The thought brought her head up with a snap. She scowled at him, sitting so calm and relaxed on his tiny handkerchief of a balcony. The slanting rays of the late-afternoon sun highlighted the short, glossy black hair, the golden oak of his skin, the strong cheekbones and chin. The speculative look in his dark eyes…
“What do you know that you’re not telling me?” she snapped.
“There,” he said, tipping his glass toward her in mock salute. “That’s what I know.”
“Huh?”
“That spark of temper. That flash of spirit. You try so hard to hide them behind the prim, proper facade you present to the world but every so often they slip out.”
“What are you talking about? What facade?”
He parried her questions with one of his own. “Do you see the ironmonger’s cast there, right in front of you, stamped into the balcony railing?”
“What?”
“The cast mark. Do you see it?”
Frowning, she surveyed the ornate initial entwined with ivy. The mark was worn almost smooth but still legible. “You mean that N?”
He gestured with his glass again, this time at the panorama view across the river. “What about the Liberation Monument, high on that hill?
“Dominic…”
“Do you see it?”
She speared an impatient glance at the bronze statue of a woman holding a palm leaf high aloft. It dominated the hill in the far distance and could obviously be seen from anywhere in the city.
“Yes, I see it.” The temper he’d commented on earlier sparked again. “But I’m in no mood for games or quizzes, Mr. Grand Duke. What do you know that I don’t?”
“I know you wore glasses in New York,” he replied evenly. “Large, square glasses with thick lenses that you apparently don’t require for near or distance vision. I know you scraped your hair back most unattractively instead of letting it fall loose to your shoulders, as it does now. I know you chose loose clothes in an attempt to disguise your slender hips and—” his glance drifted south, and an appreciative gleam lit his eyes “—very delightful breasts.”
Her mouth had started sagging at the mention of glasses. It dropped farther when he got to her hair, and snapped shut at the mention of her breasts. Fighting the urge to cross her arms over her chest, she tried to make sense of his observations.
She couldn’t refute the part about the clothes. She’d questioned her fashion sense herself before she’d tossed the garments in the trash this morning. But the glasses? The hair?
She scrubbed her palms over her thighs, now encased in the formfitting designer jeans she’d purchased at the boutique. The jeans, the sandals, the short-sleeve T-shirt didn’t feel strange or uncomfortable. From what Dom had said, though, they weren’t her.
“Maybe what you saw in New York is the real me,” she said a little desperately. “Maybe I just don’t like drawing attention to myself.”
“Maybe,” he agreed, his gaze steady on her face. “And maybe there’s a reason why you don’t.”
She could think of several reasons, none of them particularly palatable. Some were so far out she dismissed them instantly. She just couldn’t see herself as a terrorist in training or a bank robber on the run. There was another explanation she couldn’t shrug off as easily. One Dom brought up slowly, carefully.
“Perhaps your desire to hide the real you relates to a personal trauma, as Dr. Kovacs suggested this morning.”
She couldn’t deny the possibility. Yet…
She didn’t feel traumatized. And she’d evidently been doing just fine before her dive into the Danube. She had a job that must have paid very well, judging by the advance on her salary Sarah had sent. She’d traveled to Paris, to Vienna, to Hungary. She must have an apartment back in the States. Books, maybe. Framed prints on the wall or a pen-and-ink sketch or a…
Her thoughts jerked to a stop. Rewound. Focused on a framed print. No, not a print. A painting. A canal scene with strong, hazy colors and a light so natural it looked as though the sun was shimmering on the water.
She could see it! Every sleek black gondola, every window arch framed by mellow stone, every ripple of the green waters of the lagoon.
“Didn’t Sarah tell you I went to Vienna to research a painting?” she asked Dom eagerly.
“She did.”
“A Venetian canal scene.” She clung to the mental image with a fierce effort of will. “By…by…”
“Canaletto.”
“Yes!” She edged off the tall chair and kept a few careful inches away from the iron railing. “Let’s go inside. I need to use your laptop.”