The Diplomat's Pregnant Bride

by Merline Lovelace

  She could hardly speak past the terror lodged like a spiked ball in her throat. “Yes.”

  Wedging a hand into the pocket of her jeans, she extracted the business card Driskell had given her earlier. Dev snatched it from her fingers and entered the number on his device. Mere seconds later, his blue eyes lit with fierce satisfaction.

  “Okay, I’ve got her.” He swung toward the foyer. “Let’s go.”

  Gina, Zia, Jack’s dad and Dale Vickers all wheeled in a swift formation that would have done a platoon of marines proud. Their syncopated turn didn’t impress Dev.

  “Whoa! We can’t all—”

  “Do not say it!” Zia interrupted. Her dark eyes blazed and her accent went thick with passion. “I am a doctor. If Dom… If anyone is hurt, I can help.”

  “I’m going, too,” Jack’s dad growled.

  Dale Vickers didn’t say a thing but his pugnacious expression dared anyone, Dev included, to try and stop him.

  Sarah was the only who exhibited any restraint. “I’ll stay with Grandmama.” Her gaze drilled into her husband. “But please, please, be careful.”

  “I will.” Dev strode for the foyer. “We’ll have to take two cabs.”

  “Sarah!” Gina called over her shoulder. “Buzz down and tell Jerome to get on his whistle. We need two taxis, like pronto!”

  * * *

  The doorman had them lined up and waiting at the curb when they all poured out of the elevators. Dev aimed for the lead vehicle and issued orders in a voice that said he wasn’t allowing vetoes this time.

  “Gina, you and Zia with me. Vickers, you follow with Mr. Mason.”

  They scrambled into their assigned cabs. Gina and Zia took the backseat of the first, Dev folded his tall frame into the front.

  “Hey, mon,” the cabbie said in a lilting Caribbean accent that matched his shoulder-length dreadlocks and colorful orange, green, yellow and black knit cap. “Where ya goin’?”

  “Straight down Central Park West until I tell you to turn.”

  The cabbie shrugged and activated his meter. As the leafy green of the park zipped by, Dev kept his narrowed gaze on the street grid filling his screen.

  Gina edged forward on her seat and looked over his shoulder. All she could see was a tiny red dot racing along the grid.

  “Is that Driskell?”

  “It is.”

  “What happens if she gets or makes a call? You won’t lose the track, will you?”

  “Heads in my R-and-D division will roll if I do.”

  Not quite reassured by that grim prediction, Gina groped for her cousin’s hand. Zia threw her a glance filled with equal parts hope and determination.

  “They will be okay, your man and my brother. But to make sure…” She squeezed Gina’s fingers. “I shall say a special prayer to Saint Stephen. He is the patron saint of your grandmother’s homeland, you know.”

  No, Gina didn’t know. At this point, though, she would pray to any celestial being who might intercede on Jack and Dom’s behalf.

  As if sensing how close her cousin was to a total meltdown, Zia tried to distract her with details about the saint. “He is Istvan in our language. He was born in 965 or ’67 or ’75. No one knows for sure. His father was Grand Prince Géza of Hungary. His mother, the daughter of Gylua of Transylvania.”

  The mention of Transylvania diverted Gina long enough for all-too-vivid images of werewolves springing out of coffins to flash into her mind. Or was it vampires who rose from the dead? For God’s sake! Who cared?

  Zia refused to let her cousin’s wildly careening thoughts and emotions overwhelm her. Speaking calmly, slowly, soothingly, she related how the eventual Saint Istvan married Giselle of Bavaria and ascended to the throne of the Magyars on the death of his father. How he discouraged pagan customs and strengthened Christianity by a series of strict laws. How he was devastated by the death of his oldest son, Emeric, in a hunting accident, after which his cousin, Duke Vazul, took part in an assassination conspiracy.

  “The attempt failed,” Zia related as Dev issued a sharp order to the cabbie to cut across town. “Vazul had his eyes gouged out and molten lead poured in his ears.”

  “Umm,” Gina murmured.

  Her eyes were on that blinking red dot, her thoughts anywhere but with some long dead saint.

  “Without a living heir, King St. Istvan asked the Blessed Virgin Mary to take the Hungarian people as her subjects and become their queen. He died on the same feast day that commemorates the assumption into heaven of the Blessed Virgin Mary, yes?”

  “What? Oh. Right.”

  Gina had no idea what her cousin had been talking about. Her focus was on the bridge ahead. As a native New Yorker, she understood why the cabbie balked.

  “I don’t do runs to that part of Brooklyn,” he said with a head shake that set his dreadlocks swinging.

  “There’s an extra five hundred in it for you,” Dev countered.

  “Say no more, mon.”

  As they cruised onto the bridge, Gina twisted around. The second cab was still following. She dropped back in her seat, wondering how much Jack’s dad had offered his driver.

  * * *

  Once across the bridge they entered a twilight zone of abandoned warehouses and crumbling industrial facilities. The area had formerly been home to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and had died a painful death in the ’60s or ’70s. Gina knew a comeback was planned, but it was still a ways off.

  Artists and commercial activities rented space in the cavernous building that hadn’t collapsed under the weight of time and disuse. She saw a bright pink neon sign indicating a movie studio. Another, slightly less attention-grabbing billboard advertised Brooklyn Grange Farm. The farm supposedly utilized 45,000 square feet on the roof of Building 3, wherever that was. Sadly, all too many of the structures showed an endless vista of graffiti-covered walls, trash-strewn yards fenced off with razor wire, and row after row of broken windows.

  With every deserted block the cab skimmed past, Gina’s hopes dipped lower and lower. They hit rock-bottom when the taxi turned a corner and she spotted what looked like twenty or more emergency vehicles dead ahead.

  The cabbie screeched to a halt a half block away. “Hey, mon, I can’t cruise close to no cop cars. They might have dogs with ’em.”

  “Christ,” Dev muttered, “what are you hauling in… Oh, hell, never mind.”

  He shoved a wad of bills at the driver and shouldered open the door. Gina and Zia scrambled out at the same time.

  “Stay here until I scope out the situation,” Dev ordered brusquely.

  “No way,” Gina said, her frantic gaze locked on the two ambulances parked side by side amid the other vehicles.

  She took off after Zia, who’d already broken into a dead run. All Dev could do at that point was curse and charge after her. If shots were fired from any of the broken windows staring sightlessly down at them, he’d damned well better get in front of Gina and shield her body with his. Sarah would never forgive him if her sister got hurt. Zia would just have to take her chances.

  The cabbie barely waited for them to clear his vehicle before screeching into a three-point turn. He almost swiped the second cab’s fender when he peeled off. Dev heard the shriek of brakes, the thud of doors slamming, the slam of footsteps on pavement as Vickers and Jack’s father raced down the street.

  Luckily, they all reached the protective screen of emergency vehicles without shots erupting from the warehouse. The uniformed officer on the perimeter looked as if he might draw his weapon, though, when the two women leading the charge ignored his command to stop. Parting like the proverbial Red Sea, they started to go around him.

  “Hey! Hold it right there.”

  He made a grab for the closest, which happened to be Zia, and got a face full of raging female. />
  “Vagyok orvos! Ach! I am doctor! Doctor!”

  Her unleashed emotions made her accent so heavy that the English was almost indistinguishable from the Hungarian. Neither made an impression on the uniformed officer.

  “Look, lady, you…all of you…better not take another friggin’ step until I see some ID, log you in and get clearance to…”

  “Ide, Anastazia!”

  The shout came from an unmarked vehicle parked inside the cordon. Zia whirled and gave a glad cry. The rest of the group spun around, as well. Gina registered a half-dozen wildly careening thoughts as she watched Dominic stride toward them.

  Blood seeped from a slash high on one cheek. One eye was swollen shut. He wasn’t in handcuffs. And he was alone.

  Dear God! He was alone.

  With a sob of sheer terror, she dodged the uniformed officer and broke into another run. He gave a shout, but interpreted a short air-chop from Dominic as a signal that his duty lay in keeping the rest of the crowd corralled.

  Ten steps later, Gina flung herself at Dominic. Her fists hammered a frantic drumbeat on his chest. “Where’s Jack? What did you do with him? If you or those thugs you were with hurt him, I’ll carve out your heart and shove it down your throat.”

  Dom’s eyes widened, and Gina shocked even herself with the viciousness of the threat. A distant corner of her mind registered a flicker of surprise that she hadn’t burst into her by-now-usual flood of tears. Her otherwise volatile hormones seemed to have narrowed to a single, deadly and completely primal urge.

  If this man—if any man—had harmed her mate, she’d make that Italian crime organization Jack’s dad mentioned seem like a bunch of playful kindergarteners.

  “Tell me, dammit. Where’s Jack?”

  Dom caught her pounding fists before they did serious damage to his chest wall. “He’s there, Gina.” Keeping a careful grip on her wrists, he angled her around. “Talking with some agents from the FBI.”

  She spotted him the same moment he followed Agent Driskell’s nod and glanced over his shoulder. In the ten seconds it took for Gina to wrestle out of Dom’s hold and Jack to sprint the fifty or so yards separating them, she saw that he was as bruised as her cousin.

  But it was his eyes that lit her heart up like the Fourth of July. His fierce, unguarded expression. The raw, male pheromones shooting off him like live sparks when he caught her in his arms. Her blood singing with joy, she returned his kiss with every ounce of relief, of desire, of love that was in her.

  Swift, frightening sanity came in the form of a sticky residue that transferred from the sleeve of his dark charcoal suit coat to Gina’s palm. In her mad rush to his arms, she hadn’t noticed the stain.

  She couldn’t miss it now. It left her palm a rusty red and a lump of dismay the size of a basketball bouncing around in her stomach. Gently, gingerly, she tried to ease away from the injured arm.

  “You’re hurt.”

  “So are you.”

  He curled a knuckle under her chin and angled her chin to survey the ugly bruise.

  “I thought slamming my fist into your cousin’s eye made up for this,” he said, murder in his voice. “Looks like he still has some payment coming.”

  “You gave Dom his black eye?” Gina couldn’t make sense of any of this. “If he was part of the plot to kidnap you, why isn’t he under arrest?”

  “Long story. Why don’t we…?” He broke off, his gaze going to the men who now approached. “Hello, Dad. Dale.”

  Jack didn’t seem the least surprised to see his father or chief of staff. Gina backed away to give them access to the man they all loved. She could share him with his family. With his obnoxious assistant. With his memories of Catherine.

  And with the child they would welcome to the world in just a few short months. Lost in a love undiminished by the past or constrained by the present, Gina acknowledged there was more than enough of Jack Mason to go around.

  Fifteen

  Once again the duchess’s spacious apartment served as command central. Most of the key players in the day’s drama sat elbow-to-elbow at the dining table, relieving their tension with their choice of coffee, iced tea, fruit juice, žuta osa or the last of the double-distilled pálinka.

  The duchess and Jack’s father had opted for the brandy. Jack, Dev, Zia and Dom braved the throat-searing kick of the liqueur. Dale Vickers went with coffee, while Gina and Sarah chose juice. The duchess insisted Maria fill her own glass rather than trying to keep everyone’s topped off and just sit down.

  Pam Driskell put in a brief appearance, as did Jerome. The doorman had delegated his post to a subordinate to accompany the FBI agent upstairs. He’d abandoned his dignity long enough to wrap Gina in a fierce hug. He then shook Jack’s hand, told him how happy he was to see him safe and went back to work.

  The only major players who failed to put in an appearance were Antonio Cordi and his two thugs. Cordi because he was dead, shot through the heart during the violence that erupted inside the warehouse just moments before the police arrived. One of his hired hands was also deceased, the big one Jack bitingly referred to as Goliath. He’d had his jugular sliced by the lid of a rusty tin can and had bled out before the EMTs arrived. The second thug was now a guest of the U.S. government and likely to remain so for a long, long time.

  Even now, huddled at the table that could seat twenty comfortably with the leaves in, Gina felt sick at the thought of how close both Jack and Dom had been to being on the receiving end of a bullet.

  “Cordi must have wondered if my well-publicized departure from Interpol was a blind,” Dom related after tossing back another restorative shot of pálinka. “He allowed me into the outer fringe of ’Ndrangheta but never let me get close enough to gather the evidence we needed to nail him.”

  “So to get close to the capo,” Jack drawled, “you suggested using your kinship to Gina as a means to get to me.”

  “Cordi had sworn a blood oath to avenge his brother,” Dom said with an unrepentant shrug. “He would have gotten to you eventually. I merely proved my loyalty by offering to set up the hit.”

  Gina still couldn’t believe the tangled web of lies and deceit Dom had lived for almost a year. Danger had stalked him with every breath, every step.

  Zia was even more appalled. She’d had no idea her brother had infiltrated one of Europe’s most vicious crime organizations. Or that he’d arranged this “business” trip to New York City for a specific, and very deadly, purpose.

  “No wonder you balked at my decision to accompany you,” she said, scowling.

  “You would not have accompanied me, had I not been sure I could keep you safe from danger.”

  “Not to mention,” Dev guessed shrewdly, “the fact that she added to your credibility with the duchess.”

  “Yes, there was that consideration.” A wry smile curved Dom’s lips. “You don’t know my sister very well, however, if you think my objections carried any weight with her. If I hadn’t been certain I could keep her safe, I would have been forced to chain her to a wall in the dungeon of the crumbling castle the Duchess Charlotte once called home.”

  Jack’s voice cut across the table like a serrated knife blade. “Too bad you couldn’t offer the same guarantees for Gina.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  Dom’s glance went to the bruise on Gina’s chin. His one eye was still swollen shut, but the other showed real chagrin. “I very much regret having to hurt you, cousin. My associates had become impatient, you see, and I had to act or risk blowing my cover.”

  His glance slewed to Jack, then back to Gina. A rakish glint replaced the regret in his good eye. “If you would but let me,” he murmured, “I would kiss away the hurt.”

  Jack answered that. This time his tone was slow and lazy but even more lethal. “You really do like living on the edge, d
on’t you, St. Sebastian?”

  “That’s enough!”

  The sharp reprimand turned every head to the duchess. Her chin had tilted to a degree that both Gina and Sarah recognized instantly, and her faded blue eyes shot daggers at the two combatants.

  “May I remind you that you’re guests in my home? Dominic, you will cease making such deliberately provocative comments. Jack, you will stop responding like a Neanderthal ready to club all rivals. Gina…”

  When her gimlet gaze zinged to her youngest granddaughter, Gina jerked upright in her chair. She’d been on the receiving end of that stare too many times to take it lightly.

  “What did I do?”

  “It’s what you haven’t done,” the duchess informed her. “For pity’s sake, tell Jack you love him as much as he so obviously loves you and get on with planning your wedding.”

  A few moments of stark silence greeted the acerbic pronouncement. Jack broke it with a cool reply. “With all due respect, Duchess, that’s something Gina and I should discuss in private.”

  His father joined the fray with a sudden and explosive exclamation. “Bull hockey!”

  “Dad…”

  John II ignored his son’s warning glance. The face he turned to Gina wore a mix of regret and resolution. “I know I acted like an ass when you came to visit us at Five Oaks.”

  “Pretty much,” she agreed politely.

  “I need to apologize for that. And for the ugly name I called you earlier this morning,” he added with a wince.

  “Christ, Dad, what the hell did you…?”

  “Be quiet, Jack. This is between Gina and me.”

  John Harris Mason II hadn’t lost his bite. His son matched him glower for glower but yielded the floor. Once again, the older man addressed Gina.

  “That was unforgivable. I hope you’ll chalk it up to a father sick to death with worry over his son.”

  “Consider it chalked,” she said with a shaky smile.

  Oh, boy! Her emotions were starting one of their wild swings. Now that the danger to Jack had passed and she was surrounded by everyone she loved most in the world, she wasn’t sure how long she could hold out before dissolving into wet, sloppy tears.