“Let me make sure I understand the terms of this contract,” she said slowly.

“You’re asking me to give up my condo, my job, my life, and take up permanent residency in your gatehouse until such time as we mutually decide to terminate the arrangement.”

He was blowing it. Forcing a smile, he tried again. “Actually, I’m asking you to move into the main house. With Tommy and me.”

Neither the smile nor the offer produced the desired effect. If anything, they added fuel to the temper darkening her eyes.

“You pompous, conceited jerk. You think all you have to do is waltz in, invite me to be your live-in lover, and expect me to …”

“Whoa! Back up a minute! I’m asking you to marry me!”

“What?”

Third Time’s the Bride!
Merline Lovelace

www.millsandboon.co.uk

A career Air Force officer, MERLINE LOVELACE served at bases all over the world. When she hung up her uniform for the last time, she decided to try her hand at storytelling. Since then, more than twelve million copies of her books have been published in over thirty countries. Check her website at www.merlinelovelace.com or friend Merline on Facebook for news and information about her latest releases.

For my niece, Stephanie Fichtel, who’s as beautiful as she is talented. Thanks for giving me such great insight into the busy, busy life of a graphic artist, Steph.

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.

Chapter Two

Tommy conked out after a supper of lemon-broiled chicken, snow peas and the inevitable mac ’n cheese. The Gulfstream’s soft leather seats were twice as wide as regular airline seats, so they made a perfect kid-size bed. Dawn covered him with a blanket before accepting his dad’s suggestion that she move across the aisle and join him for an after-dinner brandy.

“My assistant was kind enough to pack and ship the personal items Mrs. Wells will need during her rehab,” Ellis told her over snifters of Courvoisier. “She also contacted the cleaning service we use to let them know you’ll be filling in as Tom’s temporary nanny. They’ll have the guest room in the gatehouse apartment ready for you.”

Dawn didn’t miss the slight but unmistakable emphasis on “temporary.” Warming the brandy between her palms, she studied the CEO she’d met for the first time only last week. He’d discarded the coat and tie he’d worn to the ceremony at the Trevi Fountain and popped the top two buttons on his dress shirt. The satiny sheen of the fabric deepened the Viking blue of his eyes but didn’t make them any warmer.

“You don’t like me very much, do you?”

He was too good, Dawn thought with grudging admiration, and way too smooth to show surprise at her blunt question.

“My son thinks you’re totally awesome,” he said with a neutral lift of his shoulders. “And Kate and Callie would peel a strip off anyone who dissed you. With those endorsements, what I think doesn’t matter.”

“Bull. What you think is the only thing that matters when it comes to your son.” She tipped the snifter and let a trickle of smoky fire burn its way down her throat before picking up the gauntlet again. “So why do you go all fudge-faced whenever I walk in the room?”

“Fudge-faced?”

“Fudge-faced. Poker-faced. Pie-faced. Take your pick.”

He sat back, fingering his drink. “Okay,” he said after a pause. “I’ll be honest. Tommy’s got two sets of very loving grandparents. He considers Mrs. Wells his third grandmother. What he doesn’t have is a mother. Although...”

Intrigued, Dawn watched his mouth twist into something dangerously close to a smile. Amazing how such a simple realignment of a few facial muscles could transform him from a cool, aloof executive into someone almost human.

“I should warn you he’s made several valiant efforts to fill the void,” Ellis admitted. “The first time wasn’t so bad. After several less than subtle attempts at matchmaking, his pediatrician gently let him know that she was already married. This last time...” He shook his head. “Let’s just say his kindergarten teacher and I were both relieved when the school year ended.”

Dawn knew Ellis had run a background check on her. She’d done some Googling of her own.

“I went online and saw some of the hotties you’ve escorted to various charity functions in recent years,” she informed him, lifting her brandy in a mock toast. “From the adoring looks on their faces, any one of them would’ve been happy to fill that void.”

The smile disappeared and the cool, distant executive reappeared. “Tommy’s void maybe. Not mine. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work.”

Oooh-kay. She’d put her foot in it that time. Maybe both feet.

Subtle probing these past few days had confirmed that Tommy retained only a hazy concept of his mom. His father’s memories were obviously stronger and more immediate.

Tossing back the rest of her brandy, Dawn retreated to the luxuriously appointed aft cabin. She stood beneath a hot, stinging shower for some moments before slithering between what felt like 700-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets. The tail-mounted engines reverberated with a mind-numbing drone that soon rocked her into a deep sleep.

* * *

With the six-hour time difference between Rome and Washington, DC, and the fact that they’d flown west across several time zones, the Gulfstream touched down at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport at almost the same hour it had taken off. Bright autumn sunshine greeted them after they’d exited customs and crossed to the limo waiting in the executive car park.

Brian preferred to drive himself most of the time, since EAS headquarters was located only a few miles from his home in a shady gated community in Bethesda. After a long flight like this one, though, he was just as happy to let Dominic fight the rush-hour traffic that would already be clogging the city streets.

Once again, Tommy made the introductions. And once again, a longtime EAS employee had to struggle to keep his jaw from dropping as he was introduced to the new nanny.

Temporary new nanny, Brian wanted to add. Temporary!

He kept his mouth shut and Dominic managed to keep his tongue from hanging out as he stashed their luggage and slid behind the wheel.

“George Washington Parkway’s still pretty clear,” he advised Brian. “We should beat the worst of the rush-hour traffic.”

When they exited the airport to access the parkway that would take them west along the Potomac River, Tommy graciously pointed out the sights.

“That’s the Pentagon,” he announced, then swiveled in his seat to indicate the monument across the Tidal Basin. “’N that’s the Jefferson Memorial. Thomas Jefferson was a president. Number...uh...”

“Three,” Dawn supplied when he appeared stuck. “Actually, I know DC pretty well. I attended school at Georgetown, just a little farther upriver.”

“You did? What grade were you in?”

“I was a grad student. That would be, like, grade seventeen.”

“Seventeen?” His eyes went big and round. “I’m just starting first grade. Does that mean I gotta do...um—” he gulped in dismay “—sixteen more grades?”

“Maybe. If that’s what rows your boat.” She slanted Brian a quick glance. “Ask your father how many he did.”

He gave his dad an accusing stare. “How many?”

“More than seventeen,” Brian admitted apologetically. “But I didn’t do them one right after another. I took a break when I went into the marines and didn’t start grad school until after I got back from Iraq. Your mom took some of the same classes I did,” he added in an instinctive attempt to keep Caroline’s memory alive for her son. “She was working on a Master’s Degree in chemical engineering at the time. That’s where we met.”

“I know. You told me. Look! There’s the Iwo Jima Memorial. They were marines, too, weren’t they, Dad?”

“Yes, they were.”

Brian had no desire to keep Tom anchored to the past. And he certainly didn’t want him to mourn a mother he’d never really known. Yet he found himself fighting a stab of guilt and making a mental apology to Caroline for their son’s minimal interest.

* * *

Damned if he didn’t feel guilty all over again when they crossed the Potomac into Maryland and approached the suburbs of Bethesda and Chevy Chase.

Caroline had spent weeks searching for just the right neighborhood to bring up the big, noisy family she and Brian wanted to have. Six months pregnant at the time, she’d visited local schools, shops and churches to make sure they were international as well as fully integrated. She then spent hours with an architect designing updates to the home they’d purchased. Brian could see her touch in the lush greenery, the bushes that flowered from spring to late fall, the mellow brick and mansard roofs she’d insisted reminded her of their Paris honeymoon.

After she’d died, he’d thought about moving. Many times. The house, the detached gatehouse, the garden, the curving drive all carried Caroline’s personal stamp. But he’d stayed put, pinned in place these past five years by EAS’s rapidly expanding business base and the fact that this was the only home Tommy had ever known.

He told himself there was no reason to feel disloyal for bringing Dawn here to live, even temporarily. So she was young and vivacious and gorgeous? No big deal. All that mattered was that she’d clicked with Tommy. His son had been so shaken by Mrs. Wells’s accident. Terrified she might die on the operating table, like the mom he couldn’t really remember. Brian would have hired a dozen Dawn McGills if that’s what it took to ease his son’s instinctive fears.

Although one McGill looked to be enough. More than enough.

Brian trailed along as Tommy performed tour guide duty again. Eagerly, he showed her through the main house. The two front rooms that had been knocked into one to create a large, airy family room with sunshine pouring through the windows. The spacious, eat-in kitchen. The trellised patio and landscaped backyard with its fanciful gazebo.

The laundry beyond the kitchen contained what Tommy insisted looked like spaceship appliances. The washer and dryer were gray steel, with lighted touch panels and front-loading glass portholes. A side door in the laundry room opened to the three-car garage, which housed Brian’s SUV and the small, neat compact Mrs. Wells preferred.

“It’s leased,” Brian told Dawn. “I can trade it out if you’d like something bigger.”

And flashier, he thought, to go with her red hair and multicolored toes.

“It’s fine,” she assured him.

Nodding, he tapped in a digital code on a flat-paneled cabinet in the laundry room. “You’ll need the car keys, as well as keys to both the gatehouse and main house.”

While he retrieved the appropriate keys from the neatly labeled pegs, Tommy darted to the other door. It opened onto a covered walkway paved with flat flagstones.

“This goes to the gatehouse,” he explained unnecessarily, since the two-story bungalow sat all of twenty yards away.

It was made of the same mellow brick as the main house and had been converted into a comfortable retreat for Mrs. Wells. Once inside, they confirmed the cleaning service had indeed prepared the gatehouse’s second bedroom and restocked its kitchen.

“This is perfect,” Dawn exclaimed.

Delighted, she peered through the kitchen’s bay windows at the brick-walled backyard. Its lush lawn was bordered by early fall flowers lifting their showy faces to the sky, and the white-painted gazebo was perfect for sipping morning coffee while the sun burned the dew off the grass.

“I can take my laptop outside to work,” Dawn told Tommy. “Although I doubt I’ll get much done with all those dahlias to distract me. And that green, green grass just begs for a cartwheel or two.”

Tommy looked thrilled at the prospect of lawn gymnastics. Brian, on the other hand, had to forcibly slam a mental door on a vision of this woman with her fiery hair flying and her legs whirling through the air.

“And speaking of distractions,” Dawn commented, turning to prop a hip against the red tiled counter. “You start school next week, right?”

Tommy looked to his dad for confirmation, then mirrored his nod. “Right.”

“That gives us the rest of this week to have fun. I haven’t seen the pandas at the zoo. We need to do that, and check out the new exhibits at the Smithsonian, and...”

“And get in some shopping,” Brian interjected.

“Now you’re speaking my language! I’m not bragging when I say I’m intimately acquainted with every mall and shopping center within a fifty-mile radius.” She turned an inquiring look Tommy. “What about you? Do you like to cruise the malls?”

“No!”

She hid a smile at his undisguised horror and turned to Brian. “So why suggest shopping?”

“The school sent a checklist of supplies and uniform items we need to get.”

“He has to wear a uniform?”

“I don’t mind,” Tommy volunteered. “Dad explained that all the kids wear the same thing so no one makes fun of anyone else’s stuff.”

“Well, that’s sensible.”

Sensible, but kind of sad when Dawn remembered all the items of clothing she and Callie and Kate had shared over the years. So many, in so many different colors and styles, that they usually forgot who’d originally owned what. ’Course that was the difference between growing up in a small Massachusetts town versus a major metropolitan area with a socially and economically diverse population.

“Okay, we’ll add a shopping expedition to our agenda. You’ll need to get me a copy of that checklist, Brian.”

“I’ll print it out and give it to you at breakfast tomorrow. If you care to join us,” he added after a slight pause. “Mrs. Wells usually did.”

“She ate dinner with us, too,” Tommy added, “’cept when she was tired ’n wanted to put her feet up. She had to do that a lot. But you don’t put your feet up, do you?”

Dawn hated to burst his bubble. Especially after he’d proudly informed EAS’s chief pilot that she was, like, a hundred years younger than Mrs. Wells.

“Sometimes,” she admitted.

His brow furrowed, and while he struggled to reconcile Fun Dawn with Old Lady Dawn, his father stepped in. “Tommy and I will certainly understand if you’d prefer to take your meals here.”

“I may do that when work piles up. Otherwise, I’ll be happy to join you guys.”

“Okay. Well...” He palmed his chin, scraping the bristles that had sprouted during the long flight. “Since we ate on board, I figured we’d just do sandwiches tonight.”

“Sounds good.”

“About an hour?”

“I’ll be there.”

Dawn used the time to empty her roll-on suitcase. There wasn’t much to unpack: black slacks and a cream-colored tunic that could be dressed up or down with various tops and scarves; a gauzy sundress; her most comfortable jeans; three stretchy, scoop neck T-shirts; a loose-knit, lightweight sweater; underwear; sandals; flip-flops; a bathing suit; and a zipper bag of costume jewelry. That should be enough to get through another week in DC. If not, or if she stayed longer than anticipated, she’d have to make another excursion to the mall.

With Kate and Callie, if she could catch Callie before she flew home to Boston. Buoyed by the prospect, Dawn stripped off the filmy blouse, zebra-striped belt and wide-legged palazzo pants she’d purchased at a Rome boutique for the surprise ceremony at the Trevi Fountain. The pants had made the flight home without a wrinkle, but the blouse needed some serious steaming.

Dawn hung it on the outside of the walk-in shower stall before adjusting the spray on a showerhead the size of a dinner plate. The hard, pulsing streams revived her jet-lagged muscles and did a lively tap dance on her skin. She felt refreshed and squeaky clean and, once dressed in her favorite jeans and a scoop neck tee, ready to face the world again.

The world maybe, but not her mother.

When she remembered to turn her phone back on, she skimmed the text messages. Two were from members of her team at work, one from the director of a charity she was doing some free design work for and three from her mother.

Dawn had emailed both parents copies of her itinerary in Italy, with the addresses and phone number of the hotels in case of an emergency. She’d also zinged off a quick text when the itinerary had changed to include an unplanned stay in Tuscany, with a side excursion to Venice.

Her mother had texted her twice during that time. Once to ask the reason for the change, and once to insist she contact her father and pound some sense into his head about arrangements for Thanksgiving. These new texts, however, were short and urgent.

I need to speak to you. Call me.

Where are you? I tried your hotel. They said you’d checked out. Call me.

Dawn! Call me!

Swamped by the sudden fear someone in the family was sick or hurt, she pressed the FaceTime button for her mom. When her mother’s face filled the screen, she could see herself in the clear green eyes and dark auburn brows. Maureen McGill’s once-bright hair had faded, though, and unhappiness had carved deep lines in her face.

“Finally!” she exclaimed peevishly. “I’ve texted a half dozen times. Why didn’t you answer?”

“We were in the air and only landed a little while ago. I just now turned my phone back on. What’s wrong?”

Her mother ignored the question and focused instead on the first part of her daughter’s response.

“Why were you in the air? You and Kate and Callie aren’t supposed to fly home until tomorrow.”

“My plans changed, Mom. What’s going on?”

“It’s your father.”

“Is he okay?”

“No. The man’s as far from okay as he always is. He’s adamant that you and your brothers and their families have Thanksgiving with him and that trashy blonde he’s taken up with.”

Arrrrgh! Dawn vowed an instant and painful death for whichever of her brothers or sisters-in-law had told Maureen about Doreen.

“I know you’re all coming here for Christmas,” her mother continued, “but I would think that at least one of you wouldn’t want me to be alone over Thanksgiving.”

“Mom...”

“It’s not like he’ll put a decent meal on the table. The man burns water, for pity’s sake.”

“Mom...”

“And I’ll be very surprised if that woman can cook. I hear she—”

“Mo-ther!”

That was met with a thunderous silence. Dawn used the few seconds of dead air to do the mental ten count she resorted to so often when dealing with either of her parents. Modulating her voice, she repeated her previous refusal to enter into another holiday war.

“I told you, I’m not getting in the middle of this battle.”

Then an escape loomed, and she grabbed it with both hands.

“As a matter of fact, I may not be able to spend Thanksgiving with either Dad or you.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve just started a new project.”

“So? Boston’s less than ninety miles from home. Even if you have to work the day before and after the holiday, you could zip over and right back.”

“Actually, I won’t be doing this project in Boston. That’s why I flew home from Italy a day early. To, ah, consult with the people I’ll be working with and get everything set up. I’m in DC now.”

Which wasn’t a lie. It just didn’t offer up specific details about the “project.” Her mother would be as skeptical as Kate and Callie about this nanny gig. Even the sparse details Dawn now provided left her peevish.

“You might have told me about this special project,” she sniffed, “instead of just letting all this drop after the fact.”

“I didn’t decide to do it until just a few days ago.”

“Have you told your father?”

“Not yet.”

As expected, the fact that Maureen was privy to information that her ex-husband wasn’t soothed at least some of her ruffled feathers. Dawn moved quickly to exploit the momentary lull.

“I have to go, Mom. I’ll call you when I know where I’ll be on this project come Thanksgiving.”

Or not!

Shoving the phone in the back pocket of her jeans, she went out the back door of the gatehouse. Shadows dimmed the vibrant scarlet and gold of the dahlias in the walled-in backyard, and early fall leaves skittered across the flagstones of the covered walkway connecting the gatehouse to the main house.

It was still early. Only a little past 6:00 p.m. Yet the patch of sky visible above the brick-walled garden was already shading to a deep, federal blue. Appropriate, Dawn thought as her sense of humor seeped back, for a suburb jammed with Washington bureaucrats.

The main house looked big and solid and welcoming. Light streamed through the windows of its country-style kitchen. She could see Brian at the counter with his back to the window. She stopped for a moment, surprised and annoyed by the little flutter just under her ribs.

“Don’t be stupid,” she muttered to her elongated shadow on the walkway. “The man made his feelings clear enough on the plane. Just go in, make nice and keep all lascivious thoughts to yourself.”

Determined to obey that stern admonition, she rapped on the kitchen door.

“It’s open!”

She walked in and was greeted by music piping through the house speakers. Something low and jazzy, with lots of sax and horn. A pretty wild sax, as it turned out.

Dawn cocked her head as the notes suddenly soared to a crashing crescendo, dropped into a reedy trough and took flight again, all within the few seconds it took for Brian to reach for his phone and reduce the volume.

“Sorry. I have my phone synced to the kitchen unit and tend to let the music rip. Help yourself to wine if you want it. That’s a pretty decent Malbec.” He jerked his chin toward the bottle left open to breathe. “Or there’s white in the fridge.”

“Malbec’s good.”

She poured a glass and studied him while she took an appreciative sip. Judging by the damp gleam in his chestnut hair, he’d showered, too. He’d also changed out of his suit into jeans and a baggy red T-shirt sporting the logo of the Washington Nationals baseball team.

He hadn’t shaved, though. She normally didn’t go for the bristly, male model look, but on Ellis it looked good. So good, it was a few seconds before she thought to look around for his son.

“Where’s Tommy?”

“Dead to the world.”

He sliced tomatoes with the precision of an engineer. Which he was, she remembered, and wondered why she’d never considered engineers particularly sexy before.

“He barely made it upstairs before he conked out. I got him out of his clothes and into bed, but I expect his internal clock will have him up and watching cartoons at 3:00 a.m.” He shot her a glance that was half apology, half warning. “He may be a little hard to handle until he’s back on schedule.”

“I’ll make sure he burns off his excess energy at the zoo tomorrow. And if he gets on my nerves too badly, I’ll just hang him by the heels over the polar bear pool.” She held up a palm, grinning at his look of alarm. “I’m kidding!”

“Yeah, well...” He added the tomato slices to a platter of lettuce, sweet-smelling onions and cheese. “I’ve considered something along those lines a time or two myself.”

“Then he looks up at you with those wide, innocent eyes,” she said, laughing, “and you can’t remember what the heck got you all wrapped around the axle.”

“That pretty well sums it up. BLTs okay? Or there’s sliced chicken breast in the fridge.”

“A BLT sounds great.”

“White, whole wheat or pumpernickel?”

“Pumpernickel. Definitely pumpernickel. I’ll do that,” she offered when he extracted an uncut loaf from a bread bin and exchanged the tomato knife for one with a serrated edge. “You do the bacon.”

She joined him at the counter and went to work. She’d cut two thick slices before she realized he’d paused in the act of arranging the bacon on a microwavable tray. She turned, found him bent toward her, frowning, and almost collided with his nose.

Startled, she drew back a few inches. “Something wrong?”

“No.” He straightened, and a hint of red crept into his whiskered cheeks. “It’s your shampoo. I can smell the lemon but there’s something else, something I can’t identify. It’s been driving me crazy.”

Dawn tried to decide whether she should feel stoked by that bit about driving him crazy, or chagrined that it was her shampoo doing the driving. What she shouldn’t be feeling, though, was all goose-bumpy.

“That’s probably lotus blossom,” she got out a little breathlessly. “The company I work for manufactures this shampoo. Lemon and lotus blossom, with a touch of coconut oil for sheen. All natural ingredients.”

Oh, for pity’s sake! This was ridiculous. Men had leaned over her before. A good number of them, if she did say so herself. Some were even sexier than Brian Ellis. But not many, she couldn’t help thinking as he bent down again.

“I don’t think I’ve sniffed a lotus before.” He raised a hand, twirled a still-damp tendril around a finger. “Or felt anything so soft and silky. The coconut’s doing a good job.”

Well, damn! Who would’ve thunk it? This unexpected proximity seemed to have knocked Mr. Cool, Calm and Collected a few degrees off balance. The realization should have given Dawn a dart of feminine satisfaction. Instead, she had to struggle to remember where she was.

She barely registered the brick-walled kitchen or the copper pots hanging over the cook island. Brian blocked almost everything else from view. All she could see was the prickle of beard on his cheeks and chin. The slight dent in his nose. The narrowed blue eyes. She was still trying to decipher their message when he released her hair and brushed a knuckle down her cheek.

“About our discussion on the plane...”

Which discussion? She was damned if she could sort out her jumbled thoughts with his knuckle making another pass.

“I don’t dislike you.”

“Good to know, Ellis.”

“Just the opposite, McGill.” Another stroke, followed by a look of pure regret. “Which is why we can’t do what I’m aching to do right now.”

“You’re right,” she got out unsteadily as he cupped her cheek. “We can’t. Because...?”

As Brian dropped his hand, guilt hit him like a hammer.

Because, he thought with a searing stab of regret, we’re standing in the kitchen Caroline redesigned brick-by-aged-brick. Under the rack holding the dented copper pots she’d discovered in a shopping expedition to the Plaka in Athens. With a loaf of the pumpernickel she’d taught him to tolerate, if not particularly like, sitting right there on the counter.

Christ! He knew he shouldn’t keep hauling around this load of guilt. Everyone said so. The grief counselor recommended by Caroline’s oncologist. The various “experts” he’d consulted on issues dealing with single parenting. The well-meaning friends and associates who’d fixed him up with their friends and associates.

He’d dated off and on in the five years since his wife’s death. No one seriously. No one he’d brought here, to the home Caroline had taken such delight in. And he sure as hell had never ached to kiss one of those casual dates six ways to Sunday. Then hike her onto the counter, unsnap her jeans and yank them...

Dammit! Furious with himself, Brian stepped back and offered the only excuse he could. “Because Tommy’s upstairs. He might wake up and wander down to the kitchen.”

She recognized a pathetic excuse when she heard one. Eyes widening, she regarded him with patently fake horror. “Omigod! How totally awful if he walked in on us trading spit. He’d be so grossed out.”

“Dawn, I...”

She cut him off with a wave of the serrated knife. “I got the picture, Ellis. No messing around in the house. Not with me, anyway. Are you going to nuke that bacon or not?”

The flippant response threw him off. Almost as much as her smile when she attacked the pumpernickel again. It wasn’t smug. Or cynical. Or disappointed. Just tight and mocking.

Feeling like a teenager who’d just tripped over his own hormones, he tore some paper towels from the roll, covered the tray and shoved it in the microwave. Within moments the aroma of sizzling bacon permeated the kitchen and almost—almost!—wiped out the scent of the damned lotus blossoms.

Chapter Three

Dawn was wide-awake and skimming through emails at midnight. Not surprising, since she’d zoned out for a solid five hours on the plane. Her mind said it was the middle of the night but her body thrummed with energy.

Then there was that near miss in the kitchen. She and Ellis had come nose to nose, close enough to exchange Eskimo kisses. Although there’d been no actual contact, electricity had arced between them. He’d felt the sizzle. So had she. Still did, dammit! No wonder she couldn’t sleep.

Dawn didn’t kid herself. She knew what they’d experienced was purely physical. She’d shared that same sizzle with too many deliciously handsome men to read any more into it than basic animal attraction. It was just Ellis’s pheromones responding to her scent.

As advertised, she thought with a grin. Dawn and her team had designed the labels for this particular line of bath products, which had been based on a study by the Smell & Taste Research Foundation in Chicago. The study demonstrated how combinations of various natural products triggered a wide variety of responses, including a few she found very interesting. Supposedly, the scents of lavender and pumpkin pie when sniffed together reportedly increased penile blood flow by forty percent!

Naturally, Dawn had read the study from cover to cover. She’d had to, in order to conceptualize the designs for the ads. She’d also conducted her own field trials of the new products. Her final choice of the lemon and lotus blossom shampoo didn’t appear to increase penile blood flow quite as dramatically as the lavender and pumpkin, but it had done wonders for her normally flyaway red curls. And it had certainly impacted Brian Ellis’s libido, she thought with a stab of satisfaction.

Not that she’d specifically intended to impact it. Although she was as attracted to Big Bad Brian as he apparently was to her, neither of them could let the sizzle gather steam or heat. He’d made it clear he wasn’t looking for any kind of permanent relationship, and Dawn was pretty well convinced there wasn’t any such animal.

She knew she came across as fun and flirtatious. Knew, too, she’d developed a love ’em and leave ’em reputation. The irony was that her parents’ toxic example had left her so gun-shy that she never went beyond flirting. Well, almost never. The only exceptions had come after she’d convinced herself she was in love—which only went to prove how flawed her instincts were.

That thought led to a quick glance at the digital clock on the nightstand. It was twelve twenty in DC. Six twenty in the morning in Rome. Kate and Callie would be up now and getting ready to leave for the airport.

Propping her shoulders against the headboard, Dawn booted up her laptop. How did any friendship survive these days without FaceTime? She tapped her fingers against the computer’s frame while waiting for the connection. Kate came on first, wide-awake and wearing a wide, cat-got-the-cream smile.

“Bitch!” Dawn exclaimed. “You had wake-up sex.”

“I did. And it was wonderful. Glorious. Stupendous. With the sun just coming up over the seven hills and...”

“Please! Spare me the details.”

“About what?” Callie asked as her face materialized on the other half of the split screen.

“About Kate’s wake-up call. Apparently she started the day off right.” Frowning, Dawn peered at the screen. “You, on the other hand, look as pasty as overcooked fettucini.”

“Gee, thanks.” Callie tucked a wayward strand of mink-brown hair behind her ear. “You’re not exactly glowing, either. Jet lag?”

“Yeah. No. Sort of.”

“Uh-oh. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t give us that,” Kate huffed. “We knew you before you got braces or boobs. Why so blah?”

“I think I’d better change my shampoo.”

Both women grasped the underlying context instantly. They should. They’d devoured the smell study as avidly as Dawn. They’d also been privy to the results of her personal field trials.

“Change it,” Kate urged. “Tonight!”

The emphatic responses made Dawn blink. “It’s not exactly a life-or-death situation.”

“Yet.”

Callie’s response carried considerably less emphasis but still hit home. “You told us you thought Brian was a fantastic dad, but otherwise a little cool and detached. Does that remind you of anyone?”

Dawn blinked again. “Oh! Well. Maybe.”

Fiancé Number One hadn’t been either cool or remote, but he did tend to act supercilious toward store clerks and restaurant servers. Having worked as both during her high school and college years, Dawn was finally forced to admit the truth. Not only did she not love the guy, she didn’t really like him.

Fiancé Number Two was outgoing, gregarious and a generous tipper. Until he decided someone had wronged him, that is. Then he morphed from fun-loving to icily, unrelentingly determined on revenge. Dawn still carried the scars from that close encounter of the scary kind.

She couldn’t see Brian morphing into another Mr. Hyde. She really couldn’t. Then again, she’d been wrong before.

“All right,” she told her friends. “I’ll lay in a new supply of shampoo tomorrow.”

“Do it,” Kate urged again, giving her the evil eye. “I’d better not catch a single whiff of lemons or lotus blossoms when you and Brian and Tommy come to dinner this Saturday.”

“We’re coming to dinner?”

“You are. Seven o’clock. My place. Correction,” she amended with a quick, goofy smile. “Our place. Travis gets in that morning.”

“I thought he needed to fly back to Florida after he wraps things up at Aviano.”

“He does, but he’s taking a few days in between to scope out his new job at Ellis Aeronautical Systems. Callie will be there, too,” Kate offered as added incentive. “Despite her objections to banging headboards, she’s agreed to spend some time with us in Washington. So Saturday. Seven o’clock. Our place.”

“Got it!”

Dawn signed off, relieved that she’d shared the incident with Brian but feeling guilty that she’d lumped him in with her two late, unlamented ex-fiancés. Yes, he was aloof at times. And yes, he held something of himself back from everyone but Tommy. But she hadn’t seen him condescend to anyone. Take his pilot and limo driver, for example. Judging by their interaction with their boss, the relationship was one of mutual respect.

Nor could Dawn imagine Brian peeling back that calm, unruffled exterior to reveal a core as petty as Fiancé Number Two’s. Of course, she’d never imagined Two having that hidden vindictive streak, either.

Just remembering what the bastard had put her through after their breakup gave Dawn a queasy feeling. Slamming the laptop lid, she dumped it on the nightstand, flipped off the lamp and slithered down on the soft sheets. Their sunshine-fresh scent reinforced her determination to hit a drugstore and buy some bland-smelling shampoo first thing in the morning. Then, she decided with an effort to rechannel her thoughts, she and Tommy would have some F-U-N!

* * *

The next four days flew by. Dawn stuck to her proposed agenda of zoo, Smithsonian and shopping, with side excursions to Fort Washington, the United States Mint and paddle-boating on the Tidal Basin. The outings weren’t totally without peril. Fortunately, Dawn grabbed the back strap of Tommy’s life preserver just in time to keep him from nose-diving into the water when he tried to scramble out of the paddleboat. And she only lost him for a few, panic-filled moments at the Air and Space Museum.

Those near disasters aside, she cheerfully answered his barrage of questions and fed off his seemingly inexhaustible, hop-skip-jump energy. Together, they thoroughly enjoyed revisiting so many of her old stomping grounds.

As an added bonus, the weather couldn’t have been more perfect. An early cold snap had rolled down from Canada and erased every last trace of summer heat and smog. Washington flaunted itself in the resulting brisk autumn air. The monuments gleamed in sparkling sunshine. The fat lines at tourist sites skinnied down. There was even a faint whiff of wood smoke in the air when the two explorers retuned home Friday afternoon, pooped but happy.

They’d saved a picnic on the grounds of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial for their last major excursion of the week. The memorial had opened during Dawn’s last year at Georgetown, when she’d been too swamped with course work and partying to explore the site. So her grin was as wide as Tommy’s at dinner that evening, as he proudly displayed the photo snapped by an accommodating bystander. It portrayed him and Dawn hunched down to get cheek-to-jowl with the statue of FDR’s much-loved Scottish terrier.

“He’s the only dog to have his statue right there, with a president,” Tommy informed his dad.

“I didn’t know that.”

“Me, neither. We Googled him, though, and learned all kinds of interesting stuff. His name was Fala, ’n he could perform a whole bag of tricks, like sit ’n roll over ’n bark for his dinner.”

“Sounds like a smart pooch.”

“He was! ’N he was in the army!” The historical events got a little blurry at that point. Forehead scrunching, Tommy jabbed at his braised pork. “A sergeant or general or something.”

“I think he was a private,” Dawn supplied.

“Right, a private. ’Cause he put a dollar in a piggy bank every single day to help pay for soldiers’ uniforms ’n stuff.” His fork stopped halfway to his mouth. “Musta been a big piggy bank.”

Brian flashed Dawn a grin, quick and potent and totally devastating. She was still feeling its whammy when he broke the code for his son.

“I suspect maybe the piggy bank was a bit of WWII propaganda. A story put out by the media,” he explained, “to get people to buy bonds or otherwise contribute to the war effort.”

Tommy didn’t appear to appreciate this seeming denigration of the heroic terrier. Chin jutting, he conceded the point with obvious reluctance. “Maybe. But Fala was more than just proper...popor...”

“Propaganda.”

“Right. Dawn ’n me...” His dad’s brows lifted, and the boy made a swift midcourse correction. “Dawn ’n I read that soldiers used his name as a code word during some big battle.”

“The Battle of the Bulge,” she confirmed when his cornflower blue eyes turned her way.

“Yeah, that one. ’N if the Germans didn’t know who Fala was, our guys blasted ’em.”

Dawn was a little surprised at how many details the boy had retained of FDR’s beloved pet. Brian, however, appeared to know exactly where this detailed narrative was headed. Setting down his fork, he leaned back in his chair.

“Let me guess,” he said to his son. “You now want a Scottish terrier instead of the English bulldog you campaigned for last month.”

“Well...”

“And what about the beagle you insisted you wanted before the bulldog?”

Tommy’s blue eyes turned turbulent, and Dawn had a sudden sinking sensation. Too late, she understood the motivation behind the boy’s seemingly innocent request for her to check out the grooming requirements for Scottish terriers.

“Beagles ’n bulldogs shed,” he stated, chin jutting again. “Like the spaniel you said we had when I was a baby. The one I was ’lergic to. But Scotties don’t shed. They gotta be clipped. ’N they’re really good with kids. Dawn read that on Google,” he finished triumphantly. “She thinks a Fala dog would be perfect for me.”

Four days, Dawn thought with a silent groan. She and Brian had maintained a civilized facade for four entire days. After her emergency purchase of the blandest shampoo on the market, there’d been no leaning. No sniffing. No near misses. Just a polite nonacknowledgment of the desire that had reared its head for those few, breathless moments.

The glance Brian now shot her suggested the polite facade had developed a serious crack. But his voice was unruffled as he addressed his son’s apparently urgent requirement for a canine companion.

“We talked about this, buddy. Remember? With the trip to Italy this summer and you just about to start school, we decided to wait awhile before bringing home a puppy.”

“You decided, not me.”

“Puppies need a lot of attention. You can’t leave them alone all day and...”

“He wouldn’t be alone. Dawn can watch him while I’m at school ’n clean up his poop ’n stuff.”

The crack yawned deeper and wider.

“Dawn’s already been very generous with her time,” Brian told his son, his tone easy but his eyes cool. “I’m sure she wants to get back to her job and her friends. We can’t ask her to take on puppy training before she goes home to Boston.”

“But I don’t want her to go home to Boston. I want her to stay here, with us.” His belligerence gave way to a look of sly cunning. “She could, if you ’n her got married.”

Neither adult corrected his grammar this time, and he launched into a quick, impassioned argument.

“You told me you like her, Dad. ’N I see the way you stare at her sometimes, when she’s not looking.”

Dawn raised a brow.

“She likes you, too. She told me.”

This time it was Brian who hiked a brow.

“So you should get married,” Tommy concluded. “You’d have to kiss ’n sleep in the same bed ’n take showers together, but you wouldn’t mind that, would you?”

His father parried the awkward question with the skill of long practice. “Where’d you get that bit about taking showers together? You’d better not tell me you’ve been watching TV after lights-out again.”

“No, sir. Cindy told me that’s what her mom and dad do. It sounds pretty yucky but she says they like it.”

Dawn struggled to keep a straight face. “Who’s Cindy?”

“A very precocious young lady who lives on the next block,” Brian answered drily. “She and Tommy went to the same preschool. They’ve gotten together with some of their other friends for play times during the summer. And her big brother Addy—Addison Caruthers the Third—stays with Tommy sometimes when Mrs. Wells needs a break.”

“Addy’s cool,” Tommy announced, “but Cindy’s my best friend, even if she is a girl. You might meet her ’n her mom when you take me to school Monday.” He thought about that for a moment. “Maybe you should ask her mom if you would really hafta do that shower stuff.”

Dawn bit the inside of her lip. “Maybe I should,” she said gravely. “That could certainly be a deal-breaker.”

She glanced across the table, expecting Brian to appreciate this absurd turn in the conversation. His cheeks still carried that hint of red, but she detected no laughter in his expression.

Oops. Message received. Propping her elbows on the table, Dawn tried to deflect Tommy’s latest attempt to fill the void in his life.

“The thing is, kiddo, I’m allergic to marriage.”

“Really? Like I am to dog hair?”

“Pretty much. Every time I think about marching down the aisle, I get all nervous and sweaty and itchy.”

“I get itchy, too. Then my eyes turn red and puffy.”

“There! You know what it’s like. So...” Smiling, she tried to let the boy down gently. “Although I like your dad and he likes me, we’re just friends. And we’ll stay friends. All three of us. I promise.”

“Even after you go back to Boston?”

“Even after I go back to Boston.”

Her smile stayed in place, but the thought of resuming her hectic life left a dusty taste in her mouth. She washed it down with a swish of the extremely excellent Syrah that Brian had uncorked to accompany their braised pork.

With his characteristically quicksilver change in direction, Tommy shifted topics. Dawn contributed little as the conversation switched from Scottish terriers and adult shower habits to the video he had to watch before bed that night. From there it zinged to the laundry list of items he’d crammed into his school backpack.

The question of when his temporary nanny would head north again didn’t come up again until after he’d dashed up to his room to retrieve the overstuffed pack and demonstrated to his father exactly why he needed every item to survive his first full day of elementary school.

“Sorry ’bout that third-person proposal,” Brian said as he and Dawn carried the dishes to the sink. “I did warn you, though.”

“Yes, you did. Good thing I’m ’lergic to marriage, or Tommy might have swept me right off my feet.”

He passed her the dinner plates, which she rinsed and slotted in the lower rack. Straightening, she found him standing with a dessert bowl in each hand.

“I appreciate the way you stepped in to help us out, Dawn. I really do. So I need to tell you that I talked to Lottie Wells this afternoon. Her rehab is going fine, but she’s decided to stay in California with her sister.”

Dawn’s heart emitted the craziest little ping. Was he going to ask her to stay? Suggest some sort of loose arrangement that would keep him and Tommy in her life and vice versa? His next comments put those thoughts on instant ice.

“Since I suspected that would be Lottie’s decision, I had my assistant compile a list of prospective replacements. She’s contacted the top five on the list and I’m flying them in for interviews, starting Monday.”

“Oh. Good.” She grabbed the dessert bowls and jammed them into the top rack. “I’ve had a great time with Tommy...and with you,” she added belatedly. “But you’re right. I need to get back to my real life.”

The one filled with twelve-and fourteen-hour days at the office. Late nights hunched over her laptop. Casual dates with men whose names she couldn’t remember.

“I also need to catch up on some work,” she said briskly. “Tell Tommy good-night for me. We haven’t planned any outings for the weekend, by the way, since I assumed you’d want to spend time with him before his big day Monday.”

“Good assumption. And about Monday...”

She paused, one brow lifting.

“I’ll take him to school that morning. They want parents to sign kids in the first day.”

“Makes sense,” she said with a shrug that disguised her disappointment.

“The school also needs to verify alternate emergency contacts,” Brian continued. “Since both sets of grandparents live out of state, I’ll designate them as secondary alternates and you as primary.”

“That’ll work.”

For now. Until he hired a permanent replacement.

Just as well he intended to start those interviews next week, Dawn decided grimly. She needed to cut loose from Tommy the Terrible—and his dad—before the ties went deeper or wrapped tighter around her heart.

The wineglasses were the last to hit the dishwasher. They were tall-stemmed, paper thin and probably expensive. With ruthless determination, she plunked them in the top rack beside Tommy’s milk glass and skimmed a quick glance around the kitchen.

“Looks like we’re done here,” she said flatly. “See you in the morning. Or whenever.”

She made it to the kitchen door. The lighted walkway to the gatehouse beyond offered a welcome escape.

“Dawn, wait!”

His face was set and his lips tight when she turned to face him.

“These past four days. I’ve enjoyed... I’ve been...”

“You’ve been what?” she taunted with a mocking smile. “Staring at me when I’m not looking? Wishing you’d leaned in a little closer that first night? Wondering why I changed my shampoo?”

The words were barely out of her mouth before she realized she’d baited a caged tiger. The skin stretched taut over his cheeks, and a sudden heat flamed in his blue eyes. Muttering a curse, he strode over to where she stood.

“Yes, yes and yes. I’m also wondering why the hell I waited so long to do this.”

She wanted to pretend she was shocked when he slid a palm around her nape and tipped her face to his. She had that instant, that breath-stealing second to protest or jerk away. When she didn’t do either, his mouth came down on hers.

The truth was she’d been imagining the taste of him, the feel of him, since their first meeting in Venice. As his lips moved over hers, reality far exceeded her expectations.

The man could kiss!

Dawn had compiled a fairly decent sample size over the years and would rank Brian Ellis’s technique in the top tenth percentile. Okay, maybe the top percentile. He didn’t go all Neanderthal and bend her back over his arm. Didn’t pooch his lips or get wet and sloppy. He just sort of...overwhelmed her. His broad shoulders, his hard muscles, the hand on her nape. Riding a wave of sensual delight, she locked her arms around his neck.

With a low growl, he widened his stance. His other hand cupped her bottom and drew her into him. She could feel him harden, feel the answering desire curl hot and sweet in her belly. She pressed closer, eager for the contact, but he jerked his head up.

His breathing harsh, he stared down at her for long seconds before grinding out an apology. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”

She wasn’t, but his next words pushed her close.

“Wonderful example that would have set for Tommy if he’d walked in.”

“Hey, your kid just proposed we scrub each other’s back. I doubt a little lip-lock would’ve traumatized him for life.”

“No, but it...”

“Never mind. I get it. We don’t want to confuse the poor kid or let him think that what just happened sprang from anything but good, old-fashioned lust.”

When he didn’t disagree, she tipped him another, even more mocking smile.

“’Night, stud. See you around.”

Chapter Four

Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny, a direct contrast to Brian’s mood. The kiss he’d laid on Dawn the previous evening had made for a restless night.

Restless, hell! It had left him hard and hurting. Good thing she’d breezed out of the kitchen when she had or he might have compounded his stupidity by suggesting they share a brandy after Tommy trotted off to bed. Brandy being code for getting down on the sofa. Or the floor. Or a king-size bed with soft sheets and her luscious body stretched out in naked abandon.

Dammit! He threw back the comforter and stalked to the bathroom, determined to erase the mental image of shimmering auburn hair splayed across his pillow and those lush, full breasts bared to his touch.

The image wouldn’t erase. It followed him into the shower, then stared back at him from the steam-clouded mirror over the sink. Laughing, sensual, inviting, she teased and taunted him. She knew he wanted her. The feeling was mutual. That message had come through with the astounding clarity of a radio signal transmitted via a 200 gigahertz, ultrahigh frequency satellite band.

The same band, he remembered abruptly, that EAS had been lobbying for access to for months. Which in turn reminded him of his scheduled meeting with the FCC on Monday. Between that potentially contentious meeting, getting Tommy settled in school and interviewing prospective nannies, it looked to be a busy start to his week.

Yanking off the towel he’d wrapped around his waist, Brian tossed it at the laundry basket before pulling on a pair of jeans and his favorite Washington Nationals sweatshirt. He threaded the laces through the eyeholes of his running shoes, thinking of all he should do today. Like go into the office for a few hours to prep for the FCC meeting. And, while he was there, give Travis Westbrook a personal tour of EAS headquarters. EAS’s new VP of Test Operations and Evaluation had landed in DC late last night and confirmed his arrival by email.

Brian paused, the laces snaked around his fingers. Somehow he suspected Travis wouldn’t mind delaying the EAS tour for a day. The pilot was still making up for lost time with his wife. He and Kate had looked so happy when they’d renewed their wedding vows at the impromptu ceremony beside the Trevi Fountain. So secure in the love that had been tested for long, agonizing months but refused to keel over and die. The kind of love that lasted a lifetime.

The kind Brian and Caroline had thought they’d have.

Slewing around, he studied the framed photo on his nightstand. It was a casual, unposed shot of his wife with Tommy in her arms, taken mere weeks before they’d discovered that her sudden imbalance and dizzy spells were caused by a fast-growing tumor that had wrapped itself around her brain stem.

Over the next agonizing months the tumor relentlessly strangled the nerves that controlled every basic bodily function. Her breathing. Her heart rate. Blood flow. Eye movement. Hearing. Sensory perception. After chemo and radiation failed to halt the tumor’s pernicious growth, she opted for a last, desperate attempt to have it cut out.

She and Brian both knew the odds were she wouldn’t survive the surgery. They’d said their goodbyes in the purple twilight punctuated with beeping monitors, then spent the night spooned against each other in her hospital bed. Both sets of parents had arrived early the next morning, bringing Tommy with them. The hours that followed were lost in a misty haze. Brian couldn’t remember the expression on the surgeon’s face when she broke the grim news. He retained only a vague memory of his father-in-law’s shattered sobs and his quietly efficient mother helping him through the business of death.

With a knot in his throat, he realized that he could barely recall the sound of his wife’s laughter or the title of the tune she used to hum all the time. Another woman’s laugh now echoed through their house. Another woman’s voice was in his head. A vivacious, seductive woman who hadn’t tried to disguise her response to his kiss. Or her mocking smile when he’d damned near tripped over his own feet backing away.

Calling himself ten kinds of an idiot, Brian went downstairs and found the coffee already made. The note propped against the pot informed him Dawn had come over early to borrow some artificial sweetener. It also announced that she had a ton of work to catch up on, so she’d hang at the gatehouse while he and Tommy enjoyed a day doing man things. She’d see them this evening. Brian could buzz when he and Tommy were ready to head to the Westbrooks’ for dinner.

He crumpled the note with a combination of relief and irrational pique at the casual way she’d cut him and Tommy out of her day. Gathering the makings for French toast, he cracked eggs into a mixing bowl with something less than his usual dexterity. He added milk and a dash of cinnamon, then set the bowl aside.

Topping off his coffee, he booted up his iPad to skim the financial news until muted thumps and a quick flush signaled his son’s return to the land of the living. He was arranging bread slices in a heavy iron skillet when Tommy rushed into the kitchen. He was still in his pajamas, his hair sticking up in spikes and sleep crusting the corners of his eyes.

“Back upstairs,” Brian directed. “Wash your face, brush your teeth, get dressed.”

Ignoring the order, Tommy swept the kitchen with an eager glance. “Where’s Dawn?”

“She’s working.”

“I gotta tell her something.”

“Not now, Tommy.”

“It’s okay,” his son countered, darting for the door. “I’ll be quick.”

“Not now.”

“I just wanna...”

“Thomas...”

The warning growl stopped the boy in his tracks, but Brian didn’t kid himself. Long experience had taught him there would be more to come.

Predictably, his son’s chin jutted and he threw his father a defiant look. “Dawn said I could come over anytime.”

“And I’m saying she’s busy. Haul your behind upstairs, then we’ll have breakfast and decide what to do today.”

“But...”

“Now!”

He stopped short of a roar but got his point across. Still mulish but wary, Tommy retreated.

Brian had to battle the urge to call him back and smooth things over with a hug. Instead, he concentrated on whipping the eggs and milk into a froth. Pouring the mixture over the bread slices, he left them to soak and returned to his iPad to check the football schedule.

He had the bacon sizzling and the French toast browning when Tommy reappeared. The earlier power struggle forgotten, he hopped up on a counter stool and wanted to know what they were going to do today.

“How about we take in the Redskins’ home game?”

“Really?”

“Really.”

EAS maintained a box at the stadium. When not used for entertaining clients, employees could vie for the seats via an in-house lottery system. All but one ticket was taken for today’s game, but Brian could pay an exorbitant premium to squeeze in an additional guest.

“What about Dawn?” Tommy wanted to know. “Is she coming, too?”

“She said she’d see us this evening when we go to dinner with Major and Mrs. Westbrook. It’s just us guys today. Kickoff’s at 10:00 a.m.,” he informed his excited son. “So eat fast, and we’ll hit the road.”

* * *

Dawn replied to Brian’s text advising that he and Tommy were going to the game with a smiley face and a cheerful “Have fun!” A short time later, she caught the rumble of the garage door going up, the SUV gunning to life and the door rolling down again.

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