Third Time's The Bride!

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!”