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“You’re a lifesaver, Betty. I assume the yeast roll is mine too, but who’s the pecan pie for?”
    “I thought your handsome friend might like some pie to go along with all that coffee he’s been consuming.”
    She slid the pie in front of him without waiting for his response. “Say, are you related to Professor Durban? You two look a lot alike.”
    Amelia answered for him. “Yep, they’re related. He’s Ben’s nephew.”
    “I suspected something like that,” Betty said, nodding. She glanced around the diner. “I’d better go. The place is filling up and folks want their food.”
    “Don’t forget refills for my tea,” Amelia yelled towards Betty’s back.
    Betty waved a hand in the air to acknowledge the command, then stopped to wait on another table.
    Ben’s nephew ignored his pie but took another sip of coffee. “I take it you and my uncle come here often.”
    Amelia stopped cutting her steak long enough to look across the table and respond. “Yes. In fact, the way Ben acts, you’d think he owns this back booth.”
    “That sounds like him.”
    “Speaking of Ben, I wonder why he never mentioned having a nephew.” Amelia forked up a piece of steak, plopped it into her mouth, and moaned with sheer pleasure as the combined flavours of gravy and beef brought ecstasy to her taste buds.
    Then she realised she’d closed her eyes and thrown her head back much as she did when the hallucinatory duke brought her to a climax. She quickly swallowed, straightened and looked across the table in an attempt to judge whether her actions might have seemed familiar to her companion.
    He was watching her with an enigmatic smile. Damn him!
    “So.” She narrowed her eyes. “What’s your name, anyway?”
    “Jonathon, but my friends call me Jack.”
    “Jack?”
    He turned his head slightly, as though to observe her from the corners of his eyes. “Why do you say Jack in that tone of voice?”
    “Ever hear of a man named Jackson who was the sixth Duke of Durbane?”
    “Of course. Uncle Ben is convinced that we’re descended from Jackson, who, as I’m sure you know, was the last duke before the title was declared extinct.”
    “Yes, I’m aware of all that. Ben thinks the Duchess of Durbane left England for America while pregnant with the future duke. Since her husband disappeared soon after, it’s assumed he tried to follow her and was lost at sea, or died through some other misadventure.”
    Jack sighed. “What makes Ben so positive that, even assuming the duchess had the baby in America, he’s descended from that child?”
    Amelia paused with her fork halfway to her mouth and regarded her companion. Now that she looked more closely, he didn’t really resemble the duke all that much. Sure, their colouring was the same, but Jack was good-looking in an entirely different way. She liked the crinkles around his eyes that suggested he smiled frequently, and she was amazingly attracted to the shape of his lips, which were a tad fuller than the duke’s. She bet he’d be a wonderful kisser.
    But in addition to all of that, there was a familiar air about him, almost as though she’d met him at some point in the past. “Any chance I’ve ever seen you with Ben?” she asked, just before lifting a forkful of potatoes to her mouth.
    “No, I’ve never visited him in Atlanta, and I just moved here myself less than a month ago. Why?”
    She savoured the potatoes for a minute before swallowing. “Just wondering. For a minute I thought… Never mind. Did you ask me a question?”
    He shrugged. “I did. It was about the reason behind Ben’s obsession with the duke, but I’ll bet it’s related to the similarity between the duke’s title name of Durbane and our surname of Durban. It’s just like Uncle Ben to extrapolate a relationship from such scant evidence.”
    Impressed in spite of herself, Amelia regarded him with new respect. “I suspect you’re right. Frankly, even with all the research I’ve done on the