The Merciless Travis Wilde

Chapter NINE



HE WANTED HER to spend the night with him.

She said that she couldn’t.

“I have to go home,” she said as she lay in his arms in a lounger on the terrace.

“It’s almost midnight. That means it’s almost Sunday, and Sunday’s a day when nobody has to do anything.”

She laughed. “You make that sound so logical.”

“It is logical. Would a mathematician say anything that wasn’t?”

“You’re an investment banker, Travis Wilde. You play the stock market. What’s logical about that?”

Travis clapped his hand to his heart.

“You wound me, madam.”

Jennie laughed. “Seriously. I have to go home.”

“Why?” he said, trying to make light of it because she had no way of knowing he hardly ever asked a woman to spend the night in his bed—and he was still amazed that having her do that was what he wanted. He kissed the tip of her nose. “Have to feed the cat?”

“I wish,” she said, a little wistfully.

“You like cats, huh?”

“I like animals. But—”

“But?”

“But, I never had one. My mother said pets would make a mess. And when I went away to college, you couldn’t have pets in the dorm.”

Travis thought of the big mutt he’d found wandering on campus his freshman year, and brought back to his dorm suite.

“Dogs are not allowed,” the R.A. had said with authority.

“Right,” Travis had replied...and moved the dog into his room for the rest of the semester, when he’d taken him home to El Sueño.

But Jennie wouldn’t have done that.

She was a good girl, and good girls didn’t break rules...

Except for the one about walking into a bar to pick up a guy and hand over your virginity.

Why? Why had she done something so out of character? Because now that he knew her, he could not imagine she would ever have done such a thing.

There had to be a reason.

She was keeping part of herself a secret. He knew it. And it worried him.

“Travis,” she said softly, lifting her head from his shoulder and smiling at him. “You look so serious. What are you thinking?”

He smiled back at her.

“I’m trying to come up with some brilliantly creative reason that will convince you to stay.”

She wanted to. Desperately. Hours had gone by since the headache and it might not return for even more hours. Still, if it did...

You need to keep your meds with you, Jennifer, the doctor had said, but carrying around a container of tablets and capsules would be a constant reminder of—of what was happening to her, and she wasn’t ready for that.

Not yet

He brushed his lips lightly over hers.

“Now who’s looking serious?”

Jennie forced a smile.

“I’m thinking.”

“A dangerous habit—unless you’re thinking of changing your mind about leaving me.”

A swell of emotion rose inside her.

She didn’t want to leave him. Not ever. How could you leave a man like this?

He kissed her, slid his hand under the shirt he’d given her to wear. She caught her breath as he stroked her nipples.

“Travis—”

“I’m just helping you come up with a reason to stay.”

She laughed.

“You’re a bad influence on me,” she said, but it wasn’t true. He was a wonderful influence. In all her life, she had never been this happy, felt so alive...

Tears welled swiftly, dangerously in her eyes. She tried to bury her face against him before he could see them but she wasn’t quick enough.

“Sweetheart. What is it?”

“Allergies,” she said brightly. “Nothing to worry about.”

And, really, there was nothing to worry about, because what was the point? She couldn’t change fate, couldn’t change life...

Couldn’t change what was happening in her heart, each time Travis kissed her or touched her or said her name.

“Stay with me,” he said.

Do what your heart tells you, her alter-ego whispered.

And what it told her was to stay.

* * *

In the morning, when he staggered into the john, eyes half closed because it was Sunday and surely there was a law against fully waking up early on Sundays, Travis finished what he’d gone into the bathroom to do, flushed the toilet, washed his hands, reached for a face towel and came up, instead, with something small and silken.

His eyes flew open.

It was a pair of white panties.

Jennie’s.

Evidently, she’d rinsed them last night and left them to dry.

Travis looked at them. So honest. So unsophisticated.

So Jennie.

A funny feeling swept over him.

Among the few women who’d ever spent the night, a couple had left things on the vanity. A compact. A lipstick. He wasn’t an overly fastidious man but seeing those things in what was his space had irritated him no end.

Seeing Jennie’s panties on his towel rack sent a warmth through his veins.

He liked seeing them there.

He liked seeing her in his bed.

And he was old enough, wise enough, to know that liking those things could be dangerous to a man’s stability and sanity.

Okay. Time for her to leave. She’d stayed the night. They’d made love when they’d first gone to bed, then during the night.

He’d give her a cup of coffee, then drive her home. Phone her in a few days, ask her to dinner, to a movie, whatever.

It was a good plan, but it fell apart as soon as he went back into the bedroom and saw her.

She’d just come awake; her eyes were sleepy-looking, her hair was mussed, and when she saw him, she smiled.

“Good morning,” she said softly.

Travis shook his head as he made his way to her.

“It isn’t,” he said solemnly, “because we haven’t yet performed a vital morning ritual.”

Her eyebrows rose. “What ritual?”

“This one,” he said, and he took her in his arms and kissed her, and she returned his kiss with such tenderness that he could have sworn he felt his heart swell.

* * *

They spent the morning reading the papers, eating omelets Jennie made after she’d opened the fridge, rolled her eyes and finally unearthed half a dozen eggs, what remained of a pint of cream, four English muffins, a stick of butter and the biggest find of all, a chunk of still-usable Gruyère to add to the eggs.

There was other stuff, too: a bunch of little white cardboard containers Travis thought might have contained leftover take-out Tex-Mex.

“Unless it’s take-out Chinese,” he said apologetically.

“Hard to tell, I guess.”

“Yuck,” she said, dumping the containers in the trash.

“Hey,” Travis said, his hand on his heart, “what can I tell you? Cooking isn’t my thing.”

Thankfully, it seemed that coffee was.

He had two pounds of Kona beans in the freezer, a grinder in the cupboard and a pot with more dials and buttons on it than Jennie had ever seen in her life.

She rolled her eyes again but admitted he got points for not completely destroying her faith in starting the day right.

Travis grinned, came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her and lightly bit the nape of her neck.

“I thought what we did a little while ago definitely started the day right.”

“Behave yourself,” she said sternly, but she leaned back against him and tilted her head up for a kiss.

After breakfast, they showered again. His shower was big enough for a dozen people, she said, and he gave a mock growl, took her in his arms and said he’d fight off anybody foolish enough to try to share the shower with them because she belonged strictly to him.

He meant the words as a joke.

But once he’d said them, he stopped smiling. Jennie did, too.

“Strictly to me,” he said gruffly, and he made love to her against the glass wall, beneath the kiss of the warm spray.

* * *

He wanted to take her out.

Well, what he really wanted was to take her to bed, again, but he knew how much he’d love walking down a street with her beside him.

He thought about the things the women in his past had liked to do.

Did she want to go window-shopping? She wrinkled her nose. Stroll through a flea market? Another wrinkle of that cute little nose. How about a walk in the park? A drive?

She chewed on her lip.

“What?” he asked.

She hesitated. “I don’t suppose...I mean, I heard a couple of other T.A’s. talking...No. Never mind. It’s silly. A drive would be—”

“Nothing’s silly, if it’ll make you happy.” Travis took her hand and brought it to his lips. What did she want to do? Go to see some chick flick, probably. Well, fine. Not fun but he could surely survive—

“Six Flags,” she blurted.

For a second or two, he was lost.

“Six flags of what?” He blinked. “You mean, the amusement park?”

She nodded. Her eyes were round and bright.

“Could we?”

Travis grinned, put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a loud, smacking kiss.

“A woman after my own heart!”

* * *

“Oh, my,” Jennie kept saying, as they strolled through the park, hand in hand.

Everything made her squeal with delight. The grilled turkey legs. The funnel cakes. The giant hot dogs.

And the rides.

They drew her like a candy store drew kids.

“Can we watch?” she kept saying, and Travis would say sure, of course, and while she watched the rides and the riders, he watched her.

Was it possible this was all new for her?

“Honey?” he said as she stood, head tilted back, mouth forming a perfect “O,” her fingernails digging into his hand as terrified people shrieked and screamed with delight while plummeting earthward on a parachute ride, “haven’t you ever been to a place like this before?”

She shook her head, but her eyes stayed locked to the parachute tower.

“No.”

“Little parks only? Okay. Maybe there isn’t anything like this in New—”

“My parents didn’t approve of amusement parks.”

Her parents. The duo that had been upset because she hadn’t wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant.

“Well, how about local fairs? You know, Ferris wheels. Old-fashioned roller coasters.”

Jennie shook her head.

“Not those, either. My parents were very protective, remember?”

“Aha,” he said, trying to imagine how it must have been for her to grow up in such a closed-off world.

“They meant well,” she said quickly, because his “aha” had dripped with meaning. “But they were always, you know, careful I didn’t do anything that might be, you know, dangerous or, you know, risky, or—”

“What I know,” Travis said gently, drawing her into the curve of his arm, “is that they wanted to protect you.”

She nodded. “Exactly. But—but—”

“But,” he said, smiling, trying to make light of what she’d missed, “life is short.”

She looked up at him, her eyes suddenly dark with something he couldn’t read.

“Yes. It is. And when I—when I realized that, I knew there were so many things I’d never done, that I wanted to know about...”

Like making love.

She didn’t say it.

He did.

And when he did, she nodded.

“I wanted to know about sex,” she said in a low voice. “But what I learned about was—was making love. And it wouldn’t have been making love if I hadn’t found—” Her words stumbled to a halt. “Oh, God! Travis. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Please, I swear, I’m not trying to—”

He took her in his arms and kissed her.

It was either that or say something he couldn’t imagine saying to a woman he’d met a week ago, something he’d never imagined saying to any woman ever, or at least not for maybe the next hundred years.

Something that made no sense, he told himself, but as she melted against him, he knew that nothing had made sense since the night she’d walked into that bar.

Nothing—except the sweet, sweet joy he felt, holding his Jennie in his arms.

* * *

After a while, he figured she was happy just looking at everything.

Logical.

For a girl who’d never so much as ridden a Ferris wheel, going on one of the park’s big rides would surely be daunting. That was fine with him. Just being together made the day perfect—and when he saw her staring at somebody munching on one of those enormous turkey legs, he figured he knew a way to make her smile.

“Lunch,” he said.

Jennie looked at him.

“You get your choice of gourmet treats, madam. A turkey leg. A hot dog—though you have to understand, they won’t do ’em with the sophisticated panache of the Wilde Brothers—”

She laughed.

A good sign, because she’d been very quiet for the last twenty or thirty minutes.

“Or fried chicken. A hamburger. Pretty much any non-PC, artery-cloggin’ goody your heart desires—”

“The roller coaster.”

“Huh?”

“The wooden one. Where we were a little while ago. The one called Judge Something-Or-Other.” Her eyes were shining. “Can we ride it?”

Travis hesitated. “Honey. You sure you want to start with something like that? There are easier rides to—”

Jennie bounced on her toes. The last time he’d seen somebody do that, it had been his sister Lissa, aged three or four, pleading for him to let her ride his horse instead of her pony.

He hadn’t been able to say “no” then.

And he sure as hell couldn’t say it now.

* * *

She loved riding that roller coaster.

She screamed and shrieked, and laughed with such joy that he forgot he’d given up nonsense like amusement parks a long time ago and laughed along with her.

“Again,” she said when the ride ended.

They rode the coaster again.

And then they rode everything else, or damn near everything else, before Travis said, “Enough,” took her in his arms for probably the hundredth time that day, kissed her and said it was time they took a break, ate something, drank something while he told himself he was being, yes, protective, but not the way her parents had been.

But he understood how they’d felt.

Someone as good and sweet as Jennie deserved to be protected.

“Okay,” she said. And laughed. “Actually, I just realized—I’m starving! I could eat a horse!”

“Them’s fightin’ words, here in Texas,” Travis said solemnly.

They ate tacos. Fried chicken. One of those turkey legs.

“It’s from a brontosaurus, not a turkey,” Jennie said, chomping into it.

Travis watched her eat and tried not to smile.

“More?” he said politely, after she’d finished the leg.

She thought about the giant hot dogs she’d seen, glistening on the grill. Then she remembered something Travis had said.

“What did you mean about the Wilde Brother’s hot dogs?”

He laughed.

“When we were kids, Jacob, Caleb and I would cook up these feasts.”

“Feasts? With hot dogs?”

“Have some faith, woman. Would we call it a feast if it only involved hot dogs? These were special. We fried ’em.” He laughed at the expression on her face. “Actually, I did. Jake made the fried cheese sandwiches. Caleb was the marshmallow expert.” Travis brought his thumb and index finger together. “Dee-lish-ee-oh-so!”

Jennie reached for a napkin.

“That did it. I’m full.”

He grinned.

“Amazing. You should be popping out of your jeans by now.” He held out his hand. “Come on. Let’s get some lemonade.”

They found a stand, bought huge plastic glasses of lemonade and found a quiet spot on a bench beneath a tree.

“So,” Travis said, “what’s your professional opinion of amusement parks, Dr. Cooper?”

Her smile, so bright during the past hours, seemed to dim a little.

“I don’t have a doctorate yet.”

“But you will.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “You never know.”

“Well, true. Life’s unpredictable, but—”

“I had a wonderful time today!”

He smiled, reached for her hand.

“Me, too.”

“All those rides...” Her eyes shone. “What do you call them? Thrill rides?”

“Right.”

“Well, they’re definitely thrilling. But basically, they’re safe. I mean, the parks wouldn’t have them if they weren’t. Right?”

“Right,” he said again, and wondered where the conversation was going because, clearly, there was something in the wind.

“What I mean is,” she said slowly, “there’s no real risk.”

Travis grinned. “Got it. Nope. No real risk, so it’s safe to tell your folks that— Oh. Honey. I’m sorry. I forgot.”

“It’s okay,” she said softly. “That’s the way life is. You’re born, you die...”

She fell silent.

Travis thought he felt her hand tremble in his.

“Okay,” he said briskly, “we’re out of here. You’ve had enough sun and enough risk for the day.”

“No. I mean, that’s what I was saying. There really isn’t any risk in taking these rides. It’s wonderful,” she added quickly. “I mean, I had more fun today...” She looked at him. “I never actually did anything risky.”

Travis nodded. The conversation was on track again.

“But you have,” she said. “Haven’t you?”

“Well—”

“Did you ever go bungee jumping?”

“Yes. And it’s not all it’s cracked up to—”

“Back country skiing. Scuba diving. Rock climbing. Swimming with sharks.”

“Jennie.” His tone was harsh; he hadn’t meant it to be. “Where are you going with this?”

“I want to try something risky.”

A muscled knotted in his jaw.

“You already did. You got all dressed up, walked into a bar—”

Her face crumpled. She sprang to her feet.

He caught her by the wrist.

“I said it wrong, dammit. I didn’t mean it the way you think.” When she shook her head, he rose, too. “What I’m saying is that anything might have happened to you that night, anything at all. And the thought of something happening to you, something or someone hurting you...” Travis clasped her shoulders and turned her toward him. “Do you know how much you mean to me?” he said in a thick voice. “Do you have any idea how important you’ve become to me?”

She shook her head.

“You don’t know me. We’ve only been together—”

“I know how long we’ve been together. But I know something else, as well.” He looked deep into her eyes. “This—you and me—this isn’t—it isn’t just a man and a woman and—and sex—”

She shook her head and tried to turn away. He wouldn’t let her.

“I’m saying it wrong, dammit. What I mean is—”

“I know what you mean. I—I feel it, too.” Tears glittered like stars in her eyes. “I never meant for this to happen,” she whispered. “That I’d find someone like you, that I’d find such happiness—”

He kissed her.

Gently. Only their lips met, as if touching her might shatter the moment.

And as he kissed her, he tasted the salt of her tears.

Something ran through him, an emotion so new, so rare that it stunned him, and with it came a question.

Could everything a man thought he wanted out of life completely shift in little more than a week?

Even asking the question was dangerous.

Travis put his arm around Jennie, held her to his side as they headed back to his car.

Dangerous, sure.

But as he’d learned years ago, you could say that about anything that was really worth doing. Or having.

Life was all about risk.

What he hadn’t known was that, if a man was really lucky, he might just stumble across one special risk that had the power to change his life, forever.