The Next Santini Bride

Rounding the edge of the old brick building, she looked up and saw Dan Mahoney. Arms folded across his chest, feet crossed at the ankles, he stared at her from across the lot, and even at a distance, Angela felt the power, the hunger, in his gaze.

Parts of her body struggling back to life throbbed and hummed with an electrical pulse. As she started toward him, her heels tapped loudly against the asphalt and kept time with the pounding of her heart.

He leaned toward her. “So, Angela,” he said softly, his voice whispering along her spine. “Do we still have a date?”

One last chance to back out, she told herself. To forget about the craziness of what she’d been planning and go home alone. But she knew that he was exactly what she needed. What she wanted.

There would be no backing out.

Not tonight…

Dear Reader,

As we celebrate Silhouette’s 20th anniversary year as a romance publisher, we invite you to welcome in the fall season with our latest six powerful, passionate, provocative love stories from Silhouette Desire!

In September’s MAN OF THE MONTH, fabulous Peggy Moreland offers a Slow Waltz Across Texas. In order to win his wife back, a rugged Texas cowboy must learn to let love into his heart. Popular author Jennifer Greene delivers a special treat for you with Rock Solid, which is part of the highly sensual Desire promotion, BODY & SOUL.

Maureen Child’s exciting miniseries, BACHELOR BATTALION, continues with The Next Santini Bride, a responsible single mom who cuts loose with a handsome Marine. The next installment of the provocative Desire miniseries FORTUNE’S CHILDREN: THE GROOMS is Mail-Order Cinderella by Kathryn Jensen, in which a plain-Jane librarian seeks a husband through a matchmaking service and winds up with a Fortune! Ryanne Corey returns to Desire with a Lady with a Past, whose true love woos her with a chocolate picnic. And a nurse loses her virginity to a doctor in a night of passion, only to find out the next day that her lover is her new boss, in Doctor for Keeps by Kristi Gold.

Be sure to indulge yourself this autumn by reading all six of these tantalizing titles from Silhouette Desire!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

The Next Santini Bride

Maureen Child

To my cousins, Jimmy and Doris Semon, who showed us

just how beautiful Louisiana really is. Thank you for

everything, you guys. We love you.

MAUREEN CHILD

was born and raised in Southern California and is the only person she knows who longs for an occasional change of season. She is delighted to be writing for Silhouette Books and is especially excited to be a part of the Desire line.

An avid reader, Maureen looks forward to those rare rainy California days when she can curl up and sink into a good book. Or two. When she isn’t busy writing, she and her husband of twenty-five years like to travel, leaving their two grown children in charge of the neurotic golden retriever who is the real head of the household. Maureen is also an award-winning historical writer under the names Kathleen Kane and Ann Carberry.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

One

“No man has a right to be that good-looking,” Angela Santini Jackson said, nodding toward a man standing on the opposite side of the room.

Her sister Marie Garvey leaned in close and whispered, “He is a hunk, isn’t he?”

Hunk barely covered it. The man had to be six feet four inches of solid muscle. His cheekbones were sharp enough to draw blood, and his eyes were a pale, brilliant green that seemed to glitter in his deeply tanned face.

He looked, Angela thought, like the poster boy for a don’t-let-your-daughter-near-this-man campaign. She smiled to herself. He looked her way, and their gazes locked. Embarrassed to be caught staring, Angela quickly realized she had two choices here—glance away quickly and pretend to be oblivious…or meet his gaze squarely and refuse to back down.

She went with the latter. After all, it was a free world. A woman should have the right to look at anyone she wanted to. Right?

A long minute or two passed in silent observation. All around them people wandered about the private dining room of the Bayside Crab Shack. Her youngest sister’s rehearsal dinner was almost over, and now the wedding party and their guests had time to chat. She heard snatches of conversations without really registering them. She knew her sister Marie was talking to her, but her voice sounded more like an annoying background buzz than anything else.

All she saw, all she focused on, was him. His eyes. The way he stood in the middle of everything and yet separate and apart from the crowd. It was as if he was off in his own world and was drawing her in there with him.

She shifted slightly in her seat, fought down the rush of warmth that slammed through her, and still couldn’t look away.

It was as if they were in one of those old movies, where the hero and heroine exchange glances across a crowded room and the rest of the world blurred as the director homed in on his stars.

And that wild thought was enough to break the spell holding her. She smiled to herself, and as she did, one corner of his mouth quirked up in a tilted smile, and he lifted his beer bottle in a mock salute as if to call their silent staring competition a draw.

Angela swallowed hard, gave him what she hoped was a regal nod, and when he looked away, turned her attention back to the sister who had now resorted to nudging Angela’s ribs with her elbow. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Funny,” Marie said, giving a quick look across the room at the tall man now talking to Gina’s fiancé, Nick. “I was just going to ask you the same thing.”

“What are you talking about?” Angela picked up a place card and used it as a minifan in a futile attempt to cool her still-heated blood.

“What exactly were you and Mr. Wonderful over there doing?”

She dropped the card back onto the table and straightened up in her seat. “We weren’t doing anything,” Angela said, though even she didn’t completely believe that. For the few seconds their gazes had been locked, she’d felt something almost…electrical pass between them. Oh, my, she thought, and reached for her glass of wine. Taking a sip, she let the cool liquid slide down her throat and hoped the chill would ease the last of the heat still crouched inside her.

“Not what it looked like from where I’m sitting,” Marie muttered.

“Get a new seat,” Angela told her shortly. Then, in an attempt to change the conversation, she pointed to their youngest sister and said, “Look at her. She’s practically glowing.”

Gina Santini smiled up at the man who would by this time tomorrow be her husband, and Nick Paretti bent down to claim a kiss.

“She’s happy,” Marie said simply.

“I hope she stays that way,” Angela whispered more to herself than to her sister. Then louder she said, “Still, it’s hard to believe that Gina’s getting married. It all happened so fast.”

“Maybe it’s contagious,” Marie mused as she held up her left hand to study the white-gold wedding band on her ring finger. “First me, then Gina, then…” She slid a glance at the woman beside her.

“Oh no, you don’t,” Angela said and held up both hands, making a cross out of her index fingers as if trying to ward off a vampire. “The phrase ‘been there, done that’ springs to mind.”

Marie huffed out a breath. “For heaven’s sake, Ange, just because you picked a lemon in the garden of love the first time around, doesn’t mean you’ll do the same thing again.”

“Thanks so much for that very pithy piece of advice,” Angela said with a nod. “But if you don’t mind, I’m staying out of that particular garden from now on.”

It was an old argument, Angela told herself. One she had no interest in reviving tonight. If her sisters wanted to get married, she would wish them every happiness and hope to high heaven that their marriages turned out better than hers had.

Old memories rose up in her mind, and Angela quickly pushed them back into the black hole where they were usually stored. This wasn’t the time to remember the pain and misery that had been her marriage. This was a night to hope and pray that Gina would be as happy as Marie was.

“Oh,” Marie said suddenly as an old, familiar tune swelled out of the speakers tucked discreetly into the four corners of the room. “I love this song. Think I’ll go find my handsome husband and force him to dance with me.”

Abandoned, Angela leaned back in her chair and took another sip of her wine. It was times like these when she most minded being single. All around the room couples were paired off, talking or dancing or laughing together. Even her eight-year-old son, Jeremy, was busy talking to the only other child in the room, a little girl he might normally have avoided like the plague.

She smiled to herself as she watched him. The one precious thing to have come out of marrying Bill Jackson was this little boy. And for the pleasure of having Jeremy in her life, she would be willing to go through all of it again.

“Who’s that smile for, I wonder?” a deep voice asked from beside her.

Angela started and glanced up into the green eyes that now seemed somehow familiar. Okay, it was one thing to stare at him with the safe distance of a room between them. It was quite another to have him so close she could smell his cologne.

And, oh, boy, did he smell good.

She cleared her throat and sat up straight, guiltily clearing her mind as though he could look into her eyes and see just what she was thinking. “My son,” she said, motioning toward the boy who was apparently explaining the proper batting stance to a very bored little girl.

“Nice-looking kid.”

“Thank you,” she said, and stood up, wanting to be on a more even footing than having to look up at him. Well, she thought, as she tipped her head back…and back…to meet his gaze, so much for that idea.

“You’re Angela, right?” he asked, shifting his gaze back to her and giving her that lopsided smile again.

Her stomach dropped as she nodded. He knew her name. How? Who had he asked about her?

“I’m Dan. Dan Mahoney.”

“Hi,” she said, silently congratulating herself on her sparkling wit and conversational abilities.

“I work with Nick,” he continued.

“You’re a Marine.”

He smiled again, and her toes curled. “Isn’t everyone?” he asked.

“In this room,” she conceded, “just about.”

Of course, that was to be expected when the groom to be was a Gunnery Sergeant. Heck, even Nick’s brothers, Sam and John, who had flown in for the ceremony, were Marines. And Nick’s father was an ex-Marine, if there was such a thing—which she doubted, since most of these guys seemed to be Marine right down to their bones.

She slid a glance at the Paretti boys, as she’d begun to think of them. Three brothers with jet-black hair, pale-blue eyes and more muscles than any three men had a right to. And not a one of them did a thing for her.

“Angela?” Dan said, and she drew her attention back to the man standing dangerously close to her. This man, on the other hand, seemed to have some weird effect on her nerves.

“Would you like to dance?” he asked.

“Dance?”

“Yeah,” he said, that smile firmly in place. “You know, moving back and forth in tandem to a specific rhythm?”

Well, duh. God, why was she being such an idiot? Had it really been so long since she’d spoken to a man? Good heavens, had she kept herself so locked away that a conversation with a handsome man could actually paralyze her?

Apparently so. She swallowed hard, sucked in a breath and forced herself to say, “I’d love to.”

“Good,” he said, taking her hand and heading for the small patch of parquet tiles passing itself off as a dance floor.

Angela concentrated on the feel of her hand in his. Wow. It was really an amazing sensation. Flesh pressed to flesh. Warm, strong fingers folded around her own. She hadn’t even realized just how starved she’d been for a simple touch. And now that she had, other parts of her body were demanding a little attention, too.

That thought even surprised her.

In the midst of the other dancers, Dan pulled her into his arms and started swaying in time to the music. He held her right hand in his left and kept it tucked close to his chest. She felt his heartbeat beneath her hand, and the steady, even beat of it calmed her even as it excited her. It had been too long, she thought, as she began to relax and follow his lead. Too long since she’d danced with anyone but an exuberant Jeremy. Too long since she’d felt the hard strength of a man’s arm around her waist, the press of his body against hers.

“You’re a good dancer,” he said, and his breath brushed her ear even as his voice rumbled along her spine.

“Thanks,” she said, pulling her head back in self-defense. She was way too close to him for comfort. “You’re a good liar.”

He laughed shortly. “Okay, so neither one of us is Fred Astaire.”

Nope, this slow turn in a tight circle would hardly qualify as great dancing, but Angela didn’t care. It was way more than she’d had in years. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “It’s nice.”

“Yeah,” he said softly, letting his right hand smooth up and down her back, “it is.”

Angela shivered, and her eyes closed as she savored the feelings he inspired in her. Oh boy. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea, living like a recluse for the past three years. She was way overreacting to this situation.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

Her eyes opened, and she stared up into those green eyes. If this was his regular line, it was pretty good. But it wouldn’t do to let him know she was in desperate danger of falling for it. “And like I already said, you’re a good liar.”

“Not this time, lady,” he whispered.

Her stomach flip-flopped, and her mouth went dry.

There was something happening here. Something that ran in a tense, hot undercurrent. The calm, rational side of her, the side that had had her in hiding for the past three years, was telling her to run fast and run far. The other side however, urged her to get closer. Urged her to enjoy this moment in time.

“Can I steal my sister for a minute?”

They both turned toward the woman speaking, and briefly Angela considered telling her little sister to take a hike. But something in Gina’s eyes stopped her.

So instead, she reluctantly slipped out of Dan Mahoney’s grasp and said, “Thanks for the dance.”

“My pleasure, ma’am,” he said, then gave her a slow wink before drifting off toward a cluster of Marines.

Sighing for opportunities lost, Angela turned to her sister and asked, “Okay, little sister, what’s up?”

“Nothing yet, I hope,” Gina muttered, glancing over her shoulder at Dan.

“What are you talking about?” Honestly, she loved her sister, but…

“Stay away from that guy,” Gina blurted out.

“Excuse me?” She stared down at her sister in disbelief.

Muttering, “Come on,” the younger woman grabbed her arm and dragged her across the room toward the open double doors leading to a brick patio.

A cool ocean breeze wafted into the room, and in the press of people, the chill was welcome. Stepping outside, Angela sent a quick look up at a star-filled sky, took a deep breath, then looked at Gina. “This had better be good.”

“Nick says you should keep your distance from him.”

“Oh, Nick says.” Angela nodded and threw her hands wide. “Well, sure. Why didn’t you say so?”

“Angie, he says that Dan’s a nice guy, but he’s a one-night stand kind of man.” Gina shook her head. “Not really the type for you, y’know.”

Amazing. Her younger sister giving her advice on men, for heaven’s sake. Although, she had to admit that Gina probably knew what she was talking about. After all, she’d already decided that Dan Mahoney was a smooth talker. But whether she listened or not should be up to her.

“How about you guys letting me decide who my type is?”

Gina pushed her hair out of her eyes, winced as if she knew she’d stepped into something, then tried to salvage it. “Nobody’s telling you to do anything.”

“You did,” Angela reminded her. “You said to ‘stay away from that guy.”’

“Okay, I put it badly, but I just wanted you to be careful….”

Careful? She hadn’t been on a date, had in fact, hardly spoken to a man in the past three years. What could be more careful? For the first time in ages she was dancing with an attractive man, feeling those feelings she remembered so vaguely, and what happens? Her family comes so unglued you’d think she was a vestal virgin being slated for sacrifice.

Geez. If she wanted to do something daring…something out of character…something dangerous, wasn’t she old enough to make that choice for herself?

“Gina—”

“Angela,” her sister interrupted, “we’ve all been trying to get you back into the dating pool for years. I just don’t want you to drown on your first time out.”

She looked so concerned, Angela let her anger dissolve into nothingness. Reaching out, she pulled Gina into a tight hug then held her at arm’s length and said, “Okay, I swear, if I start going down for the count, I’ll give a yell, okay?”

Although right now the thought of drowning in Dan Mahoney’s pale-green eyes didn’t sound like such a bad idea at all.

Two

“We ought to get together,” Sam Paretti said. “Brother of the groom, sister of the bride…how perfect is that?”

Angela looked up at him and grinned. She couldn’t help it. After meeting Nick’s two brothers, Sam and John, she was willing to admit that the Paretti men were not only gorgeous, but charming, too. God had been on a real roll when he’d created these three.

“It’s perfect, all right,” she said, “heck, it’s practically a romance novel.”

“There you go,” Sam said, and glanced toward the bride and groom. “They look happy, don’t they?”

“Yes, they do,” she said, watching her little sister dance with her new husband. Her wedding dress swirled around her in a froth of lace and tulle, and the smile on her face was bright enough to light the room. The man guiding her proudly around the dance floor looked handsome in his Dress-Blue uniform, and together they made an almost fairy-tale picture.

A pang of something sharp and bittersweet twinged around her heart. So much hope, so much love. Angela said a quick, fervent prayer that Gina and Nick would always be as happy as they were tonight.

Old tunes poured from the stereo system set up on the auditorium’s stage. The church hall was decorated in rose and white balloons, and baskets of fresh flowers dotted every table. The caterers had served dinner, and now it was time for everyone to enjoy the party celebrating Gina and Nick’s marriage.

Everything was changing so quickly. Just a few short months ago all of the Santini women had been sharing the family house. Now, it would be just Mama, Angela and Jeremy.

Her sisters were now officially halves of couples.

Marie and Davis.

Gina and Nick.

Angela and…she took a sip of champagne and turned away from the happy couple. No point in torturing herself, was there? Besides, it wasn’t as if she wanted a husband. Not again. She just didn’t want to end up a lonely old woman talking to cats and bothering her only son about bringing the grandchildren by more often.

Oh yeah, she thought grimly. Have some more champagne, it’s really helping your attitude.

“So,” Sam said, drawing her attention back to him, “what do you say to a dance with a lonely Marine?”

Lonely? She had a feeling Sam Paretti had never had a lonely day in his life.

“Sure,” she said, “I—”

“Sorry, Marine,” a deep voice said from behind Angela, “she’s promised this one to me.”

Angela’s breath caught in her throat, and her stomach flip-flopped wildly.

“Is that right?” Sam asked, looking down at Angela.

“Uh,” she cleared her throat, swallowed hard and said, “do you mind?”

The two men stared at each other for a long moment before Sam finally nodded. “I’ll see you later, Angela.”

“Thanks,” she said as he turned and moved off into the crowd, leaving her alone with the man she’d been catching glimpses of all day.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said in a throaty whisper that tingled along her spine.

A quick spurt of excitement sizzled through her bloodstream as she turned around to face Dan. They’d both been so busy doing wedding party things, they hadn’t spoken since last night’s interrupted dance. Well, they’d done more than just spoken, in Angela’s dreams, but since he didn’t know about that, it probably didn’t count.

“Was I that hard to find?” she asked.

“Not for me,” he said, leaning one hand on the wall above her head and bending closer. “I used to be Recon. Reconnaissance. The guys who go in, get what needs getting and get out.”

He leaned in even closer, and Angela swore she could feel the warm brush of his breath against her cheek. Or maybe that was just her own heated blood flushing her face.

“You should know, I’ve been warned about you,” Angela said as she looked up into the green eyes that had haunted her dreams all last night.

“Me?” Dan answered with that slow, crooked smile that was guaranteed to breach any defenses. “I’m harmless, lady.”

Oh yeah, she believed that. And chocolate had no calories when eaten at midnight. Ha! She took another sip of champagne and silently reminded herself that she was on a mission here. She didn’t want harmless. She wanted dangerous.

If just for tonight.

Actually, Gina’s warning the night before had been the deciding factor in this. Knowing that Dan was interested in nothing more than a one-night stand made it all so easy. She could have one night of magic after far too long a dry spell, and there wouldn’t be a single string attached. Well, except for the guilt strings she was already experiencing. Honestly, you wouldn’t think it would be so hard for a twenty-eight-year-old widow to seduce a man. Another swallow of champagne followed the last, and a part of her brain reminded her that she wanted to be loose, not unconscious. But heck, who could blame her for trying a little liquid courage? It wasn’t as if she did this every day.

“Harmless, huh?” she asked, giving him a smile she hoped was sexy. It had been so long, she couldn’t be sure. “That’s not what I hear.”

“Who’s been talking?”

Oh, brother, that smile of his should be classified as a lethal weapon. It did amazing things to a woman’s equilibrium.

“Who hasn’t?” she quipped.

“And do you always believe what you hear?” he asked, letting his gaze slide across her body with a slow, deliberately casual thoroughness.

Boy, he was better than she’d given him credit for. Her skin felt tight, and parts of her body she’d thought atrophied were galloping back to life. This was moving so fast she could hardly keep up. Taking a moment to calm down a bit, she looked around the room…actually, she looked anywhere but into those green eyes.