The Next Santini Bride

“I’ll be fine, Mama,” she said, giving her mother a quick hug. “I’m a big girl, remember? I don’t need a baby-sitter for heaven’s sake. I’m actually looking forward to spending some time alone.” Not completely alone, of course, but her mother didn’t have to know that.

“All right, then,” the older woman said, obviously still not convinced. “I’ll only be gone ten days, and…”

The rest of her mother’s words drifted into a stream of sound as Angela watched the last of the wedding guests filter out of the hall. The past two hours had crawled by. All she’d been able to think about was being alone with Dan Mahoney. It had been so long. So long since she’d been held, kissed, touched. Her body burned with an intensity she’d never known before. Every square inch of her skin seemed alive with sensation, as if she could almost feel his hands on her already.

“Are you listening to me?” her mother asked, laying one hand on Angela’s forearm.

She jumped slightly, then tried to laugh it off. “I’m sorry, I must be tired.”

“Actually your eyes look a little feverish,” Mama said, frowning. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

Oh, she was feverish all right, but it was nothing aspirin could cure.

“I’m fine, Mama,” she said, looking past her mother to the car pulling up opposite the doorway. “Look, there’s Margaret now. You’d better hurry or you’ll miss your plane.”

“All right then,” Mama said, giving into the excitement of her first cruise. “You take care and make sure you lock the house and—”

“For heaven’s sake, Mama,” she said, impatience stampeding through her, “go.”

“Okay, I’m going.” Shaking her head, she hurried to her friend’s car, opened the door and got in. Then with a wave of her hand and a honk of the horn, she was off.

Angela pulled in a deep breath and blew it out again. Alone. Finally alone. Jeremy had gone home with his friend Mike, the caterers would clean up the mess in the hall, Mama was taken care of. And that meant that for the first time in too long, Angela Santini Jackson, mother, daughter, sister, widow, could be, for tonight, anyway, simply Angela.

She headed for the parking lot on suddenly shaky legs. Her stomach spun, her mind raced as she asked herself if she was doing the right thing. This was so not her.

She just wasn’t the one-night stand kind of woman.

Rounding the edge of the old brick building, she dug in her purse for her keys, and when she looked up, she saw Dan Mahoney, spotlit in the soft yellow glow of a parking lot lamp, leaning negligently against the hood of his car. Arms folded over his chest, feet crossed at the ankles, he stared at her from across the lot, and even at a distance Angela felt the power, the hunger in his gaze.

Her heartbeat quickened, and the parts of her body struggling back to life throbbed and hummed with an electrical pulse. She paused only briefly, then started toward him. Her heels tapped loudly against the asphalt and kept time with the pounding of her heart.

Her car was parked just a few spaces away from his. She stopped at the driver’s side door, unlocked it and then looked at him.

He straightened up, moved over to her car and leaned both forearms on the roof. “So, Angela,” he said softly, his voice whispering along her spine, “do we still have a date?”

She closed her eyes briefly, then looked at him again. If she said no, he’d leave, no harm done. There it is, she told herself. One last chance. One final opportunity to back out. To forget about the craziness of what she’d been planning and go back to her house alone.

She could pack away the box of condoms she’d purchased the night before and slide into her empty bed. She could dream her dreams and do without the soft slide of this man’s hands on her skin.

Instead of feeling a man’s arms around her, she could sit in the darkness and regret not having had the courage to take what she wanted. To, for once, put her own needs ahead of everyone else’s.

The chilly, damp air swirled around her, and in the soft tendrils of fog blowing in off the ocean, he looked almost otherworldly. As if he was only the dream image of a man. But she knew he was all too real, and that’s exactly what she needed. What she wanted.

There would be no backing out.

Not tonight.

Swallowing hard, she said only, “I haven’t changed my mind.”

He nodded. “Me, neither.”

Oh, my. The flash of desire glinted in his eyes and set off sparks deep within her. Her heart galloped, and she sucked in a gulp of air before opening the car door with a shaky hand. Then she looked directly into those amazing eyes of his and said, “You can follow me to my house.”

He gave her a slow smile and nodded. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Three

Damn. He felt as keyed up as some randy teenager in the back seat of his father’s Buick. Dan kept his gaze locked on Angela’s taillights as she drove along the narrow streets toward her home. She made a left, turning onto a residential block that even in the darkness looked quiet and cozy. A Leave It to Beaver kind of neighborhood that ordinarily would have set off his internal radar and had him running in the opposite direction.

But not tonight.

Tonight there was nowhere else he’d rather be. Angela Jackson had dogged his mind and haunted his every thought since the moment he’d met her, and now he had to have her. If she’d sent him away, he would have had to crawl. His body was so eager for the joining that a no from her might have killed him.

Expectation whispered inside him and his body, already hard and ready, tensed further as she signaled a left turn into a driveway.

He glanced at the California bungalow-style house as he passed it. Then, making a U-turn in the middle of the block, he came back around and parked at the curb. Shutting off the engine, he took a moment to listen to the profound stillness. Slowly he swiveled his head to watch her climb out of her car.

Silhouetted against the backdrop of the porch light, he couldn’t see her face, but he read her tension in every line of her body. Her tall, slim figure swayed a bit, and her floor-length skirt rippled around her.

Grabbing his keys, he got out of the car, locked it and shut the door with a solid thump that seemed to echo off the silent houses staring at him with dark windowpane eyes. Walking around the back of his car, he headed toward her. She didn’t move, simply stood there, waiting for him.

His heart thundered in his chest, and when he came close enough to read her expression, even that beat accelerated. Desire, need, hunger, all shone in her eyes, feeding the emotions nearly strangling him.

He reached out and laid one hand on her forearm. She shivered. Whether from eagerness or hesitation, he couldn’t be sure. To satisfy the gentleman still crouched at the feet of the beast within, he forced himself to say softly, “Angela, if you don’t want this, just say so.”

She laughed shortly and tipped her head back to look up at him. “Want it?” she repeated, her voice thick and husky. “Dan, I want it so much it scares me.”

That’s all he needed to know. Turning her around, he led her toward the house and the brightly lit porch. They took the steps together, already moving as one, setting an unconscious rhythm. She fumbled with the keys, dropped them and Dan bent down to scoop them up.

“That one,” she said.

He nodded, jammed it home and turned it. The lock snicked open, he turned the knob and ushered her inside. He stepped in right behind her, closed and locked the door, then turned to look at her.

Their gazes locked.

A heartbeat passed, then another.

Angela dropped her purse.

He let the keys clatter to the hardwood floor.

Then she was in his arms. He didn’t know how she got there. He didn’t remember moving toward her. He didn’t know or care how they’d come together. He only knew that he couldn’t seem to hold her close enough.

Taking her mouth, he plundered her, parting her lips with his tongue, sweeping past any defenses she might have raised if she’d had time to think. He claimed her mouth fiercely, thoroughly. Again and again, his tongue mated with hers, twisting, twining, exploring and tasting. He sought her treasures, her secrets, and once he found them, searched for more. His hands moved up and down her back, over the curve of her behind where his fingers grabbed hold and squeezed, pulling her tightly to him.

Pressing her body to the straining, hard arousal that had tortured him all night brought a wave of pleasure so deep and rich it staggered him. He wanted more. He wanted it all.

Shifting his hands to the front of her dress, he slid them up, up past the swell of her breasts, to the wide collar that dipped so enticingly across her shoulders. He skimmed his fingertips across her skin and smiled to himself when she trembled in his grasp.