Merline Lovelace - Her Unforgettable Royal Lover

Tonight’s visitors were no exception. All three gawked at the floodlit spires, towering dome, flying buttresses and stained-glass windows of the Parliament Building across the river. Equally elaborate structures flanked the massive building, while the usual complement of river barges and brightly lit tour boats cruised by almost at its steps.

Ruthlessly, Dom cut into their viewing time. “Please sit down, all of you, then someone needs to tell me what this is all about.”

“It’s about this woman,” Gradjnic said in heavily accented English when everyone had found a place to perch. He tugged a small black notebook from his shirt pocket. “What did you say her name was?”

Dom’s glance shot to Natalie. “You didn’t tell them your name?”

“I…I don’t remember it.”

“What?”

Her frown deepened. “I don’t remember anything.”

“Except the Grand Duke,” Officer Gradjnic put in drily.

“Wait,” Dom ordered. “Back up and start at the beginning.”

Nodding, the policeman flipped through his notebook. “The beginning for us was 10:32 a.m. today, when dispatch called to report bystanders had fished a woman out of the Danube. We responded, found this young lady sitting on the bank with her rescuers. She had no shoes, no purse, no cell phone, no ID of any kind and no memory of how she ended up in the river. When we asked her name or the name of a friend or relative here in Budapest, all she could tell us was ‘the Grand Duke.’”

“Jesus!”

“She has a lump the size of a goose egg at the base of her skull, under her hair.”

When Dom’s gaze shot to Natalie again, she raised a tentative hand to the back of her neck. “More like a pigeon’s egg,” she corrected with a frown.

“Yes, well, the lump suggests she may have fallen off a bridge or a tour boat and hit her head on the way down, although none of the tour companies have reported a missing passenger. We had the EMTs take her to the hospital. The doctors found no sign of serious injury or concussion.”

“No blurred vision?” Dom asked sharply. He’d taken—and delivered—enough blows to the head to know the warning signs. “No nausea or vomiting or balance problems?”

“Only the memory loss. The doctor said it’s not all that unusual with that kind of trauma. Since we had no other place to take her, it was either leave her at the hospital or bring her to the only person she seems to know in Budapest—the Grand Duke.”

Hit by a wicked sense of irony, Dom remembered those quivering nostrils and flickers of disdain. He suspected Ms. Clark would rather have been left at a dog pound than delivered to him.

“I’ll take care of her,” he promised, “but she must have a hotel room somewhere in the city.”

“If she does, we’ll let you know.” Gradjnic flipped to an empty page and poised his pen. “Now what did you say her name was?”

“Natalie. Natalie Clark.”

“American, we guessed from her accent.”

“That’s right.”

“And she works for your cousin?”

“Yes, as research assistant.” Angling around, Dom tried a tentative probe. “Natalie, you were supposed to meet with Sarah sometime this week. In Paris, right?”

“Sarah?”

“My cousin. Sarah St. Sebastian Hunter.”

Her first response was a blank stare. Her second startled all three men.

“My head hurts.” Scowling, she pushed out of her chair. “I’m tired. And these clothes stink.”

With that terse announcement, she headed for the unmade bed at the far end of the loft. She kicked off the sneakers as she went. Dom lurched to his feet as she peeled out of the torn jacket.

“Hold on a minute!”

“I’m tired,” she repeated. “I need sleep.”

Shaking off his restraining hand, she flopped facedown across the bed. The three men watched with varying expressions of surprise and resignation as she buried her face in the pillow.

Gradjnic broke the small silence that followed. “Well, I guess that does it for us here. Now that we have her name, we’ll trace Ms. Clark’s entry into the country and her movements in Hungary as best we can. We’ll also find out if she’s registered at a hotel. And you’ll call us when and if she remembers why she took that dive into the Danube, right?”

“Right.”

The sound of their departure diverted the Agár’s attention from the chew-bone he’d dug out of the hamper. To quiet his whining, Dom let him out of the bathroom but kept a close watch while he sniffed out the stranger sprawled sideways across the bed. Apparently deciding she posed no threat, the dog padded back to the living area and stretched out in front of the window to watch the brightly lit boats cruising up and down the river.

Dom had his phone in hand before the hound’s speckled pink belly hit the planks. Five rings later, his sleepy-sounding cousin answered.

“Hullowhozzis?”

“It’s Dom, Sarah.”

“Dom?”

“Where are you?”

“We’re in…uh…Dalian. China,” she added, sounding more awake…and suddenly alarmed by a call in what had to be the middle of the night on the other side of the globe. “Is everyone okay? Grandmama? Gina? Zia? Oh, God! Is it one of the twins?”

“They’re all fine, Sarah. But I can’t say the same for your research assistant.”

He heard a swift rustle of sheets. A headboard creaking.

“Dev! Wake up! Dom says something’s happened to Natalie!”

“I’m awake.”

“Tell me,” Sarah demanded.

“The best guess is she fell off a bridge or a cruise boat. They fished her out of the river early this morning.”

“Is she…? Is she dead?”

“No, but she’s got a good-size lump at the base of her skull and she doesn’t remember anything. Not even her name.”

“Good Lord!” The sheets rustled again. “Natalie’s been hurt, Dev. Would you contact your crew and have them prep the Gulfstream? I need to fly back to Paris right away.”

“She’s not in Paris,” Dom interjected. “She’s with me, in Budapest.”

“In Budapest? But…how? Why?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“She didn’t say anything about Hungary when we got together in Paris last week. Only that she might drive down to Vienna again, to do more research on the Canaletto.” A note of accusation slipped through Sarah’s concern. “She was also going to dig a little more on the codicil. Something you said about it seemed to have bothered her.”

He’d said a lot about it, none of which he intended to go into at the moment. “So you don’t know why she’s here in Hungary?”

“I have no clue. Is she there with you now? Let me speak to her.”

He flicked a glance at the woman sprawled across his bed. “She’s zoned out, Sarah. Said she was tired and just flopped into bed.”

“This memory thing? Will she be all right?”

“Like you, I have no clue. But you’d better contact her family just in case.”

“She doesn’t have any family.”

“She’s got to have someone. Grandparents? An uncle or aunt stashed away somewhere?”

“She doesn’t,” Sarah insisted. “Dev ran a detailed background check before I hired her. Natalie doesn’t know who her parents are or why she was abandoned as an infant. She lived with a series of foster families until she checked herself out of the system at age eighteen and entered the University of Michigan on full scholarship.”

That certainly put a different spin on the basic age-height-DOB info he’d gathered.

“I’ll fly to Budapest immediately,” Sarah was saying, “and take Natalie home with me until she recovers her memory.”

Dom speared another glance at the researcher. His gut told him he’d live to regret the suggestion he was about to make.