The doubts crept in after she’d been home for several weeks. Dom seemed distracted when he called. After almost a month, it felt to Natalie as though he was struggling to keep any conversation going that didn’t deal directly with the authentication effort.
Sarah seemed to sense her assistant’s growing unease. She didn’t pry, but she had a good idea what had happened between her cousin and Natalie during their time together in Budapest. She got a far clearer picture when she dropped what she thought was a casual question one rainy afternoon.
“Did Dom give you any glimmer of hope when the team might vet the Canaletto the last time he called?”
Natalie didn’t look up from the dual-page layout on her computer screen. “No.”
“Damn. We’re supposed to fly to New York for another meeting with Random House next week. I hate to keep putting them off. Maybe you can push Dom a little next time you talk to him.”
“I’m…I’m not sure when that will be.”
From the corner of her eye Natalie saw Sarah’s head come up. Swiveling her desk chair, she met her employer’s carefully neutral look.
“Dom’s been busy… The time difference… It’s tough catching each other at home and…”
The facade crumbled without a hint of warning. One minute she was faking a bright smile. Two seconds later she was gulping and swearing silently that she would not cry.
“Oh, Natalie.” Sympathy flooded Sarah’s warm brown eyes. “I’m sure it’s just as you say. Dom’s busy, you’re busy, you’re continents apart…”
“And the tabloids have glommed on to him again,” Natalie said with a wobbly smile.
“I know,” Sarah said with a grimace. “One of these days I’ll learn not to trust Alexis.”
Her former boss had sworn up and down she didn’t leak the story. Once it hit the press, though, Beguile followed almost immediately with a four-page color spread featuring Europe’s sexiest single royal and his role in the recovery of stolen art worth hundreds of millions. Although the story stopped short of revealing that Dom worked for Interpol, it hinted at a dark and dangerous side to the duke. It even mentioned the Agár and obliquely suggested the hound had been trained by an elite counterterrorist strike force to sniff out potential targets. Natalie might have chuckled at that if the accompanying photo of Dom and Duke running in the park below the castle hadn’t knifed right into her heart.
* * *
As a consequence, she was feeling anything but celebratory when she joined Sarah and Dev and Dev’s extraordinarily efficient chief of operations, Pat Donovan, at a dinner to celebrate the book’s completion. She mustered the requisite smiles and lifted her champagne flute for each toast. But she descended into a sputtering blob of incoherence when Sarah broached the possibility of a follow-on book specifically focused on Karlenburgh’s colorful, seven-hundred-year history.
“Please, Natalie! Say you’ll work with me on the research.”
“I, uh…”
“Would you consider a one-year contract, with an option for two more? I’ll double what I’m paying you now for the first year, and we can negotiate your salary for the following two.”
She almost swallowed her tongue. “You’re already paying me twice what the average researcher’s services are worth!”
Dev leaned across the table and folded his big hand around Natalie’s. “You’re not just a researcher, kid. We consider you one of the family.”
“Th-Thank you.”
She refused to dwell on her nebulous, half-formed thoughts of actually becoming a member of their clan. Those silly hopes had faded in the past month…to the point where she wasn’t sure she could remain on the fringe of Sarah’s family orbit.
Her outrageously expensive dinner curdled at the thought of bumping into Dom at the launch of Sarah’s book six or eight months from now. Or crossing paths with him if she returned to Hungary to research the history of the St. Sebastians. Or seeing the inevitable gossip put out by the tabloids whenever the sexy royal appeared at some gala with a glamorous female looking suspiciously like Natalie’s mental image of Kissy Face Arabella.
“I’m overwhelmed by the offer,” she told Sarah with a grateful smile. “Can I take a little time to think it over?”
“Of course! But think fast, okay? I’d like to brief my editors on the concept when we meet with them next week.”
Before Natalie could even consider accepting Sarah’s offer, she had to come clean. The next morning she burned with embarrassment as she related the whole sorry story of her arrest and abrupt departure from her position as an archivist for the State of Illinois. Sarah listened with wide eyes but flatly refused to withdraw her offer.