BRANDED BY A CALLAHAN by Tina Leonard Page B

said, struck by the sudden thought that maybe he was in the wrong place. Heck, he was a traveling man—he could go where she wanted to.
    “Dante,” Ana said slowly, “I tried on the magic wedding dress that your aunt Fiona—”
    “I knew it!” Dante turned to stare at her. “You were crying when you left the house the other day! Because you’d tried on that thing!”
    “I wasn’t crying exactly—”
    “I know, I know, bodyguards don’t cry. Okay, so you had sun in your eye. What happened up in that attic? Because when I went up there, everything looked just fine to me.” At least for a couple of minutes, anyway. But he wasn’t about to share that. “So you actually put the dress on?”
    She nodded, and his face split into a grin. “You like me, Ana St. John, you’re crazy about me, and you want me like chocolate cake. You wouldn’t have been trying out the fit of the magic wedding dress if you weren’t thinking about me.”
    Ana looked away. “It’s not very gentlemanly for a man to crow about a woman’s feelings.”
    “Oh, I’m crowing, all right. I’m going to crow louder.” He pulled her into his lap, kissing her until she was breathless. “You’re just dragging this out. I am your knight in shining armor, and I think you know it.”
    She moved back out of his lap. “Actually, you’re not, Dante. I didn’t see you when I put the gown on.”
    “Of course you didn’t, doll. I didn’t go up there until you’d left.” He saw no problem with that whatsoever. “But if I’d known you wanted me around, I’d sure have been there.” He frowned, struck by a thought. “I thought it was bad luck for a man to see a woman in a wedding gown. There’s some superstition about that. I think it’s like a black cat crossing your path. You don’t want to see a woman in a wedding dress, at least if you’re a die-hard bachelor. I believe that if you see a bride, you might end up with one.” He considered the notion. “Of course, I’m okay with that. I don’t believe much in magic and superstition, and elves and gnomes and fairies and things.”
    She shook her head at him. “You don’t understand. I didn’t see you.”
    Oh . She was trying to tell him this was about her and not him. He supposed he was a bit of an attention hog; he’d been trying to figure out the wedding gown thing from the guy’s perspective. “Like I said, I wasn’t there. But if you want to put it on again, like, next Saturday, I’ll be there with my best jeans and dress jacket on.” He was pretty hopeful he could convince her. She belonged to him, and vice versa, he just had to close the deal. Wipe away whatever cute little female worries and oogie-boogies were bugging her. It was the man’s role, and he was good at that. “So, Saturday? We can send the jet for your family. I heard my cousin Rafe just updated his aircraft.”
    This was easier than he’d thought it was going to be. If all she was worked up about was the gown, they could fix that. He’d thought it was the baby-making problem—and if that had been her issue, he’d been prepared to do a little bargaining.
    She put her palms on either side of his face and stared into his eyes. “Dante, the legend of the magic wedding dress is that a woman is supposed to see the man of her dreams, the only man for her, when she puts it on.”
    He took her hands in his, kissed them, thinking madly. Okay, now he had a problem because he hadn’t heard that angle. “That’s just some of Fiona’s mumbo jumbo.” But he wasn’t certain. The damn dress had disappeared from his hands. He couldn’t dismiss that. “I wouldn’t worry your pretty head about that if I was you.”
    She gave him a look of disgust. “I’m not worrying my pretty head, thank you. You’re doing all the worrying. What I’m telling you is that you are not my prince.”
    “Huh. I swear I never thought a woman would ever say that to me.” He didn’t like it, either. “And to think I thought