The Merciless Travis Wilde

Chapter FIVE



TRAVIS’S WEEK PASSED quickly.

Three days in Frankfurt and a last-minute, two-day stopover in London.

Success in each place, agreements negotiated and concluded. He felt great about it—victory was always sweet—but something was missing.

He couldn’t get the woman out of his head.

And it made no sense.

Yes, the sex had been good. Great, when you came down to it. Not because she’d been a virgin but because she’d been—she’d been so sweet. So honest...

Except, she was neither of those things.

Not really.

Sweet? A woman who walked into a bar, looking for a hookup?

Honest? A woman who let a man find out she was a virgin when it was too late to change his mind?

And he would have changed it.

Of course, he would.

A man didn’t want the responsibility of taking a woman’s innocence...

Her wonderful innocence.

And, hell, what was that all about? He was not, never had been one of those smug fools who thought a guy was entitled to bed everything in sight, but a woman should live like a nun.

Apparently, Genevieve had.

Until last Friday night.

And then she’d given herself to a man.

To him.

Except, he could have been anybody. That she’d walked into that bar at the right moment had been pure chance.

She hadn’t chosen him, she’d stumbled across him.

“Stop it,” he muttered, as he sat in the comfort of his private jet, flying high above the Atlantic.

The world was filled with women, beautiful, available women.

What he needed was to call one of them, take her for drinks and dinner.

Good plan.

But it could wait until he was home.

There was no rush.

It was Friday again, they’d land in a few hours, and he could think of half a dozen women who’d drop any plans to spend an evening with him.

Hey, if a man couldn’t be honest with himself, who could he be honest with?

* * *

Still, he didn’t reach for his cell phone when he got to his condo.

He was travel-weary; even the comfort of a private jet didn’t make up for things like time zone changes. So he undressed, showered, put on a pair of old gym shorts, opened a chilled Deep Ellum IPA and took it out to the terrace, where he sank down in a lounger.

It was the kind of day Dallas rarely saw in midsummer: warm but not hot, no humidity, the sun shining from the kind of perfect blue sky he’d always associated with home.

Funny.

He’d flown fighters through equally blue skies, under the kiss of an equally hot sun, in places that were just unpronounceable names on a map to most people but those skies, that sun, had always seemed alien, as if he’d gone to sleep at home one night and awakened the next morning in a world that made no sense.

Travis lifted the bottle of ale to his lips and took a long, cooling swallow.

He knew that his brothers, who had also served their country, felt the same.

The wars of the last couple of decades had been very different from the ones their father had talked about when they were growing up.

The old man was a general. Four stars, all rules, regs, spit and polish. He’d raised them on tales of heroism that went back centuries—“The blood of valiant warriors flows in your veins, gentlemen,” he’d say—and on stories of their more recent ancestors, men who’d battled their way across the Western plains and settled in what eventually had become Texas, where they’d founded El Sueño, the family ranch—if you could call a half a million acre kingdom a “ranch.”

Problem was, their father’s stories didn’t seem to apply to the realities of the twenty-first century, but at least they’d all come home again, if not quite the same way they’d left.

Jake had been wounded in battle, Caleb had been scarred by the dark machinations of an agency nobody talked about.

He’d got off lucky.

No wounds. No scars...

Suddenly he thought back a few years, to a woman he’d dated for a while after he’d come home.

Actually she’d been a shrink with enough initials after her name to fill out the alphabet.

She’d said he had a problem.

He couldn’t connect emotionally, she said, and even though she’d sounded angry, she’d sighed and kissed him, and told him she could hear her internal clock ticking and it was time she found a man who wasn’t just willing to take risks skydiving and flying and doing who in hell knew what else, it was time to find one ready to risk everything by committing to a relationship.

Travis took another mouthful of ale.

Then she told him she knew he couldn’t help it, that he almost surely had PTSD.

But he didn’t.

He hadn’t bothered telling her that.

After all, she was a shrink and painfully certain that she knew all there was to know about the human psyche but the simple truth was, he’d come through two wars—Afghanistan and Iraq—just fine. No physical injuries, no Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

A few bad dreams, maybe.

Okay, maybe nightmares, was more like it.

But he’d survive them.

He’d survived nightmares just as bad, the ones that had almost drowned him in despair when he was little and his mother left him.

Travis frowned.

Hell.

She hadn’t left him. She’d died. Not her fault. Not anybody’s fault. And he’d come through it, gathered himself up, moved on.

One thing a man learned in life.

It wasn’t smart to become dependent on another human being.

To get emotionally involved, the way he’d done last week, with Blondie...

“Dammit,” he said.

He hadn’t gotten involved. Neither had she. Wasn’t that the point? That she’d picked him to take her to bed instead of wanting him to do it...

And why was he wasting time, thinking about her? Why was she still in his head at all?

Travis finished the ale, got to his feet and headed inside.

He didn’t need a date.

He needed a reality check, and what could be better for that than a couple of hours spent with his brothers?

He made a three-way call, got Jake and Caleb talking. After a couple of minutes of bull, he pointed out that it was Friday night.

“I always told you he was brilliant,” Jake said solemnly.

“Yeah,” Caleb said. “I bet he even knows the month and the year.”

Travis ignored the horseplay.

“So are you two up for it? Can you get away for the evening?”

“Get away?” Caleb snorted. “Of course.” And then he must have covered the phone because they heard him say, in a muffled voice, “Honey? You okay with me spending some time tonight with Trav and Jake?”

Travis snickered. Jake didn’t. He just said getting together sounded good to him.

“You don’t want to check with Addison?” Travis said blandly.

“Why would I?” Jake said, bristling, and then he cleared his throat and said Addison was meeting with her book club tonight anyway, so—

“So,” Travis said, reminded once again, as if he needed reminding, of yet another reason why “commitment” was never going to be a word in his vocabulary, “where do you want to meet?”

Jake named a couple of places. Caleb said why didn’t they try someplace different? A client had told him good things about a new place that had opened in the Arts District.

“Local beers, good wine list, great steaks, music up front but booths in the back where, he says, you can actually hear yourself carry on a conversation.”

“Won’t it be overrun by university types?” Jake said. “You know, alfalfa sprouts, folk music, T-shirts that read, Schopenhauer Was Right?”

His brothers chuckled.

“Not if my client likes the place,” Caleb said. “His brand of philosophy leans more toward Charlie Brown than Schopenhauer.”

They all laughed. Then Jake said, “Okay. Let’s try it. Eight? That okay?”

It was perfect, Travis assured them, and he found himself whistling as he headed for the shower.

* * *

Jake got there before the others.

He snagged a booth with a crisp fifty dollar bill and when he saw Travis come through the door, he got to his feet and signaled.

“Caleb’s client got it wrong,” he said. “If it were winter, the amount of tweed in this place would keep us warm straight through until spring.”

“Yeah,” Travis said, “I noticed. There’s some kind of party up front, lots of skinny guys with beards and women with hair under their arms.”

Jake laughed. “You always did have a way with words, but what the hell, we’re here. And I just saw a platter of rib-eyes go by.”

“Always knew you understood the basics,” Travis said solemnly. He cocked his head. “Married life agrees with you, buddy. It’s made you less ugly, anyway.”

Jake grinned and they exchanged quick bear hugs.

“A fine compliment, coming from you, considering everybody says we look like two peas in a pod.”

“Three peas,” Caleb said, as he joined them. More quick embraces, a few jabs in the shoulder, and then the brothers slid into the booth.

“How’d the trip to Germany go?”

“Great. I closed one hell of a deal.”

“Perfect,” Jake told Caleb. “He’s handsome, like us. And modest, too. What a guy.”

“And your love life?” Caleb said. “How’s that going?”

Travis looked at him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Caleb raised an eyebrow.

“It means,” he said with deliberate care, “how’s your love life going?”

“It’s going fine.”

Jake laughed. “Hey, man. It’s not a trick question. Our ladies are certain to ask.”

Travis let out a long breath.

“Yeah. Okay. Sorry. I guess I’m still jet-lagged.”

“Nobody special yet?”

“No,” Travis said evenly. “But you know what I think about this line of questioning?” He sat forward, eyes narrowed. “I think—”

“What I think,” Caleb said lazily, “is that we’d better decide what we’re having, ’cause here comes our waitress.”

Their orders were identical.

Porterhouse steaks, baked potatoes with butter, sour cream and chives.

“And an extra-large basket of fried onion rings,” Travis said.

“Of course,” Jake said, his lips twitching. “Every meal should include a vegetable.”

Two beers, an ale for Travis.

The waitress brought those right away, along with a bowl of cashews.

They all dug in, drank, munched, talked about guy stuff.

Travis started to relax.

Why had he reacted so negatively to a simple question? It didn’t make sense.

Talk helped.

Everyday stuff. Baseball, still going strong. Football, coming up soon. Jake’s progress in remodeling the house and sprawling ranch that adjoined El Sueño. Caleb and his wife’s search for a house and land of their own, and the news that ten thousand acres in Wilde’s Crossing had just come on the market.

Their steaks arrived. They ordered more drinks. And just when Travis had almost decided he was home free, his brothers exchanged a look, laid their knives and forks on their plates and Caleb said, “Something bothering you, Trav?”

Travis forced a smile.

“Not a thing. Something bothering you, Caleb”

“Hey,” Caleb said lightly, “watch yourself.” He waggled his eyebrows. “I’m a trained interrogator, remember?”

Travis laughed, just as he was supposed to do. He thought about playing dumb, tossing back a look of complete innocence and saying he had no idea what they were talking about, but you didn’t grow up with two guys who knew everything about you and lie to their faces.

Besides, until this moment, he hadn’t realized how much last Friday night—correction, his reaction to last Friday night—was gnawing at him.

Still, he didn’t have to tell them all the details.

So he shrugged, put down his knife and fork, too, blotted his mouth with his napkin and said, “I met a woman.”

“He met a woman,” Caleb said to Jake.

“Wow. Amazing. Our brother, the hotshot hedge fund manager, met a woman. So much for avoiding that question about his love life.”

“I didn’t avoid anything,” Travis said tersely. “This has nothing to with love. And I have nothing to do with hedge funds. I run an investment firm—and why were you talking about me as if I’m not here?”

“Because the last time you were involved with a woman and wouldn’t talk about her was when you had that thing going with Suzy Franklin.”

Travis sat back, folded his arms over his chest.

“I was in fifth grade. And I wasn’t ‘involved’ any more than I’m ‘involved’ now.”

“He protests too much,” Jake said.

“What did I just say about that ‘he’s not here’ routine? And I’m not protesting. There’s nothing to protest.” He’d meant to make it all sound light but one glance at his brothers and he knew it hadn’t worked. He took a breath, let it out and leaned over the table. “Look, it was nothing. See, I was minding my business in this place way downtown...”

“What were you doing downtown?”

“Actually, it was your fault. Your faults. Can you say ‘faults’? Because it was. It was last Friday night, you guys couldn’t make it, and...”

What the hell.

He told the story.

Most of it.

Some of it.

Finally, he got to the part he was still having trouble with.

“...and,” he said, “then the door opened, this woman walked in and she was, ah, she was attractive.”

“You mean, she was hot.”

A muscle knotted in Travis’s jaw.

“You could say that, yeah.”

“And?”

“And, I figured if I could convince the drooling yahoos at the bar that I’d been waiting for her to show up, everything would be fine.”

“Drooling yahoos,” Caleb said dryly.

“What did I say? He has a way with words,” Jake said, just as dryly.

“You want to hear this or not?”

“We wouldn’t miss it. Go on. A hot babe came strutting through the door—”

“She didn’t ‘strut,’” Travis said, a little sharply. “And she was—she was good-looking. Not hot. Not the way you’re making it...” His words trailed away. His brothers were looking at him as if he’d lost his mind.

Dammit, he thought, and he cleared his throat.

“So, anyway, I, ah, I approached her. I told her I had a problem and asked her for her help. And, after a little, uh, a little persuasion, she agreed.”

“Persuasion?”

“What’d you do? Talk her into a coma?”

Travis was silent for a long, long minute. Then he sighed.

“I kissed her,” he said in a low voice because, hell, maybe if he talked about it he’d stop thinking about it.

About Genevieve.

Caleb stared at him. “And she went along with it?”

“Yeah.”

“Aha.” Jacob grinned. “Not just a hot babe. A hot babe looking for a night’s diversion.”

Travis looked at his brother through narrowed eyes.

“I told you, it’s wrong to call her that.”

Jake held up his hands. “Okay. Sorry. A lady looking for a night’s—”

“She’d walked into the wrong place, that’s all,” Travis said tightly.

“So, you weren’t just looking for her to get you out of there in one piece, you were going to protect her.”

“Yes. No. Dammit!” Travis sat back, wrapped his hands around his half-empty mug of ale. “Look, let’s drop it, okay? I got into a stupid situation, and that’s the end of it.”

“Yeah, but I don’t see how this played out,” Caleb said. “This jerk and his friends were on you because they figured you’d been hitting on his woman. You said no, you were waiting for your date. This babe—sorry. This woman walked in—”

“She had a name,” Travis said, in a dangerously quiet voice. “Genevieve.”

Jake waggled his eyebrows. “Wow. Not just good-looking but French.”

“Better and better,” Caleb said.

Travis opened his mouth, then quickly shut it. All at once he didn’t want to talk about last Friday night, not when it would involve giving away details that suddenly seemed far too personal.

“Never mind.”

“Never mind? Bro, you can’t leave us hanging. We’re married men. Happily married, I hasten to add, but still, there’s no harm in living vicariously.”

“And it was just getting interesting. There you were, in this dive and, wham, a woman walks in, you kiss her, she’s warm and willing...and what? You took her home? Went to her place? Or maybe—”

“Enough,” Travis snapped.

His tone was cold, hard and flat. His brothers stared at him, then exchanged a quick glance. What in hell? that glance said, but they both knew that the line between asking questions and expecting answers had been crossed.

“Right,” Jake said, after a few seconds. He cleared his throat. “So, ah, so did I tell you guys about the dude with the fabric samples? Man, I swear, he doesn’t speak in any language I ever heard before. Batiste. Bouclé. Brocade. And that’s just in the B’s...”

Caleb forced a laugh.

Jake kept talking and, finally, Travis forced a laugh, too. The waitress came by. They asked for refills on their drinks, talked some more...

And Travis, who had come out tonight for the express purpose of getting a woman he hardly knew, except in the most basic sense of the word, out of his head now realized he couldn’t think about anything except her.

He held up his end of the conversation. More or less. An occasional comment, a laugh when it was expected, but he wasn’t really there.

He was in his penthouse, Genevieve in his arms, her responses to his caresses, his kisses, his deep, incredible possession of her so honest, so passionate, so thrilling...until he’d ruined it, ruined everything by reacting like a selfish, stupid kid...

“Travis?”

He wanted to see her again.

Just—just to tell her he’d been wrong, that he shouldn’t have said—

“Trav?”

He blinked. Focused his gaze on his brothers. They were staring at him, concern etched into their faces.

“Jet lag,” he said with forced good humor. “What I need is coffee. A gallon of it, black and strong and...

His words trailed off.

His heart thudded.

“Travis? You okay?”

The place had gotten crowded with people.

The bunch at the university party up front was still there. If anything, it had grown larger.

Two women, surely from that group, had just walked by. Save-the-Something T-shirts. Real jeans. Leather sandals.

One woman had dark hair.

One had light hair.

The one with the light hair was stumbling. The other was supporting her. Arm around her waist, face a mix of concern and irritation.

“Travis? Man, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he said, as the women disappeared into the rear bathroom.

It had to be nothing.

The woman who’d been stumbling had looked just like Genevieve. Exactly like her.

Well, not exactly.

Her hair was that same golden color but it wasn’t loose, it hung down her back in a long ponytail.

And, of course, she wasn’t wearing a dress the size of a handkerchief, or shoes with heels high enough to give a man hot dreams.

So it wasn’t her.

It couldn’t be her.

It was ridiculous even to think it was her...

The bathroom door swung open. The two women stepped through it.

Travis got to his feet.

“Travis,” Caleb said sharply, “what’s going on?”

Hell. It was her. Genevieve. Her face was drained of color and she had her hand pressed to her belly.

“For crissakes, Gen,” the second woman said loudly, “nobody gets sick on two margaritas!”

Travis dug out his wallet, tossed some bills on the table.

“I have to go,” he said, his eyes never leaving Genevieve.

“Go where? Dammit, man, talk to us!”

“I’ll call you later,” Travis said. “Don’t worry, everything’s fine.”

“The hell it is,” Jake said.

He started to rise but Caleb, who’d turned to watch Travis, grabbed his arm.

“Let him go.”

“Go where? Man, what’s happening?”

“Look.”

Jake looked.

Travis had reached the women. He said something to them. The one with dark hair gave him a quizzical look.

“You mean, with you?” she said.

Travis’s response was loud and clear.

“Absolutely with me,” he said, his tone no longer that of a guy who lived for the moment but, instead, that of the tough, take-no-prisoners fighter pilot he’d once been.

“Fine with me,” the brunette said. She let go of the blonde, who swayed like a sapling in a Texas dust-storm as Travis scooped her off her feet.

“Whoa,” Caleb said.

“Whoa, is right,” Jake said, because after a couple of seconds of struggle, the blonde blinked hard, looked up at their brother and said, “Travis?”

“The one and only,” Travis said grimly.

She looped her arms around his neck and buried her face against his throat. And he, jaw set, eyes hard as obsidian, carried her straight through the room and out the door.