A Bravo Homecoming (2 page)

“She still trying to find you the new love of your life?”

He grunted a second time and looked at her kind of strangely. She got the message. He wasn’t in the mood to talk about his mother and her plans to get him hogtied and branded.

Sam could read Travis pretty well. After all, they’d been friends since way back when he was nineteen and she was eighteen. Back then, Travis had worked on the oil well at her dad’s South Dakota ranch.

So, all right. Not talking about his mother was fine with her. She had something else on her mind anyway.

Sam indulged in a glum look around the lounge. It was a large room. But the low ceiling, the absence of windows and the fluorescent lighting gave the space a sort of subterranean glow. It made Travis look tired, turned his tanned skin kind of pasty. She didn’t even want to think about how it made
her
look.

Travis’s dark brows drew together. “Got something on your mind, Sam?”

Oh, yes, she did. “You have no idea how frickin’ tired I am of being on this rig. And I could seriously use a tall cold one about now, you know?”

They grunted in unison then. There was no liquor allowed on the rig.

Most rig workers had the usual two-weeks-on, two-weeks-off rotation. Not the pusher. Sam had been on the rig for over a month now, working twelve-hour shifts seven days a week. A week more and she would be back on land at last. She could not wait. And the rock docs—the engineers—were saying that the four-month drilling process was within days of completion. Her job on the
Deepwater Venture
was ending anyway. She wouldn’t be signing on to another rig to start all over again.

“Travis, I’ve been thinking…”

He waited, watching her.

She sat straighter and swept both arms wide, a gesture meant to include not only the lounge, but every inch of the semi-submersible rig, from the operating deck and the cranes and derrick soaring above it, to the ballasted, watertight pontoons below the ocean’s surface that held the giant platform afloat. “I used to love the challenge, you know? Doing a man’s job and doing it right. Earning and keeping the men’s respect—in spite of being female, even though I was younger than half of them. But lately, well, I’m thinking it’s time to change it up a little. I’m thirty years old. It’s a time when a person can start to wonder about things.”

He tipped his head to the side, frowning. “What things?”

“Things like getting back to the real world, like living on solid ground full-time, like…I don’t know, letting my hair grow, for cryin’ out loud, getting a job where I don’t end up covered in drilling mud and grease at least once a shift. Sitting in an employee lounge that has actual windows—windows that look out on something other than water and more water.”

He made a low noise. Was it a doubtful kind of sound? What? He didn’t think she could make it in a desk job?

She scowled at him and raked her fingers back through her sweaty, chopped-off hair. “And you can just stop looking at me like that, Travis Bravo. Yeah, I know what working in an office is going to mean. I get that I’m going to have to clean up my language and maybe even learn to wear a damn dress now and then. And I’m ready for that.”

He kept on looking at her. Studying her, really. What the hell was he thinking?

She threw out both arms again, glanced left and then right—and then directly at him again.
“What?”
she demanded.

He swung his boots up onto the molded plastic chair next to his. Way too casually, he suggested, “So, Sam. Want to come to my parents’ wedding?”

Okay, now she was totally lost. “Your parents’
wedding?
Didn’t that already happen? Y’know like, oh, a hundred years ago? Travis, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

One corner of his mouth quirked up. “Well, okay. Technically, it’s a reaffirmation of their wedding vows. It’s happening out at Bravo Ridge.” He’d spoken of Bravo Ridge often. It was his family’s ranch near San Antonio. “It’ll be on Thanksgiving Day.”

She sat back and folded her arms across her middle. She’d always wondered about his family, the high-class, powerful San Antonio Bravos. It would be interesting to meet them all, to match the real, flesh-and-blood people to the faces in the pictures Travis had shown her over the years.

Then again, maybe not. “I don’t think so….”

“Come on. Why not?”

“Well, to be honest, from everything you’ve said about your family, I don’t think I’d fit in with them.”

“Sure you will.”

“I don’t
even
have the clothes for something like that, let alone the manners. And I don’t have any fancy pedigree, either. I’d probably embarrass you.”

“You could never embarrass me. You’re the best. And what do you mean, pedigree? It’s America. We’re all equal, remember? And if you’re nervous about your clothes, I’ll deal with that.”

She looked at him sideways. “How, exactly are
you
going deal with
my
clothes?”

“I’ll buy you some new ones.”

“No way. I buy my own stuff. But even if I maxed out my credit cards getting a whole new wardrobe, well, I still wouldn’t know which frickin’ fork to use.”

He swung his feet to the floor and canted toward her in the chair. “So we’ll get you a coach. A few days in Houston beforehand should do it.”

“Um. Travis, I’m not really understanding what exactly you’re up to here.”

“I just said. You’ll have time. A whole week to get ready after you’re back on land, plenty of time to buy the clothes and work with the coach.”

“The coach,” she repeated blankly.

“Yeah, the coach. Someone who’s an expert on all that stuff—on the clothes, the makeup, the…use of the silverware, whatever. By the time you meet my mom, you’ll be more than ready.”

“More than ready for…?”

“Everything.” He smiled. It wasn’t a very sincere smile.

She rubbed her temples with the tips of her fingers. Really, he was making her head spin. “Travis, cut the crap. What
exactly
are you trying to talk me into?”

He glanced away, and then back. “Before I get too specific, I just want to know you’ll keep an open mind about the whole thing, okay?”

“Yeah, well. Before I can keep an open mind, I need to know what I’m supposed to be keeping an open mind about.”

He hoisted his feet back up on the chair again. “It’s like this. I want you to help me get my mom off my back.”

She followed. Kind of. “You mean about all the, er,
suitable
young women, right?”

He nodded. “I need you to be my date—for a week, including Thanksgiving.”

“You think if you bring a date, your mom will stop trying to fix you up?”

He pulled a face and scratched the back of his head. “Well, yeah. For a while. If my date was…more than just a date.”

“What do you mean, more than just a frickin’ date?”

“Okay, it’s like this. I want you to pretend that you’re my fiancée.”

Travis didn’t find the look on Sam’s face the least bit encouraging.

She swore. Colorfully. And then she jumped up from the chair, strode around the table to him—and slapped him upside the back of the head.

He shoved her hand away. “Ouch! Knock it off.”

She gave a disgusted snort. “Have you lost your mind?”

He put up both hands to back her off. “Look. It just…slipped out when I was talking to her, okay?”

“It? What?”

“She was all over me, pressuring me, going down the list of all the women she wants me to meet. And then you came down from the deck and I, well, all of a sudden, I was saying I already had a girl. I said
you
were my girl and we were engaged.”

Sam did more swearing. And then she returned to her chair, grabbed the back of it, spun it around and sat down in it front ways that time. “What
have
you been smoking?”

“Not a thing. You know that. And can you just think it over? Please? Don’t say no without giving it some serious consideration. You get the coach and the clothes to help you change up your life. And I have a few strings I can pull, too, for you. To make sure you get the job you want.”

She had her arms folded good and tight across her middle by then. “There’s just one teensy problem.”

“What?”

“It’s a big wonkin’ lie.”

“I know that, but it can’t be helped.”

“Sure, it can. Call your mom back. Tell her you lied and I’m not your girl after all. And when you want a girl, you’ll find her yourself.”

“Sam, come on…”

She pressed her lips together, blew out a breath—and flipped him the bird.

But he refused to give up. The more he thought about it, the more this looked like a solution to his problem.

A temporary solution, yeah. But still. Even temporary was better than no solution at all.

“Look,” he said. “You do this for me, I figure it’s good for up to a year of peace and quiet on my mother’s part.”

“Why don’t you just
talk
to your mother? Tell her how you feel, tell her you want her to back off and mind her own business.”

“You think I haven’t? It doesn’t matter what I say, she thinks she’s doing the right thing for me. She thinks it’s for my own good. And when my mother thinks what she’s doing is for the good of one of her children, there’s no stopping her. There’s no getting her to see the light and admit that she’s got it all wrong.”

“But making up some big old lie is not the answer. It’s…just not you. You’re a straight-ahead guy. No frills and no fancy footwork. I’ve always liked that about you.”

He laid it right out for her. “Sam, I’m desperate. I need a break from this garbage. I need to be able to go home for once without having a bunch of sweet-faced Texas debutantes in their best party dresses lined up waiting to meet me. I need to be able to call my mom without being beat over the head with all the women she wants to introduce me to.”

“Maybe if you just gave it a chance with one of them, you’d find out that—”

“Stop. Don’t go there. You know I’m not up for that. I
had
the love of my life. She died. And I already tried it with the woman who could never take her place.”

“But it’s been years and years since you lost Rachel. And just because it didn’t work out with Wanda doesn’t mean there isn’t someone else out there who’s right for you.”

He gave her a really dirty look, and then he glanced away. “You’re starting to sound like my mother. I don’t need that.”

“Travis, I only—”

He turned to meet her eyes again. “Help me out, Sam. Help me out and I’ll help
you
out. Win-win. You’ll see. You can have the new life you’ve been dreaming of. All you have to do to get it is a little favor for a friend.”

A
week and a day later, Sam entered the lobby of Houston’s Four Seasons Hotel.

She wore a gray pantsuit with a white blouse and black flats. Not exactly glamorous. But hey. At least it was something other than coveralls, steel-toed boots and a hard hat.

Unfortunately, her hair was being really annoying that day. It was only an inch long, for cripes’ sake. But still, it insisted on curling every which way.

Her makeup? She wore none—and not because she hadn’t tried. Three times, she’d applied blush, lip gloss and mascara. She’d picked those up the day before at Walmart in an effort to look more pulled-together for this big adventure she probably shouldn’t have let herself be talked into in the first place. Each time she put the makeup on, she’d had to scrub it right off again. It just didn’t look right on her. So in the end, she decided to go without.

The Four Seasons was about the fanciest hotel in Houston. She’d expected old-fashioned elegance. But the lobby was modern. The furniture had clean, trendy lines. The carpets were in black-and-white geometric patterns. There was also bright color—in the modern art on the walls, in the purple pillows, all plump and inviting on the tan and off-white sofas.

And where the hell was Travis, anyway? He’d promised he would be here waiting for her.

She tried not to gape like the oversize hayseed she knew herself to be. She told herself it was all in her mind that the bellmen and concierge clerks were staring at her and wondering what she was doing there. What did a concierge clerk care if she was as big as a horse and every bit as muscular? So what if she looked more manly than most of the guys in the place? She had as much right to be there as anyone else.

And she did have her pride. Chin up, her black leather tote hooked on a shoulder, she sauntered past the checkin desk and chose a sofa thick with bright pillows beneath a giant circular chandelier dripping with about a hundred thousand crystals.

When she reached the sofa, she turned and lowered herself into it with care. She kept her knees together, her black flats planted on the thick carpet, neatly, side-by-side. Easing the tote off her shoulder, she put it at her feet. And then, sitting very still and very straight, she folded her hands in her lap and she waited.

She tried not to squirm, tried to keep her face calm and composed. The minutes crawled by.

Travis, you SOB, where are you?

He’d better get there damn soon or she wouldn’t be waiting when he finally did arrive. She pressed her lips together, swallowed, felt the nervous sweat beginning to seep through the underarms of her new shirt.

Wasn’t there some old saying about how a person should beware of all situations that require new clothes?

Uh, yeah. Exactly.

Travis, unless you show up right this minute, I am going to get up and walk out of here. And then, the next time I see you, I will beat the ever lovin’ crap out of you….

“Sam. Great. There you are….”

So. He was there. At last.

Sam let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Turning to look over her shoulder, she watched him striding toward her, wearing really nice black jeans and a sport jacket, looking like he owned the place. With him was a short, skinny man in a striped shirt with a big white collar, linen pants and suspenders. The man’s thick, wavy blond hair was bigger than he was. Sam could have picked him up with one hand, tucked him under her arm and carried him several city blocks without even breathing hard.

She snatched up her tote and rose to meet them.

“Lookin’ good,” said Travis. He grabbed her in a quick hug. When he let her go, he turned to the tiny, bird-boned guy with the big hair. “Jonathan, Sam. Sam, Jonathan.”

The little guy gave her the once-over through eyes as small and bright and birdlike as the rest of him. “Hello, Samantha. I can see we’ve got our work cut out for us.”

Her coach. Of course. Pretentious frickin’ twit. She started to say something to put him in his place, but then changed her mind. He might be pretentious, but then again, he was also right. No point in beating up the messenger. She had a lot to learn if she wanted a different kind of life. “Yeah,” she said drily. “I hope you’re up to the job.”

Travis said, “I found him on the internet. And I’m betting he’s the best.”

Jonathan tossed his big hair. “No time to waste, is there? Shall we go up?”

The suite was spectacular. All in relaxing colors—dusty greens and creamy tans and warm golds, with a great view of downtown Houston. Two bedrooms. One for her, one for her coach.

Travis had his town house in the city.

She stood at the window and looked out at the skyline and worried about how much this had to be costing him.

He came to stand with her. “Great view, huh?”

“Yeah. Where’s Jonathan?” she asked the question low, out of the corner of her mouth.

“He’s in his room, getting settled.”

She decided to go ahead and ask him about the expense. “This all looks…really pricey, Travis.”

“That’s right.” He sounded so pleased with himself. “Didn’t I promise you a crash course in how the other half lives?”

“I’m just saying it’s enough that you hired me my own personal coach. That had to cost plenty. And then the clothes. That’ll be plenty more. You really didn’t need to spring for a suite at the Four Seasons.”

He put an arm around her shoulder, gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Only the best for my favorite fiancée.”

She eased out from under his hold. “You’re blowing me off.”

“No, I’m not.”

“It just, you know, seems like it’s kind of overkill. Way too frickin’ expensive overkill. I mean, I know you have your investments and all, but I hate to see you waste your hard-earned money.”

“Stop worrying—and anyway, I didn’t raid my portfolio for this.” He leaned in closer and lowered his voice to a soft growl. “Did I ever tell you about my giant trust fund?”

“You did, but you always said—”

“—that I would never touch it. And I haven’t. Not once. Until now.”

She turned to him, met his kind dark eyes. “You broke into your trust fund for
this?
”

He gave her an easy smile. “About time, I was thinking—and no, I didn’t
break
into it. It’s mine, after all, just sitting there, waiting for me, the prodigal son, to finally take advantage of what being a Bravo has always offered me.”

She smiled too, then. “The prodigal son. I never thought of you that way. And I thought a prodigal was a wild-living big spender.”

“I was thinking more in the sense of the son who left home.”

“Well, you are that.”

“And my mom only wants me to come home.”

“And get married to a nice Texas debutante…”

“Lucky for me, I have you to save me from that.”

She had the strangest desire to lay her hand along the side of his smooth, freshly shaved cheek. But that seemed uncalled-for. They weren’t pretending to be engaged
yet,
after all. “Yeah, well,” she said vaguely. “We’ll see….”

“Ahem.” It was Jonathan. He stood over by the sitting area, holding a laptop against his narrow chest. He set the laptop on the gleaming glass surface of the coffee table and then clapped his skinny hands together. “All right, then. Let’s begin.” He sat down on the sofa and patted the cushion next to him. “Samantha, come and sit by me.” She sent Travis a what-have-you-gotten-me-into glance and then went over and sat next to Jonathan, who signaled to Travis with a dramatic flourish. “You, too. Have a seat.” Travis claimed a wing chair across the coffee table.

Sam was realizing that she found her new coach kind of amusing. She liked his take-charge attitude and self-assurance. He might be little, but every sentence, every gesture, was delivered on a grand scale. “So, Jonathan, what’s your last name?”

He turned slowly to look up at her, one pencil-thin eyebrow raised. “Just Jonathan, darling.”

Oh, wow. Now she was his darling. She chuckled. “Well, all right.”

Travis got up and went to grab an apple from the basket on the granite wet bar. “I flew Jonathan in from L.A. And before I did, I checked out his references. He comes highly recommended.” He bit a big, crunchy hunk out of the apple.

Jonathan almost smiled—or at least the corners of his tiny mouth lifted a fraction. “I have my own cable show,” he said proudly.
“Jeer-worthy to Cheer-worthy.”
He opened the laptop and fiddled with the keyboard for a moment. His picture appeared on the screen. He sat in a plush leather chair in a red-walled room, his hair bigger and wavier than it was in person. A bookcase behind him was filled with gold-tooled leather volumes and accented with what seemed to be valuable antiques. “My website,” he said. She’d already figured that out, of course, from the ornate gold header at the top of the page. “JustJonathan.com.”

“Uh. Real nice,” she said.

“Thank you, darling.” He clicked the mouse. A really sad-looking redhead appeared on the screen. Ruddy skin, frizzy hair, a face as round as a dinner plate. “Amanda Richly. Before.”
Click.
“And after,” he said proudly.

The second image was the same redhead. But the same redhead, transformed. Now her hair was thick and wavy and completely unfrizzed, her skin pink and perfect, her blue eyes framed by long, lush red-brown lashes. She was no longer sad. In fact, her happy smile brought out the cute dimples in her cheeks.

“Wow. Way to go, Jonathan.” Sam elbowed him in his itty-bitty ribs.

He almost fell over sideways. But not quite. “Please don’t hurt me, darling,” he said drily. She laughed. And then he preened, “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”

“I can see that.” She shared a nod with Travis, who remained by the wet bar, polishing off his apple.

Jonathan clicked through several more transformations. Each one was amazing. Sam was impressed and she told Jonathan so.

Finally, he snapped the laptop shut and frowned at her. “If we are to work together, I need to be able to be perfectly frank.”

“Go for it.” She braced herself for the bad news.

“You’re a disaster, my sweet.” He caught her hands, turned them over, gave a small gasp of pure distress. “Look at these. What have you been doing with them, scraping barnacles off a ship’s hull?”

“Close,” she confessed.

He shook his head. “Never mind. Don’t tell me. I don’t need specifics.” He turned her hands over again, set them on her knees, and patted the backs of them. Next, scowling, he touched her hair. And then he caught her face between his soft, warm palms. “We must get you to the spa immediately,” he announced. “You will need
everything.
It’s going to take a while. And the peels, the scrubs, the masks and the mud wraps, the hair, nails and makeup are only the beginning. There will be shopping. Intensive, goal-centered shopping. I will go with you, of course, give you guidance, save you from yourself should you try and buy another unfortunate pantsuit.”

She winced and looked down at the pantsuit in question. “Unfortunate? I bought it yesterday. I know it’s not great. But I thought it was better than just unfortunate.”

He wiggled a finger at her. “Remember. Absolute honesty.”

“Yeah. All right. Hit me with it.”

He caught the fabric of her sleeve, fingered it and shuddered. “You must learn to buy clothing made from natural fibers, my love. It not only looks so much better, but it also lets the skin breathe and doesn’t trap odors.”

“Odors,” she echoed weakly, way too aware of the lingering dampness beneath her arms.

“I noticed you had just that big black bag.”

She shrugged. “Well, I only brought a couple of changes of underwear and some pj’s. I thought we would be buying the rest.”

“Very good. Excellent. Out with the old and all things polyester. And in with the new. By the time I’m through with you, you won’t be afraid of five-inch Manolo Blahniks, or a little color.”

She wasn’t a complete idiot. She knew who Manolo Blahnik was. She’d watched a few episodes of
Sex and the City
back in the day. “Uh, Jonathan. Maybe you didn’t notice. I don’t wear high heels because I’m already taller than just about everyone else.”

“Yes, you are. And your height is spectacular.”

Travis folded his big frame back into the wing chair. He was grinning. “Yep. Absolutely spectacular.”

She blinked at him. “Uh. It is?”

Jonathan patted her arm. “You also have excellent bone structure. Fabulous cheekbones.”

Her sagging spirits lifted. She pressed her fingers to the cheekbones in question. “Well, that’s good.”

“And I can see you are in prime physical condition. We can use that.”

“Er…we can?”

“Oh, yes. Gone are the days when a pretty woman had to be tiny and delicate. It’s okay at last to be a woman of substance. Muscles, wide shoulders, strong calves and hard thighs are the height of fashion now.”

Maybe it wasn’t as bad as she’d thought. She dared to grin.

Jonathan frowned, shook his head and then smoothed his acres of hair carefully back into place. “Don’t become overconfident, my love. You’ve got a lot to learn. And a limited amount of time to do it in.”

At Jonathan’s request, Travis got up to go a few minutes later.

“You will not see Samantha until Saturday evening,” her coach announced in what Samantha considered a very grim tone. “For the final test.”

“Test?” Sam piped up weakly.

“Don’t ask.” Jonathan remained deadly serious. “Not yet. We are only beginning. And there’s a long way to go before we’re ready to discuss the final test.”

Travis gave her a hug at the door. That was the second time he’d hugged her that day—first, in the lobby, now here, as he was leaving. As a rule, she and Travis didn’t hug much. Especially the past few months when they’d been working on the rig together. Hugs would not be professional.

But now, with his strong arms around her, she realized how much she enjoyed getting the chance to lean on him. He was a couple of inches taller than she was, and even broader in the shoulders and deeper in the chest. It felt good to hug him. She knew she could hug him hard and never hurt him. For a girl of her size and strength, that was a rare thing.