Third Time's the Bride! Read Online Free PDF Page B

pure regret. “Which is why we can’t do what I’m aching to do right now.”
    “You’re right,” she got out unsteadily as he cupped her cheek. “We can’t. Because...?”
    As Brian dropped his hand, guilt hit him like a hammer.
    Because , he thought with a searing stab of regret, we’re standing in the kitchen Caroline redesigned brick-by-aged-brick. Under the rack holding the dented copper pots she’d discovered in a shopping expedition to the Plaka in Athens. With a loaf of the pumpernickel she’d taught him to tolerate, if not particularly like, sitting right there on the counter.
    Christ! He knew he shouldn’t keep hauling around this load of guilt. Everyone said so. The grief counselor recommended by Caroline’s oncologist. The various “experts” he’d consulted on issues dealing with single parenting. The well-meaning friends and associates who’d fixed him up with their friends and associates.
    He’d dated off and on in the five years since his wife’s death. No one seriously. No one he’d brought here, to the home Caroline had taken such delight in. And he sure as hell had never ached to kiss one of those casual dates six ways to Sunday. Then hike her onto the counter, unsnap her jeans and yank them...
    Dammit! Furious with himself, Brian stepped back and offered the only excuse he could. “Because Tommy’s upstairs. He might wake up and wander down to the kitchen.”
    She recognized a pathetic excuse when she heard one. Eyes widening, she regarded him with patently fake horror. “Omigod! How totally awful if he walked in on us trading spit. He’d be so grossed out.”
    “Dawn, I...”
    She cut him off with a wave of the serrated knife. “I got the picture, Ellis. No messing around in the house. Not with me, anyway. Are you going to nuke that bacon or not?”
    The flippant response threw him off. Almost as much as her smile when she attacked the pumpernickel again. It wasn’t smug. Or cynical. Or disappointed. Just tight and mocking.
    Feeling like a teenager who’d just tripped over his own hormones, he tore some paper towels from the roll, covered the tray and shoved it in the microwave. Within moments the aroma of sizzling bacon permeated the kitchen and almost—almost!—wiped out the scent of the damned lotus blossoms.

Chapter Three
    D awn was wide-awake and skimming through emails at midnight. Not surprising, since she’d zoned out for a solid five hours on the plane. Her mind said it was the middle of the night but her body thrummed with energy.
    Then there was that near miss in the kitchen. She and Ellis had come nose to nose, close enough to exchange Eskimo kisses. Although there’d been no actual contact, electricity had arced between them. He’d felt the sizzle. So had she. Still did, dammit! No wonder she couldn’t sleep.
    Dawn didn’t kid herself. She knew what they’d experienced was purely physical. She’d shared that same sizzle with too many deliciously handsome men to read any more into it than basic animal attraction. It was just Ellis’s pheromones responding to her scent.
    As advertised, she thought with a grin. Dawn and her team had designed the labels for this particular line of bath products, which had been based on a study by the Smell & Taste Research Foundation in Chicago. The study demonstrated how combinations of various natural products triggered a wide variety of responses, including a few she found very interesting. Supposedly, the scents of lavender and pumpkin pie when sniffed together reportedly increased penile blood flow by forty percent!
    Naturally, Dawn had read the study from cover to cover. She’d had to, in order to conceptualize the designs for the ads. She’d also conducted her own field trials of the new products. Her final choice of the lemon and lotus blossom shampoo didn’t appear to increase penile blood flow quite as dramatically as the lavender and pumpkin, but it had done wonders for her normally flyaway red curls. And it had