Seeing Stars: A Loveswept Classic Romance

by Baker, Fran

The peppery aroma of Smithfield ham permeated the house, mingling with the spicy sweetness of cedar and bay. In the living room a little girl and her twin brother played with their new toys in a rainbow of tree lights. In the kitchen their mommy kissed Santa Claus.…

  “Merry Christmas,” Dovie whispered against his lips.

  “Happy Groundhog Day,” Nick answered teasingly before he lowered his mouth to hers.

  “You missed New Year’s,” she murmured when he raised his head.

  He remedied that with a thorough kiss that kept his tongue nestled in her mouth for breathless minutes.

  Ten years, and they still couldn’t get enough of each other.

  She laughed throatily. “You taste like chocolate sticky bun.”

  He nuzzled her neck. “You smell like roses … all over.”

  “Which reminds me …” She placed her lips against his ear so their five-year-old twins wouldn’t hear her. “I love my new unmentionables.”

  “Me too.” His hands found the dearly beloved curve of her derriere and squeezed it gently, urging her forward and upward.

  Every Christmas Eve, which they secretly considered their anniversary, Nick gave her sexy lingerie. Since they were gifts for him as much as they were for her, Dovie modeled them in the privacy of their bedroom.

  This year he’d chosen a wispy silver-gray bikini drenched in lace, with a matching garter belt and bra. And last night, as always, they’d fanned the home fires with a fervor that defied description.

  She leaned against him and sighed.

  “Tired?”

  “A little.”

  He crushed her to him, loving the feel of her compact body against his. Every time he touched her, naked or clothed, he saw stars. “What time is everyone coming for dinner today?”

  “Curtis said they couldn’t get here until two.” She gave silent thanks that the family ties were stronger for having been tested. “And I don’t look for the rest of them much before that.”

  “Where’s Harley?”

  “He wanted to see his sister in Richmond before he picked Arie up at the airport.”

  Dovie glanced at the slim gold watch that Nick had given her when she graduated from nursing school. The one and only time it had been off her wrist since then was the day she’d given birth to the twins. “That leaves you three hours and ten minutes to talk me out of ordering that new CAT scanner for the clinic.”

  One corner of his mouth slanted up in a smile as he reached into his hip pocket, then handed her an invoice that was stamped “Paid in Full.” According to the date in the upper right-hand corner, he’d placed the order almost a month ago. “Merry Christmas.”

  Tears blinded her and made the lines on the ticket bleed together. “Thank you.”

  Even after all these years, his generosity never ceased to amaze her. He’d encouraged her to become a nurse-practitioner, then agreed to serve as the supervising physician of the Spicey Hill Health Center. And she needed look no farther than her own backyard to see that he’d given her two of the most beautiful children she’d ever laid eyes on.

  “Have you noticed how quiet it is in there?” Nick inclined his head toward the living room.

  Dovie gazed lovingly in the same direction and smiled through her tears. “I told you when they woke us up at five-thirty this morning that they wouldn’t make it till noon.”

  “Should we move them?” he whispered as they tiptoed closer to the leather wing chair, where the twins had curled up with a storybook and fallen fast asleep.

  “Not unless you want to baby-sit them while I take a nap,” she answered with a big yawn.

  They were silent for a moment, each remembering the miracle they’d shared in the delivery room.

  Dovie remembered the sight of those small bodies slithering from her womb, the feel of their precious little mouths suckling at her nipple, and the sweet smell of talcum powder when she cuddled them and kissed them. Nick remembered his awe at touching them, counting their fingers and toes, and hearing them cry.

  They’d named their daughter Catherine, after her mother, and their son Michael, after his father.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” he prompted softly.

  “I was just thinking how lucky we are,” she murmured.

  Granted, they had more than the usual problems that married couples face. Nick’s blindness still depressed him sometimes, and Dovie could only hold him, letting him feel her love. But most of the time, when they curled up together at night after their gloriously tender lovemaking, she was the one who felt sheltered and protected.

  He dipped a vagabond finger into the ribbed V neckline of her sweater in a caress so evocative, her stomach churned with excitement. “What time is it?”

  She shifted her position slightly to allow him better access to her breasts and smiled up at him. He was beautiful, even dressed in blue jeans and a flannel shirt. But in her mind’s eye she saw him as he looked best. Naked. “Time for a nap?”

  His soft laughter ruffled her hair; his strong hand stroked her lyre flare of hip. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Arm in arm then they walked toward their bedroom, both of them wearing the look of love.

  THE EDITOR’S CORNER

  Welcome to Loveswept!

  The chill of fall is in the air, creating the perfect setting for romance readers to snuggle up with a good book. And as luck would have it I think Loveswept has the perfect book for you! As you sharpen your skates, Erik is already on the ice in Toni Aleo’s next installment in the hockey Assassins Series, BLUE LINES. Reviewers rave about Toni’s characters and the emotional depths she takes them to. Introduce yourself to this ice-melting series beginning with: TAKING SHOTS, TRYING TO SCORE, EMPTY NET, and FALLING FOR THE BACKUP – you’ll see what all of the excitement is about.

  And, the romance never stops – don’t miss:

  Fran Baker’s SEEING STARS, a seductive tale of first loves and second chances; Sandra Chastain’s FIREBRAND, meet a sexy rancher Rusty Wilder – gotta love a man in cowboy boots! Sandra’s classics continue with THE JUDGE AND THE GYPSY, when payback turns to passion; and THE LAST DANCE, another installment in Sandra Chastain’s Mac’s Angels series! And, readers have never forgotten Iris Johansen’s bestselling Loveswepts including, MATILDA THE ADVENTURESS, a Delaney’s of Killaroo sequel.

  Love doesn’t end here because there’s more next month!

  Happy Romance –

  Gina Wachtel

  Associate Publisher

  Read on for excerpts from more Loveswept titles …

  Read on for an excerpt from Ruthie Knox’s

  Flirting with Disaster

  Chapter One

  “Yes,” Katie said, gripping the steering wheel harder. “Uh-huh, yes, I get it.” She glanced in the rearview mirror, signaled left, and changed lanes. The traffic was getting thicker as they approached Louisville.

  Her brother kept talking, his voice robbed of its customary power by the cheap speakers of her cell phone, which sat in a cup-holder mount and broadcast Caleb’s warnings upward at her head. “If you have the slightest indication that there’s danger attached to this threat, you’re going to call me, and—”

  “Yesssssss,” she droned.

  The drama was wasted on Caleb, who was going to give her this lecture for the seventeenth time whether she wanted to hear it or not.

  It was wasted on Katie’s traveling companion, too. Sean didn’t react to anything she did. Ever.

  Katie glanced at the man in the passenger seat of her Jetta, just to be sure. His expression as he stared out the windshield matched the bleak, featureless expanse of southbound I-71. He was like a human wall of granite, completely impervious to everything about her.

  A stern, gorgeous cliff face.

  Suppressing a sigh, she tuned back in to Caleb’s speech. “—you to be in charge of anything along those lines, Sean. This is a trial run for Katie. I’m only letting her go because Judah insists she’s the one he wants to work with. You got th
at, Katie? It’s Sean’s show. I need you to play nice and stay out of his way.”

  “Yes,” she confirmed. “I know the deal. I agreed to the deal. I am on board with the deal. Now can we stop talking about it, please?”

  She flinched at the way her voice came out, sharper than she’d meant to sound. It was only because she was nervous about this trip. Her palms had gone clammy and slimed the leather wheel cover, so uncomfortable did it make her to venture into an unknown city to do an unfamiliar job with a man who didn’t like her.

  She had a tendency to bristle when nervous.

  One more bad habit she needed to make an effort to tame. Better to be professional. What Katie really needed to figure out was how to act cool and icy like some kind of Bond Girl assassin, slinking around and poisoning people by slipping strychnine into their drinks.

  Except without the poisoning. Her goal was to win herself a promotion from office manager to agent for Caleb’s security company, not to become an assassin. Not unless her ex-husband strolled into town needing assassinating.

  “We’ll stop talking about it when I’m positive you’re going to cooperate,” Caleb said. “Right now, you sound like you’re blowing smoke up my ass.”

  “I’m not,” she replied levelly. “I promise. I understand that this is your company and Sean’s assignment, and I’m just a companion on this trip. I promise I’ll be quiet and helpful and learn things, okay?”

  “I need you to be safe.”

  She made a face, then immediately regretted it. Wrinkling her nose and pursing her lips in response to Caleb’s babying only proved she deserved to be babied. Not the way she wanted Sean to see her.

  She flicked another glance in his direction. If he saw her at all, he gave no sign.

  “I’m safe,” she said.

  “I care about you, Katelet.”

  “I know you do,” she replied. “I care about you, too.”

  “And it’s only because I care about you that I’m going to say this again …”

  Katie tapped her fingertips against the steering wheel and stopped listening.

  She understood his worry. Ever since she’d confessed that she was married and needed to locate her spouse so she could get divorced, Caleb had become all concerned and brotherly. She kept waiting for him to go back to the way he’d been before, but so far, no luck.

  Five years older than her, her brother was a born nice guy who had spent most of his adulthood in the Military Police before moving home a year ago to help take care of their parents after their dad had a stroke. Katie had been living in his house rent-free at the time, working as a bartender nights and spending her days in elastic-waist pants, moping and watching daytime TV. Her husband, Levi, had cleaned her out and dropped her like a bad habit, and she’d returned from the life they’d built in Alaska in defeat. She’d practically regressed to adolescence by the time Caleb pulled her out of her self-pity slump.

  He gave her a job running the office of his new company, Camelot Security, and after the first month or so, Katie had started to feel useful again. Competent. She’d discovered she had some get-up-and-go left in her after all. That she actually wanted to do something with herself.

  Caleb was also the one who’d encouraged her to enroll in a couple of online classes. He’d even appointed himself her personal trainer, helping her whip her body into its best shape in years.

  He was a great brother, but Katie was done with the coddling. She’d turned over a new leaf. He needed to get with the program.

  “Sean, are you hearing all this?” he asked.

  Sean nodded. He was invisible to Caleb, but the two of them apparently had a man-telepathy thing going, because Caleb said, “Great. Give me a call after you’ve talked to Pratt. I want to hear the details of these threats he’s supposedly getting. And if you can, find out why he’s brought this case to us instead of giving it to his security team from Palmerston, because—”

  “Caleb,” Katie interrupted.

  “What?”

  “Give it a rest.”

  “I just—”

  “We’ve been over this and over this. Sean gets it. I get it. We’ll call you. Now let us do the job.”

  Her brother exhaled explosively, which made Katie smile a little. “Aren’t you supposed to be taking today off?” she asked. “Go home and help Ellen with wedding arrangements or something.”

  Caleb and Ellen had met on a job and gotten engaged about six minutes later. He pretty much lived over at her place now, and he’d become more of a father to her son, Henry, than the two-year-old’s real father ever had.

  “God, no. She won’t let me near any of the wedding stuff. But I did tell Henry I’d take him to the hardware store.”

  “So why aren’t you doing that?”

  Katie spotted an exit and swerved toward it, weaving nimbly through three lanes of traffic. The gas tank was getting low.

  “I’ve got payroll to figure out first.”

  She caught herself right before the words left her mouth. I can do that when I get back.

  It was the kind of thing a self-sacrificing doormat would say, not a slick professional. A decade of specializing in being a doormat had left her rumpled and ground down, with boot prints on her forehead.

  Time to stop jumping to the rescue.

  “You should hire somebody else to do payroll, now that I have a new job,” she said instead.

  At the end of the off ramp she turned—a little too fast, perhaps, because she got distracted by the fact that Sean was looking directly at her. Somehow he made looking look like not-looking. As though he could see her, but he couldn’t be bothered to see her.

  How was she supposed to concentrate on Caleb talking about payroll when Sean was not-looking at her that way?

  She didn’t know what the guy’s deal was. It seemed as if he didn’t approve of her—though what it was about her he disliked, she had no idea. Her personality, her being on the job, her existence?

  Sean had been working for her brother since the summer, and in that time he and Caleb had grown thick as thieves. He spent hours every week in Caleb’s office, a solid panel of pine muffling the mingled sound of their voices as they bent their heads over some obscure security challenge and Katie tried to get her work done at the reception desk a few feet away.

  Then he would come out, fix her with that blue stare, nod like a robot, and leave.

  She’d tried being nice to him, reminding him they’d gone to high school together and sat by each other in Algebra II and Trig. She’d tried ignoring him. She’d tried glaring at him and even, one embarrassing day, flirting with him. Nothing made a difference.

  He didn’t speak to her. Not at all, not ever, not under any circumstances. It was extremely weird, and it drove her nuts.

  Caleb was way too casual about it.

  Don’t send me to Louisville with him, she’d begged. He hates me.

  No, he doesn’t, Caleb had said. I’m positive he doesn’t hate you. You two just need to work it out between you.

  She didn’t know how to work it out, but she refused to let Sean get to her. This job was the big chance she’d been waiting for—her opportunity to get out of Camelot and see new places, rub elbows with interesting people, become somebody independent of Levi and Caleb. Her own somebody.

  Judah Pratt saw her potential. The singer-songwriter had asked for her specifically. And okay, yes, maybe Judah’s interest in her was largely carnal, but an opportunity was an opportunity. She’d only been in his Chicago apartment for half an hour when it arrived: he’d announced that he would hire Camelot Security, but only if he could have Katie.

  He’d said it just like that, too. Only if I can have Katie. A week later, the memory retained the power to send shivers skittering up her spine.

  Or it usually did. It was a little hard to get swept up in her Judah fantasies with Sean sitting next to her, emanating stony disapproval of … something. Her being assigned to work with him. The way she breathed. Her boots. Who
knew?

  “Katie?” Caleb interrupted her reverie.

  “What?”

  “Are you even listening to me?”

  “Sure.” She rewound her brain, hoping to locate some phantom memory of what he’d said when she wasn’t paying attention. Nada. “What did you say?”

  “When did you stop listening?”

  “Uh, payroll?”

  “Never mind. The upshot is, you’ve still got your old job when you come back.”

  “Yeah, but after I completely blow your socks off, you’ll need someone else to do my old job.”

  “Please don’t try to blow my socks off. Be safe.”

  “Right, right.” She turned into the gas station. “I’ve got to go.”

  “One last thing.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to keep your distance from Pratt.”

  “Caleb—”

  “No, I’m serious. Sean, I need your help here. Keep the guy away from my sister. I don’t trust him not to take advantage.”

  Katie pulled to a stop beside a pump, her blood boiling. There was overprotective, and then there was stifling. She loved Caleb and all, but she wasn’t about to let him smother her to death.

  Sean had turned to look at her. He had the most astonishing eyes. Dark, dark blue, with thunderstorms in them.

  She lifted her chin. “That isn’t necessary,” she told Caleb.

  “I think it is.”

  “No, it isn’t. If Judah wants to take advantage of me, I’m all for it.”

  Sean blinked.

  “Katie,” Caleb said, a note of warning in his voice.

  “Stop. You don’t want to have this conversation any more than I do, so just drop it, okay?”

  Sean got out of the car. Katie watched him go, uneasy but resolved. It was hard enough to defeat her own internal censor. She didn’t need two men dog-piling on to judge her ability to make decisions about her own freaking sex life.

  Not that she had a sex life.

  “Believe me, I would love to drop it,” Caleb said. “But I don’t think I can.”