Callie's Christmas Wish. Merline Lovelace
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took the plunge.”
“Wait! I’m not exactly plunging into any—”
“The heck you’re not. I can’t count the number of studs Kate and I have fixed you up with in the past few years. After every date you’ve smiled your enigmatic Mona Lisa smile and sent them on their way. Joe’s the first male you’ve invited back for seconds.”
“Dawn,” Callie protested, half laughing and half embarrassed at how close that barb had hit to home. “It was only a kiss. Although...”
“Although what, Langston?”
She played with her half-empty cup. She couldn’t understand her reluctance to share her silly wish with Dawn. God knows, they’d shared everything else in their lives. She hesitated another few seconds before yielding her secret.
“Okay, here’s the deal. Remember when the three of us tossed coins in the Trevi Fountain that first time?”
“Of course I do. But you, Miss Priss and Boots, wouldn’t make a wish. You insisted that just throwing in a coin satisfied tradition and we’d all return to Rome someday.”
“Actually, I did make a wish.”
“Which,” Dawn guessed instantly, “involved Joe Russo.”
“How could it? We didn’t meet him until a week later, in Venice.”
“Okay, okay. If you didn’t wish for steamy, totally deviant sex with Mr. Macho out there, what was it? Please tell me it was something equally kinky.”
“Since when are any of us into kink?”
When Dawn wagged her brows, Callie gave a rueful laugh. “All right. The wish was a little...fanciful.”
“Are we talking satin sheets fanciful? Or whipped cream and melted chocolate? Or ice cubes and...”
“Dawn!”
“Ha! Do not go all prune-faced and prudish on me, missy. Just remember who advised Kate on the best brand of vibrator to buy when she and Travis separated.”
“It was the same brand you recommend to me.”
“Please stop annoying me with all these pesky details. Just tell me. What did you wish for?”
“Not what. Who. Louis Jourdan.”
Dawn understood the reference instantly. She should, since she and Callie and Kate had drooled over the stunningly handsome ’50s and ’60s–era star during several all-night movie marathons as teens.
“God,” Dawn breathed. “Do you remember him in Gigi? So suave and sophisticated and hot. The man made me want to jump straight from twelve to twenty.”
“I think he was better in Three Coins in the Fountain,” Callie mused.
She remembered the first time they’d watched the old classic. So many years ago. So many dreams ago.
“Did you ever notice how much Joe looks like him?”
That was met with a moment of startled silence.
“Now that you mention it,” her friend said, recovering, “I can see the resemblance. Aside from that fact that Joe’s eyes are gray, not brown, and he’s probably four inches taller and considerably more muscled than our boy Louis, they’re dead ringers.”
“All right, I may be projecting a bit.”
“Ya think? But, hey. Project away, girl. It’s so romantic.”
And so out of character. Despite the incident with Pimple Face Hendricks, Callie had always been the sensible, bookish one of the three. More into reading than boys in junior high. An honor student in high school. On scholarships all through college and her master’s program.
Majoring in psychology had given her great insight into the vagaries of human behavior. Unfortunately, it had also reinforced her natural tendency to stand off to the side and observe. Six years at the child advocate’s office, where she was sworn to protect her young clients’ rights and privacy, had only added to her natural reticence. The often heartbreaking cases she’d worked had taught her to wall off her own emotions. Except, of course, from Kate and Dawn.
And now Joe.
He’d pierced her shell in Italy when he’d convinced her to tell him about the emails. He’d taken another whack at it with that kiss before he’d zipped down to Australia. The one he’d laid on her just a few moments ago had pretty well completed the conquest. Watching him now, coaching Tommy in the fine art of boomeranging, Callie could almost feel her outer barriers trembling like the fabled walls of Jericho.
“Well,” Dawn commented in an obvious effort to validate Callie’s wish at the fountain, “Joe certainly has what it takes to star in a few movies. They’d probably be more shoot-’em-up action flicks than romances, though.” She hesitated a few moments. “It doesn’t bother you, what he does?”
“It might, if I could pry more than the most superficial details about his clients out of him.”
“Brian says Joe and his people were prepared to take a bullet for Carlo in Italy. Evidently the prince led a special ops raid that rescued some UN workers in Afghanistan. Or maybe it was Africa. Anyway, the group’s leader put a bounty on Carlo’s head. That’s why he required beefed-up security when we first met him in Italy.”
“Kate told me a little about that raid. Travis took part in it, too.”
Dawn nodded. “I know I don’t have to remind you that the constant fear and uncertainty, the never knowing where Travis was or how long he’d be gone or who was shooting at him, almost broke up Kate’s marriage.”
“No, you don’t have to remind me.”
Callie had been right there. She and Dawn both. Lending support and shoulders to cry on when Kate made the agonizing decision to end her marriage to the man she’d loved since high school. They’d been there, too, when Travis refused to let her go, insisting nothing else mattered if he didn’t have her.
“Joe and I are nowhere near that stage,” Callie said. “Or any stage, really.”
“Tell that to your action hero.” Dawn tilted her head in the direction of the window. “He looks like he has more than a kiss in mind.”
Callie followed her nod and caught Joe’s glance through the wide windows. He and Tommy and the pooch had finished and were heading in. When he jerked his chin in the direction of the gatehouse, she slid off the counter stool with more haste than grace.
“Kate said she’ll leave work early,” Callie reminded Dawn. “She and Travis should be here by six or six thirty.”
“Brian’s leaving early, too.”
“Buzz me when they get here.”
“You sure you want to be disturbed?”
Ignoring her friend’s salacious grin, Callie met the three males at the back door. The pup danced around her while she dutifully praised Tommy’s skills. Then Dawn lured her two boys into the main house with an offer of hot chocolate and whipped cream.
“Lots of whipped cream,” she said with a wicked glance in Callie’s direction.
Joe caught the less than subtle byplay. “Something going on I should know about?”
“Nothing important,” she said as she led the way along the covered flagstone path to the gatehouse. Escaping the chill December air, she ushered him inside. “Here, let me take your coat.”
She hung it beside hers on an empty hook. The well-worn bomber jacket carried his scent, she thought as she took a discreet sniff. Sharp and clean and leathery. It felt like him, too. Tough and resilient.
Oh, Lord! She had it worse than she thought if she was standing here smelling his jacket. Hoping to heck he hadn’t witnessed