who served as maid, companion to Charlotte and friend to both Sarah and her sister for more than a decade was just preparing to leave.
“Hola, Sarah.”
“Hola, Maria. How was your day?”
“Good. We walked, la duquesa and me, and shopped a little.” She shouldered her hefty tote bag. “I go to catch my bus now. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Good night.”
When the door closed behind her, a rich soprano voice only slightly dimmed by age called out, “Sarah? Is that you?”
“Yes, Grandmama.”
She deposited her purse on the gilt-edged rococo sideboard gracing the entryway and made her way down a hall tiled in pale pink Carrara marble. The duchess hadn’t been reduced to selling the furniture and artwork she’d acquired when she’d first arrived in New York, although Sarah now knew how desperately close she’d come to it.
“You’re home early.”
Charlotte sat in her favorite chair, the single aperitif she allowed herself despite the doctor’s warning close at hand. The sight of her faded blue eyes and aristocratic nose brought a rush of emotion so strong Sarah had to swallow before she could a reply past the lump in her throat.
“Yes, I am.”
She should have known Charlotte would pick up on the slightest nuance in her granddaughter’s voice.
“You sound upset,” she said with a small frown. “Did something happen at work?”
“Nothing more than the usual.” Sarah forced a wry smile and went to pour herself a glass of white wine. “Alexis was on a tear about the ski-resort mock-up. I had to rework everything but the page count.”
The duchess sniffed. “I don’t know why you work for that woman.”
“Mostly because she was the only one who would hire me.”
“She didn’t hire you. She hired your title.”
Sarah winced, knowing it was true, and her grandmother instantly shifted gears.
“Lucky for Alexis the title came with an unerring eye for form, shape and spatial dimension,” she huffed.
“Lucky for me,” Sarah countered with a laugh. “Not everyone can parlay a degree in Renaissance-era art into a job at one of the country’s leading fashion magazines.”
“Or work her way from junior assistant to senior editor in just three years,” Charlotte retorted. Her face softened into an expression that played on Sarah’s heartstrings like a finely tuned Stradivarius. “Have I told you how proud I am of you?”
“Only about a thousand times, Grandmama.”
They spent another half hour together before Charlotte decided she would rest a little before dinner. Sarah knew better than to offer to help her out of her chair, but she wanted to. God, she wanted to! When her grandmother’s cane had thumped slowly down the hall to her bedroom, Sarah fixed a spinach salad and added a bit more liquid to the chicken Maria had begun baking in the oven. Then she washed her hands, detoured into the cavernous sitting room that served as a study and booted up her laptop.
She remembered the basics from the article Beguile had run on Devon Hunter. She wanted to dig deeper, uncover every minute detail she could about the man before she crossed swords with him again tomorrow evening.
Two
Seated at a linen-draped table by the window, Dev watched Sarah St. Sebastian approach the restaurant’s entrance. Tall and slender, she moved with restrained grace. No swinging hips, no ground-eating strides, just a smooth symmetry of motion and dignity.
She wore her hair down tonight. He liked the way the mink-dark waves framed her face and brushed the shoulders of her suit jacket. The boxy jacket was a sort of pale purple. His sisters would probably call that color lilac or heliotrope or something equally girlie. The skirt was black and just swished her boot tops as she walked.
Despite growing up with four sisters, Dev’s fashion sense could be summed up in a single word. A woman either looked good, or she didn’t. This one looked good. Very good.
He wasn’t the only one who thought so. When she entered the restaurant and the greeter escorted her to the table by the window, every head in the room turned. Males without female companions were openly admiring. Those with women at their tables were more discreet but no less appreciative. Many of the women, too, slanted those seemingly casual, careless glances that instantly catalogued every detail of hair, dress, jewelry and shoes.
How the hell did they do that? Dev could walk into the belly of a plane and tell in a single glance if the struts were buckling or the rivets starting to rust. As he’d discovered since that damned magazine article came out, however, his powers of observation paled beside those of the female of the species.
He’d treated the Ten Sexiest Singles list as a joke at first. He could hardly do otherwise, with his sisters, brothers-in-law and assorted nieces and nephews ragging him about it nonstop. And okay, being named one of the world’s top ten hunks did kind of puff up his ego.
That was before women began stopping him on the street to let him know they were available. Before waitresses started hustling over to take his order and make the same pronouncement. Before the cocktail parties he was forced to attend as the price of doing business became a total embarrassment.
Dev had been able to shrug off most of it. He couldn’t shrug off the wife of the French CEO he was trying to close a multibillion dollar deal with. The last time Dev was in Paris, Elise Girault had draped herself all over him. He knew then he had to put a stop to what had become more than just a nuisance.
He’d thought he’d found the perfect tool in Lady Eugenia Amalia Therése St. Sebastian. The blonde was gorgeous, vivacious and so photogenic that the vultures otherwise known as paparazzi wouldn’t even glance at Dev if she was anywhere in the vicinity.
Thirty minutes in Gina St. Sebastian’s company had deep-sixed that idea. Despite her pedigree, the woman was as bubbleheaded as she was sumptuous. Then she’d lifted the Byzantine medallion and the game plan had changed completely. For the better, Dev decided as he rose to greet the slender brunette being escorted to his table.
Chin high, shoulders back, Sarah St. Sebastian carried herself like the royalty she was. Or would have been, if her grandmother’s small Eastern European country hadn’t dispensed with royal titles about the same time Soviet tanks had rumbled across its border. The tanks had rumbled out again four decades later. By that time the borders of Eastern Europe had been redrawn several times and the duchy that had been home to the St. Sebastians for several centuries had completely disappeared.
Bad break for Charlotte St. Sebastian and her granddaughters. Lucky break for Dev. Lady Sarah didn’t know it yet, but she was going to extract him from the mess she and her magazine had created.
“Good evening, Mr. Hunter.”
The voice was cool, the green eyes cold.
“Good evening, Ms. St. Sebastian.”
Dev
