The Next Santini Bride. Maureen Child

leaning one hand on the wall above her head and bending closer. “I used to be Recon. Reconnaissance. The guys who go in, get what needs getting and get out.”

      He leaned in even closer, and Angela swore she could feel the warm brush of his breath against her cheek. Or maybe that was just her own heated blood flushing her face.

      “You should know, I’ve been warned about you,” Angela said as she looked up into the green eyes that had haunted her dreams all last night.

      “Me?” Dan answered with that slow, crooked smile that was guaranteed to breach any defenses. “I’m harmless, lady.”

      Oh yeah, she believed that. And chocolate had no calories when eaten at midnight. Ha! She took another sip of champagne and silently reminded herself that she was on a mission here. She didn’t want harmless. She wanted dangerous.

      If just for tonight.

      Actually, Gina’s warning the night before had been the deciding factor in this. Knowing that Dan was interested in nothing more than a one-night stand made it all so easy. She could have one night of magic after far too long a dry spell, and there wouldn’t be a single string attached. Well, except for the guilt strings she was already experiencing. Honestly, you wouldn’t think it would be so hard for a twenty-eight-year-old widow to seduce a man. Another swallow of champagne followed the last, and a part of her brain reminded her that she wanted to be loose, not unconscious. But heck, who could blame her for trying a little liquid courage? It wasn’t as if she did this every day.

      “Harmless, huh?” she asked, giving him a smile she hoped was sexy. It had been so long, she couldn’t be sure. “That’s not what I hear.”

      “Who’s been talking?”

      Oh, brother, that smile of his should be classified as a lethal weapon. It did amazing things to a woman’s equilibrium.

      “Who hasn’t?” she quipped.

      “And do you always believe what you hear?” he asked, letting his gaze slide across her body with a slow, deliberately casual thoroughness.

      Boy, he was better than she’d given him credit for. Her skin felt tight, and parts of her body she’d thought atrophied were galloping back to life. This was moving so fast she could hardly keep up. Taking a moment to calm down a bit, she looked around the room…actually, she looked anywhere but into those green eyes.

      Angela studied the faces surrounding her, both familiar and strange. Dozens of Marines were sprinkled through the crowd, and she had to admit there was something about a man in a Dress-Blue uniform. It was an unfair advantage, really. No red-blooded woman, especially one who’d been living a celibate life for more than three years, could resist.

      And the simple truth was, Angela didn’t want to resist. She’d made up her mind what she was going to do the minute her sister Gina had told her that Dan was known on base as the king of the one-night stands. And she wasn’t going to back out now.

      “Want to try to finish our dance?” Dan asked, breaking into the thoughts swirling ceaselessly through her mind.

      She inhaled and swiveled her head to look at him.

      “For starters,” she said bravely, and watched as desire flickered in the depths of his eyes. She half turned to set her champagne glass on the closest table, then he took her hand and led her through the crowd. Angela’s gaze fixed on his broad back, narrow hips and long legs. A curl of anticipation unwound inside her, and her mouth went dry.

      Ever since the night before, Angela hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him. Sure, he was tall, dark and gorgeous. So were most of the other guys in the room. But there was something about First Sergeant Mahoney that made her blood boil and her usually cautious nature want to fly out the window.

      And just for tonight, she was going to let it.

      As they came to the middle of the dance floor, the music changed, shifting from a fast-paced, rock and roll number to an old Frank Sinatra standard. The voice of Ol’ Blue Eyes swept into the room and was welcomed like an old friend. If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn Dan had planned it this way.

      Dan pulled her into his arms and pressed her body to his. Her mouth went dry, and her head swam. She wasn’t sure if it was the four or five glasses of champagne or the heady sensation of being held by a man again that was making her feel almost dizzy. And she didn’t care. It was enough to be feeling again. To be experiencing that swift, sure punch of desire. The lick of flames at her center. The pooling warmth that threatened to collapse her knees and rob her of breath.

      His right hand dropped to the curve of her behind as he eased her around the crowded dance floor. Subtly he pulled her tight against him. Hard and strong, his body pressed into hers, letting her know what she was doing to him. A rush of confidence filled her. She could still attract a man. Apparently the past three years of being a mom and a widow hadn’t robbed her of her abilities to be a woman.

      On his shoulder her left hand clutched at the fabric of his uniform. She leaned her head back to look up at him and struggled to continue breathing as he kept her pressed tightly to him.

      “I sure hope I’m reading you right,” Dan said, staring down at the woman he wanted more than his next breath.

      She swallowed hard, then smoothed her left hand across his shoulders and down his back. “Trust me on this. If you weren’t reading me right, you’d have known by now.”

      “Fair enough,” he said, nodding, “but just to be safe, I’ll say it plain. A simple no will end this. Now.”

      She stared at him, and he saw his own reflection in the soft-brown of her eyes. “And what does a yes get me?”

      Dan’s body tightened even further which he would have thought impossible a minute or two ago. Damn. He hadn’t been expecting this. Stand up at his friend’s wedding and end up sleeping with the friend’s new sister-in-law?

      “Lady,” he said on a soft exhale of breath, “a yes will get you any darn thing you want.”

      She gave him a slow smile that set a match to the dynamite stacked inside him.

      “That covers a lot of territory, First Sergeant.”

      “Yes ma’am,” he promised, his brain filling with images of the night to come, “it surely does.”

      “Good,” she said, and moved even closer to him, taking what little of his breath was left. “Then it’s a date? After the bride and groom leave?”

      “If I can wait that long,” he said.

      “It’ll be worth the wait,” she assured him, and stepped out of his arms as the song ended.

      “Damn straight,” he said tightly. He watched her as she moved back through the crowd, headed toward her sister. Her shoulder-length, dark-brown hair curved under at the ends and swung gently with each step she took. She wore a dark-pink bridesmaid’s dress with a high collar, long sleeves and a full skirt that fell to her feet and brushed the floor in a soft, swishing sound as she moved. And that dress looked so damn good on her, he wondered if there was any way to convince Nick and Gina to take off on their honeymoon now.

      “You’re sure, honey?” Maryann Santini asked for the fiftieth time in the last ten minutes. “It just doesn’t seem fair, all of us leaving you at the same time. I mean, Nick and Gina of course deserve their honeymoon, but it doesn’t seem right for me to take off on a cruise right now.”

      “You and Margaret have been planning this for weeks,” Angela reminded her mother patiently.

      “I know, but now Jeremy’s going to be gone, and even Marie and Davis are leaving town for a week.”

      Angela smiled at the thought of her eight-year-old son, but as much as she loved him, she was glad he’d asked to spend the weekend with his best friend. Especially now. With the plans she had for later tonight, home was no place for her son tonight.

      “I’ll