Callie's Christmas Wish. Merline Lovelace
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self.
That ridiculous wish was coming back to haunt her now. Every part of her thrummed with nervous anticipation as she helped Dawn and Tommy loop fresh pine boughs into Christmas wreaths for the doors of the Ellises’ home. Luckily, the determined efforts of Tommy’s three-month-old wheaten terrier pup to get into the action kept both the boy and Dawn so amused that neither noticed Callie jump when the doorbell rang.
The sound of the bell sent the pup into an immediate frenzy. His butt end whipped around. His claws skittered on the pine plank flooring. High-pitched yelps split the air as he careened out of the kitchen and down a hallway fragrant with the scent of the cloves and cinnamon and oranges in the Christmas potpourri.
“That’ll be Joe.”
Pushing to her feet, Dawn dusted the pine needles from the moss-colored turtleneck that clung to her generous curves and made her eyes appear an even deeper shade of emerald.
“His message said his plane would touch down at three and he’d be here by four.” She slanted Callie a sly look. “Tall, dark, handsome and punctual. What more could a girl ask for?”
Nothing, Callie agreed, her stomach fluttering. Not a single, solitary thing.
Except...maybe...
There it was! That absurd coin toss again. How juvenile to wish Joe would let just a tiny smidgen of romance sneak through his solid, masculine, don’t-mess-with-me-or-mine exterior. Hadn’t he put his highly lucrative business interests on hold for her? Devoted considerable time and expense to tracking down the source of the ugly emails she’d begun receiving a few weeks before the trip to Italy? Shaking her head at her own foolishness, Callie followed Dawn, the wildly yipping terrier and Tommy down the hall.
“Joe promised he’d bring me a real, live boomerang from Australia,” the boy reminded them as he charged for the door. “Hope he remembered it!”
He would. Callie didn’t doubt it for a second. In the few short months she’d known Joe Russo, she’d come to realize that nothing ever escaped the steel trap of his mind.
They’d first met during a never-to-be-forgotten jaunt to Venice. At the time Joe headed a highly specialized personal security team guarding Carlo Luigi Francesco di Lorenzo, aka the Prince of Lombard and Marino, who also happened to be one of Italy’s most decorated air force pilots. Carlo, Kate’s husband, Travis, and Dawn’s now-husband, Brian, had been involved in testing some hush-hush, super-secret modification to NATO special ops aircraft flying sorties from a base in northern Italy.
Callie and Joe had met again in Rome, when Travis surprised Kate with an elegant ceremony to renew their marriage vows. At that damned fountain! It must have been the stars in Kate’s eyes as she reaffirmed her love. Or the mischievous sparkle in Dawn’s when she announced she was flying home with the Ellises to assume duties as Tommy’s stand-in nanny. Whatever the impetus, Callie gave in to her friends’ urging that they all toss one last coin over their shoulders. Which was when she’d made that stupid, stupid wish.
Not ten minutes later, she’d found herself separated from her friends and yielding to Joe Russo’s quiet but relentless interrogation. As she’d soon discovered, the man hadn’t transitioned from military cop to soldier of fortune to head of one of the world’s most exclusive personal protection agencies without learning how to extract secrets from even the most reluctant interviewees.
He’d watched her, Joe had revealed. Saw how her shoulders braced every time she checked her email. Noted, too, how her eyes would flicker with distress before she withdrew even farther into her seemingly serene shell.
Callie tried to deny it. Tried to shrug aside his laser-sharp perceptions. She was too used to safeguarding the privacy of the children she’d represented as an ombudsman for the Massachusetts Office of the Child Advocate to spill their—or her—secrets. At that point Joe reminded her that she’d walked away from her job some weeks ago. He also pointed out that he could tap into any legal and/or law enforcement agencies necessary to resolve whatever was scaring the crap out of her.
Callie still couldn’t believe she’d broken down and told him about the threatening emails before she’d shown them to Kate and Dawn. Neither could her two best friends, for that matter. They’d let her know what they thought about that in some pretty forceful terms. But they got over their snit in short order and promptly threw a protective shield around her.
First, Kate insisted Callie stay with her in DC after their return from Italy. Then, when Dawn married and moved out of the elegant gatehouse designed for Tommy’s live-in nanny, she’d insisted Callie take up residence there while Joe investigated the emails. And when the emails escalated from ugly to really scary, Joe tried to hustle her into protective custody.
Callie had drawn the line at that. She was staying in DC, hundreds of miles from her Boston home. She had four fierce watchdogs in the persons of Kate and Dawn and their spouses guarding her day and night. She’d turned over every threatening communication to the authorities, and Joe had exercised the legal system to gain access to the juvenile court cases she’d worked.
Enough was enough.
But her heart had still pounded each time she checked her emails. It pounded even harder every time Joe called or flew in to update her on his investigation. The kiss he’d laid on her last time he was in DC might also have something to do with the fact that she was holding her breath while Tommy yanked open the front door.
“Hi, Joe. Didja bring the boomerang? Didja?”
“You bet.”
One of Joe’s rare smiles flickered across his face. His cheeks creased, almost hiding the scar slashing down the left side. All Callie knew was that it was the legacy of a mission he wouldn’t talk about to anyone, not even to Brian, Travis or Carlo. The angry red slash had faded in the past few months but still drew occasional startled glances.
Callie barely noticed it anymore. The rest of the package was too compelling. The broad shoulders now encased in a leather bomber jacket that had seen its share of wear, the square chin, the ice-gray eyes, the dark brown hair with its barest hint of a curl.
“Don’t forget what I told you,” Joe instructed as he stepped through the door and handed over a package wrapped in brown paper. “It’s not a toy.”
“I remember! Boomerangs are more than ten thousand years old. The aber...um...abra...”
“Aborigines.”
“Yeah. The aborigines used to hunt with ’em.”
While the boy tore at the brown paper, Joe nodded hello to Dawn before shifting his gaze to Callie. In their short time together, she’d discovered that his silvery eyes could turn as opaque and impenetrable as a Massachusetts coastal fog when he wanted, which was most of the time. But they glinted now with a triumph so clear and sharp that she knew instantly his sudden trip Down Under had yielded results.
“The emails!” she exclaimed. “You nailed the sender.”
“To the wall,” he replied with such savage satisfaction that Dawn whooped and flung up a palm for a joyous high five.
“All riiiight, Russo!”
The exuberant exclamation startled Tommy and the pup. Blue eyes wide, the boy clutched his boomerang to his chest and demanded to know what was going on while his pet made indiscriminate lunges at any and all adults.
“Down!”
Joe’s low command caught the terrier in midlunge. It dropped instantly onto its haunches, looking as uncertain as a cuddly, curly-haired puppy could.
“Let me take your jacket,” Dawn said in the sudden, blessed silence. “Then we’ll go into the kitchen and you can tell us every detail.”
“Mooooom.”
Tommy stretched the single syllable into a mile-long protest that stopped Dawn in her tracks. Despite the butterflies in her stomach, Callie had to smile at her friend’s goofy expression. The bubbly,