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Oh, God! Burying her suddenly tight fists in her lap, she was asking herself for the twentieth time if she really wanted to put them both through all the hurt again when Travis reclaimed his seat.
“Almost like old times,” he said with a cautious smile.
“Which times?” Dawn oozed honey-coated acid. “Before or after you got up close and cuddly with your little captain?”
Callie winced. Kate’s nails dug deeper into her palms. Travis folded his elbows on the table and took the knife thrust head-on.
“Okay, I know Kate shared that Facebook business with you two. I’m sure she also shared my pathetic defense. I’ll state it once more, for the record. And only once.”
His eyes as hard and flat as agates, he held Dawn’s glare.
“I did spend time with Captain Chamberlain talking goals and career paths. More than I should have, obviously. I did not, however, touch, kiss or otherwise indicate I wanted to have sex with her. Nor did I have any idea she’d posted those pictures of me sweaty and stripped to the waist.”
Fairness compelled Kate to intervene before blood was spilled. “They were taken during a volleyball match between aircrews. Travis sent me the uncropped versions later, after...”
She lifted a hand, let it drop. No need to bring all the ugliness into this starlit night. She’d got past it. Mostly.
“After the crap hit the fan,” he finished when she didn’t. “Now do you think you can sheathe your claws long enough for us to have dinner, Dawn?”
“I can try. But I’m not making any promises.”
Surprisingly, the snarky reply took some of the stiffness out of his shoulders.
“Actually,” he said gruffly, “I asked Kate to let me buy the three of you dinner for a specific purpose. I want to thank you, Dawn. And you, Callie. You stood shoulder to shoulder with her all these months. I’m more grateful than I can say she had you to turn to.”
Dawn blinked, and even Callie was surprised into a semithaw. “It hasn’t been easy for you, either,” she replied. “We know that. And we want you to know we’re good with whatever Kate’s decided to do for the rest of her stay in Italy.”
“Yeah, well, I want to talk about that, too.”
Their server arrived at that point to take their drink orders. The women opted for the Italian classic Bellini, Travis for a scotch rocks. He waited for the server to retreat before laying his cards on the table.
“I know I’m putting a major dent in your plans by asking Kate to spend this time with me. I’d like to make up for it by proposing an alternative to your itinerary, too.”
Kate had to bite back an instinctive protest. All her work, all the timetables and reservations and prepaid museum passes stored in her iPhone, appeared to be going up in a puff of smoke right before her eyes.
“As Kate may have mentioned, I’m on temporary assignment to the NATO base up near Venice. I’m working with a project involving several of our closest allies, one of whom is an Italian Special Ops pilot.”
“So?”
Dawn wasn’t giving an inch. Travis took her belligerence in stride and continued. “So Carlo’s family owns a villa in Tuscany. He says it’s within easy driving distance of Florence and Siena and on the fast train line to Milan and Venice. He also says the villa is currently vacant but fully staffed. It’s yours if you want to make it your home base for the next week or so.”
“Sounds wonderful,” Dawn admitted, surprised out of her hostility by the generous offer, “but the hotel here in Rome was our big splurge. We can’t afford to spring for a fully staffed villa.”
Actually, she could. Since Kate regularly advised her on various mutual funds and investments, she knew precisely how much her friend raked in each year as a graphic designer for a Fortune 500 health-and-fitness firm in Boston. She might come across as bubbly and carefree, but she was damned good at her job and had invested wisely.
Callie was a different story, however. She’d walked away from her job as a children’s ombudsman with the Massachusetts Office of the Child Advocate just weeks before this Roman holiday. After watching how the heartbreak of the cases she had to adjudicate shredded her emotions, both Dawn and Kate had cheered the decision. They’d also offered to pay her share of expenses for the trip, which she’d adamantly refused. Still, they suspected she’d had to dip into her savings, and neither wanted her to dig deeper.
Then Travis made it clear she wouldn’t have to. “Actually, there would be no charge. Carlo commands one of Italy’s crack special ops units. He and I took part in a joint mission some months back, and he now thinks he owes me.”
“For what?” Dawn wanted to know.
“Nothing worth writing home about.”
Although he dodged the question with a careless shrug, a familiar pressure built in Kate’s chest. The American media gave scant coverage to forces from other countries engaged in the war on terror, but she knew troops from dozens of different nations were engaged in the life-and-death struggle. They, like Travis and his crews, put their lives on the line every day.
If this Italian major thought her husband owed him, the joint mission they’d participated in had to have been hairy as hell. Kate’s chest squeezed again as she tried not to imagine the scenario.
Their server arrived at that point with the three Bellinis and a crystal tumbler of scotch. When she’d served the drinks, Travis picked up where he’d left off.
“So what do you think? Want to spend an all-expense-paid week in Tuscany?”
“That depends on what Kate’s decided.”
Three questioning faces turned her way. She looked at them blankly for a moment while she tried to factor this unexpected bonus for her friends into an equation made even more complicated by the stress of knowing Travis and this Italian commando had shared what she guessed had been a life-and-death situation. Torn, she took Callie’s advice and went with her gut.
“I think you should take this guy... What’s his name?”
“Carlo.”
“I think you should take Carlo up on his offer.” Her gaze turned to her husband. “And I’ll take you up on yours.”
* * *
Dinner went reasonably well after that. The tantalizing prospect of a week in a Tuscan villa with a full staff to see to her needs blunted the sharpest edges of Dawn’s antagonism. Kate knew the fiery redhead would snatch up the sword again in a heartbeat, though. So would Callie. Kate would have loved them for that no-questions-asked, just-let-us-at-him support even if the three of them weren’t already bonded by so many years of BFF-hood. She loved Travis, too, for setting them up so comfortably.
The insidious thought sneaked in before she could block it.
Damn! Had he preplanned this whole maneuver—leveraged whatever debt this guy Carlo owed him to preempt Kate’s nagging guilt over abandoning her friends? Was he that focused, that determined to achieve his objective?
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Major Travis Westbrook never skimmed down a runway and lifted off without extensive preflight planning. Nor would he hesitate to deploy all available countermeasures to deflect or defeat enemy fire. Still, Kate had to admit he’d orchestrated a pretty impressive op plan for separating his primary target from its outer defenses.
Travis texted Carlo between drinks and dinner to let him know Ms. Dawn McGill and Ms. Callie Langston would arrive at his family’s villa the day after tomorrow, assuming it was still available. The Italian Air Force officer texted back confirming availability. The same text provided both directions and the code for the front gate.
Travis shot them to Callie’s and Dawn’s cell phones before the four of them settled in for a truly remarkable meal. Abandoning any inclination to count either carbs or calories, Kate ordered a grilled-peach-and-buffalo-mozzarella salad followed by a main course of lobster ravioli in a sinfully rich cream sauce.
She would have quit at that point if Dawn hadn’t talked her into sharing a spun-sugar-and-limoncello confection that depicted an iconic scene from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. She felt almost sacrilegious forking into the portrayal of Adam’s hand reaching up to touch God’s. After the first taste, though, she and Dawn attacked the edible art with the same fervor as the Visigoths who’d sacked Rome in 410 AD.
It was almost 10:00 p.m. when their server cleared the table and poured the last of the sweet, sparkling asti spumante Travis had ordered to accompany dessert. Another countermeasure, Kate guessed, to prevent a final round of hostile fire from either Dawn or Callie. If so, it didn’t work.
When Kate indicated she wanted to talk to Travis for a few moments, her friends waged a short but spirited battle to pay for their share of dinner. Defeated, they pushed away from the table. If Travis thought he’d bought a reprieve with the astronomically expensive dinner, he soon learned otherwise. Dawn took only a few steps, turned back and aimed her forefinger like a cocked Beretta.
“Do not forget, Westbrook. Callie and I are only a phone call away. All Kate has to do is hit speed dial, and we’re there.”
“Good to know that hasn’t changed in all the years I’ve known the Invincibles.”
His obvious sincerity angled Dawn’s chin down a notch. Just one. The mulish set to her mouth, however, suggested she wasn’t ready to quit the field until Callie bumped her hip.
“He got the message. Time for us to make an exit.”
“I guess I deserved that,” Travis commented as the two women wove their way through the candlelit tables.
“Actually, they let you off easy. You don’t want to know the various surgical procedures Dawn performed on you in absentia.”
“Most, I would guess, done with a rusty pocketknife.”
“In her more generous moments. Other times she went to work with a hacksaw.”
“Ouch.”
His exaggerated shudder earned him a faint smile. He had to fight the urge to follow it up by reaching across the table and folding her hand in his.
“I meant what I said earlier,” he told her instead.
“About?”
“About being grateful to them. They were there for you when you needed them.”
When he couldn’t be.
Facing his wife across the table, Travis acknowledged that he’d abrogated his role as a husband too many times. When the Bank of America promoted Kate in recognition of her adroit handling of foreign investments during the recession that panicked markets around the world, he’d been swatting mosquitoes at a remote airstrip in Kenya. And just months ago, while she’d agonized over whether to accept the offer from the World Bank and move to DC, he’d been freezing his ass off at a classified location he still couldn’t talk about. Time now, he vowed silently, to realign his priorities and reclaim a place in her life.
Assuming she would let him. He’d cracked the door open by getting her to spend this time with him, but the determined expression that now settled over her face suggested he’d have his work cut out to push it open all the way.
“What did you want to talk about?” he asked her.
“We need to discuss the ROE.”
“Are we speaking your language or mine?”
ROE in her world stood for return on equity, a formula that assessed a company’s efficiency at generating profits for its stockholders. In his, ROE stood for the rules of engagement outlining the type of force that could be employed in various situations.
“In this instance, they represent the same thing. We need a set of parameters that define what we should and shouldn’t do during this time together.”
Travis didn’t much like the sound of that. “I figured we would play it by ear.”
“Right. Like you did with the villa? Tell me you just pulled that idea out of the air.”
“Okay, I might have scoped out a few possible courses of action...”
“Exactly. And if I remember the principles of war correctly, the purpose of a course of action is to achieve an objective.”
She didn’t add at all costs, but the implication hung heavy on the air. His brows snapping together, Travis shook his head.
“We’re not at war, Kate. At least I hope to hell we’re not.”
“No, we’re not. Now. And I want to keep it that way.”
“All right,” he conceded, not particularly happy with the direction this conversation was taking. “Let’s hear your ROE.”
She raised a hand and ticked them off with a decisiveness that told him she didn’t intend to negotiate. “One, separate bedrooms. Two, we share all expenses. Three, we decide on the itinerary together. Four, no changes unless by mutual consent. Five, no surprises of any size, shape or dimension.”
He took a moment. “Okay.”
“That was too easy,” Kate said, frowning. “What am I missing?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you want to add to the list?”
“I think you’ve covered the essentials.”
Her frown deepened. “This won’t work if we’re not honest with each other, Trav.”
“I am being honest. I can live with those ROE. As long as you understand I intend to focus most of my energy on number four.”
Focus, hell. He intended to use every weapon at his disposal to make it happen.
“That’s my sole objective, Katydid. Gaining your consent...to changes in bedrooms, expenses, itinerary and—oh, yeah—our pending divorce.”
“Well.” She sat back, her brown eyes wide. “That’s certainly honest enough.”
“Good.” He pushed back his chair, figuring he’d better make tracks before she added to their list of rules. “Why don’t you text me a proposed itinerary? I’ll look at it tonight and we can negotiate if necessary. Just be sure to factor in some driving time. I want you to see Italy the way it should be seen.”
“I, uh... Fine.”
* * *
The blunt declaration left Kate feeling flustered as they crossed the Cavalieri’s elegant lobby to the elevators. Travis didn’t touch her this time, not even a gentlemanly hand on her elbow, and she was furious with herself for missing that small courtesy. So furious she jabbed the elevator button before she could miss more than his touch. Like the feel of his breath tickling her ear. The whisper of her name when he...
The elevator doors pinged open. Kate almost jumped in with a promise to zap him a proposed agenda within an hour.
Dawn and Callie were still up and open to further discussion on plans for the remainder of their time in Italy. Snatching up her notebook filled with maps and detailed descriptions of major tourist attractions, Kate worked up an alternate itinerary for them based out of the Tuscan villa. Then she went to work on one for her and Travis.
Driving time. He’d said to factor in driving time. So...
Lips pursed, Kate studied her heavily annotated map of Italy. Since driving in Rome was a nightmare, Kate decided she and Travis should depart the city in the morning, tour the countryside and save Rome for the end of the trip...assuming they were still together at that point. The uncertainty of that churned in her belly as she emailed the proposed itinerary to Travis’s phone.
He emailed back while she was still studying her map. The flight plan looked good. No negotiations or changes necessary. He’d pick her up at eight thirty.
* * *
Kate fully expected to lie awake the rest of the night riddled by doubts. She slid between the satiny sheets, still mulling over Travis’s stated intention to do whatever he could to change her mind about their future. But almost as soon as her head touched the pillow, the combination of rich food, several glasses of wine and mental exhaustion following hours of wildly conflicting emotions put her out.
The alarm she’d set on her iPhone went off at 7:00 a.m., but the happy marimba barely penetrated. Fumbling for the phone, she hit the snooze button. Twice. So when she finally came fully awake, she glanced at the time, let out a yelp and scrambled to get showered, dressed and packed.
Luckily, she’d packed light for the trip. All three of them had. Just one tote and roll-on each. The absence of heavy luggage made traveling so much easier but restricted choices. Kate had opted for two pairs of jeans, one pair of khaki twill slacks, tanks and Ts in various colors, a lightweight cotton sundress, and her slinky, caramel-colored pants and jacket. Since she would spend the day driving, she decided on jeans and a cap-sleeved black T paired with the chunky wooden necklace.
Callie was up when Kate dashed out of her bedroom, but Dawn hadn’t seen the light of day yet. Noting the tote and roll-on, Callie smiled.
