LITMIR.BIZ

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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 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

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