That must be a first.”
“Jézus, Mária és József! The mouth on you, Anastazia Amalia. I should have washed it with soap when I had the chance.”
“Ha! You would never have been able to hold me down long enough. But come in, come in! Sarah’s on FaceTime with her grandmother. I think you’ll be interested in their conversation.”
FaceTime? The duchess? Marveling at the willingness of a woman who’d been born in the decades between two great world wars to embrace the latest in technology, Dom followed his sister into the sitting room. One glance at the tableau corrected his impression of Charlotte’s geekiness.
She sat upright and unbending in her customary chair, her cane close at hand. An iPad was perched on her knees, but she was obviously not comfortable with the device. Gina sat cross-legged on the floor beside her, holding the screen to the proper angle
Sarah’s voice floated through the speaker and her elegant features filled most of the screen. Her husband’s filled the rest.
“I’m so sorry, Grandmama. It just slipped out.”
“What slipped out?” Dom murmured to Zia.
“You,” his sister returned with that mischievous glint in her eyes.
“Me?”
“Shh! Just listen.”
Frowning, Dom tuned back into the conversation.
“Alexis called with an offer to hype my book in
Beguile,” Sarah was saying. “She wanted to play up both angles.” Her nose wrinkled. “My former job at the magazine and my title. You know how she is.”
“Yes,” the duchess drawled. “I do.”
“I told Alexis the book wasn’t ready for hype yet. Unfortunately, I also told her we’re getting there much quicker since I’d hired such a clever research assistant. I bragged about the letter Natalie unearthed in the House of Parma archives, the one from Marie Antoinette to her sister describing the miniature of her painted by Le Brun that went missing when the mob sacked Versailles. And…” She heaved a sigh. “I made the fatal mistake of mentioning the codicil Nat had stumbled across while researching the Canaletto.”
Although the fact that Dom’s cousin had mentioned that damned codicil set his internal antennae to vibrating, it didn’t appear to upset the duchess. Mention of the Canaletto had brought a faraway look to her eyes.
“Your grandfather bought me that painting of the Grand Canal,” she murmured to Sarah. “Right after I became pregnant with your mother.”
She lapsed into a private reverie that neither of her granddaughters dared break. When she emerged a few moments later, she included them both in a sly smile.
“That’s where it happened. In Venice. We were supposed to attend a carnival ball at Ari Onassis’s palazzo. I’d bought the most gorgeous mask studded with pearls and lace. But…how does that rather obnoxious TV commercial go? You never know when the mood will hit you? All I can say is something certainly hit your grandfather that evening.”
Gina hooted in delight. “Way to go, Grandmama!”
Sarah laughed, and her husband issued a joking curse. “Damn! My wife suggested we hit the carnival in Venice this spring but I talked her into an African photo safari instead.”
“You’ll know to listen to her next time,” the duchess sniffed, although Dom would bet she knew the moment could strike as hot and heavy in the African savannah as it had in Venice.
“I don’t understand,” Gina put in from her perch on the floor. “What’s the big deal about telling Alexis about the codicil?”
“Well…” Red crept into Sarah’s cheeks. “I’m afraid I mentioned Dominic, too.”
The subject of the conversation muttered a curse, and Gina let out another whoop. “Ooh, boy! Your barracuda of an editor is gonna latch on to that with both jaws. I foresee another top-ten edition, this one listing the sexiest single royals of the male persuasion.”
“I know,” her sister said miserably. “It’ll be as bad as what Dev went through after he came out on Beguile’s top-ten list. When you see Dominic tell him I’m so, so sorry.”
“He’s right here.” Hooking a hand, Gina motioned him over. “Tell him yourself.”
When Dominic positioned himself in front of the iPad’s camera, Sarah sent him a look of heartfelt apology. “I’m so sorry, Dom. I made Alexis promise she wouldn’t go crazy with this, but…”
“But you’d better brace yourself, buddy,” her husband put in from behind her shoulder. “Your life’s about to get really, really complicated.”
“I can handle it,” Dom replied with more confidence than he was feeling at the moment.
“You think so, huh?” Dev returned with a snort. “Wait till women start trying to stuff their phone number in your pants pocket and reporters shove mics and cameras in your face.”
* * *
The first prospect hadn’t sounded all that repulsive to Dom. The second he deemed highly unlikely…right up until he stepped out of a cab for his scheduled meeting at Washington’s Interpol office the following afternoon and was blindsided by the pack of reporters, salivating at the scent of fresh blood.
“Your Highness! Over here!”
“Grand Duke!”
“Hey! Your lordship!”
Shaking his head at Americans’ fixation on any and all things royal, he shielded his face with his hands like some damned criminal and pushed through the ravenous newshounds.
Two weeks later Dominic was in a vicious mood. He had been since a dozen different American and European tabloids had splashed his face across their front pages, trumpeting the emergence of a long-lost Grand Duke.
When the stories hit, he’d expected the summons to Interpol Headquarters. He’d even anticipated his boss’s suggestion that he take some of the unused vacation time he’d piled up over the years and lie low until the hoopla died down. He’d anticipated it, yes, but did not like being yanked off undercover duty and sent home to Budapest to twiddle his thumbs. And every time he thought the noise was finally dying down, his face popped up in another rag.
The firestorm of publicity had impacted his personal life, as well. Although Sarah’s husband had tried to warn him, Dom had underestimated the reaction to his supposed royalty among the females of his acquaintance. The phone number he gave out to non-Interpol contacts had suddenly become very busy. Some of the callers were friends, some were former lovers. But many were strangers who’d wrangled the number out of their friends and weren’t shy about wanting to get to know the new duke on a very personal level.
He’d turned most of them off with a laugh, a
