Loe raamatut: «Third Time's The Bride!»

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Dawn McGill would be the first to admit her track record when it came to relationships with the male of the species sucked. Oh, she’d connected with some great guys over the years. Even got engaged to two before dumping them almost at the altar. Fortunately—or unfortunately for the dumpees—she’d discovered just in time that she didn’t really want to spend the rest of her life with either of them.

Given that dismal history, Dawn never expected to tumble hopelessly in love during what was supposed to have been a carefree jaunt across northern Italy with her two best friends. Callie and Kate were as shocked as Dawn at how hard and fast she fell.

Nor could any of them have imagined that the man of Dawn’s dreams would turn out to be a pint-size ball of energy with soft brown hair, angelic blue eyes and an impish grin. But when the three friends had converged in Venice last week to help babysit the six-year-old, whose nanny had taken a nasty spill and broken her ankle, Tommy the Terrible had wrapped Dawn around his grubby little fist within hours of their first meeting.

Now they were back in Rome. She and Callie and Kate. With Kate’s husband, Travis, who’d orchestrated a surprise ceremony to renew their wedding vows using the Trevi Fountain as a backdrop.

Tommy and his dad were here, too. Brian Ellis had worked with Kate’s husband on some supersecret project at the NATO base north of Venice and they’d become good friends. The father was too conservative and stuffy for Dawn’s taste, but the son...

God, she loved watching the boy’s antics! Like now. She had to grin as Tommy scrambled onto the fountain’s broad lip. His dad grabbed the back of his son’s shirt and kept a tight hold.

“Careful, bud!”

The three women stood in a loose circle to watch the byplay. Kate was a tall, sun-streaked blonde. Callie, a quiet brunette who seemed even more subdued than usual since she’d walked away from her job as a children’s advocate. And Dawn, her hair catching fire from the afternoon sun and her ready laughter bubbling as Tommy barely escaped a dousing from one of the cavorting sea horses.

“That kid is utterly fearless,” she said with real admiration.

“A natural born adventurer,” Callie agreed with a smile. “Just like you. How many times did Kate and I follow you into one scrape or another?”

“Hey, I wasn’t always the ringleader. I seem to recall you convincing us to shimmy through a window of the library one night, Miss Priss and Boots. And you—” she smirked at Kate “—were the one who suggested ‘borrowing’ my brother Aaron’s car so we could zip over to the mall. We’re lucky the cop who stopped us on a stolen vehicle report didn’t let us sit in jail overnight before calling our parents.”

The smirk stayed in place, but the memory of that brief joyride churned a familiar acid. Her parents had each blamed the other for their daughter’s brush with the law. No surprise there, since they’d been feuding for years by that point. Dawn’s three brothers were all older and had escaped the toxic home environment by heading off to college and then careers. She hadn’t been as lucky. She was a freshman in high school and almost drowning in the anger her mom and dad spewed at each other when they’d finally decided to call it quits.

The divorce should have been a relief to all parties concerned. Instead, her folks had turned it into an all-out war. No way either would agree to joint custody or reasonable visitation rights for their teenage daughter until the judge was forced to step in and make the decision for them. Dawn ended up shuttling back and forth between her parents, each of whom blamed the other for their subsequent loneliness.

The constant tug-of-war had chipped away at their daughter’s breezy, fun-loving disposition. Might have demolished it completely if not for Kate and Callie. They’d all grown up in Easthampton, a small town in western Massachusetts, and had been inseparable since grade school. The Invincibles, as Kate’s husband, Travis, called them, not always intending it as a compliment.

Her parents’ turbulent history was part of the reason Dawn had bonded so quickly with young Tommy Ellis. The boy’s own emotional upheaval had occurred when he was much younger. Not much more than a baby, actually. But the fact that he’d grown up without a mother had colored his life, just as her parents’ battles had Dawn’s.

Too bad she hadn’t bonded as well with Tommy’s dad. Lips pursed, she watched as Brian Ellis hauled his son back from the brink yet again. The man was sexy as all hell. She couldn’t deny that. Big, but quick, with six feet plus of impressively hard muscle to go with his razor cut brown hair and killer blue eyes. Those eyes had gleamed with undeniable interest when she and Brian had first met in Venice, Dawn recalled. But they’d turned all cool and polite when she’d laughed playfully with one of the other men present.

Oh, well! Not a problem, really. She and the Ellises would share the same address for only a few days. A week or two at most. Just until Brian could determine whether Tommy’s injured nanny would be able to return to work and, if not, hire a new one. In the meantime, Dawn had already advised her boss at the relentlessly healthy natural foods company where she worked as a graphic designer that she would be working remotely for that week or two.

As if reading her mind, Kate gave her a sideways look. “Are you sure you want to take a leave of absence from your job to play nursery maid?”

“You told us you’re being considered for director of marketing,” Callie added. “Won’t that get put on hold?”

“No. Maybe. What the heck, I don’t care. I need a break from the temperamental artists and computer nerds I spend my days with. Plus, my job’s pretty portable. I can work in DC almost as easily as in Boston.”

“A director’s position isn’t that portable,” Kate protested. “And I know you don’t spend your days only with artists and nerds.”

An executive herself, Kate regularly interfaced with clients and senior management.

So did Callie, who’d had to attend an endless grind of meetings at the Massachusetts Office of the Child Advocate. Both women knew all too well that supervisors at every level of every organization weren’t particularly sympathetic to employees taking short-notice, nonemergency leaves of absence.

More to the point, they’d both watched their friend fall in and out of love. Or what she’d thought was love. Dawn knew they were uneasy about her current infatuation.

When Brian Ellis hauled his son off the fountain and aimed him in their direction, though, all she could see was the eagerness on the boy’s face as he darted through the crowd.

“Dawn! You gotta come throw a coin over your shoulder. Dad says it’s tradition.”

“Kate and Callie and I did that when we first got to Rome.”

“Oh.” His face falling, he opened his fist to display two shiny euros. “But Dad gave me these. One for you ’n one for me.”

“Well, in that case...lay on, Macduff.”

“Huh?”

“It’s from one of Shakespeare’s plays. It means lead the way.”

The boy couldn’t care less about Shakespeare, but the euros were burning a hole in his palm. “C’mon!”

Grabbing Dawn’s hand, he tugged her back to the fountain. Brian kept a close eye on them as he joined Kate and Callie. The other men in their small party drifted over, as well. USAF Major Travis Westbrook, Kate’s husband. Prince Carlo di Lorenzo, a short, barrel-chested dynamo as famed for his military exploits as for his reputation with women. And Joe Russo, head of the special squad responsible for Carlo’s security during their stint at the NATO base north of Venice.

Brian had gotten to know each of the three men well during his own time at the base. So well, in fact, that when Travis decided to hang up his air force uniform, Brian had jumped at the chance to bring the seasoned special operations pilot on board as Ellis Aeronautical Systems’ Vice President for Test and Evaluation.

Travis saw Brian’s gaze locked on the two at the fountain and grinned. Father and son were in for a wild, unpredictable ride with Dawn McGill.

“You sure you know what you’re getting into, Brian?”

“Hell, no.”

“I’ve known Dawn and Callie as long as I have Kate,” Travis commented. “I can vouch for the veracity of that old saying.”

“I probably shouldn’t ask but...what old saying?”

“Blondes are wild,” he recited with a wink at his tawny-haired wife, “and brunettes are true, but you never can tell what a redhead will do.”

Kate laughed and the dark-haired Callie smiled, but Brian didn’t find the quip particularly amusing.

His glance zinged back to the two at the fountain. He must have been crazy to accept Dawn McGill’s offer to fill in as Tommy’s temporary nanny. With her flame-colored hair and sparkling green eyes, she lit up any room she walked into. Her lush curves also started every male past puberty spinning wild sexual fantasies. Including him, dammit!

If Mrs. Wells hadn’t tripped and shattered her ankle in Venice...

If Brian wasn’t juggling a dozen different balls at work...

If his son hadn’t begged him to ask Dawn to come stay with them...

It would just be for a week, Brian reminded himself grimly. Two at most. Only until he could hire someone more qualified to cover during Mrs. Wells’s convalescence or possible retirement. The fifty-five-year-old widow had opted to fly out to California and stay with her sister while going through rehab. Brian figured it was iffy at best that she’d regain either the energy or the stamina to keep up with Tommy.

Dawn, on the other hand, didn’t lack for either. Or smarts, he acknowledged grudgingly. Before agreeing to this crazy scheme, he’d had his people run a background check on the woman. He had to admit her credentials were impressive. A degree in graphic arts from Boston University, with a minor in advertising. A master’s in integrated design media from Georgetown. A hefty starting salary right out of grad school at one of the country’s largest health food and natural products consortiums, where she was reportedly poised to move up the managerial ranks.

The problem wasn’t her professional credentials, however. The problem was her personal life. The background check had been sketchier in that area, but Brian had pried enough details out of Travis to get the picture. Apparently the delectable Ms. McGill collected men with the same eagerness Tommy did plastic dinosaurs. And when she tired of them, which she did with predictable frequency, she put ’em on the shelf to gather dust while she waltzed off in search of a new toy. Brian wasn’t about to let Tommy become attached to someone that mercurial. Any more attached, he amended as his son’s shriek of laughter carried across the piazza.

Tommy and Dawn had turned their backs to the fountain. Together, they shouted a count of one-two-three. Their arms went up. Their coins soared through the afternoon sunlight. Twin splashes spouted in the basin.

“Good throw,” Travis called. “Right on target.”

“Thank God,” Brian muttered. “Maybe, just maybe, we’ll escape Italy with no injuries to innocent bystanders. Speaking of which...”

He shot up the cuff on his suit coat to check the Mickey Mouse watch Tommy had presented him with last Father’s Day. Bought using his very own allowance, the boy had proudly proclaimed. Brian took even more pride in Mickey’s silly grin than he had the Bronze Star he’d earned as a USMC chopper pilot in what now seemed like another lifetime ago.

“We need to head for the airport,” he said, turning to the others. “Sure I can’t talk the rest of you into flying home with Tommy and me? And Dawn,” he added belatedly.

The others had already nixed his offer of a flight back to the States aboard the Ellis Aeronautical Systems corporate jet. Kate and Callie were staying in Rome another night and would fly home using their prepaid, nonrefundable commercial tickets. Travis would head back to the base to wrap up the final details of their project. The prince would rejoin his special ops unit stationed just outside Rome and Joe Russo would move on to his next assignment. Whatever that was. The high-powered, high-dollar security expert was as tight-lipped about his work as he was good at it.

So good, Brian had approached him about doing a top-to-bottom scrub of EAS’s physical, cyber and industrial security. Ignoring the still-angry scar slashing the left side of Joe’s face, Brian held the man’s steady gaze.

“Let me know when you can nail down a start date.”

“Will do,” Joe answered. “In the meantime, have your security people send me their operating procedures and I’ll get my team looking at them.”

“Roger that. Well...”

Brian glanced around the circle, warmed by the close friendship he’d forged with the other three men in such a short time. With Kate and Callie, too.

Then there was Dawn.

She and Tommy approached the small circle, she wearing a smug grin and he skipping in delight. “Didja see us, Dad? Didja? Me ’n Dawn hit the water first try!”

“Dawn and I,” Brian corrected.

Tommy made a face but echoed his dad, “Dawn ’n I hit the water first try. Didja see us?”

“I saw.” Smiling, Brian ruffled his son’s hair. “Good job, buddy. You, too, Dawn. Now we’d better say our goodbyes and head for the airport.”

Tommy shook hands and Dawn gave hugs all around. A flirtatious one for the prince who’d tried his damnedest to get her to jet off to Corsica or Cannes or wherever with him. A friendly one for Joe. And one that came with a warning for Travis.

“You and Kate have spent too much time apart, Westbrook. Get your butt home quick and start working on that baby you guys have decided to produce.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The hugs for her two friends were fiercer and much longer. Brian waited patiently but Tommy’s forehead puckered into a worried frown when all three women teared up.

“I can’t believe our Italian adventure is over,” Callie sniffed. “We’ve dreamed about coming here for so long.”

“Ever since we watched Three Coins in the Fountain all those years ago,” Kate said gruffly.

“But we’ll be back.” Dawn gulped, tears flowing. “Someday.”

As worried now as his son, Brian shot Travis a quick glance. Kate’s husband merely rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry. They do this all the time. They’ll get it together in a moment.”

Sure enough, the tears stopped, the sniffles dried up and the smiles reemerged as Kate began planning an imminent reunion.

“It’s so awesome that Brian and Tommy live in Bethesda. Travis and I will be less than a half hour away. We can get together regularly. And Callie can come stay with us, too, until she lands a new job.”

“I don’t think so,” the brunette said with a flash of unexpected humor. “You two have that baby to work on. I don’t need to listen to the headboard banging—” she gave Tommy a quick glance and finished smoothly “—when you put the crib together.”

* * *

After another round of hugs, Brian finally ushered his two charges to the waiting limo. Moments later they were threading through Rome’s insane traffic on their way to Ciampino, the smaller of the city’s two airports.

The corporate jet was fueled and sitting on the ramp. The Gulfstream G600 with its twin Pratt & Whitney engines and long-range cruise speed of five hundred plus mph had been retrofitted by an avionics package specifically designed by EAS.

The sight of the sleek jet stirred familiar feelings of pride and a secret amazement in Brian. Hard to believe just twelve years ago he’d set up a small avionics engineering firm using his entire savings and a five-thousand dollar loan from his father-in-law. The first years hadn’t been easy. He was fresh out of the Corps with a new bride and more enthusiasm than business smarts.

Thank God for Caroline, he thought with an all-too-familiar ache. She’d provided long-range vision while he supplied the engineering muscle. Together, they’d grown Ellis Aeronautical Systems from the ground up. She hadn’t lived to experience the thrill when EAS hit the Fortune 500 list, though. She’d barely made it to their son’s first birthday.

Smothering the ache with a sheer effort of will, Brian greeted his chief pilot at the jet’s rear steps. “Thanks for the quick turnaround, Ed. Mrs. Wells made the flight back to the States okay?”

“She did,” the pilot confirmed. “So did the Italian medical team you hired to attend to her during the flight. They said to thank you for the extra week in California, by the way. After they got her settled, the first stop on their agenda was Disneyland, followed by the vineyards in Napa Valley.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Brian drawled while the pilot bent to bump fists with Tommy.

“Hey, kid. How’d you like Italy?”

“It was great! Me ’n...” Nose scrunching, he made a quick midcourse correction. “Dawn ’n I took a gondola ride in Venice ’n I went to the Colosseum in Rome with Dad. He got me a sword ’n helmet ’n everything.”

“Cool.” The pilot straightened and held out his hand to the third passenger on his manifest. “Good to meet you, Ms. McGill.”

“Dawn,” Tommy corrected helpfully. “She’s, like, a hundred years younger than Mrs. Wells so it’s okay for us to call her Dawn. She’s gonna come live with me ’n Dad.”

“She is, huh?”

“Until Mrs. Wells gets back on her feet,” Brian interjected smoothly.

Ed Donahue had flown executive-level jets too long to show anything but a professional front, but Brian knew interest and speculation had to be churning behind his carefully neutral expression. One, the auburn-haired beauty could get a rise from a stone-cold corpse. Two, she was the first living, breathing sex goddess to fly aboard EAS’s corporate jet.

As she demonstrated when she followed Tommy up the steps and ducked into the cabin. The slinky, wide-legged pants she’d worn to the ceremony at the Trevi Fountain clung to her hips and outlined a round bottom that made Brian’s breath hiss in and Ed’s whoosh out.

Gulping, the pilot made a valiant recovery. “I’ll, uh, recompute our flight time once we reach cruising altitude and give you an updated ETA.”

“Thanks,” Brian said grimly, although he’d already figured that no matter what the ETA, he was in for a long flight.

* * *

He’d figured right.

Over the years he’d worked hard to minimize his time away from his son by combining business trips with short vacations whenever possible. They’d taken a number of jaunts to Texas, where EAS’s main manufacturing and test facility was located. Several trips to Florida so Brian could meet with senior officials in the USAF Special Ops community, with requisite side trips to Disney World. The Paris Air Show last year. This summer’s excursion in Italy.

As a result, his son was a seasoned traveler and very familiar with the Gulfstream’s amenities, every one of which he was determined to show Dawn once they’d gained cruising altitude. Brian extracted his laptop and set it up on the polished teak worktable while the eager young guide started his tour by showing her the aft cabin.

“It’s got a shower ’n toilet ’n the beds fold down,” he announced while Dawn surveyed the cabin through the open door. “Watch.”

“That’s okay, I... Oh. Cool. Twin beds.”

“One for me ’n one for Dad. There’s another bunk up front. Ed ’n his copilot take turns in that one on long flights. But you kin have my bed,” he offered generously. “I sleep in my seat lotsa times.”

Brian glanced up from the spreadsheet filling his laptop’s screen and met Dawn’s eyes. The laughter dancing in their emerald depths invited him to share in the joke. He returned a smile but for some reason didn’t find the idea of sharing the aft cabin with her quite as amusing as she obviously did.

“I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on,” he told his son. “Why don’t we let Dawn have the cabin to herself and we guys will hang here tonight?”

“Okay. C’mon, you gotta see the galley.”

When Tommy led her back up the spacious aisle, Brian caught her scent as they went by. It was faint, almost lost in the leather and polished teakwood of the cabin, but had teased him from their first meeting in Venice. It drifted to him now, a tantalizing mix of summer sunshine and lemons and something he couldn’t identify. He tried to block it out of his senses as Tommy gave her a tour of a well-stocked galley that included a wide selection of wines, soft drinks, juices, snacks and prepackaged, microwavable gourmet meals.

The pièce de résistance, of course, was the touch screen entertainment center. On every long flight Brian gave fervent thanks for the video games, TV shows and Disney movies that snared his son’s attention for at least a few hours.

“You just press this button here in the armrest ’n the screen opens up.” Buckled in again, Tommy laughed at Dawn’s surprise when a panel in the bulkhead glided up to reveal a sixty-inch flat screen TV.

“We’ve got bunches of movies.” He flicked the controls and brought up a menu screen with an impressive display of icons. “If you want, we kin watch Frozen.”

“Right.” She gave a small snort. “And how many times did we watch it in Venice? Four? Five?”

Tom looked honestly puzzled. “So?”

“So let’s see what else is here. Ah! Beauty and the Beast. Do you like that one?”

“It’s okay.”

“Only okay?”

“All that love stuff is kinda gross.”

“It can be,” she admitted with a wry grin. “Sometimes.”

“We’ll watch it if you want,” Tommy offered manfully as he handed her a pair of noise-canceling Bose earphones. “Here, we hafta wear these so Dad kin work.”

Brian had long ago perfected the ability to concentrate on his laptop’s small screen despite the colorful images flickering on the bulkhead’s much larger screen. He did a pretty good job of focusing this time, too, until Dawn kicked off her shoes. Angling her seat back, she raised the footrest, crossed her ankles and stretched out to watch the movie.

Startled, Brian stared across the aisle at her toes. Each nail was painted a different color. Lavender. Pink. Turquoise. Pale green. Pearly blue.

He didn’t keep up with the latest feminine fashion trends. He had no reason to. But he was damned if he could concentrate on the production schedule for EAS’s new Terrain Awareness Warning System with her tantalizing scent drifting across the aisle and those ten dots of iridescent color wiggling in time to the music.