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 tiny principality of Karlenburgh, when she fled her Communist-overrun country more than five decades ago. After being forced to witness her husband’s brutal execution, she’d escaped with the clothes on her back, her infant daughter in her arms and a fortune in jewels hidden inside the baby’s teddy bear.
She’d eventually settled in New York City and become an icon of the social and literary scenes. Few of the duchess’s wealthy, erudite friends were aware this stiff-spined aristocrat had pawned her jewels over the years to support herself and the two young granddaughters who’d come to live with her after the tragic death of their parents. Jack knew only because Dev Hunter had hinted that he should tread carefully where Charlotte and her granddaughters’ financial situation were concerned.
Very carefully. Jack’s one previous encounter with the duchess made it clear her reduced circumstances had not diminished either her haughty air or the fierce protectiveness she exhibited toward her granddaughters. That protectiveness blazed in her face now.
“I just spoke with Gina. She says you’re still trying to convince her to marry you.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Why?”
Jack was tempted to fall back on Gina’s excuse and suggest that a wedding reception was hardly the proper place for this discussion. The steely look in the duchess’s faded blue eyes killed that craven impulse.
“I think the reason would be obvious, ma’am. Your granddaughter’s carrying my child. I want to give her and the baby the protection of my name.”
The reply came coated with ice. “The St. Sebastian name provides more than enough cachet for my granddaughter and her child.”
Well, hell! And he called himself a diplomat! Jack was delivering a mental swift kick when the duchess raised her cane and jabbed the tip into his starched shirt front.
“Tell me one thing, Mr. Ambassador. Do you honestly believe the baby is yours?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Yes, ma’am, I do.”
The cane took another sharp jab at his sternum.
“Why?”
For two reasons, one of which Jack wasn’t about to share. He was still pissed that his father had reacted to the news that he would be a grandfather by hiring a private investigator. With ruthless efficiency the P.I. had dug into every nook and cranny of Gina St. Sebastian’s life for the past three months. The report he submitted painted a portrait of a woman who bounced from job to job and man to man with seeming insouciance. Yet despite his best efforts, the detective hadn’t been able to turn up a single lover in Gina’s recent past except John Harris Mason III.
Furious, Jack had informed his father that he didn’t need any damned report. He’d known the baby was his from the moment Gina called from Switzerland, sobbing and nearly incoherent. He now tried to convey that same conviction to the ferocious woman about to skewer him with her cane.
“As I’ve discovered in our brief time together, Duchess, your granddaughter has her share of faults. So do I. Neither of us have tried to deceive the other about those faults, however.”
“What you mean,” she countered with withering scorn, “is that neither of you made any protestations of eternal love or devotion before you jumped into bed together.”
Jack refused to look away, but damned if he didn’t feel heat crawling up the back of his neck. Wisely, he sidestepped the jumping-into-bed issue. “I’ll admit I have a lot to learn yet about your granddaughter but my sense is she doesn’t lie. At least not about something this important,” he added with more frankness than tact.
To his relief, the duchess lowered the cane and leaned on it with both hands. “You’re correct in that assessment. Gina doesn’t lie.”
She hesitated, and a look that combined both pride and exasperation crossed her aristocratic features. “If anything, the girl is too honest. She tends to let her feelings just pour out, along with whatever she happens to be thinking at the time.”
“So I noticed,” Jack said, straight-faced.
Actually, Gina’s exuberance and utter lack of pretense had delighted him almost as much as her luscious body during their weekend together. Looking back, Jack could admit he’d shucked a half-dozen layers of his sober, responsible self during that brief interlude. They hadn’t stayed shucked, of course. Once he’d returned to Washington, he’d been engulfed in one crisis after another. Right up until that call from Switzerland.
The duchess reclaimed his attention with a regal toss of her head. “I will say this once, young man, and I suggest you take heed. My granddaughter’s happiness is my first—my only—concern. Whatever Eugenia decides regarding you and the baby, she has my complete support.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less, ma’am.”
“Hrrrmph.”
