Third Time's the Bride!

by Merline Lovelace

  Third time lucky?

  Take a vacation to Italy and land a husband? Well, at least fiancé number three. Dawn McGill’s fear of marriage has halted two weddings, but millionaire Brian Ellis and his adorable little boy might change all that. After all, a marriage based on convenience is less frightening than one based on love.

  Brian will do anything for his young son, and what Tommy wants even more than a puppy is a mom. Dawn is great with his boy and she’s even beginning to fill a void in his own heart. Yet he can’t shake the feeling that his bride-to-be is getting cold feet. What will it take to get Dawn all the way down the aisle this time?

  “Let me make sure I understand the terms of this contract,” she said slowly.

  “You’re asking me to give up my condo, my job, my life, and take up permanent residency in your gatehouse until such time as we mutually decide to terminate the arrangement.”

  He was blowing it. Forcing a smile, he tried again. “Actually, I’m asking you to move into the main house. With Tommy and me.”

  Neither the smile nor the offer produced the desired effect. If anything, they added fuel to the temper darkening her eyes.

  “You pompous, conceited jerk. You think all you have to do is waltz in, invite me to be your live-in lover, and expect me to...”

  “Whoa! Back up a minute! I’m asking you to marry me!”

  “What?”

  Dear Reader,

  The urge to travel seems to be imprinted in my DNA. My dad was in the military, and as a kid I lived in Newfoundland, France and about half of the fifty states. During my own military career, I was assigned to Taiwan, Vietnam and the Pentagon, among other places. To this day I love exploring new locales and other cultures.

  With all my travels, though, I still remember the first time my husband and I tossed coins over our shoulders into the sparkling waters of the Trevi Fountain in Rome. And sure enough, the fountain worked its magic! We’ve since returned to Rome many times.

  We did the usual toss during our last visit a few months ago, and as I surveyed the laughing crowd, my busy mind started weaving the stories of three friends who travel to Rome together, make a wish at the fountain and are shocked when their wishes come true in totally unexpected ways.

  I hope you enjoy reading Third Time’s the Bride! as much as I did writing it...and that all your wishes come true, too!

  All my best,

  Merline

  Check out my latest books at merlinelovelace.com.

  Third Time’s the Bride!

  Merline Lovelace

  A career Air Force officer, Merline Lovelace served at bases all over the world. When she hung up her uniform for the last time, she decided to try her hand at storytelling. Since then, more than twelve million copies of her books have been published in over thirty countries. Check her website at merlinelovelace.com or friend Merline on Facebook for news and information about her latest releases.

  Books by Merline Lovelace

  Harlequin Special Edition

  Three Coins in the Fountain

  “I Do”...Take Two!

  Harlequin Romantic Suspense

  Course of Action (with Lindsey McKenna)

  Course of Action

  Crossfire

  The Rescue

  Harlequin Desire

  The Paternity Proposition

  The Paternity Promise

  Duchess Diaries

  Her Unforgettable Royal Lover

  The Texan’s Royal M.D.

  The Diplomat’s Pregnant Bride

  A Business Engagement

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  Get rewarded every time you buy a Harlequin ebook!

  Click here to Join Harlequin My Rewards

  http://www.harlequin.com/myrewards.html?mt=loyalty&cmpid=EBOOBPBPA201602010002

  For my niece, Stephanie Fichtel,

  who’s as beautiful as she is talented. Thanks for giving me such great insight into the busy, busy life of a graphic artist, Steph.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Excerpt from Riverbend Road by RaeAnne Thayne

  Chapter One

  Dawn McGill would be the first to admit her track record when it came to relationships with the male of the species sucked. Oh, she’d connected with some great guys over the years. Even got engaged to two before dumping them almost at the altar. Fortunately—or unfortunately for the dumpees—she’d discovered just in time that she didn’t really want to spend the rest of her life with either of them.

  Given that dismal history, Dawn never expected to tumble hopelessly in love during what was supposed to have been a carefree jaunt across northern Italy with her two best friends. Callie and Kate were as shocked as Dawn at how hard and fast she fell.

  Nor could any of them have imagined that the man of Dawn’s dreams would turn out to be a pint-size ball of energy with soft brown hair, angelic blue eyes and an impish grin. But when the three friends had converged in Venice last week to help babysit the six-year-old, whose nanny had taken a nasty spill and broken her ankle, Tommy the Terrible had wrapped Dawn around his grubby little fist within hours of their first meeting.

  Now they were back in Rome. She and Callie and Kate. With Kate’s husband, Travis, who’d orchestrated a surprise ceremony to renew their wedding vows using the Trevi Fountain as a backdrop.

  Tommy and his dad were here, too. Brian Ellis had worked with Kate’s husband on some supersecret project at the NATO base north of Venice and they’d become good friends. The father was too conservative and stuffy for Dawn’s taste, but the son...

  God, she loved watching the boy’s antics! Like now. She had to grin as Tommy scrambled onto the fountain’s broad lip. His dad grabbed the back of his son’s shirt and kept a tight hold.

  “Careful, bud!”

  The three women stood in a loose circle to watch the byplay. Kate was a tall, sun-streaked blonde. Callie, a quiet brunette who seemed even more subdued than usual since she’d walked away from her job as a children’s advocate. And Dawn, her hair catching fire from the afternoon sun and her ready laughter bubbling as Tommy barely escaped a dousing from one of the cavorting sea horses.

  “That kid is utterly fearless,” she said with real admiration.

  “A natural born adventurer,” Callie agreed with a smile. “Just like you. How many times did Kate and I follow you into one scrape or another?”

  “Hey, I wasn’t always the ringleader. I seem to recall you convincing us to shimmy through a window of the library one night, Miss Priss and Boots. And you—” she smirked at Kate “—were the one who suggested ‘borrowing’ my brother Aaron’s car so we could zip over to the mall. We’re lucky the cop who stopped us on a stolen vehicle report didn’t let us sit in jail overnight before calling our parents.”

  The smirk stayed in place, but the memory of that brief joyride churned a familiar acid. Her parents h
ad 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 s
houted 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.