Third Time's the Bride! by Merline Lovelace Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t disagree, she tipped him another, even more mocking smile.
    “’Night, stud. See you around.”

Chapter Four
    S aturday morning dawned bright and sunny, a direct contrast to Brian’s mood. The kiss he’d laid on Dawn the previous evening had made for a restless night.
    Restless, hell! It had left him hard and hurting. Good thing she’d breezed out of the kitchen when she had or he might have compounded his stupidity by suggesting they share a brandy after Tommy trotted off to bed. Brandy being code for getting down on the sofa. Or the floor. Or a king-size bed with soft sheets and her luscious body stretched out in naked abandon.
    Dammit! He threw back the comforter and stalked to the bathroom, determined to erase the mental image of shimmering auburn hair splayed across his pillow and those lush, full breasts bared to his touch.
    The image wouldn’t erase. It followed him into the shower, then stared back at him from the steam-clouded mirror over the sink. Laughing, sensual, inviting, she teased and taunted him. She knew he wanted her. The feeling was mutual. That message had come through with the astounding clarity of a radio signal transmitted via a 200 gigahertz, ultrahigh frequency satellite band.
    The same band, he remembered abruptly, that EAS had been lobbying for access to for months. Which in turn reminded him of his scheduled meeting with the FCC on Monday. Between that potentially contentious meeting, getting Tommy settled in school and interviewing prospective nannies, it looked to be a busy start to his week.
    Yanking off the towel he’d wrapped around his waist, Brian tossed it at the laundry basket before pulling on a pair of jeans and his favorite Washington Nationals sweatshirt. He threaded the laces through the eyeholes of his running shoes, thinking of all he should do today. Like go into the office for a few hours to prep for the FCC meeting. And, while he was there, give Travis Westbrook a personal tour of EAS headquarters. EAS’s new VP of Test Operations and Evaluation had landed in DC late last night and confirmed his arrival by email.
    Brian paused, the laces snaked around his fingers. Somehow he suspected Travis wouldn’t mind delaying the EAS tour for a day. The pilot was still making up for lost time with his wife. He and Kate had looked so happy when they’d renewed their wedding vows at the impromptu ceremony beside the Trevi Fountain. So secure in the love that had been tested for long, agonizing months but refused to keel over and die. The kind of love that lasted a lifetime.
    The kind Brian and Caroline had thought they’d have.
    Slewing around, he studied the framed photo on his nightstand. It was a casual, unposed shot of his wife with Tommy in her arms, taken mere weeks before they’d discovered that her sudden imbalance and dizzy spells were caused by a fast-growing tumor that had wrapped itself around her brain stem.
    Over the next agonizing months the tumor relentlessly strangled the nerves that controlled every basic bodily function. Her breathing. Her heart rate. Blood flow. Eye movement. Hearing. Sensory perception. After chemo and radiation failed to halt the tumor’s pernicious growth, she opted for a last, desperate attempt to have it cut out.
    She and Brian both knew the odds were she wouldn’t survive the surgery. They’d said their goodbyes in the purple twilight punctuated with beeping monitors, then spent the night spooned against each other in her hospital bed. Both sets of parents had arrived early the next morning, bringing Tommy with them. The hours that followed were lost in a misty haze. Brian couldn’t remember the expression on the surgeon’s face when she broke the grim news. He retained only a vague memory of his father-in-law’s shattered sobs and his quietly efficient mother helping him through the business of death.
    With a knot in his throat, he realized that he could barely recall the sound of his wife’s laughter or the title of the