'I Do'...Take Two!. Merline Lovelace

He’d tagged her with it one hot summer evening when they’d spread a blanket under the stars and listened to the quivering whir of grasshoppers feasting on fresh-cut grass. Only he could call her an insect and make it feel like the soft stroke of a palm against her skin. And only he could blot out every one of those zillion stars with a single kiss.

      Oh, God! What was she doing?

      She tightened her grip on the roll-on, almost ready to scurry back to her room, when she caught a flash from the corner of one eye. Turning, she spotted her husband at the wheel of the convertible that pulled up at the front entrance. It was low, sporty, hibiscus red, and it gleamed with chrome. It also, she saw when she exited the automatic doors, displayed a distinctive logo on its sloping hood. Like the bellman and parking attendant, she was riveted by the medallion depicting a rampant black stallion silhouetted against a field of yellow.

      “Is this a Ferrari?”

      “It is,” Travis confirmed as he waved off the parking attendant who hurried forward. Rounding the hood, he took Kate’s case and stashed it in the trunk. “Compliments of Carlo.”

      “Free use of a villa and a Ferrari? He owes you that much?”

      “He doesn’t owe me anything. He just thinks he does.”

      Shadowy images of what must have gone down to rack up such a large debt, real or imagined, made Kate swallow. Hard. Trying to blank her mind to the possible circumstances, she folded herself into the cloud-soft black leather of the passenger seat.

      “It’s got a retractable hardtop,” Travis said as he slid behind the wheel. “If the wind is too much, let me know and I’ll put it up.”

      She nodded, still trying to force her thoughts away from downed aircraft and skies ablaze with tracers from enemy fire. Her husband didn’t help by sharing a bit of historical trivia.

      “Did you know Ferrari derived his logo from the insignia of a World War I Italian ace?”

      “Why am I not surprised?” Kate said drily. “The symbol for such a lean, mean muscle machine could only have come from a flier.”

      “Damn straight.” Grinning, Travis keyed the ignition and steered past a parade of taxis waiting to pick up departing guests. “Count Francesco Baracca was cavalry before he took to the air, so he painted a prancing black stallion on the sides of his plane. Baracca racked up so many kills he became a national hero, and when Ferrari met the count’s mother some years later, she suggested he paint the same symbol on his racing car for good luck.”

      “The ace didn’t object to having his personal symbol co-opted?”

      “He probably wouldn’t have, but we’ll never know. He went down in flames just a few months before the end of the war.”

      Both the dancing stallion and the sleek vehicle it decorated lost their dazzle in Kate’s eyes. “Some good-luck charm,” she muttered. “I hope your pal Carlo hasn’t stenciled it on his plane.”

      “No, the aircraft in his unit sport their own very distinctive nose art. The wing’s name in Italian is the Seventeenth Stormo Incursori, if that gives you any clue.”

      When she shook her head, his grin widened.

      “It translates literally to ‘a flock of raiders.’ Not so literally to ‘watch your asses, bad guys.’”

      “Of course it does. Do they fly the K-2, too?”

      K-2 was their shorthand for the Combat King II. The latest model of the HC-130 was still relatively new to the USAF inventory and dedicated to special ops.

      “They do,” Travis confirmed. “Just got ’em in this year. Carlo and his crew were still doing a shakedown when we got tagged for that joint op.”

      Kate dug in her purse for a fat plastic hair clip, thinking that her husband and his Italian counterpart had forged quite a bond. It might be of recent origin, but it sounded almost as deep and unbreakable as the one between her, Dawn and Callie.

      “I’d like to meet this new friend of yours sometime,” she commented as she anchored her hair back with the clip.

      “I’d like that, too.” He cut her a quick glance. “Want to amend our itinerary to include the base at Aviano? And maybe Venice?”

      “I...uh...”

      For pity’s sake! They hadn’t even left the Cavalieri’s landscaped grounds and were already making changes to the agenda. But the lure of Venice proved almost as powerful as the desire to meet this new friend of her husband’s.

      “Okay by me.”

      “Great.”

      When they reached the bottom of the long, curving drive, Travis downshifted and hit the brake. His hand rested casually on the Ferrari’s burled walnut gearshift knob while its engine purred like a well-fed feline.

      “This baby can go from zero to sixty in three-point-five seconds,” he confided as they waited for the cross street to clear. “Once we shake free of Rome, we’ll open her up.”