The Next Santini Bride

“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.

Angela studied the faces surrounding her, both familiar and strange. Dozens of Marines were sprinkled through the crowd, and she had to admit there was something about a man in a Dress-Blue uniform. It was an unfair advantage, really. No red-blooded woman, especially one who’d been living a celibate life for more than three years, could resist.

And the simple truth was, Angela didn’t want to resist. She’d made up her mind what she was going to do the minute her sister Gina had told her that Dan was known on base as the king of the one-night stands. And she wasn’t going to back out now.

“Want to try to finish our dance?” Dan asked, breaking into the thoughts swirling ceaselessly through her mind.

She inhaled and swiveled her head to look at him.

“For starters,” she said bravely, and watched as desire flickered in the depths of his eyes. She half turned to set her champagne glass on the closest table, then he took her hand and led her through the crowd. Angela’s gaze fixed on his broad back, narrow hips and long legs. A curl of anticipation unwound inside her, and her mouth went dry.

Ever since the night before, Angela hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him. Sure, he was tall, dark and gorgeous. So were most of the other guys in the room. But there was something about First Sergeant Mahoney that made her blood boil and her usually cautious nature want to fly out the window.

And just for tonight, she was going to let it.

As they came to the middle of the dance floor, the music changed, shifting from a fast-paced, rock and roll number to an old Frank Sinatra standard. The voice of Ol’ Blue Eyes swept into the room and was welcomed like an old friend. If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn Dan had planned it this way.

Dan pulled her into his arms and pressed her body to his. Her mouth went dry, and her head swam. She wasn’t sure if it was the four or five glasses of champagne or the heady sensation of being held by a man again that was making her feel almost dizzy. And she didn’t care. It was enough to be feeling again. To be experiencing that swift, sure punch of desire. The lick of flames at her center. The pooling warmth that threatened to collapse her knees and rob her of breath.

His right hand dropped to the curve of her behind as he eased her around the crowded dance floor. Subtly he pulled her tight against him. Hard and strong, his body pressed into hers, letting her know what she was doing to him. A rush of confidence filled her. She could still attract a man. Apparently the past three years of being a mom and a widow hadn’t robbed her of her abilities to be a woman.

On his shoulder her left hand clutched at the fabric of his uniform. She leaned her head back to look up at him and struggled to continue breathing as he kept her pressed tightly to him.

“I sure hope I’m reading you right,” Dan said, staring down at the woman he wanted more than his next breath.

She swallowed hard, then smoothed her left hand across his shoulders and down his back. “Trust me on this. If you weren’t reading me right, you’d have known by now.”

“Fair enough,” he said, nodding, “but just to be safe, I’ll say it plain. A simple no will end this. Now.”

She stared at him, and he saw his own reflection in the soft-brown of her eyes. “And what does a yes get me?”

Dan’s body tightened even further which he would have thought impossible a minute or two ago. Damn. He hadn’t been expecting this. Stand up at his friend’s wedding and end up sleeping with the friend’s new sister-in-law?

“Lady,” he said on a soft exhale of breath, “a yes will get you any darn thing you want.”

She gave him a slow smile that set a match to the dynamite stacked inside him.

“That covers a lot of territory, First Sergeant.”

“Yes ma’am,” he promised, his brain filling with images of the night to come, “it surely does.”

“Good,” she said, and moved even closer to him, taking what little of his breath was left. “Then it’s a date? After the bride and groom leave?”

“If I can wait that long,” he said.

“It’ll be worth the wait,” she assured him, and stepped out of his arms as the song ended.

“Damn straight,” he said tightly. He watched her as she moved back through the crowd, headed toward her sister. Her shoulder-length, dark-brown hair curved under at the ends and swung gently with each step she took. She wore a dark-pink bridesmaid’s dress with a high collar, long sleeves and a full skirt that fell to her feet and brushed the floor in a soft, swishing sound as she moved. And that dress looked so damn good on her, he wondered if there was any way to convince Nick and Gina to take off on their honeymoon now.

“You’re sure, honey?” Maryann Santini asked for the fiftieth time in the last ten minutes. “It just doesn’t seem fair, all of us leaving you at the same time. I mean, Nick and Gina of course deserve their honeymoon, but it doesn’t seem right for me to take off on a cruise right now.”

“You and Margaret have been planning this for weeks,” Angela reminded her mother patiently.

“I know, but now Jeremy’s going to be gone, and even Marie and Davis are leaving town for a week.”

Angela smiled at the thought of her eight-year-old son, but as much as she loved him, she was glad he’d asked to spend the weekend with his best friend. Especially now. With the plans she had for later tonight, home was no place for her son tonight.

“I’ll be fine, Mama,” she said, giving her mother a quick hug. “I’m a big girl, remember? I don’t need a baby-sitter for heaven’s sake. I’m actually looking forward to spending some time alone.” Not completely alone, of course, but her mother didn’t have to know that.

“All right, then,” the older woman said, obviously still not convinced. “I’ll only be gone ten days, and…”

The rest of her mother’s words drifted into a stream of sound as Angela watched the last of the wedding guests filter out of the hall. The past two hours had crawled by. All she’d been able to think about was being alone with Dan Mahoney. It had been so long. So long since she’d been held, kissed, touched. Her body burned with an intensity she’d never known before. Every square inch of her skin seemed alive with sensation, as if she could almost feel his hands on her already.

“Are you listening to me?” her mother asked, laying one hand on Angela’s forearm.

She jumped slightly, then tried to laugh it off. “I’m sorry, I must be tired.”

“Actually your eyes look a little feverish,” Mama said, frowning. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

Oh, she was feverish all right, but it was nothing aspirin could cure.

“I’m fine, Mama,” she said, looking past her mother to the car pulling up opposite the doorway. “Look, there’s Margaret now. You’d better hurry or you’ll miss your plane.”

“All right then,” Mama said, giving into the excitement of her first cruise. “You take care and make sure you lock the house and—”

“For heaven’s sake, Mama,” she said, impatience stampeding through her, “go.”

“Okay, I’m going.” Shaking her head, she hurried to her friend’s car, opened the door and got in. Then with a wave of her hand and a honk of the horn, she was off.

Angela pulled in a deep breath and blew it out again. Alone. Finally alone. Jeremy had gone home with his friend Mike, the caterers would clean up the mess in the hall, Mama was taken care of. And that meant that for the first time in too long, Angela Santini Jackson, mother, daughter, sister, widow, could be, for tonight, anyway, simply Angela.

She headed for the parking lot on suddenly shaky legs. Her stomach spun, her mind raced as she asked herself if she was doing the right thing. This was so not her.

She just wasn’t the one-night stand kind of woman.

Rounding the edge of the old brick building, she dug in her purse for her keys, and when she looked up, she saw Dan Mahoney, spotlit in the soft yellow glow of a parking lot lamp, leaning negligently against the hood of his car. Arms folded over 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.

Her heartbeat quickened, and the parts of her body struggling back to life throbbed and hummed with an electrical pulse. She paused only briefly, then started toward him. Her heels tapped loudly against the asphalt and kept time with the pounding of her heart.

Her car was parked just a few spaces away from his. She stopped at the driver’s side door, unlocked it and then looked at him.

He straightened up, moved over to her car and leaned both forearms on the roof. “So, Angela,” he said softly, his voice whispering along her spine, “do we still have a date?”

She closed her eyes briefly, then looked at him again. If she said no, he’d leave, no harm done. There it is, she told herself. One last chance. One final opportunity to back out. To forget about the craziness of what she’d been planning and go back to her house alone.

She could pack away the box of condoms she’d purchased the night before and slide into her empty bed. She could dream her dreams and do without the soft slide of this man’s hands on her skin.

Instead of feeling a man’s arms around her, she could sit in the darkness and regret not having had the courage to take what she wanted. To, for once, put her own needs ahead of everyone else’s.

The chilly, damp air swirled around her, and in the soft tendrils of fog blowing in off the ocean, he looked almost otherworldly. As if he was only the dream image of a man. But she knew he was all too real, and that’s exactly what she needed. What she wanted.

There would be no backing out.

Not tonight.

Swallowing hard, she said only, “I haven’t changed my mind.”

He nodded. “Me, neither.”

Oh, my. The flash of desire glinted in his eyes and set off sparks deep within her. Her heart galloped, and she sucked in a gulp of air before opening the car door with a shaky hand. Then she looked directly into those amazing eyes of his and said, “You can follow me to my house.”

He gave her a slow smile and nodded. “I’ll be right behind you.”

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