Star he’d earned as a USMC chopper pilot in what now seemed like another lifetime ago.
“We need to head for the airport,” he said, turning to the others. “Sure I can’t talk the rest of you into flying home with Tommy and me? And Dawn,” he added belatedly.
The others had already nixed his offer of a flight back to the States aboard the Ellis Aeronautical Systems corporate jet. Kate and Callie were staying in Rome another night and would fly home using their prepaid, nonrefundable commercial tickets. Travis would head back to the base to wrap up the final details of their project. The prince would rejoin his special ops unit stationed just outside Rome and Joe Russo would move on to his next assignment. Whatever that was. The high-powered, high-dollar security expert was as tight-lipped about his work as he was good at it.
So good, Brian had approached him about doing a top-to-bottom scrub of EAS’s physical, cyber and industrial security. Ignoring the still-angry scar slashing the left side of Joe’s face, Brian held the man’s steady gaze.
“Let me know when you can nail down a start date.”
“Will do,” Joe answered. “In the meantime, have your security people send me their operating procedures and I’ll get my team looking at them.”
“Roger that. Well...”
Brian glanced around the circle, warmed by the close friendship he’d forged with the other three men in such a short time. With Kate and Callie, too.
Then there was Dawn.
She and Tommy approached the small circle, she wearing a smug grin and he skipping in delight. “Didja see us, Dad? Didja? Me ’n Dawn hit the water first try!”
“Dawn and I,” Brian corrected.
Tommy made a face but echoed his dad, “Dawn ’n I hit the water first try. Didja see us?”
“I saw.” Smiling, Brian ruffled his son’s hair. “Good job, buddy. You, too, Dawn. Now we’d better say our goodbyes and head for the airport.”
Tommy shook hands and Dawn gave hugs all around. A flirtatious one for the prince who’d tried his damnedest to get her to jet off to Corsica or Cannes or wherever with him. A friendly one for Joe. And one that came with a warning for Travis.
“You and Kate have spent too much time apart, Westbrook. Get your butt home quick and start working on that baby you guys have decided to produce.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The hugs for her two friends were fiercer and much longer. Brian waited patiently but Tommy’s forehead puckered into a worried frown when all three women teared up.
“I can’t believe our Italian adventure is over,” Callie sniffed. “We’ve dreamed about coming here for so long.”
“Ever since we watched Three Coins in the Fountain all those years ago,” Kate said gruffly.
“But we’ll be back.” Dawn gulped, tears flowing. “Someday.”
As worried now as his son, Brian shot Travis a quick glance. Kate’s husband merely rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry. They do this all the time. They’ll get it together in a moment.”
Sure enough, the tears stopped, the sniffles dried up and the smiles reemerged as Kate began planning an imminent reunion.
“It’s so awesome that Brian and Tommy live in Bethesda. Travis and I will be less than a half hour away. We can get together regularly. And Callie can come stay with us, too, until she lands a new job.”
“I don’t think so,” the brunette said with a flash of unexpected humor. “You two have that baby to work on. I don’t need to listen to the headboard banging—” she gave Tommy a quick glance and finished smoothly “—when you put the crib together.”
* * *
After another round of hugs, Brian finally ushered his two charges to the waiting limo. Moments later they were threading through Rome’s insane traffic on their way to Ciampino, the smaller of the city’s two airports.
The corporate jet was fueled and sitting on the ramp. The Gulfstream G600 with its twin Pratt & Whitney engines and long-range cruise speed of five hundred plus mph had been retrofitted by an avionics package specifically designed by EAS.
The sight of the sleek jet stirred familiar feelings of pride and a secret amazement in Brian. Hard to believe just twelve years ago he’d set up a small avionics engineering firm using his entire savings and a five-thousand dollar loan from his father-in-law. The first years hadn’t been easy. He was fresh out of the Corps with a new bride and more enthusiasm than business smarts.
Thank God for Caroline, he thought with an all-too-familiar ache. She’d provided long-range vision while he supplied the engineering muscle. Together, they’d grown Ellis Aeronautical Systems from the ground up. She hadn’t lived to experience the thrill when EAS hit the Fortune 500 list, though. She’d barely made it to their son’s first birthday.
Smothering the ache with a sheer effort of will, Brian greeted his chief pilot at the jet’s rear steps. “Thanks for the quick turnaround, Ed. Mrs. Wells made the flight back to the States okay?”
“She did,” the pilot confirmed. “So did the Italian medical team you hired to attend to her during the flight. They said to thank you for the extra week in California, by the way. After they got her settled, the first stop on their agenda was Disneyland, followed by the vineyards in Napa Valley.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Brian drawled while the pilot bent to bump fists with Tommy.
“Hey, kid. How’d you like Italy?”
“It was great! Me ’n...” Nose scrunching, he made a quick midcourse correction. “Dawn ’n I took a gondola ride in Venice ’n I went to the Colosseum in Rome with Dad. He got me a sword ’n helmet ’n everything.”
“Cool.” The pilot straightened and held out his hand to the third passenger on his manifest. “Good to meet you, Ms. McGill.”
“Dawn,” Tommy corrected helpfully. “She’s, like, a hundred years younger than Mrs. Wells so it’s okay for us to call her Dawn. She’s gonna come live with me ’n Dad.”
“She is, huh?”
“Until Mrs. Wells gets back on her feet,” Brian interjected smoothly.
Ed Donahue had flown executive-level jets too long to show anything but a professional front, but Brian knew interest and speculation had to be churning behind his carefully neutral expression. One, the auburn-haired beauty could get a rise from a stone-cold corpse. Two, she was the first living, breathing sex goddess to fly aboard EAS’s corporate jet.
As she demonstrated when she followed Tommy up the steps and ducked into the cabin. The slinky, wide-legged pants she’d worn to the ceremony at the Trevi Fountain clung to her hips and outlined a round bottom that made Brian’s breath hiss in and Ed’s whoosh out.
Gulping, the pilot made a valiant recovery. “I’ll, uh, recompute our flight time once we reach cruising altitude and give you an updated ETA.”
“Thanks,” Brian said grimly, although he’d already figured that no matter what the ETA, he was in for a long flight.
* * *
He’d figured right.
Over the years he’d worked hard to minimize his time away from his son by combining business trips with short vacations whenever possible. They’d taken a number of jaunts to Texas, where EAS’s main manufacturing and test facility was located. Several trips to Florida so Brian could meet with senior officials in the USAF Special Ops community, with requisite side trips to Disney World. The Paris Air Show last year. This summer’s excursion in Italy.
As a result, his son was a seasoned traveler and very familiar with the Gulfstream’s amenities, every one of which he was determined to show Dawn