Her Unforgettable Royal Lover. Merline Lovelace

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.

      Dominic. His name was Dominic. It fit him, she thought with a grimace, much better than Natalie did her. Those muscled shoulders, the strong arms, the chest she’d sobbed against, all hinted at power and virility and, yes, dominance.

      Especially in bed. The thought slipped in, got caught in her mind. He’d said they weren’t lovers. Implied she’d slept alone. Yet heat danced in her belly at the thought of lying beneath him and feeling his hands on her breasts, his mouth on her…

      Oh, God! The panic came screaming back. She breathed in. Out. In. Then set her jaw and glared at the face in the mirror.

      “No more crying! It didn’t help before! It won’t help now.”

      She snatched up a dry washcloth and had started to scrub the fogged glass when she caught the echo of her words. Her fist closed around the cloth, and her chest squeezed.

      “Crying didn’t help before what?”

      Like the steam still drifting from the shower stall, the mists in her mind seemed to curl. Shift. Become less opaque. Something was there, just behind the thin gray curtain. She could almost see it. Almost smell it. She spun around and hacked out a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh.