The Duchess Diaries. Merline Lovelace
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Merline Lovelace
Will inconvenient pregnancy lead to convenient matrimony in this Duchess Diaries novel by USA TODAY bestselling author Merline Lovelace?
A wild weekend changes Gina St. Sebastian’s life, but one thing won’t change—her marital status. Ambassador Jack Mason, the dashing, arrogant father of her unborn baby, can forget about a marriage of convenience. She’s perfectly capable without him. Never mind the heat between them. That’s pregnancy hormones!
Jack will deploy his formidable charms to do what’s right—marriage for the baby’s sake. Yet the more he tries to convince Gina, the more he realizes he wants her as much as he wants his child….
A career Air Force officer, MERLINE LOVELACE served at bases all over the world. When she hung up her uniform for the last time she decided to combine her love of adventure with a flair for storytelling, basing many of her tales on her own experiences in uniform. Since then she’s produced more than ninety action-packed sizzlers, many of which have made the USA TODAY and Waldenbooks bestseller lists. Over eleven million copies of her books are available in some thirty countries.
When she’s not tied to her keyboard, Merline enjoys reading, chasing little white balls around the fairways of Oklahoma and traveling to new and exotic locales with her handsome husband, Al. check her website at www.merlinelovelace.com or friend her on Facebook for news and information about her latest releases.
To my gorgeous niece Cori and Jane and the rest of the crew at Clayton on the Park, in Scottsdale. Thanks for the inside look at the ups and downs of an event coordinator’s life!
I could not have asked for two more beautiful or loving granddaughters. From the first day they came to live with me—one so young and frightened, the other still in diapers—they filled the empty spaces in my heart with light and joy. Now Sarah, my quiet, elegant Sarah, is about to marry her handsome Dev. The wedding takes place in a few hours, and I ache with happiness for her.
And with such worry for her sister. My darling Eugenia has waltzed through life, brightening even the sourest dispositions with her sparkling smile and carefree, careless joie de vivre. Now, quite suddenly that carelessness has caught up with her. She’s come face-to-face with reality, and I can only pray the strength and spirit I know she possesses will help her through the difficult days ahead.
Enough of this. I must dress for the wedding. Then it’s off to the Plaza, which has been the scene of so many significant events in my life. But none to match the delight of this one!
From the diary of Charlotte,
Grand Duchess of Karlenburgh
Gina St. Sebastian forced a smile to hide her gritted teeth. “Good Lord, you’re stubborn, Jack.”
“I’m stubborn?”
The irate male standing before her snapped his sun-bleached brows together. Ambassador John Harris Mason III was tanned, tawny-haired and a trim, athletic six-one. He was also used to being in charge. The fact that he couldn’t control Gina or the situation they now found themselves in irritated him no end.
“You’re pregnant with my child, dammit. Yet you refuse to even discuss marriage.”
“Oh, for...! Trumpet the news to the whole world, why don’t you?”
Scowling, Gina craned her neck to peer around the bank of gardenias shielding her and Jack from the other guests in the Terrace Room of New York City’s venerable Plaza Hotel. With its exquisitely restored Italian Renaissance ceiling and crystal chandeliers modeled after those in the Palace of Versailles, it made a fabulous venue for a wedding.
A wedding put together on extremely short notice! They’d had less than two weeks to pull it off. The groom’s billions had eased the time crunch considerably, as had the miracle worker Dev Hunter employed as his executive assistant. Gina had done all the planning, though, and she would not allow the man she’d spent one wild weekend with to disrupt her sister’s wedding day.
Luckily no one seemed to have heard his caustic comment. The band was currently pulsing out the last bars of a lively merengue. Sarah and Dev were on the dance floor, along with the St. Sebastians’ longtime housekeeper, Maria, and most of the guests invited to the elegant affair.
Gina’s glance shot from the dancers to the lace-clad woman sitting ramrod-straight in her chair, hands crossed on the ebony head of her cane. The duchess was out of earshot, too, thank God! Hearing her younger granddaughter’s pregnancy broadcast to the world at large wouldn’t have fit with her notions of proper behavior.
Relieved, Gina swung back to Jack. “I won’t have you spoil my sister’s wedding with another argument. Please lower your voice.”
He took the hint and cranked down the decibels, if not his temper. “We haven’t had ten minutes alone to talk about this since you got back from Switzerland.”
As if she needed the reminder! She’d flown to Switzerland exactly one day after she’d peed on a purple stick and felt her world come crashing down around her. She’d had to get away from L.A., had to breathe in the sharp, clean air of the snow-capped Alps surrounding Lake Lucerne while trying to decide what to do. After a day and a night of painful soul-searching, she’d walked into one of Lucerne’s ultramodern clinics. Ten minutes later, she’d turned around and walked out again. But not before making two near-hysterical calls. The first was to Sarah—her sister, her protector, her dearest friend. The second, unfortunately, was to the handsome, charismatic and thoroughly annoying diplomat