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he saw Natalia De la Grip. He glanced at his watch. He was early. It wasn’t quite one o’clock yet, but she was even earlier. The other patrons were mostly tourists, but Natalia had still chosen a table at the back of the establishment and was seated so that she was hardly visible. It was clear that she didn’t want to be seen with him, but that made sense. He had made the reservation out here instead of at one of the more central restaurants near Stureplan so they wouldn’t be recognized.
    She spotted him, raised her hand to wave, but then quickly brought it back down as if she’d changed her mind. David started walking toward her.
    She was very fair-skinned and looked quite modest, her face serious, her clothes an austere gray. It was hard to believe that she worked as an adviser to one of the world’s biggest banks, and for J-O no less. He was one of the most demanding and eccentric bosses David had ever met. But J-O had promoted this drably dressed woman to the top, saying she had the potential to become one of his best corporate finance wizards. “She’s bright, alert, and bold,” J-O had said. “She can go as far as she wants.”
    David would have to be careful not to underestimate her.
    When he reached the table, Natalia De la Grip stood. She was taller than he’d expected. She held out her hand. It was slender, with short, unpainted nails. She had a firm, professional handshake, and David couldn’t help but glance at her left hand, even though he already knew. No ring.
    â€œThanks for meeting me at such short notice,” he said. “I wasn’t so sure you’d make it.”
    â€œReally?” she asked skeptically.
    David released her hand. The heat from it lingered on his palm, and he smelled a spicy, warm, and vaguely alluring scent. So far she wasn’t anything like what he’d been expecting, and that made him more alert.
    It had been surprisingly hard to learn anything more than general information about the middle of the three De la Grip siblings. David had skimmed through what had been written online, in articles, and in a few biographies of her family. What he found was mostly about her father and her two brothers, almost nothing about her, not even on Wikipedia, definitely not on the Swedish website Flashback. But then women were traditionally completely invisible in that family, even though the men always married very powerful and well-to-do society women. Natalia’s foremothers had all been rich. Her mother was related to Russian grand duchesses and the Swedish financial elite, but the men in the family wielded all the real power—Natalia’s father Gustaf, her grandfather Gustaf Senior, and on back through the centuries. Unlike both of her brothers, hereditary prince Count Peter De la Grip and jet-set prince Count Alexander De la Grip, Natalia did not have a particularly high profile in either the business pages or the tabloids. But that fit with the overall picture, of course. She wasn’t just shy of the media because of her name and her background. No one presided over as many things behind the scenes as the corporate finance folks, secretly doling out their advice. They ran things from the wings and rarely spoke to the press.
    She wore her dark hair up in a fairly severe hairstyle and a strand of pearls around her neck, a mark of upper-class stuffiness that David hated. No, he thought, as he took his seat at the table, in the end Natalia De la Grip looked exactly the way he’d known she would—unmarried, almost thirty, career-focused, well-to-do but utterly ordinary.
    Apart from her eyes, that was. He’d never seen anything like them.
    â€œI have to admit I was curious when you called.” She gave him a golden look, and David felt something tingle down his spine.
    He took the menu from the waiter and quickly perused it. “You must be used to people looking you up,” he said with a laugh and a