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Nope, this slow turn in a tight circle would hardly qualify as great dancing, but Angela didn’t care. It was way more than she’d had in years. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “It’s nice.”
“Yeah,” he said softly, letting his right hand smooth up and down her back, “it is.”
Angela shivered, and her eyes closed as she savored the feelings he inspired in her. Oh boy. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea, living like a recluse for the past three years. She was way overreacting to this situation.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
Her eyes opened, and she stared up into those green eyes. If this was his regular line, it was pretty good. But it wouldn’t do to let him know she was in desperate danger of falling for it. “And like I already said, you’re a good liar.”
“Not this time, lady,” he whispered.
Her stomach flip-flopped, and her mouth went dry.
There was something happening here. Something that ran in a tense, hot undercurrent. The calm, rational side of her, the side that had had her in hiding for the past three years, was telling her to run fast and run far. The other side however, urged her to get closer. Urged her to enjoy this moment in time.
“Can I steal my sister for a minute?”
They both turned toward the woman speaking, and briefly Angela considered telling her little sister to take a hike. But something in Gina’s eyes stopped her.
So instead, she reluctantly slipped out of Dan Mahoney’s grasp and said, “Thanks for the dance.”
“My pleasure, ma’am,” he said, then gave her a slow wink before drifting off toward a cluster of Marines.
Sighing for opportunities lost, Angela turned to her sister and asked, “Okay, little sister, what’s up?”
“Nothing yet, I hope,” Gina muttered, glancing over her shoulder at Dan.
“What are you talking about?” Honestly, she loved her sister, but…
“Stay away from that guy,” Gina blurted out.
“Excuse me?” She stared down at her sister in disbelief.
Muttering, “Come on,” the younger woman grabbed her arm and dragged her across the room toward the open double doors leading to a brick patio.
A cool ocean breeze wafted into the room, and in the press of people, the chill was welcome. Stepping outside, Angela sent a quick look up at a star-filled sky, took a deep breath, then looked at Gina. “This had better be good.”
“Nick says you should keep your distance from him.”
“Oh, Nick says.” Angela nodded and threw her hands wide. “Well, sure. Why didn’t you say so?”
“Angie, he says that Dan’s a nice guy, but he’s a one-night stand kind of man.” Gina shook her head. “Not really the type for you, y’know.”
Amazing. Her younger sister giving her advice on men, for heaven’s sake. Although, she had to admit that Gina probably knew what she was talking about. After all, she’d already decided that Dan Mahoney was a smooth talker. But whether she listened or not should be up to her.
“How about you guys letting me decide who my type is?”
Gina pushed her hair out of her eyes, winced as if she knew she’d stepped into something, then tried to salvage it. “Nobody’s telling you to do anything.”
“You did,” Angela reminded her. “You said to ‘stay away from that guy.”’
“Okay, I put it badly, but I just wanted you to be careful….”
Careful? She hadn’t been on a date, had in fact, hardly spoken to a man in the past three years. What could be more careful? For the first time in ages she was dancing with an attractive man, feeling those feelings she remembered so vaguely, and what happens? Her family comes so unglued you’d think she was a vestal virgin being slated for sacrifice.
Geez. If she wanted to do something daring…something out of character…something dangerous, wasn’t she old enough to make that choice for herself?
“Gina—”
“Angela,” her sister interrupted, “we’ve all been trying to get you back into the dating pool for years. I just don’t want you to drown on your first time out.”
She looked so concerned, Angela let her anger dissolve into nothingness. Reaching out, she pulled Gina into a tight hug then held her at arm’s length and said, “Okay, I swear, if I start going down for the count, I’ll give a yell, okay?”
Although right now the thought of drowning in Dan Mahoney’s pale-green eyes didn’t sound like such a bad idea at all.
Two
“We ought to get together,” Sam Paretti said. “Brother of the groom, sister of the bride…how perfect is that?”
Angela looked up at him and grinned. She couldn’t help it. After meeting Nick’s two brothers, Sam and John, she was willing to admit that the Paretti men were not only gorgeous, but charming, too. God had been on a real roll when he’d created these three.
“It’s perfect, all right,” she said, “heck, it’s practically a romance novel.”
“There you go,” Sam said, and glanced toward the bride and groom. “They look happy, don’t they?”
“Yes, they do,” she said, watching her little sister dance with her new husband. Her wedding dress swirled around her in a froth of lace and tulle, and the smile on her face was bright enough to light the room. The man guiding her proudly around the dance floor looked handsome in his Dress-Blue uniform, and together they made an almost fairy-tale picture.
A pang of something sharp and bittersweet twinged around her heart. So much hope, so much love. Angela said a quick, fervent prayer that Gina and Nick would always be as happy as they were tonight.
Old tunes poured from the stereo system set up on the auditorium’s stage. The church hall was decorated in rose and white balloons, and baskets of fresh flowers dotted every table. The caterers had served dinner, and now it was time for everyone to enjoy the party celebrating Gina and Nick’s marriage.
Everything was changing so quickly. Just a few short months ago all of the Santini women had been sharing the family house. Now, it would be just Mama, Angela and Jeremy.
Her sisters were now officially halves of couples.
Marie and Davis.
Gina and Nick.
Angela and…she took a sip of champagne and turned away from the happy couple. No point in torturing herself, was there? Besides, it wasn’t as if she wanted a husband. Not again. She just didn’t want to end up a lonely old woman talking to cats and bothering her only son about bringing the grandchildren by more often.
Oh yeah, she thought grimly. Have some more champagne, it’s really helping your attitude.
“So,” Sam said, drawing her attention back to him, “what do you say to a dance with a lonely Marine?”
Lonely? She had a feeling Sam Paretti had never had a lonely day in his life.
“Sure,” she said, “I—”
“Sorry, Marine,” a deep voice said from behind Angela, “she’s promised this one to me.”
Angela’s breath caught in her throat, and her stomach flip-flopped wildly.
“Is that right?” Sam asked, looking down at Angela.
“Uh,” she cleared her throat, swallowed hard and said, “do you mind?”
The two men stared at each other for a long moment before Sam finally nodded. “I’ll see you later, Angela.”
“Thanks,” she said as he turned and moved off into the crowd, leaving her alone with the man she’d been catching glimpses of all day.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said in a throaty whisper that tingled along her spine.
A quick spurt of excitement sizzled through her bloodstream as she turned around to face Dan. They’d both been so busy doing wedding party things, they hadn’t spoken since last night’s interrupted dance. Well, they’d done more than just spoken, in Angela’s dreams, but since he didn’t know about that, it probably didn’t count.
“Was I that hard to find?” she asked.
“Not for me,” he said, leaning one hand on the wall above her head and bending closer. “I used to be Recon. Reconnaissance. The guys who go in, get what needs getting and get out.”
He leaned in even closer, and Angela swore she could feel the warm brush of his breath against her cheek. Or maybe that was just her own heated blood flushing her face.
“You should know, I’ve been warned about you,” Angela said as she looked up into the green eyes that had haunted her dreams all last night.
“Me?” Dan answered with that slow, crooked smile that was guaranteed to breach any defenses. “I’m harmless, lady.”
Oh yeah, she believed that. And chocolate had no calories when eaten at midnight. Ha! She took another sip of champagne and silently reminded herself that she was on a mission here. She didn’t want harmless. She wanted dangerous.
If just for tonight.
Actually, Gina’s warning the night before had been the deciding factor in this. Knowing that Dan was interested in nothing more than a one-night stand made it all so easy. She could have one night of magic after far too long a dry spell, and there wouldn’t be a single string attached. Well, except for the guilt strings she was already experiencing. Honestly, you wouldn’t think it would be so hard for a twenty-eight-year-old widow to seduce a man. Another swallow of champagne followed the last, and a part of her brain reminded her that she wanted to be loose, not unconscious. But heck, who could blame her for trying a little liquid courage? It wasn’t as if she did this every day.
“Harmless, huh?” she asked, giving him a smile she hoped was sexy. It had been so long, she couldn’t be sure. “That’s not what I hear.”
“Who’s been talking?”
Oh, brother, that smile of his should be classified as a lethal weapon. It did amazing things to a woman’s equilibrium.
“Who hasn’t?” she quipped.
“And do you always believe what you hear?” he asked, letting his gaze slide across her body with a slow, deliberately casual thoroughness.
Boy, he was better than she’d given him credit for. Her skin felt tight, and parts of her body she’d thought atrophied were galloping back to life. This was moving so fast she could hardly keep up. Taking a moment to calm down a bit, she looked around the room…actually, she looked anywhere but into those green eyes.
Angela studied the faces surrounding her, both familiar and strange. Dozens of Marines were sprinkled through the crowd, and she had to admit there was something about a man in a Dress-Blue uniform. It was an unfair advantage, really. No red-blooded woman, especially one who’d been living a celibate life for more than three years, could resist.
And the simple truth was, Angela didn’t want to resist. She’d made up her mind what she was going to do the minute her sister Gina had told her that Dan was known on base as the king of the one-night stands. And she wasn’t going to back out now.
“Want to try to finish our dance?” Dan asked, breaking into the thoughts swirling ceaselessly through her mind.
She inhaled and swiveled her head to look at him.
“For starters,” she said bravely, and watched as desire flickered in the depths of his eyes. She half turned to set her champagne glass on the closest table, then he took her hand and led her through the crowd. Angela’s gaze fixed on his broad back, narrow hips and long legs. A curl of anticipation unwound inside her, and her mouth went dry.
Ever since the night before, Angela hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him. Sure, he was tall, dark and gorgeous. So were most of the other guys in the room. But there was something about First Sergeant Mahoney that made her blood boil and her usually cautious nature want to fly out the window.
And just for tonight, she was going to let it.
As they came to the middle of the dance floor, the music changed, shifting from a fast-paced, rock and roll number to an old Frank Sinatra standard. The voice of Ol’ Blue Eyes swept into the room and was welcomed like an old friend. If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn Dan had planned it this way.
Dan pulled her into his arms and pressed her body to his. Her mouth went dry, and her head swam. She wasn’t sure if it was the four or five glasses of champagne or the heady sensation of being held by a man again that was making her feel almost dizzy. And she didn’t care. It was enough to be feeling again. To be experiencing that swift, sure punch of desire. The lick of flames at her center. The pooling warmth that threatened to collapse her knees and rob her of breath.
His right hand dropped to the curve of her behind as he eased her around the crowded dance floor. Subtly he pulled her tight against him. Hard and strong, his body pressed into hers, letting her know what she was doing to him. A rush of confidence filled her. She could still attract a man. Apparently the past three years of being a mom and a widow hadn’t robbed her of her abilities to be a woman.
On his shoulder her left hand clutched at the fabric of his uniform. She leaned her head back to look up at him and struggled to continue breathing as he kept her pressed tightly to him.
“I sure hope I’m reading you right,” Dan said, staring down at the woman he wanted more than his next breath.
She swallowed hard, then smoothed her left hand across his shoulders and down his back. “Trust me on this. If you weren’t reading me right, you’d have known by now.”
“Fair enough,” he said, nodding, “but just to be safe, I’ll say it plain. A simple no will end this. Now.”
She stared at him, and he saw his own reflection in the soft-brown of her eyes. “And what does a yes get me?”
Dan’s body tightened even further which he would have thought impossible a minute or two ago. Damn. He hadn’t been expecting this. Stand up at his friend’s wedding and end up sleeping with the friend’s new sister-in-law?
“Lady,” he said on a soft exhale of breath, “a yes will get you any darn thing you want.”
She gave him a slow smile that set a match to the dynamite stacked inside him.
“That covers a lot of territory, First Sergeant.”
“Yes ma’am,” he promised, his brain filling with images of the night to come, “it surely does.”
“Good,” she said, and moved even closer to him, taking what little of his breath was left. “Then it’s a date? After the bride and groom leave?”
“If I can wait that long,” he said.
“It’ll be worth the wait,” she assured him, and stepped out of his arms as the song ended.
“Damn straight,” he said tightly. He watched her as she moved back through the crowd, headed toward her sister. Her shoulder-length, dark-brown hair curved under at the ends and swung gently with each step she took. She wore a dark-pink bridesmaid’s dress with a high collar, long sleeves and a full skirt that fell to her feet and brushed the floor in a soft, swishing sound as she moved. And that dress looked so damn good on her, he wondered if there was any way to convince Nick and Gina to take off on their honeymoon now.
“You’re sure, honey?” Maryann Santini asked for the fiftieth time in the last ten minutes. “It just doesn’t seem fair, all of us leaving you at the same time. I mean, Nick and Gina of course deserve their honeymoon, but it doesn’t seem right for me to take off on a cruise right now.”
“You and Margaret have been planning this for weeks,” Angela reminded her mother patiently.
“I know, but now Jeremy’s going to be gone, and even Marie and Davis are leaving town for a week.”
Angela smiled at the thought of her eight-year-old son, but as much as she loved him, she was glad he’d asked to spend the weekend with his best friend. Especially now. With the plans she had for later tonight, home was no place for her son tonight.
