Her Unforgettable Royal Lover

“This better not be some damned reporter,” he muttered as he kneed the still-barking hound aside and checked the spy hole. The special lens he’d had installed gave a 180-­degree view of the landing outside his loft. The small area was occupied by two uniformed police officers and a bedraggled female Dom didn’t recognize until he opened the door.

“Mi a fene!” he swore in Hungarian, then switched quickly to English. “Natalie! What happened to you?”

She didn’t answer, being too preoccupied at the moment with the dog trying to shove his nose into her crotch. Dom swore again, got a grip on its collar and dislodged the nose, but he still didn’t get a reply. She merely stared at him with a frown creasing her forehead and her hair straggling in limp tangles around her face.

“Are you Dominic St. Sebastian?” one of the police officers asked.

“Yes.”

“Aka the Grand Duke?”

He made an impatient noise and kept his grip on the dog’s collar. “Yes.”

The second officer, whose nametag identified him as Gradjnic, glanced down at a newspaper folded to a grainy picture of Dom and the brunette at the coffee shop. “Looks like him,” he volunteered.

His partner gestured to Natalie. “And you know this woman?”

“I do.” Dom’s glance raked the researcher, from her tangled hair to her torn jacket to what looked like a pair of men’s sneakers several sizes too large for her. “What the devil happened to you?”

“Maybe we’d better come in,” Gradjnic suggested.

“Yes, yes, of course.”

The officers escorted Natalie inside, and Dom shut the dog in the bathroom before joining them. The Agár whined and scratched at the door but soon nosed out the giant chew-bones Dom stored in the hamper for emergencies like this.

Aside from the small bathroom, the loft consisted of a single, barn-like attic area that had once stored artifacts belonging to the Ethnological Museum. When the museum moved to new digs, their old building was converted to condos. Zia had just nailed a full scholarship to medical school, so Dom had decided to sink his savings into this loft apartment in the pricy Castle Hill district on the Buda side of the river. He’d then proceeded to sand and varnish the oak-plank floors to a high gloss. He’d also knocked out a section of the sloping roof and opened up a view of the Danube that usually had guests gasping.

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.

“Why don’t you hang loose for now? Could be she’ll be fine when she wakes up tomorrow. I’ll call you then.”

“I don’t know…”

“I’ll call you, Sarah. As soon as she wakes up.”

When she reluctantly agreed, he cut the connection and stood with the phone in hand for several moments. He’d worked undercover too long to take anything at face value…especially a woman fished out of the Danube who had no reason to be in Budapest that anyone knew. Thumbing the phone, he tapped in a number. His contact at Interpol answered on the second ring.

“Oui?”

“It’s Dom,” he replied in swift, idiomatic French. “Remember the query you ran for me two weeks ago on Natalie Clark?”

“Oui.”

“I need you to dig deeper.”

“Oui.”

The call completed, he contemplated his unexpected houseguest for a few moments. Her rumpled skirt had twisted around her calves and her buttoned-to-the-neck blouse looked as though it was choking her. After a brief inner debate, Dom rolled her over. He had the blouse unfastened and was easing it off when she opened her eyes to a groggy squint and mumbled at him.

“Whatryoudoin?”

“Making you comfortable.”

“Mmm.”

She was asleep again before he got her out of her blouse and skirt. Her panties were plain, unadorned white cotton but, Dom discovered, covered slender hips and a nice, trim butt. Nobly, he resisted the urge to remove her underwear and merely tucked the sheets around her. That done, he popped the cap on a bottle of a pilsner for himself, opened another for the hound and settled in for an all-night vigil.

* * *

He rolled her over again just after midnight and pried up a lid. She gave a bad-tempered grunt and batted his hand away, but not before he saw her pupil dilate and refract with reassuring swiftness.

He woke her again two hours later. “Natalie. Can you hear me?”

“Go away.”

He did a final check just before dawn. Then he stretched out on the leather sofa and watched the dark night shade to gold and pink.

* * *

Something wet and cold prodded her elbow. Her shoulder. Her chin. She didn’t come awake, though, until a strap of rough leather rasped across her cheek. She blinked fuzzily, registered the hazy thought that she was in bed, and opened her eyes.

“Yikes!”

A glistening pink mouth loomed only inches from her eyes. Its black gums were pulled back and a long tongue dangled through a set of nasty-looking incisors. As if in answer to her startled yip, the gaping mouth emitted a blast of powerful breath and an ear-ringing bark.

She scurried back like a poked crab, heart thumping and sheets tangling. A few feet of separation gave her a better perspective. Enough to see the merry eyes above an elongated muzzle, a broad forehead topped with one brown ear and one white, and a long, lean body with a wildly whipping tail.

Evidently the dog mistook her retreat for the notion that she was making space for him in the bed. With another loud woof, he landed on the mattress. The tongue went to work again, slathering her cheeks and chin before she could hold him off.

“Whoa! Stop!” His joy was contagious and as impossible to contain as his ecstatically wriggling body. Laughing now, she finally got him by the shoulders. “Okay, okay, I like you, too! But enough with the tongue.”

He got in another slurp before he let her roll him onto his back, where he promptly stuck all four legs into the air and begged for a tickle. She complied and raised quivers of ecstasy on his short-haired ribs and speckled pink-and-brown belly.

“You’re a handsome fellow,” she murmured, admiring his sleek lines as her busy fingers set his legs to pumping. “Wonder what your name is?”

“He doesn’t have one.”

The response came from behind her. Twisting on the bed, she swept her startled gaze across a huge, sparsely furnished area. A series of overhead beams topped with A-frame wooden trusses suggested it was an attic. A stunningly renovated attic, with gleaming oak floors and modern lighting.

There were no interior walls, only a curved, waist-high counter made of glass blocks that partitioned off a kitchen area. The male behind the counter looked at home there. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, he wore a soccer shirt of brilliant red-and-black stripes with some team logo she didn’t recognize emblazoned on one breast. The stretchy fabric molded his broad, muscular shoulders. The wavy glass blocks gave an indistinct view of equally muscular thighs encased in running shorts.

She watched him, her hand now stilled on the dog’s belly, while he flicked the switch on a stainless-steel espresso machine. Almost instantly the machine hissed out thick, black liquid. Her eyes never left him as he filled two cups and rounded the glass-block counter.

When he crossed the huge room, the dog scrambled to sit up at his approach. So did she, tugging the sheet up with her. For some reason she couldn’t quite grasp, she’d slept in her underwear.

He issued an order in a language she didn’t understand. When he repeated it in a firmer voice, the dog jumped off the bed with obvious reluctance.

“How do you feel?”

“I…uh… Okay.”

“Head hurt?”

She tried a tentative neck roll. “I don’t… Ooh!”

Wincing, she fingered the lump at the base of her skull.

“What happened?”

“Best guess is you fell off a bridge or tour boat and hit your head. Want some aspirin?”

“God, yes!”

He handed her one of the cups and crossed to what she guessed was a bathroom tucked under one of the eaves. She used his brief absence to let her gaze sweep the cavernous room again, looking for something, anything familiar.

Panic crawled like tiny ants down her spine when she finally accepted that she was sitting cross-legged on an unmade bed. In a strange apartment. With a hound lolling a few feet away, grinning from ear to ear and looking all too ready to jump back in with her.

Her hands shaking, she lifted the china cup. The rim rattled against her teeth and the froth coated her upper lip as she took a tentative sip.

“Ugh!”

Her first impulse was to spit the incredibly strong espresso back into the cup. Politeness—and the cool, watchful eyes of the bearer of aspirin—forced her to swallow.

“Better take these with water.”

Gratefully, she traded the cup for a glass. She was reaching for the two small white pills in his palm when she suddenly froze. Her heart slamming against her chest, she stared down at the pills.

Oh, God! Had she been drugged? Did he intend to knock her out again?

A faint thread of common sense tried to push through her balled-up nerves. If he wanted to drug her, he could just as easily have put something in her coffee. Still, she pulled her hand back.

“I…I better not. I, uh, may be allergic.”

“You’re not wearing a medical alert bracelet.”

“I’m not wearing much of anything.”

“True.”

He set the pills and her cup on a low bookshelf that doubled as a nightstand. She clutched the water glass, looked at him, at the grinning dog, at the rumpled sheets, back at him. Ants started down her spine again.

“Okay,” she said on a low, shaky breath, “who are you?”

Four

“I’m Dominic. Dominic St. Sebastian. Dom to my friends and family.”

He kept his eyes on her, watching for the tiniest flicker of recognition. If she was faking that blank stare, she was damned good at it.

“I’m Sarah’s cousin,” he added.

Nothing. Not a blink. Not a frown.

“Sarah St. Sebastian Hunter?” He waited a beat, then decided to go for the big guns. “She’s the granddaughter of Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Karlenburgh.”

“Karlenburgh?”

“You were researching a document pertaining to Karlenburgh. One with a special codicil.”

He thought for a moment he’d struck a chord. Her brows drew together, and her lips bunched in an all-too-familiar moue. Then she blew out a breath and scooted to the edge of the bed, pulling the sheet with her.

“I don’t know you, or your cousin, or her grandmother. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get dressed and be on my way.”

“On your way to where?”

That brought her up short.

“I…I don’t know.” She blinked, obviously coming up empty. “Where…? Where am I?”

“Maybe this will help.”

Dom went to the window and drew the drapes. Morning light flooded the loft. With it came the eagle’s-eye view of the Danube and the Parliament’s iconic red dome and forest of spires.

“Ooooh!” Wrapping the sheet around her like a sari, she stepped to the glass wall. “How glorious!”

“Do you recognize the building?”

“Sort of. Maybe.”

She sounded anything but sure. And, Dom noted, she didn’t squint or strain as she studied the elaborate structure across the river. Apparently she only needed her glasses for reading or close work. Yet…she’d worn them during both their previous meetings. Almost like a shield.

“I give up.” She turned to him, those delicate nostrils quivering and panic clouding her eyes. “Where am I?”

“Budapest”

“Hungary?”

He started to ask if there was a city with that same name in another country but the panic had started to spill over into tears. Although she tried valiantly to gulp them back, she looked so frightened and fragile that Dom had to take her in his arms.

The sobs came then. Big, noisy gulps that brought the Agár leaping to all fours. His ears went flat and his long, narrow tail whipped out, as though he sensed an enemy but wasn’t sure where to point.

“It’s all right,” Dom said, as much to the dog as the woman in his arms. She smelled of the river, he thought as he stroked her hair. The river and diesel spill and soft, trembling female still warm from his bed. So different from the stiff, disdainful woman who’d ordered him out of her New York hotel room that his voice dropped to a husky murmur.

“It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not!”

The tears gushed now, soaking through his soccer shirt and making the dog whine nervously. His claws clicked on the oak planking as he circled Dom and the woman clinging to his shirt with one hand and the sheet with her other.

“I don’t understand any of this! Why can’t I remember where I am? Why can’t I remember you?” She jerked back against his arm and stared up at him. “Are we…? Are we married?”

“No.”

Her glance shot to the bed. “Lovers?”

He let that hang for a few seconds before treating her to a slow smile.

“Not yet.”

Guilt pricked at him then. Her eyes were so huge and frightened, her nose red and sniffling. Gentling his voice, he brushed a thumb across her cheek to wipe the tears.

“Do you remember the police bringing you here last night?”

“I…I think so.”

“They took you to a hospital first. Remember?”

Her forehead wrinkled. “Now I do.”

“A doctor examined you. He told the police that short-term memory loss isn’t unusual with a head injury.”

She jumped on that. “How short?”

“I don’t know, drágám.”

“Is that my name? Drágám?”

“No, that’s a nickname. An endearment, like ‘sweetheart’ or ‘darling.’ Very casual here in Hungary,” he added when her eyes got worried again. “Your name is Natalie. Natalie Elizabeth Clark.”

“Natalie.” She rolled it around in her head, on her tongue. “Not a name I would pick for myself,” she said with a sniffle, “but I guess it’ll do.”

The brown-and-white hound poked at her knee then, as if demanding reassurance that all was well. Natalie eased out of Dom’s arms and knuckled the dog’s broad, intelligent forehead.

“And who’s this guy?”

“I call him kutya. It means ‘dog’ in Hungarian.”

Her eyes lifted to his, still watery but accusing. “You just call him ‘dog’?”

“He followed me home one night and decided to take up residence. I thought it would be a temporary arrangement, so we never got around to a baptismal ceremony.”

“So he’s a stray,” she murmured, her voice thickening. “Like me.”

Dom knew he’d better act fast to head off another storm of tears. “Stray or not,” he said briskly, “he needs to go out. Why don’t you shower and finish your coffee while I take him for his morning run? I’ll pick up some apple pancakes for breakfast while I’m out, yes? Then we’ll talk about what to do next.”

When she hesitated, her mouth trembling, he curled a knuckle under her chin and tipped her face to his. “We’ll work this out, Natalie. Let’s just take it one step at a time.”

She bit her lip and managed a small nod.

“Your clothes are in the bathroom,” Dom told her. “I rinsed them out last night, but they’re probably still damp.” He nodded to the double-doored wardrobe positioned close to the bath. “Help yourself to whatever you can find to fit you.”

She nodded again and hitched the sheet higher to keep from tripping over it as she padded to the bathroom. Dom waited until he heard the shower kick on before dropping into a chair to pull on socks and his well-worn running shoes.

He hoped to hell he wasn’t making a mistake leaving her alone. Short of locking her in, though, he didn’t see how he could confine her here against her will. Besides which, they needed to eat and Dog needed to go out. A point the hound drove home by retrieving his leash from its hook by the door and waiting with an expression of acute impatience.

* * *

Natalie. Natalie Elizabeth Clark.

Why didn’t it feel right? Sound right?

She wrapped her freshly shampooed hair in a towel and stared at the steamed-up bathroom mirror. The image it reflected was as foggy as her mind.

She’d stood under the shower’s hot, driving needles and tried to figure out what in the world she was doing in Budapest. It couldn’t be her home. She didn’t know a word of Hungarian. Correction. She knew two. Kutya and… What had he called her? Dragon or something.