Third Time's The Bride!

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.