Halloween Honeymoon Read online

  “Let’s Get One Thing Straight. Married Or Not, I Don’t Intend To Get Naked And Play Bride And Groom With You.”

  Josh smiled. “Fair enough. And I’ll try not to play ravishing pirate to your outraged captive.”

  A tide of pink rose from Cari’s shoulders to her neck to her cheeks. But she still answered him bluntly. “Try hard, Mr. Keegan. Try very hard.”

  “We’re on our honeymoon, remember? Don’t you think you should call me Josh?”

  “I can think of several things I’d like to call you.” She shot him a straight look. “Please don’t make this situation worse by turning on the charm. I don’t know how to handle it…or you.”

  “I’d say you handle both pretty well,” he replied.

  Dear Reader,

  This month, we begin HOLIDAY HONEYMOONS, a wonderful new cross-line continuity series written by two of your favorites—Merline Lovelace and Carole Buck. The series begins in October with Merline’s Halloween Honeymoon. Then, once a month right through February, look for holiday love stories by Merline and Carole—in Desire for November, Intimate Moments for December, back to Desire in January and concluding in Intimate Moments for Valentine’s Day. Sound confusing? It’s not—we’ll keep you posted as the series continues…and I personally guarantee that these books are keepers!

  And there are other goodies in store for you. Don’t miss the fun as Cathie Linz’s delightful series THREE WEDDINGS AND A GIFT continues with Seducing Hunter. And Lass Small’s MAN OF THE MONTH, The Texas Blue Norther, is simply scrumptious.

  Those of you who want an ultrasensuous love story need look no further than The Sex Test by Patty Salier. She’s part of our WOMEN TO WATCH program highlighting brand-new writers. Waming: this book is HOT!

  Readers who can’t get enough of cowboys shouldn’t miss Anne Marie Winston’s Rancher’s Baby. And if you’re partial to a classic amnesia story (as I certainly am!), be sure to read Barbara McCauley’s delectable Midnight Bride.

  And, as always, I’m here to listen to you—so don’t be afraid to write and tell me your thoughts about Desire!

  Until next month,

  Senior Editor

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  Halloween

  Honeymoon

  Merline

  Lovelace

  Books by Merline Lovelace

  Silhouette Desire

  Dreams and Schemes #872

  *Halloween Honeymoon #1030

  *Holiday Honeymoons

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Somewhere in Time #593

  †Night of the Jaguar #637

  †The Cowboy and the Cossack #657

  †Undercover Man #669

  †Perfect Double #692

  †Code Name: Danger

  MERLINE LOVELACE,

  after serving twenty-three exciting, adventure-filled years as an officer in the United States Air Force, retired and began a second, equally exciting career as a romance novelist. She and her husband, who also retired from the Air Force and has since begun his own second career as an antique dealer, love travel, antiquing and golf—not necessarily in that order!

  Halloween Honeymoon is the first in the fun-filled, five-book HOLIDAY HONEYMOONS series. Watch for the next book in the series, Thanksgiving Honeymoon, coming next month from Silhouette Desire.

  Merline enjoys hearing from readers and can be reached at P.O. Box 892717, Oklahoma City, OK 73189.

  To Merl, who convinced Al and me to take up the sport of kings almost ten years ago. Thanks, Dad, for all those wonderful hours in the sun and the fresh air, chasing silly white balls in and out of sand traps.

  Prologue

  “Hey, Lucy, wait till you take a look-see at the prize package I put together for the Halloween Charity Ball tonight.”

  Lucy Falco, office manager of Gulliver’s Travels, glanced up from her blinking computer screen at the agency’s newest employee. A short-order cook turned used-car salesman turned travel agent, Jim Burns had proved to be enthusiastic, and surprisingly adept at his new career.

  “What do you have?” she asked, smiling.

  “It’s a honey of a deal.” Eagerly he passed her a glossy brochure. “I convinced the owner of the Nautilus III to give us the VIP suite for a ten-day cruise.”

  Lucy’s dark brows lifted as she stared at a color photo of a sleek, incredibly sybaritic white yacht anchored in a turquoise bay fringed with feathery green palms.

  “I don’t know, Jim,” she said doubtfully. “Even at a substantial discount, this package has got to be more than the target the boss set for our donation.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s less than half.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “The owner’s hoping to expand and needs referrals. Look, here’s the fax from him confirming the offer.”

  Drawn by his excitement, several of the other agents crowded around while Lucy studied the confirmation from the owner and skipper of the Nautilus III. As Jim had stated, the figures for the cruise package were amazingly low.

  Too low.

  “There’s got to be a catch,” Lucy murmured, frowning as she studied the figures with serious brown eyes.

  “No, it’s all here in black and white. The package includes airfare to Miami, luxury accommodations and all meals.”

  Another agent, with a wild mane of silvery-white curls, a smooth complexion that belied her sixty-plus years and the impossible name of Tiffany Tarrington Toulouse, beamed at her fellow employee.

  “What a coup, Jim! Mr. Gulliver will be so pleased. He was one of the original organizers of this charity ball in support of the Special Olympics. He always wants our contribution to be extraspecial.”

  Her mascaraed eyes rounded as she studied the brochure Lucy passed her. “Good heavens, this yacht is twice the size of my house. And look at the Jacuzzi on the sun deck. Whoever takes this prize package home tonight is going to be one lucky person!”

  One

  Cari O’Donnell placed her skull-shaped mug of gruesome green punch on a tray stand and edged behind a pillar. Turning her back on the noisy, costumed crowd filling the ballroom of Atlanta’s Doubletree Hotel, she grasped the edge of her bodice and tugged it up.

  Or tried to.

  The darned thing wouldn’t budge.

  Cari let out as much of a sigh as the constrictive bodice would allow. Here she’d been so thrilled to actually wear the lavish costume she’d constructed in such exact detail as part of her doctoral research! The black velvet gown featured a low, square-cut neckline, puffed, slashed sleeves, and a full skirt draped over an oblong hoop. To add to the gold lace trim edging the front, she’d draped a long rope of faux pearls around her neck and and loaded her fingers with rings. As a final touch, she’d moussed her flyaway bangs straight back from her forehead and pinned up her shoulder-length honey-colored hair in a style right out of the sixteenth century. In her professional opinion, she looked gloriously Elizabethan.

  Unfortunately, she hadn’t been able to take a full breath since she’d hooked herself into the darn dress. The board-stiff bodice flattened the bottom halves of her breasts into thin pancakes and plumped the top halves to high, quivering mounds. She’d spent her entire time at the party maneuvering her wide skirts through the crowd and worrying that she’d pop right out of the lung-compressing bodice. What was more, she wasn’t used to the kind of sidelong masculine glances her dramatic cleavage had been snaring.

  The next time she attended a costume ball, Cari thought wryly, she’d opt for comfort instead of historical accuracy.
She gave the bodice another futile yank.

  “Need some help?”

  The deep, roguish drawl just behind her left shoulder brought Cari spinning around—not a wise move for a woman wearing four-inch-high platform shoes modeled after their sixteenth-century counterparts. Tilting crazily, she lost her balance and tumbled into two quickly outstretched arms.

  They folded around her, bringing her up against a broad expanse of bare chest. Cari clutched at firm, well-muscled arms, covered in soft white cotton, afraid to move. She had no idea what might have become dislodged in her sudden movement, and wasn’t quite ready to find out. She leaned against the solid chest wall for a few moments, wrinkling her nose as a tuft of dark, springy hair tickled it.

  The well-muscled torso under her cheek told Cari instantly whose arms she’d fallen into. She’d noticed only one bare-chested pirate among the throngs of Draculas and masked Zorros and Headless Horsemen at the Halloween Charity Ball. She’d also noticed the six feet or more of throat-closing, heartstopping masculinity that went with the eye patch and billowing white shirt open to the waist.

  Cari might have sworn off any involvement with the male of the species for the foreseeable future, but she wasn’t nerve-dead from the neck down—contrary to her ex-fiancé’s snide remark during their last, stormy encounter! She was woman enough to recognize a superb biological specimen when she saw one.

  Or felt one.

  Her heart thumping, she tilted her head back and stared up into a tanned, outrageously handsome face topped by wavy dark hair. One hazel eye gleamed down at her wickedly. The other—also hazel, she had to assume—was covered by the black patch.

  Oh, God, he was as incredible close up as he’d appeared when she first spotted him across the crowded ballroom. A modern-day pirate to his teeth, despite his hopelessly inaccurate costume. If she’d been capable of speech at that moment, Cari could have told him that tight black pants and this revealing white shirt constituted a Hollywood image of the brethren that had little basis in historical fact. But this man didn’t require a costume to qualify for the brotherhood of rogues. His slashing grin and that wicked glint in his eye were all the credentials he needed.

  Cari knew who he was, of course. She’d recognized him the moment he strolled into the ballroom. So had every other woman at the ball. Josh Keegan. Atlanta’s homegrown and most popular celebrity. Pro golfer and dedicated bachelor, who thoroughly enjoyed his freewheeling life-style, if the many stories printed about him in the tabloids were to be believed.

  A historian by inclination and profession, Cari knew little about sports and nothing at all about golf. Her only contact with athletes were the jocks in the freshman Western Civ course she taught. Had taught, she corrected, remembering her currently unemployed status with a slight grimace.

  Yet even historians had to stand in line at the grocery store. Over the past few years, the supermarket gossip sheets had regularly splashed Josh Keegan’s handsome face and athletic form across their front pages—usually with a different female draped over his arm or staring up adoringly at him.

  The same tabloids had gone wild over Keegan’s injury a few months ago. Huge headlines had speculated about whether the ball that sliced out of the woods, shattered his sunglasses and drove shards of plastic into his left eye had been hit by another golfer, a jealous husband or a malevolent supernatural force. Whatever or whoever had propelled the missile, the resulting injury had left Josh Keegan with an eye patch that only added to his rakish air and bad-boy charm.

  A charm he now turned up to its full megawatt power. His mouth, only inches from Cari’s own, tilted lazily. White teeth gleamed against skin tanned to a polished oak.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you okay?”

  Swallowing, she eased away from his chest the merest fraction and glanced down. She was still in her gown. More or less.

  “Yes,” she replied in relief. “I’m fine.”

  She pulled back a little more, only to halt abruptly as the gold lace at the lower edge of her V-shaped bodice snagged on his elaborate belt buckle. Instinctively she canted her hips into his to keep from tearing the rare antique trim.

  At her movement, his grin deepened. The potent impact of that all male smile collapsed Cari’s lungs. Or maybe it was the way his hands roamed her velvetcovered spine that drove the air completely out of her. Or her too-tight bodice. At this point, all she knew was that her respiratory system had completely shut down.

  “I, uh, think we’re caught,” she got out somehow.

  “I think you are.”

  There was no mistaking the suggestive glint in his eye. Flustered, Cari leaned away from him.

  “Careful,” he cautioned. “You’ll tear it.”

  Shifting slightly, he settled her more firmly between his muscular thighs—no mean trick, considering the fact that the oblong cage supporting her skirt was almost a yard wide. With the movement, her hoop dipped down in front and rose up in back. Cool air washed against Cari’s calves above her twentieth-century knee-highs. The thought of someone noticing her costuming anachronism flustered her as much as being pressed so intimately against Josh Keegan’s groin.

  Ha! Who was she kidding?

  “I hate to be the one to break it to you, Scarlett,” he drawled, amusement lacing his deep voice as he took in the hump of material rising behind her, “but your hoop’s all bent out of shape. It’s a lot wider than it is round.”

  “It’s supposed to be. It’s a farthingale.”

  “You could have fooled me.”

  The teasing note in his voice sent tiny ripples of pleasure across Cari’s bare skin. She wet her lips, totally disconcerted by his effect on her.

  “It’s not a hoopskirt such as women wore in the antebellum South,” she explained. “This style originated at the court of Castile in the late 1400s.”

  His amusement deepened as his gaze swept her exaggerated width. “Leave it to the folks who invented the Inquisition to come up with something like this to protect their ladies’ virtue.”

  “Actually,” Cari replied, squirming a bit, “Queen Juana designed it to disguise a pregnancy from her incapacitated husband, Enrique V.”

  He eyed the hooped material with new respect. “No kidding?”

  She should have expected Josh Keegan to appreciate that bit of historical trivia. By all accounts, Queen Juana’s reputation for playing the field paled beside his.

  “No kidding,” she replied.

  Cari couldn’t quite believe she was tethered to a man most women would pay dearly to be tied to, carrying on a conversation about hooped skirts. Gingerly she leaned as far back in his arms as she could without tearing the fragile lace.

  “If you’ll hold still a moment, I’ll disengage.”

  “I’ll do my best, sweetheart.”

  Ignoring both his easy familiarity and the way his gaze lingered on her décolletage, she slid her hands between their bodies. At the brush of her knuckles against his warm skin, his stomach hollowed.

  Cari’s lurched.

  This was ridiculous, she told herself sternly, fumbling with the lace snagged on his belt buckle. Not three months ago, she’d plopped her engagement ring and her resignation on her fiancé’s desk, then walked out of his office. She’d been subsisting on her savings since then, burying herself in her research while she waited to hear about the grant she’d applied for from the Atlanta History Center.

  She hadn’t come up for air in weeks. She certainly wouldn’t have attended this elegant charity ball, where the price of admission was more than she earned in a week—used to earn!—if she hadn’t served as a volunteer coordinator for the Special Olympics this summer and received a free ticket in the mail. The chance to dress up for a few hours in the gown she’d copied in such excruciating detail had been too delicious to resist.

  Dressing up was one thing, however. Standing here while a modern-day pirate undressed her with his eyes was something else again.

  She had no business goin
g all weak-kneed and breathless over a male, even if this one was as different from her former fiancé as sinfully rich chocolate was from fat-free, cholesterol-free rice cakes. Trying not to touch any more of the warm, leathery skin of his stomach than she had to, Cari worried the lace to free it from the ornate buckle.

  “Suck it in,” she ordered, nibbling on her lower lip in concentration.

  The golden skin under her hands rippled with laughter. “It’s in as far as it will go. I’m a little out of shape these days.”

  If he was out of shape, Cari thought, every other man in the room was in serious trouble.

  “I’ve almost got it, Mr. Keegan. Just hold still a moment.”

  “You know who I am?”

  His breath washed against her cheek, warm and husky with the scent of the rum or whiskey or whatever had been used to spike the bubbling green punch.

  “Doesn’t everyone?” Cari returned, concentrating on her task. “Your picture’s on every ad and poster advertising this charity ball. You are the celebrity host of this event, after all.”

  “Right, that’s me. The celebrity host.”

  The strange catch in his words made her glance up. Before she could decide what might have caused it, another voice carried over the noise of the crowd.

  “Hey, Josh, I’ve been looking all over the place for you.”

  “Go away, Oglethorpe.”