Merline Lovelace - The Duchess Diaries

The notes and trinkets were long gone but her trusty vibrator was tucked in its usual drawer. She didn’t have to resort to it often, but this...this gnawing hunger constituted a medical emergency.

So much of an emergency that the relief was almost instantaneous. And too damned short-lived! Gina tried to go from limp and languid into sleep. Jack kept getting in the way. Had he been bummed about dinner? Did he and Grandmama go without her? Would he try to see her again before he flew back to Washington?

* * *

She was forced to wait for the answers to those questions. With the manga birthday party set to kick off at 11:00 a.m., she had to leave for work before the duchess emerged from her bedroom. Maria came in at midmorning on Saturdays so Gina got no help from that quarter, either.

She toyed with the idea of calling Jack during the short subway ride to midtown, but all-too-vivid memories of last night’s searing hunger kept her cell phone in her purse. The memories raised heat in her cheeks. She suspected that hearing his voice, all deep and rich, would produce even more graphic effects. She wasn’t showing up for work with her nipples threatening to poke through bra and blouse.

That didn’t stop said nipples from sitting up and taking notice, however, when Jack contacted her just after nine-thirty.

“How are you doing, sleepyhead?”

“Better this morning than last night.” Jamming the phone between her chin and shoulder, she initialed the final seating plan and handed it to Kallie to add table numbers to name tags. “Sorry I zonked out on you.”

“No problem. The duchess didn’t want to leave you, so we ordered in.”

“Corned beef on rye from Osterman’s, right?”

“How did you know?”

“That’s what we usually order in.”

“We had a nice, long talk while we ate, by the way.”

“Uh-oh! Did she leave any stones from my misspent youth unturned?”

“One or two. She said you’ll have to turn over the rest yourself. She also said she was meeting with her opera club this evening. So that leaves just us. We can do a make-up dinner. Unless you have to work...”

He’d left her an easy out. It said much for Gina’s state of mind that she didn’t even consider taking it.

“I’m doing the party kickoff but Samuel’s taking cleanup. I should be done here by three.”

“I’ll pick you up then.”

“Kind of early for dinner,” she commented.

“We’ll find something to do.”

* * *

His breezy confidence took a hit when she slid into the cab he drove up in. Groaning, she let her purpled head drop onto the seat back.

“Next time I tell you I’m helping with a birthday party for a slew of eight-and nine-year-olds, be kind. Just shoot me right between the eyes.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse.”

“Guess that means you’re not up for a stroll down Fifth Avenue.”

“Do I look like I’m up for a stroll?”

“Well...”

She angled her head and studied him through a thick screen of purple-tipped lashes. “You, bastard that you are, appear relaxed and refreshed and disgustingly up for anything.”

Jack laughed and decided not to bore her with the details of his day, which had kicked off at 4:32 a.m. with a call from the State Department’s twenty-four-hour crisis monitoring desk. They reported that an angry crowd had gathered at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, and a debate was raging within the department over whether to reinforce the marine guard by flying in a fleet antiterrorist security team. Thankfully, the crowd dispersed with no shots fired and no FAST team required, but Jack had spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon reading the message traffic and analyzing the flash points that had precipitated the seemingly spontaneous mob.

Although the crisis had been averted, Jack knew he should have jumped a shuttle and flown back to D.C. His decision to remain in New York another night had surprised him almost as it had his chief of staff, Dale Vickers.

Jack had first met Dale at Harvard, when they both were enrolled in the Kennedy School of Government. Like Jack, Dale had also gone into the Foreign Service and had spent almost a decade in the field as a Foreign Service Officer until increasingly severe bouts of asthma chained him to a desk at State Department headquarters. Chained being the operative word. Unmarried and fiercely dedicated, Vickers spent fourteen to sixteen hours a day, every day, at his desk.

Jack appreciated his second-in-command’s devotion. He didn’t appreciate the disdain that crept into Vickers’s voice after learning his boss intended to stay another night in New York.

“We’ve kept your relationship with Ms. St. Sebastian out of the press so far, Ambassador. I’m not sure how much longer we can continue to do so.”

“Don’t worry about it. I don’t.”

“Easy for you to say,” Dale sniffed, displaying the prissy side he didn’t even suspect he possessed. “Media relations is my job.”

“I repeat, don’t worry about it. If and when the story breaks, Ms. St. Sebastian and I will handle it.”

That was met with a short, charged silence. Jack had worked with Vickers long enough now to know there was more to come. It came slowly, with seeming reluctance.

“You might want to discuss the slant we should give Ms. Sebastian’s pregnancy with your father, Ambassador. He expressed some rather strong views on the matter when he called here and I told him you were in New York.”

“First,” Jack said coldly, “I don’t want you discussing my personal affairs with anyone, including my father. Second, there is no slant. Gina St. Sebastian is pregnant with my child. What happens next is our business. Not the media’s. Not the State Department’s. Not my father’s. Not yours. Got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. I’ll let you know when I book the return shuttle to D.C.”

Fragments of that conversation played in Jack’s mind now as he studied the purple-tipped lashes framing Gina’s eyes. When his gaze drifted from those purple tips to her hair, he found himself repressing an inner qualm at the prospect of bumping into some member of the paparazzi. Jack could only imagine his father’s reaction to seeing Gina splashed across the tabloids in her manga persona.

John Harris II still mourned Catherine’s death but in recent years he’d turned his energy to finding a suitable replacement. Preferably someone with his daughter-in-law’s family wealth and political connections. He would accept an outsider if pushed to the edge. But Gina...?

“What are you thinking?” she asked, yanking Jack back to the present.

Everything fell away except the woman next to him. He relaxed into a lazy sprawl, his thighs and hips matched with hers. “I’m thinking I skipped lunch. How about you? Did you scarf down whatever you ordered up for that slew of eight-and nine-year-olds?”

“Puh-leez.” Her shoulders quivered in an exaggerated shudder. “My system can only take so much sugar.”

Her system, and her baby.

Only now did Gina appreciate the 180-degree turn her diet had taken. She’d cut out all forms of alcohol the moment she’d suspected she was pregnant. After her initial appointment with Dr. Martinson, she’d also cut out caffeine and started tossing down neonatal vitamins brimming with iron and folic acid. She hadn’t experienced any middle-of-the-night cravings yet but suddenly, inexplicably, she had to have a foot-long smothered in sauerkraut.

“How does a picnic sound?” she asked. “One of my favorite street vendors works a corner close to Bryant Park. We could grab a couple of fat, juicy hot dogs and do some serious people watching.”

“I’m game.”

* * *

Bryant Park encapsulated everything Gina loved about New York. Located between 5th and 6th Avenues and bounded on the eastern side by the New York Public Library, it formed an island of leafy green amid an ocean of skyscrapers. On weekdays office workers crowded the park’s benches or stretched out on the lawn during their lunch hours. If they had the time and the ambition, they could also sign up for a Ping-Pong game or backgammon or a chess match. Out-of-towners, too, were drawn to the park’s gaily painted carousel, the free concerts, the movies under the stars and, glory of glory, the superclean public restrooms. Chattering in a dozen different languages, tourists wandered the glassed-in kiosks or collapsed at tables in the outdoor restaurant to take a breather from determined sightseeing.