''I Do''...Take Two! (12 page)

The photos accompanying the stories weren't particularly flattering to the playboy prince. He looked short compared to the women he was photographed with. Then again, most of those svelte, impossibly glamorous companions were supermodels and starlets. But Kate thought he also looked a little overweight in his flight suit. When she'd commented on that to Travis, he'd shrugged and said Carlo wouldn't be a major in the Stormo Incursori
unless he was fit enough to chew nails and spit rivets.

* * *

More curious than ever about her husband's new friend, Kate dressed casually for the drive up to the NATO base in jeans and a coral tank, accented with the colorful scarf she'd purchased in Florence. Travis also wore jeans, and his black cotton crewneck clung to his pecs and abs in ways that turned more than one female head in the lobby.

He hooked on his mirrored sunglasses for the vaporetto ride to the parking garage, where they reclaimed the Ferrari. The VIP parking attendant handed over the keys with obvious reluctance and a last, loving pat on the sports car's fender.

“You want the top up or down?” Travis asked when they'd settled into the body-hugging leather seats.

“Down. Definitely down.”

While he engaged the system that folded the top into its storage compartment, Kate caught her hair back with the scarf. Mere moments later they were on their way.

The route took them north from Venice through rolling hills, small villages and acre after acre of vineyards. The purple smudge of the Dolomites rose in the distance. A branch of the Italian Alps, the mountains grew taller and craggier with each passing kilometer. Kate skimmed the guide to Italy on her iPhone during the drive to familiarize herself with the cultural, historical and gastronomic specialties of the area.

Although it was just midmorning, she had to sample the delicacies. She asked Travis to stop at one of the tasting rooms that lined the road so they could taste different vintages of prosecco—the sparkling white wine made from grapes grown only in that area. Delighted with its bubbly effervescence, Kate recomputed the cost per bottle listed on a slate above the counter from euros to dollars.

“This is as good as any champagne I've had,” she commented to the young woman who poured the samples. “Why is it so much cheaper?”

“It is how the wine is processed, signora. French champagne is made the traditional way, yes? It is fermented in bottles, which must be turned and cleared of sediment by hand. This is very time-consuming and...how do you say—with many people?”

“Labor-intensive.”

“Just so! For prosecco, the secondary fermentation is done in big tanks. The process requires not so many people.”

“Let's buy a few bottles to take back with us,” Kate suggested. “Dawn's partial to champagne. She'll love this.”

“And she'll probably need it after a day with Tommy the Terrible,” Travis drawled.

They decided to drive into the hillside town of Conegliano for an early lunch. The lower, more modern part of the town offered plenty of cafés and restaurants, but a short flight of steps took them to the historic center. Revived by an endive salad and risotto with cuttlefish served in a creamy black sauce, Kate consulted her trusty digital guidebook again and led Travis to see the frescoes covering the exterior and interior of the Scuola dei Battuti.

“‘
Battuti
is derived from the Italian word for
beaters
,'” she read aloud. “‘It refers to the religious lay order that once occupied the building and was known for its brutal self-flagellation rituals.'”

Travis eyed the frescoes and had no comment.

Once back in the Ferrari, they steered straight toward the Dolomites. Thirty minutes later they reached Aviano Air Base, the sprawling installation in the shadow of the snowcapped mountains. The Italian Air Force ran the base and served as hosts to the Thirty-First Tactical Fighter Wing, the only US fighter wing south of the Alps. It also hosted numerous ground and even naval units from a dozen different NATO countries. With its close proximity to hot spots in North Africa and the Middle East, Kate guessed the crews based at or staging out of Aviano had racked up a sobering number of combat sorties in recent years.

Security was tight, and it took a few moments for Travis to get her signed in at the main entrance to the base. From there they drove through a complex of housing, administrative and support buildings all painted in the military's standard tan and brown. Or in this case, tan and a sort of terra-cotta reminiscent of the tile roofs that capped so many Italian buildings.

When Kate and Travis had reported to their first duty station, she'd commented on the blah colors. He'd explained they were designed to blend in with the terrain. She didn't doubt the monochromatic scheme had served its purpose thirty or even twenty years ago, but suspected today's highly sophisticated satellite imagery probably displayed every structure in ultra-clear three-dimensional detail, right down to the ruffles on the kitchen curtains in family housing.

Drab as the colors were, however, they seemed to welcome her home. So did the signs pointing to the base exchange and billeting office and fitness center. Even the flight line had a familiar feel, with hangars and revetments sheltering aircraft of all shapes and sizes and the tang of aviation fuel permeating the warm August air.

What weren't as familiar were the markings on the various aircraft, at least the ones Kate could spot from the car. She recognized the sleek, lethal-looking US F-16 fighter jets with
AV
on the tail, which designated Aviano as their home base. But there were also small executive jets, jumbo transports, a buzz of helicopters and several odd-looking aircraft she'd never seen before.

“Where's your bird?” she asked, searching the ramp for the squat, four-engine turbo-prop Hercules, the workhorse of US and NATO Special Ops.

“Safely tucked away during the day.”

Which meant they only flew after dark, using night-vision goggles. Kate knew her husband was fully qualified on NVGs. He and the crews he flew with had to be, since their missions often involved inserting or extracting a team under cover of darkness at unimproved airstrips deep in hostile territory. The fact that the crews were fully qualified didn't mitigate the danger, though. If anything, the pucker factor increased exponentially with NVGs.

With her husband's life on the line, Kate had made it a point to study the risk associated with the increasing use of NVGs in military aviation. One analysis found that 43 percent of class A accidents due to spatial disorientation occurred during NVG flights. Another concluded that NVG operations increased the risk of spatial disorientation by almost five times.

The fact that this supersecret modification Ellis's company had developed for the special ops 130s involved night flying brought her old fears flooding back. Suddenly, the familiar surroundings of a busy air force base didn't seem nearly as welcoming or comfortable. Nor could she feel quite the same excitement about Travis's prospective new job. Not if it put him back in the cockpit, racking up hours under the same—or even more—dangerous conditions.

She was struggling with that sobering thought when they pulled up to a two-story building. A sign in English, Italian and French indicated it served as the NATO Joint Special Operations Center. Just inside the JSOC was a reception desk. Travis fished in his wallet for a green proximity access badge that contained his photo and several lines of bar code. After scanning it at the desk, he requested a visitor's badge for Kate. Once she'd produced the requested two forms of ID and looked into a camera's unblinking eye, she was issued a temporary pass. Travis clipped it to the neck of her tank top and guided her to a small visitors' lounge.

“Hang loose for a few moments. I'll check to see if Carlo has finished his debrief.”

A set of double doors controlled access to the rest of the building. Travis waved his proxi badge a few inches from the scanner mounted beside the doors and disappeared. While he was gone, Kate took advantage of the unisex bathroom to comb her wind-tossed hair and reapply some lip gloss. She was back in the reception area, waiting, when the doors to the controlled area swished open.

Travis reappeared, accompanied by two men in flight suits. One was almost as tall as Travis. The other was shorter, stockier and brimming with energy.

“Ciao, Caterina!”

Carlo di Lorenzo, prince of Lombard and Marino, swept across the reception area. His dark eyes were merry above the black handlebar mustache that bristled from cheek to cheek.

“I cannot tell you how happy I am to finally meet the beautiful wife Travis speaks of so often!”

Chapter Eleven

K
ate wasn't exactly up on the protocol for greeting Italian royalty. The prince solved her dilemma by extending his hand as he strode toward her. She offered hers, anticipating a polite shake. Instead he caught it in a warm clasp, bowed at the waist and raised it to his lips. At the last second, though, he angled her wrist so his lips grazed her palm. The kiss was warm, moist and disconcertingly intimate.

Startled, Kate blinked down at the merest hint of a bald spot showing through his curly black hair and almost jerked her hand free. But when he raised his head, the mischief dancing in his dark eyes invited her to share in what he obviously considered a great joke.

“You did not exaggerate,” he said over his shoulder to Travis. “She is indeed
bellissima
.”

Bellissima
or not, Kate gave her hand a deliberate tug. The prince released it with a dramatic sigh. “Why is it always my misfortune to fall instantly in love with other men's wives?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” Travis drawled. “Now stop pawing the woman and introduce her to your shadow.”

Their bantering wiped out most of Kate's surprise at the prince's too-personal kiss. When she turned to the man who'd accompanied the prince, though, the angry red scar slashing the left side of his face almost threw her off balance again. She couldn't
not
look at it, since it carved a jagged line from his cheek to his chin. But after that first instinctive glance, she locked her eyes on his. Smoky gray and keenly intelligent, they acknowledged her swift recovery as the prince made introductions.

“Caterina, please allow me to present Joe Russo, who refuses to allow me to address him as Giuseppe. He and his men watch my back while I am here at Aviano. Even,” he said with another exaggerated sigh, “when I would much prefer they discreetly disappear for a few hours.”

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Signora Westbrook.”

Like the man he guarded, Russo was zipped into an air force flight suit. Unlike his boss's, however, it molded a lean, muscular frame. Also unlike the prince's, Russo's uniform bore no rank, no flag, no identifying insignia of any kind. Nor did his deep voice give any clue to his nationality. Kate thought she detected a faint accent buried in there somewhere but couldn't pin it down to a country or even a continent.

“You must tell me how your friends enjoyed Tuscany,” the prince said, reclaiming her attention.

“Enormously! I can't thank you enough for putting your villa at their disposal.”

“I'm sorry they couldn't stay longer. I had thought to fly down to Siena this weekend and perhaps show them the city. From what Travis has told me, they are almost as charming and beautiful as you. And,” he added with a sly smile, “I understand that one of them, a redhead, I think he said, can be a very lively companion.”

Kate shot her husband a nasty look over the prince's head. Travis held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “Sorry. Carlo's a master at interrogation techniques.”

Of course he was. Special ops had elevated extracting information from reluctant sources into an art form.

“Let me guess,” she retorted. “This particular interrogation was conducted after a mission debrief. At a local bar. With several bottles of beer to loosen tongues.”

“But no, Caterina.” The prince actually managed to appear hurt. “It was at my quarters, with several bottles of wine from my family's vineyard. Which brings me back to your friend. She's in Venice now, isn't she?”

So much for the fantasies Kate had woven earlier this morning about hooking Callie up with the prince. He appeared to be as interested in Dawn sight unseen as Brian Ellis had been at first sight. Burying the thought that both men stood to get burned, Kate answered with a brisk “She is.”

“Then perhaps I shall have a drive down to Venice later this afternoon. What do you say, Joe? Are you up for a little R & R?”

“Always. Just give me time to get some men in place and conduct a sweep.”

“Of course. Now, Caterina, would you care to meet my crew?”

“If it's okay,” she said with a dubious glance at the heavy doors.

“We've finished our debrief. All classified materials are locked securely away.”

“Then yes, I'd very much like to meet your crew.”

“Bene!”
With a gallant gesture, he ushered her to the access point and waved his badge at the scanner.

“Aviano is not our primary operating locale, you understand. Normally we are based at Furbara, outside Rome, which is home to Italy's Special Forces Operations Command. Our detachment here is small, but we are mighty.” A smug smile creased his face, burying his upper lip under the thick mustache. “Did Travis tell you the Seventeenth Raiders have logged almost as many combat hours in Afghanistan and Iraq as their British and American counterparts?”

“He neglected that small detail.”

“And the mission three months ago? Did he tell you about that?”

“No.”

“It was bad,” Carlo recounted, his face turning grim as he escorted her down a tiled hallway. “Very bad. A special mission to rescue a news crew taken hostage by Boko Haram.”

“I didn't know the US participated in that rescue.”

It shouldn't have surprised her. An online article she'd read recently claimed that in 2014 US Special Forces had conducted ops in more than 133 countries—almost 70 percent of the nations in the world. Given the clandestine nature, most Americans had no idea of either their scope or their danger.

Travis replied with a shrug and his usual reticence. “It was a multinational op.”

The prince was more expansive. “The African jungle is a bitch...
Scusami!
A bear to operate in. The airstrip we flew into was little more than a hacked-out field, and the rebels were more heavily armed than our intel had indicated. They overran the airfield, and we had to use all our firepower to hold them off so the ground team could scramble aboard with the rescued newsmen.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at his bodyguard. “Joe earned his pay that day. Your husband, too, Caterina. I would be monkey bait if not for them.”

That explained the loan of the Ferrari and the Tuscan villa, Kate thought as they made their way down the hall lined with dramatic black-and-white photos of helicopters and various fixed-wing aircraft in action.

“We learned much on that particular op, Travis and I. That's why we are together again, here at Aviano, to test the modification Brian's company has developed for our aircraft. But enough of such grim matters,” the prince said with a dismissive wave. “Prepare to meet my crew, the meanest and ugliest in the sky.”

Kate didn't question the “mean” part, but the copilot, combat systems officer and two loadmasters Carlo introduced her to were anything but ugly. One of the loadmasters, in fact, could have modeled for Michelangelo's
David
. His hair was short and curly, his features classically Italian, and his smile could make angels sigh.

As with most NATO crews, they were fluent in English and French as well as their native Italian. They were also not the least bit inhibited when it came to recounting what Kate suspected were highly embellished tales. They couldn't talk classified missions, of course, but their accounts of some of the humanitarian missions they'd participated in left Kate helpless with laughter. The one where they'd rescued an
extremely
unhappy bull from raging floodwaters was her favorite. Then there was the time they'd received the wrong coordinates for an airdrop and sent several members of a ranger squad parachuting through the roof of a bordello. Evidently it was several hours before the rangers finally made it to their designated recovery zone.

The prince played a central role in each hilarious account. And with each tale, Kate's impressions of Carlo di Lorenzo took on new and varying hues. There was the generous friend who'd gone all out to aid Travis in his campaign to reconnect with his wife, the playboy prince depicted in the media, the short, stumpy fireplug who was light-years away from the stereotypical image of a hotshot special ops combat pilot. And now the squadron leader who commanded the bone-deep respect of his men.

Even the enigmatic Joe Russo seemed to hold him in high regard. The bodyguard stood off to one side, arms crossed over his chest and a small smile tugging at his lips as he listened to the ribald accounts.

By now Kate had figured out that Russo's unmarked flight suit slotted him into one of three categories. He could belong to the Italian counterpart of the US Delta Force. They, too, wore no identifying national insignia so—at least according to Travis—the government could deny all knowledge of their existence if one of their highly classified ops went bad.

Or Russo and his team might be civilians, astronomically paid security forces employed by companies like the one formerly known as Blackwater. The prince could be paying Joe's parent company megabucks for a more ruthless level of protection than that provided by conventional forces.

Or Russo and his men could be operating on their own. True mercenaries who hired their guns out to the highest bidder and...

An unexpected arrival interrupted her musings. To the delight of the assembled gathering, Brian Ellis appeared in the doorway.

“I got run out of Dodge,” he related with a shamefaced grin. “After I checked on Mrs. Wells this morning and finalized arrangements for her flight home tomorrow, my son announced that he and his new nanny had plans that didn't include me.”

“Did they include Callie?” Kate wanted to know.

“No. She said she was going to take in a museum. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, I think it was.”

“An excellent choice,” the prince commented. “The Guggenheim Collection is one of the best in the world of works by twentieth-century European and American artists. You must see it while you are in Venice, Caterina.”

Kate nodded, her mind pinwheeling with thoughts of Dawn on her own with the lively six-year-old. Resolutely, she put them aside. Despite her friend's occasionally flippant approach to life and love, she was rock solid in every way that counted.

“Actually,” Ellis was saying to the prince, “I drove up hoping to catch the debrief from your flight this morning.”

“We've just finished, but we would be happy to share the results with you. And with you, Travis, if your charming wife would excuse us for a few moments.”

“Sure.” She guessed it would take longer than a few moments but didn't want to stand in the way of anything that might get Travis home sooner than he anticipated. “I'll wait in the reception area.”

“Or,” her husband suggested, “you could take the car and swing by the base exchange in case you need to stock up on shampoo or stuff.”

Kate started to reply that the luxury hotels where they'd been staying kept her well supplied with stuff, but she couldn't resist the idea of getting behind the wheel of the Ferrari.

“You don't mind trusting me with your car?” she asked the prince.

His Adam's apple took a quick bob, but he responded with a gallant “Of course not.”

She hid a grin at his barely disguised chauvinism and claimed the keys from Travis.

“Just be back by four. Don't forget I need to swing by the force-support squadron.”

The quiet reminder put a bump in her pulse.
Force support
was an umbrella term for the unit that provided such varied services as billeting, child development centers, recreational facilities, education programs, the base honor guard and the office that managed military and civilian personnel matters. With a few clicks of a keyboard, an airman or sergeant working in the military personnel branch would submit the request to terminate Travis's military career.

“You sure force support is open on Saturdays?”

Stupid question, Kate realized as soon as it was out of her mouth. With the Thirty-First Fighter Wing flying around-the-clock sorties against ISIS in Syria and other hot spots, its support units would maintain at least a skeleton crew 24/7.

“I called before we left Venice and made an appointment,” Travis confirmed. He took a moment, drew a breath and turned to the prince. “Brian knows, so I guess I should tell you, too. I'm putting in a request to separate from active duty as soon as we complete this project.”

Shock made Carlo's mouth go slack under his mustache. “But...but you cannot!”

“Yeah, I can. I've already talked to my boss back in the States. It's a done deal.”

“So undo it,” the prince urged. “You have the best hands on the stick, the coolest head of any NATO pilot I've flown with. You will make colonel well ahead of your peers. General! Surely you don't want to give up those stars.”

“Some things are a whole lot more important than rank.”

“Pah! You say that now but...”

“It's done, Carlo.”

The finality of the reply cut through the air like a blade. The prince clamped his mouth shut but shot a quick glance at Kate. Although he didn't say anything, she felt the weight of his unspoken disapproval as Brian Ellis stepped into the breach.

“You're looking at EAS's new VP for test operations and evaluations, Carlo. I can't tell you how excited I am to have someone with Travis's experience joining our team. Especially if tests validate the project we're currently working on and the mod goes into full development.”

The prince took the less-than-subtle hint and snapped back to business. “We're almost there. Joe, will you escort Signora Westbrook out?”

Signora Westbrook
, Kate noted. Not
Caterina
.

After saying goodbye to the members of Carlo's crew, she left with Joe Russo. They retraced their steps down the tiled corridor in silence for a few moments. Then curiosity got the better of her.