Third Time's the Bride! (3 page)

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
Maur
een about
Dor
een.

“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

D
awn 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.”