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      About the Author

      RAYE MORGAN has been a nursery school teacher, a travel agent, a clerk and a business editor, but her best job ever has been writing romances—and fostering romance in her own family at the same time. Current score: two boys married, two more to go. Raye has published over seventy romances and claims to have many more waiting in the wings. She lives in Southern California, with her husband and whichever son happens to be staying at home at that moment.

      CHAPTER ONE

      BAD timing.

      Max Angeli shoved the single red rose he was carrying into his pocket as he flipped open his mobile and barked a greeting, resigned to the certainty that whatever he was about to be told was going to create a new level of chaos in his life. First problem—the dance club he’d just walked into was too noisy. Lights swirled and the heavy drumbeat of sensual rhythms pounded. The brittle clink of crystal liquor glasses vied with high-pitched feminine laughter to fill the air with a sort of desperate frivolity. He already despised the place.

      “Hold on, Tito,” he said into the phone. “Let me get to a spot where I can hear you.”

      He could tell it was his assistant on the other end of the call, but he couldn’t understand a word he was saying. A quick scan of the crowded lounge located the powder room and he headed for it. The sound level improved only marginally, but enough to let him hear what Tito was saying.

      “We found her.”

      Max felt as though he’d touched a live electric wire. Everything in him was shocked. Closing his eyes, he tried to take it in. They’d been searching for weeks, with no apparent leads, until this last tip that his brother’s ex-girlfriend, Sheila Bern, might have traveled by bus to Dallas.

      His brother, Gino, had died just months before. Sheila hadn’t surfaced at the time, but she’d contacted Max months later to say she’d had Gino’s baby. When he’d asked for proof that the baby was indeed his brother’s, she’d vanished again. He’d almost given up hope. And now, to hear that she’d been found …

      “You found her?” he repeated hoarsely. “Are you sure?”

      “Well, yes and no.”

      His grip hardened on the mobile. “Damn it, Tito …”

      “Just get over here, Max. You’ll see what I mean.” He rattled off an address.

      Max closed his eyes again and memorized the information. “Okay,” he said. “Sit tight. I’ve got to get out of this blind date thing I got myself involved in. I’ll be right there.”

      “Okay. Hey, boss? Hurry.”

      Max nodded. “You got it.” He snapped the phone shut and turned back to the noisy room, tempted to head straight for his car and forget the woman who was waiting for him somewhere in all this annoying crush of revelers. But even he couldn’t be quite that rude. Besides, his mother would make him pay. She might be sitting in a terraced penthouse in Venice at the moment, but she had ways of reaching across the ocean to Dallas and turning on the guilt machine. Even though she was American, he was the Italian son, and he’d been raised to value keeping his mother happy.

      Hesitating on the threshold, he scanned the room and searched for a woman holding a red rose—the match to the poor, straggly item he’d belatedly retrieved from his suit pocket. All he needed to do was find her and let her know something had come up. Simple. It should only take a minute.

      Cari Christensen bit her lip and wished she could drown her red rose in the glass of wine that sat untouched in front of her.

      “Five more minutes,” she promised herself. “And then, if he’s not here, I’m going to drop that rose into a trash basket and melt into the crowd. Without that, he’ll never know who I am.”

      He was almost half an hour late. One half hour. That ought to be good enough. She’d promised her best friend, Mara, that she would go through with this, but she hadn’t promised to spend all night at it. She sighed, carefully avoiding eye contact with any of the interested males shouldering their way past the bar, wishing with all her heart that she was home snuggled up with a good book. Mara meant well, but couldn’t understand that Cari wasn’t looking for Mr. Right. She wasn’t looking for mister anyone at all. She didn’t want a man. She didn’t want a relationship. She didn’t even want a husband. She’d done that once already and it had turned her life into a living hell.

      “Once bitten, twice shy,” was her motto. She had no intention of going through that sort of heartbreak again.

      But how could Mara understand that? She’d married her childhood sweetheart, settled down in a cute little ranch house and had two adorable kids. Her life was full of piano recitals and pictures on the refrigerator and picnics and kittens. Cari’s marriage hadn’t turned out that way. They were two very different people, despite the fact that they had been best friends forever.

      “Some people find the golden ring swimming in their cereal in the morning, slip it on their finger, and go skipping through life,” was how Cari tried to explain it to Mara. “And others drop it in the sand at the beach and spend the rest of their life digging to get it back.”

      “That’s just silly,” Mara had retorted. “Do you think my life is perfect or something?”

      “Yes, Mara, I do. Compared to mine, it is.”

      “Oh, Cari.” Mara had taken her hand and held it tightly. “What happened with Brian and … and the baby … well, it was just horrible. It shouldn’t have happened to anyone, much less someone like you who deserves so much better.” She blinked rapidly as tears filled her dark eyes. “But you’ve got to try again. There’s someone out there for you. I just know it. And once you find the right man …”

      The right man. Was there such a creature? Even Mara didn’t know the details of what her marriage had really been like. If she did, she might not be so quick to try to throw her back into the deep end of the pool.

      “Mara, will you please give it up? I’m perfectly satisfied with my life the way it is now.”

      “Oh, Cari!” She sighed tragically. “I can’t bear the thought of you sitting at home sniffing over old movies on one more Valentine’s Day.”

      Was that what this was all about?

      “Wait! Hold it. I don’t give a darn about Valentine’s Day. It’s a made-up holiday. Who cares?”

      “Don’t try to fool me, Cari Christensen. I know you better than that.”

      “Mara, no!”

      “You need a man.”

      Mara looked so fierce, Cari had to laugh. “I don’t know why I let you be my friend.”

      “Because you know I’m looking out for what’s best for you.”

      Cari sighed. She knew she was beat. But she had to pretend to fight on. “I don’t need anyone looking out for me.”

      “You do, too. I’m your assigned fairy godmother. Get used to it.”

      “No.”

      Mara, of