''I Do''...Take Two! (10 page)

“Nice to meet you, Tommy. Is that a diplodocus on your shirt?”

His eyes went wide. “You know 'bout dinosaurs?”

“I do. I studied them in school.”

“I didn't know girls studied stuff like that.”

Callie hid a smile. “Some of us do.”

“I've got a book with pictures of tyrannosauruses and pterodactyls 'n' stuff. Wanna see it?”

“Sure.”

Perked up by the attention, he bounced off the sofa and showed the way to his room.

“Cute kid,” Dawn commented as Travis delivered her a crystal goblet of deep, shimmering brunello. “How's his nanny doing?”

“Last report said she came through the surgery fine and should be able to fly home on Sunday, as planned,” he related.

“Kate told us about the private jet.” She took a sip of the wine, her green eyes knifing into him over the rim of her goblet. “She also told us this guy Ellis offered you a job. Are you going to take it?”

“That's the plan.”

“About damned time you pulled your head out of your ass and got your priorities right, Westbrook.”

“Thanks, McGill,” Travis drawled. “I was just waiting for your stamp of approval to seal the deal.”

Hastily, Kate intervened. “Sheathe the swords, you two. How about we take our drinks out on the terrace? I want to hear more about Tuscany.”

After the blistering heat of the day, the terrace was an oasis of shade and soft, sweet fragrance. Planters ringed the stone balustrade, filled with red geraniums that brightened so many Venetian window boxes. At the far end, a lion's head fountain bubbled happily into a marble basin.

None of these feasts for the senses could compete with the color and sheer vitality of the canal, however. Thoroughly delighted, Dawn leaned her elbows on the wide balustrade to admire the water ballet below. She leaned over farther, then had to jerk her hand upright to keep the wine from slopping out of her glass.

“Oops, almost got me a gondolier.”

“Better not!” The warning came from Tommy, who'd just come out with Callie. “We're not s'posed to toss anything over the rail. Dad said so. After the hotel manager complained,” he added with reluctant honesty.

“Why'd he complain?”

“Water balloons,” Travis supplied solemnly.

“Uh-oh.”

“It's those stupid hats.” The six-year-old's nose scrunched in disgust. “If they're gonna wear straw hats with ribbons 'n' stuff, I think they should 'spect to get water bombed.”

Dawn looked much struck by the observation. “You're right. Those hats are stupid. And such easy targets,” she added with a glance at the boats gliding by below.

“Christ, don't encourage him.”

Dawn responded to Travis's muttered plea by making a face, then moved to the wrought iron beside the fountain. “Sit here with me, Tommy. I want to hear more of your adventures in Venice.”

When he settled next to her, the gurgling fountain drowned out their conversation. The cheerful splash also covered Callie's quiet comment to Kate and Travis.

“He's an extremely bright child. But very concerned about the woman who's been looking after him. I gather she's been with the family for some years.”

“Pretty much most of Tommy's life,” Kate replied. “Brian said his mother died when he was little more than a baby.”

“The father seems to have done a good job with the boy. Tommy's bright and engaging and interacts well with adults.”

“He is and he does, although I have to admit he kept us on our toes today.”

“I expect he keeps his father on his toes, too,” Callie guessed. “Even considering the fact that Ellis can afford to hire live-in help, it's not easy being a single parent. Even tougher when that parent is male. Only 17 percent of single parents in the US are men. As a result, they don't have as many support systems to help them deal with the emotional roller coaster of raising a child on their own.”

“Kate and I took a brief ride on that roller coaster this afternoon,” Travis related drily. “I haven't looked in the mirror, but I suspect it turned my hair white.”

“Pure snow,” Callie said, laughing, and gently changed the subject. “Tell me about this new job. Kate says you'll be based out of Washington. What does the job entail, or is that classified?”

“Not completely.”

While Travis sketched the bare-bones details of what he would be doing as VP for test operations, Kate thought about Callie's assessment of Tommy. She wasn't surprised her friend had picked up on the boy's worries so quickly. Given her years with the Massachusetts child advocate office, Callie's antennae were finely tuned.

Too
finely tuned. The pain and despair she'd had to deal with daily had left their mark on both her heart and her health. She'd lost weight in the past year, Kate thought, her gaze on her friend's prominent cheekbones. So much weight that she and Dawn had begun to worry about the quieter one of their threesome. A primary, if unstated, goal of this trip had been to fatten Callie up on pasta and cannoli.

They'd also wanted to help her forget whatever tragedy had caused her to walk away from her job last month. She never discussed her cases, even with them. Her work was governed by confidentiality laws every bit as strict as those Travis operated under.

Privately, Kate thought part of the problem was that Callie had no one in her life to balance the heartache she'd encountered in her job. Unlike Dawn, who attracted and discarded men with cheerful regularity, Callie approached relationships the way she did everything else, carefully and cautiously. So far none of the men she'd dated—including the half dozen or so Travis had fixed her up with—had made it past her reserved exterior to tap into the passion Kate and Dawn knew she possessed.

She needed someone older, they'd decided. Someone who shared her core values about work and family and friendship. Someone...

Like Brian Ellis.

Almost as soon as the thought hit, Kate dismissed it. The heartache she herself had gone through with Travis these past months had pretty much shattered her naive belief in a perfect match.

They'd complemented each other in almost every way. Both hardworking, both career oriented, both reasonably intelligent. And so hungry for each other! In those joyously happy first years, neither of them could have even imagined they could cause each other such hurt.

Still... Her glance drifted to Tommy and back again. Be interesting to see if Callie assessed the father as favorably as she had the son.

Chapter Nine

T
he five of them stayed out on the terrace for another hour. Basking in the attention of the newcomers, Tommy remained on his best behavior. His face lit up, though, when his dad called.

Travis answered the house phone, then passed the instrument to the boy. “Your dad's on his way back to the hotel. He wants to know if you'd like to go to the hospital with him after dinner to visit Mrs. Wells.”

Abandoning his manners, Tommy snatched the phone. “Does she want me to come? Really? I miss her, too.” His happy glance landed on the geraniums. “I'm gonna pick her some flowers. She likes flowers.” He listened a moment, his lips pooching. “But these are pretty red ones. What? O-kaay. I promise.”

Heaving a much put-upon sigh, he passed the phone back to Travis. “He wants to talk to you.”

Travis took the phone and confirmed that Kate's friends had arrived and were comfortably settled. “We're all sitting out on your terrace, having drinks and admiring the view.”

“I owe you for this,” Ellis told him. “But I feel guilty as hell about cutting into your time with Kate. I know you had to hink your flight schedule big-time to get this leave.”

“Don't worry about it. Kate and I are glad to help.”

“Yeah, well, I may have to hink my schedule, too. I'd planned to stay in Italy through Billy Bob. But with Mrs. Wells out of action, I have to rethink those plans.”

Billy Bob
was their private code for the final and most critical flight test for the classified modification Ellis Aeronautical Systems had designed for Combat King II. The outcome could mean millions for EAS, possibly billions—Travis wasn't privy to the company's closely held contract negotiations. Not yet, anyway. But he knew EAS's CEO wouldn't have carved this big chunk of time out of his schedule if his company didn't have major bucks riding on the outcome.

“Let's talk about the schedule when you get back to the hotel,” he suggested.

He'd kept his reply light. Innocuous. Yet as soon as he disconnected, he found himself the object of three pairs of eyes. Kate's questioning brown, Callie's deep lavender and Dawn's sharp, clear green. Even Tommy had picked up on the subtext.

“Are Dad 'n' me flying home with Mrs. Wells?”

“Maybe.”

Emotions washed across the boy's expressive face. Relief, guilt, disappointment...all easily interpreted by the four adults.

“You don't want to go home?” Callie asked.

“Uh-huh, I do. Mostly.”

“But?” she probed gently.

“We were s'posed to go to Rome after Venice. I was gonna have my picture taken with a gladiator at the Coliseum. Maybe get a sword 'n' everything.”

“Maybe you and your dad should talk about that when you go to see Mrs. Wells after dinner.”

“Speaking of which,” Dawn put in, “what's the plan? If we're going to eat out, I need to spiffy up.”

Kate and Callie shared a quick grin. Even unspiffed, Dawn could bring strong men to their knees. At this particular moment her hair spilled over her shoulders in a careless river of dark red, her I Love Rome T clung to her full breasts and her jeans might have been painted on.

“Why don't we just hit a trattoria for dinner?” Kate suggested. “Travis took me to a fabulous one last night. Very casual.”

* * *

When Brian Ellis arrived a few moments later, he certainly appeared to agree with Kate's assessment that Dawn didn't need spiffing.

He greeted Callie with a warm smile and countered her thanks for letting them use Mrs. Wells's rooms with the comment that it was small payment for the favor Kate and Travis had done him. But his reaction to Dawn was more visceral and instantly apparent. The handshake was firm, the smile stayed in place, but he did that quick double take Dawn always sparked in the male of the species.

Uh-oh
, Kate thought. This could be trouble. As much as she loved her friend, she cringed at the distinct possibility Dawn might wreak her usual love-'em-and-leave-'em havoc on Brian Ellis. The man had lost his wife. He was raising a young son, managing a megacorporation. Anything other than a light flirtation could prove a recipe for disaster.

Hard on the heels of that thought came a healthy side order of guilt. Fiercely, Kate reminded herself that her loyalty lay—and would
always
lie—with Dawn. Ellis was an adult. He could take care of himself.

Still, Kate wasn't surprised when he asked about their plans for dinner, then countered her suggested trattoria with a generous offer. “Why don't you let Tommy and me treat you folks to dinner here at the Gritti? Their indoor restaurant is too formal for us,” he said with a conspiratorial wink in his son's direction, “but we enjoy eating out on the terrace.”

“You'd like it,” the boy assured them. “The chef bakes a special kind of mac 'n' cheese just for me. It's really good!”

Dawn shot him a quick smile. “Sounds great. I'm in.”

The others agreed and they were soon settled at a table almost within arm's reach of the water traffic gliding by. Spray misters mounted on tall poles dispersed the last heat of the day and bathed diners in cool comfort. Based on Tommy's enthusiastic recommendation, they all ordered his special dish. The mac and cheese turned out to be a truly glorious combination of penne pasta, crumbled Italian sausage, portobello mushrooms, creamy
pomodoro
sauce and four different Italian cheeses baked in individual ramekins.

During the meal Kate surreptitiously assessed Ellis's interaction with her two friends. After that initial double take, the executive divided his attention between his guests. He was easy with both Dawn and Callie and gave only a hint of the issues he was dealing with when Tommy wanted to know if they were flying home on Sunday with Mrs. Wells.

“I think so, bud. I'll have to fly right back to Venice, though, so I called Monika Sorenson. You remember the au pair who stayed with us when Mrs. Wells went out to visit her sister in California last year?”

“I remember.” The boy's nose wrinkled. “She eats those stinky fish in gucky yellow stuff.”

“Marinated smelts,” Ellis explained to the others, a smile in his blue eyes. “Monika tried to introduce Tommy to some of her native Scandinavian dishes. Without noticeable success, as you can guess by his reaction. Anyway,” he continued, addressing his son, “Monika's fall classes at the University of Virginia don't start for a week. She said she could come stay with you, so I'll fly home with you and Mrs. Wells on Sunday, get you both settled, then—” his glance flicked briefly to Travis “—fly back to finish up at the base. Okay, bud?”

“Okay.” Tommy accepted the change of plans with only a grudging poke at the remains of his pasta. “But I really wanted to go to Rome 'n' see the gladiators.”

“Next trip,” Ellis promised, pushing back his chair. “We'd better head to the hospital and see Mrs. Wells before it gets too late. The rest of you please stay and have dessert. And thanks again for today,” he said to Travis and Kate. “Tommy and I really appreciate it. Don't we?”

Recalled to his manners, the boy expressed his thanks with a smile for Kate and a manly handshake with Travis. He was so polite, so well behaved, that Kate might have imagined the sullen, unhappy child of the morning and early afternoon.

Travis had the same thought. He watched the two thread their way through the tables and shook his head. “Hard to believe that's the same kid who got us evicted from the ship museum.”

“Then tried to check out the severed horses' heads,” Kate recalled with a shudder.

“Evicted?” Dawn echoed. “Severed horses' heads? You're going to expound on those provocative comments, aren't you?”

Kate would have lingered at the table and shared the details of the day's adventures, but Travis had other ideas.

“How about we relate our Tommy adventures tomorrow? I had planned to surprise Kate with an evening gondola ride. When we volunteered for babysitting duty, I figured I'd have to cancel the reservation, but we've still got time to make it.” He pushed away from the table. “I'll check with the concierge here at the Gritti to see if they can add two more passengers.”

“Sounds like fun,” Callie said, rising as well, “but something you and Kate should enjoy together. I'll take a pass.”

Her gaze cut across the table and telegraphed an unmistakable message.

“Looks like I will, too,” Dawn drawled.

Travis flashed them both a grateful look. Carlo had described the nighttime gondola ride as a small procession of lamp-lit boats accompanied by one containing a singer and several accompanists. It was, according to the
maggiore
, one of the most romantic gifts a man could give his wife during their time in Venice. Outside the bedroom, of course.

And after spending the previous evening and all day today with Tommy, Travis wanted this time with Kate. Only with Kate. An urge she teased him about as they made their way back to the Palazzo Alleghri.

“You didn't try very hard to convince Dawn and Callie to join us.”

“Probably because I didn't want them to join us.”

“Mmm, I got that impression.”

He stopped on one of the little bridges that crossed a side canal. Buildings towered on either side of the bridge, wrapping them in shade, while the competing scents of flowers and dank water tinted the air.

“You know I like—” He stopped, corrected himself. “You know I love your pals.”

“Yes,” she said softly, “I know.”

“But I love you more, Katydid.” He buried his hands in her hair and tipped her face to his. “I never realized how much until I came so close to losing you.”

This, Kate knew instantly, was a moment she would hold in her heart forever. Travis, with the five o'clock shadow on his cheeks and chin and those white squint lines at the corners of his eyes. Colorful laundry hanging from a clothesline draped window to window on the building behind him. The amused grins on the faces of the two young backpacking tourists who edged past them on the narrow bridge.

“I love you, too.” Desperate to imprint every sensory detail, she placed her palms against his chest and felt the strong, steady beat of his heart. “I've spent all these weeks...all these months...trying to figure out how I could live without you.”

And years worrying about him when he left on yet another classified mission. Panicking every time she caught the tail end of a news flash about a suicide bomber or attack in Afghanistan or Yemen or Somalia. Feeling her throat go tight when someone on the ultra-private special ops spouses' network she subscribed to became a new widow or widower.

“The stupid thing is,” she admitted softly, “there's no real way to prepare for having your heart ripped out. Except maybe to cram in as much joy and happiness as possible when you can, while you can.”

“Seems to me we did a pretty good job of cramming our first three or four years together.”

“We did,” she agreed, flooded with memories. “Oh, God, we did!”

“That's not to say we can't squeeze in more.” Bending, he brushed her mouth with his. “Starting tonight,
cara mia
.”

* * *

The moonlight gondola ride more than lived up to their expectations. An astonishingly talented accordion player accompanied the curly-haired tenor. Barrel-chested and exuberant, the would-be Pavarotti filled the air with a soaring mix of operatic and pop classics. Tourists and residents alike stopped to gawk as their small fleet of gondolas glided by.

In Travis's opinion, however, the hours that followed blasted the moonlight sonata out of the water. The moment he and Kate hit their suite, they shoved the aquamarine duvet to the foot of the bed and explored the dips and valleys of each other's bodies as though this was the very first time. They savored every tantalizing taste, every kiss and slow, erotic stroke. As their pleasure mounted, so did their hunger.

Gasping now, Kate arched her back. Travis burned with the need to bury himself inside her but locked his jaw, eased down her sweat-slick body and spread her knees. His palms raised her tight-clenched bottom. His mouth found her hot, wet center. A groan ripping from far back in her throat, Kate rode the waves of pleasure his tongue whipped up.

It was long, languorous moments before she could work up enough energy to return the favor. When she took him in her mouth, his taste was hot and salty and achingly familiar.

Only later, when they both sprawled naked and blissfully satiated, did the thoughts she'd entertained earlier that afternoon drift into her lethargic mind.

“Trav?”

His muffled grunt signified either imminent death by pleasure or slowly returning consciousness. Kate chose to interpret it as the latter. Propping up on an elbow, she stared down at the face bathed in the moonlight slipping through the drapes they hadn't taken the time to close completely.

“Trav, are you awake?”

“No.”

“I was thinking...”

Opening his eyes, he regarded her warily. “About?”

“Callie.”

“Huh?”

Undeterred by the blank response, she used a forefinger to make little swirls in his chest hair. “And Brian Ellis.”

“Callie and Brian?” Travis struggled to make the connection. “Did I miss something tonight?”

“No.”

“Then what...?”

“I couldn't help thinking they're perfect for each other.” Kate made another twirl in the soft, crinkly chest hair. “Callie's so good with kids. Personally
and
professionally. She's also warm and generous and...”

“And a woman who knows her own mind,” Travis reminded her, fully conscious now. “Did you pick up any vibe she was attracted to Brian? Or vice versa?”

“Well...no.”

Just the opposite, in fact. The only spark Kate had registered was that brief flash when Ellis's glance settled on Dawn.