it.”
“You figured right.”
Jack took the tumbler and tipped it toward the man who might soon become his brother-in-law. Not might, he amended grimly as they clinked glasses, would.
“To the St. Sebastian sisters,” Hunter said, his gaze shifting to the two women standing with their heads together across the room. “It took some convincing, but I got mine to the altar. Good luck getting yours there.”
The Scotch went down with a well-mannered bite. Jack savored its smoky tang and eyed the sisters. They were a study in contrasts. Dark-haired Sarah was impossibly elegant in a clinging ivory gown with feathered clasps at each shoulder and glowed with the incandescent beauty of a bride. Blonde, bubbly Gina was barely six weeks pregnant and showed no signs of a baby bump. She was still slender but more generously endowed than her sister. Her flame-colored, body-hugging, strapless and backless sheath outlined her seductive curves to perfection.
Jack’s fingers tightened on the tumbler. Six weeks after the fact and he could still remember how he’d positioned those seductive hips under his. How he’d buried his hands in her silky hair and lost himself in that lush body and those laughing blue eyes.
They’d used protection that weekend. Went through a whole damned box of it, as he recalled. So much for playing the odds.
“I’ll get her to the altar,” he vowed. “One way or another.”
Hunter raised a brow but refrained from comment as his bride smiled and crooked a finger. “I’m being summoned. I’ll talk to you again when Sarah and I get back from our honeymoon.”
He handed his empty tumbler to a passing waiter and started for his wife, then turned back. “Just for the record, Mason, my money’s on Gina. She’s got more of the duchess in her than she realizes. And speaking of the duchess...”
Jack followed his glance and saw the silver-haired St. Sebastian matriarch thumping her way toward them. A long-sleeve, high-necked dress of ecru lace draped her slight frame. A trio of rings decorated her arthritic fingers. Leaning heavily on her cane with her left hand, Charlotte dismissed her new grandson-in-law with an imperious wave of the right.
“Gina says it’s time for you and Sarah to change out of your wedding finery. You only have an hour to get to the airport.”
“It’s my plane, Charlotte. I don’t think it’ll leave without us.”
“I should hope not.” Her ringed fingers flapped again. “Do go away, Devon. I want to talk to Ambassador Mason.”
Jack didn’t consciously go into a brace but he could feel his shoulders squaring as he faced Gina’s diminutive, indomitable grandmother.
He knew all about her. He should. He’d dug up the file the State Department had compiled on Charlotte St. Sebastian, once Grand Duchess of the