A Bravo Homecoming (4 page)

She cried and cried, really letting go, feeling very, very sorry for herself, biting her lip to keep from snorting and sniffling.

And then her cell rang.

She decided not to answer it. She kept on crying. In three rings, the call went to voicemail and again she was alone with her tears and her misery.

Then the room phone rang. She tried to wait it out, but the minute it stopped ringing, it only started again.

And she knew that if she didn’t pick it up, Jonathan would be tapping on her door, asking her what was the matter, hadn’t she noticed her phone was ringing?

Oh, she could just hear him now.
When one’s phone rings, Samantha, it is customary to answer it.

If she let it get to that, she would have to reply and he would hear her clogged, teary voice and know that he had gotten to her, big-time.

No way was she letting him know that. She’d held her own against some burly, badass roughnecks in her time. How could she let bird-boned, big-haired Jonathan get the better of her?

She grabbed the phone.
“What?”
she demanded in a soggy, broken whisper.

“Sam?” It was Travis. “Sam, what’s going on? You didn’t answer your cell. And I called the room twice.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” A sob got away from her, followed by a watery hiccup.

“Sam, are you all right?”

She clutched the phone harder, feeling ridiculous and needy and weak and hopeless and sad. “I’m, uh…” She put her hand over the phone, swiped at her eyes and then groped for a tissue with her white-gloved hand.

“Sam, talk to me. Please. What’s the matter with you?” He sounded so worried, so…scared even. For her.

He was worried for
her.

That meant a lot.

And then he said, “Sam, I’m coming over there. I’m coming over there now.”

“No!” The word escaped her trembling mouth on a sob. “You can’t. Uh-uh.” She ripped a tissue from the tasteful beige box on the nightstand. “You know you can’t. You can’t even see me. Not until my final test.”

“Forget the test,” he said and really seemed to mean it. “It doesn’t matter. None of it matters if you’ve had enough. It’s not a big deal. We can call the whole thing off right now.”

Call the whole thing off.
He wouldn’t mind or be mad at her if they called the whole thing off.

She could, she realized. She could do that. Call an end to this torture, give it up. There was no law that said she had to stick it out.

She could give it up and head straight for her private hideaway in San Diego. Walk on the beach, soak up some rays.

And then sign up for a new job on a different rig, go back to the challenging and profitable life she had made for herself.

“What about—” another sob escaped her “—your mother?”

“I’ll find some other way to get her off my back. Don’t worry about that. Just say the word, Sam. And you’re off the hook. I mean that. Sam? Did you hear me? Sam? Are you there?” Travis seemed really worried that she might have hung up on him.

But she hadn’t. She was sniffling. And thinking…

And coming to realize how very much she wanted this, how seriously invested she was in seeing the whole thing through.

“Damn it, Sam. Say something.”

And she did. “No, I don’t want that. I don’t want to give it up. I want to…get through this. I want to make good at it because it does matter. It matters a lot. And that’s why you can’t come over here. Because Jonathan wants it that way. And that’s fine with me. I am doing exactly what Just frickin’ Jonathan tells me to do.”

“Uh. You are?”

“Yeah. I am—and don’t you dare tell him I said the word
frickin’.
Got that?”

“Absolutely. I won’t. Whatever you say. But—”

“I
can
do this. I
will
do this. I am sticking with this program and I am going to get some serious girly going or I will die trying.” She blew her nose, good and hard. By then, well, it didn’t seem to matter all that much that Travis would figure out she’d been crying. “Sam.”

She sniffed, shamelessly that time. And it felt kind of good, really. It was kind of a relief. To let go. To cry and not care that someone might know it. “What?”

“Are you…crying?” He asked the question in a kind of awed disbelief.

“So what if I am, huh?” She grabbed another tissue and scrubbed her soggy cheeks. “So what if I am?”

“But you
never
cry.”

“Well, I’m crying now. Or I was.” She ripped out yet more tissue. “But at this point, I’ve moved on to mopping up the mess.”

“So, uh, what’s happened?” He sounded totally flummoxed.

She tried to explain. “Nothing. Everything. This is even harder than I thought it would be.”

“It is, huh?” His voice was gentle. Understanding. “Listen. I meant what I said. If you want to back out—”

“Uh-uh. No way. I’m not giving up. I’m going through with it, no matter what.”

“If you’re sure that’s what you want…”

“I am sure, yes. So stop asking me.” She settled back against the pillows, gave one last sniffle. “I guess I kind of expected to be bad at this. I just didn’t expect to care so much.”

“Who says you’re bad at it?” He seemed honestly puzzled.

“
I
say. And I ought to know—oh, and Jonathan, too. He thinks I suck the big one. He looks at me in that pained, superior way of his….”

“Wait. Jonathan told you that you suck?”

“He didn’t have to tell me. It’s written all over his snooty, pointy little face. As far as he’s concerned, I can’t do anything right.”

“But that’s not what he said to me.”

She snuggled back into the pillows. “Huh? Said to you when?”

“When he called me a few minutes ago to let me know how you were getting along. He said you were making great progress and he was really impressed with you, that he hadn’t realized at the beginning how much potential you actually had.”

Now she sat up straighter. “He didn’t. You’re lyin’, trying to make me feel better.”

“God’s truth, Sam.”

She gave a very unladylike snort—the kind of snort she wouldn’t have thought twice about making just a few days before. “And you think it would kill him to say that to
me?
”

Travis snorted right back. “Come on, you know how you are. The madder you get, the harder you work. Maybe he’s figured that out about you.”

She fiddled with the phone cord, twisting it around her gloved index finger. “Well, then why are you telling me he said nice things about me? Maybe I’ll get lazy now I know he’s only pretending to look down on me.”

“Not a chance. You haven’t got a lazy bone in your body—and it was pretty clear to me you needed encouragement.”

She pulled her finger free of the coil of cord, feeling better about everything, feeling ready to face tomorrow. Feeling she could even handle the awful, disgusting shopping that would happen the day after that. “You’re a good man, Travis Bravo. Thanks.”

“You need me, you call me.”

She made a soft sound low in her throat. “I think I can make it now.”

“I’m here. Just remember.”

He said goodbye a few minutes later. She hung up the phone thinking that she was a lucky person to have a friend like Travis.

Turning off the light and pulling up the covers, she lay on her back in the dark with a smile on her face. Jonathan had said he was impressed with her. Travis had been there to talk her down when she needed it.

She knew now she could make it. In only a few days, she
would
be ready.

She would go with Travis to San Antonio and play his bride-to-be for his family. Yes, it was a big lie and she didn’t believe in lies.

But no one was going to be hurt by the deception. She was just giving Travis’s mom an excuse to take a break from her never-ending matchmaking, giving Travis a break, too. For a while, anyway, he wouldn’t have women thrown at him constantly when he wasn’t interested in anything like that.

He’d loved Rachel Selkirk, loved her deeply and completely, the way only a good, true-hearted man can love his woman. And he didn’t want to go there again, didn’t want to take the chance of being hurt like that again. Just like Sam didn’t want to be hurt.

Sam folded her hands on top of the covers and stared up at the dark ceiling above and thought about how, maybe, after she got through the week with the Bravos, after she found her new job, she just might consider maybe going on a date again. She might consider giving love and romance and all that stuff another chance.

The thing with Zach had been so long ago. Maybe it was time she let it go, got her girly on in more ways than just her clothes and learning to sip tea without slurping.

Hey, a woman needed love in her life.

And Sam Jaworski knew now that she was just like most other women. A little taller and a lot stronger maybe. With a different kind of job history than most women had.

But with the same hungers in her lonely heart.

She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

And dreamed of Travis.

It was a hazy, indistinct sort of dream. When she woke up the next morning, she didn’t remember much about it. Except that she and Travis were together.

And in the dream, she’d started to feel sad because she knew it was all a lie and it wasn’t going to last.

Because the honest truth was, she never wanted it to end.

S
he got through the next day without once wishing she could wring Jonathan’s neck.

Even though he pushed her constantly to do better, to try harder, even though he remained as snooty and superior as ever, well, she was okay with that. If Travis hadn’t told her what her coach really thought about her, she never would have guessed that Jonathan believed she was doing well.

But Travis
had
told her, and his telling her had boosted her confidence enough that she threw herself into her training with new enthusiasm. She worked even harder than before.

And that second shopping trip on Thursday?

It wasn’t easy, but it was better. She discovered she was getting the hang of what to look for, getting an eye for spotting the finds in an endless sea of different fabrics, colors and styles.

They went back to the hotel that day with more shopping bags than the time before. Jonathan couldn’t help smiling at how well she’d done.

And she laughed. “I know you’re proud of me, Jonathan. I can see it on your face.”

“Ahem. Well. Don’t get too confident. We have a lot more to do.”

She nodded. “I know. And I’m ready for whatever you can throw at me.”

His eyelids drooped lazily over those sharp dark eyes, a look of pure satisfaction. “Perhaps you would enjoy a T-bone steak, rare, and a large baked potato this evening as a reward for work well done?”

She clapped her de-callused hands. “Oh, Jonathan. You have no idea.”

“An hour in the gym first,” he ordered gruffly.

She was only too pleased to pull on the clingy, sexy workout clothes they’d bought that day and head down to the hotel gym. She kicked butt on the treadmill and then pumped iron for all she was worth.

And at six-thirty that evening, she was treated to the most beautiful slab of beef she’d ever seen. She wanted to saw off a huge, juicy hunk and shove it in her mouth, to chew without worrying about keeping her lips together, to let the juice run down her chin.

But she didn’t. She put her napkin in her lap and she picked up her fork and knife and took her time about it. She cut each small bite smoothly and neatly—no sawing. She chewed slowly and thoroughly. She even managed to make polite conversation while she ate.

Jonathan didn’t once have to reprimand her.

And it was…. kind of fun really. Kind of graceful and satisfying. Eating slowly with care wasn’t half-bad after all.

The next day, Friday, they “worked” her wardrobe. Jonathan showed her how to mix and match the various pieces, to make several outfits out of a skirt, skinny pants, a sweater and various accessories.

They also “did” packing. He produced a gorgeous set of designer luggage and showed her how to pack for various types of excursions—from a weekend in the country to five days in Manhattan to a tropical getaway and an Alaskan cruise. She laughed at that. At the idea of Sam Jaworski packing up her designer duds and heading for the Big Apple or Jamaica or the land of the midnight sun. She also practiced packing for the week with the Bravo family.

That day, they went out for lunch and for dinner. It was important to use her new skills in the real world, Jonathan said.

And the next day, all of a sudden, it was Saturday. The last day of her training, the day of her final test.

Jonathan told her what the test would be: That night at seven, Travis would arrive to take her out for the evening.

She worked her butt off in the morning, reviewing with Jonathan. It was something of a test in itself, to prove how much she remembered of all that he’d taught her, how much she could apply with seeming effortlessness.

Over lunch at Quattro, the gorgeous Italian place in the hotel, Jonathan actually praised her outright. He said she was amazing him. He said that he was proud of her.

She went back upstairs floating on a cloud of success and good feelings.

Then came the afternoon in the spa.

It wasn’t as bad as the first time. She didn’t have to get another peel and she didn’t need waxing.

Still, there was the endless sitting as she had the manicure and the pedicure, the hair color and cut. She worked with the makeup consultant for a couple of hours, learning what products she needed, learning how to apply them.

It all took too long and she would just as soon have been down in the gym bench-pressing triple her weight, working up a good, healthy sweat.

But when it was done, well, she looked in the mirror and saw her dream self staring back at her, as tall and strong as she’d ever been—and yet, so much more. Even her too-short hair looked terrific, with highlights and lowlights, the gamine-style cut bringing out her cheekbones, kind of showing off the nice oval shape of her face. And the makeup was perfect. It enhanced her best features and minimized her flaws.

She returned to the suite, where Jonathan called her amazing for the second time that day.

By then it was almost six. Time to put on the beautifully fitted knee-length stretch satin dress with its skinny straps and built-in bra. A big rhinestone cuff and four-inch Dolce & Gabbana black lace pumps completed the outfit. She grabbed her small satin bag and the cute velvet shrug to keep her shoulders warm outside in the cool November darkness.

And she was ready.

When she came out of her room, Jonathan actually applauded.

She laughed and spun in a circle. “Pretty good, huh?”

He got out his camera and took a whole bunch of pictures. Sam almost felt nostalgic. Was it only Monday that they’d started together? Had she come so far in such a very short time?

It appeared that she had.

The firm tap on the suite’s door came at seven on the dot.

She went to answer.

The look on Travis’s face when she opened the door…oh, it was priceless. He actually gaped.

And then he said, his voice barely a croak, “Sam? My God. Sam.”

She laughed in delight. “Oh, Travis…” And she threw her arms around him. He stiffened at first—because she seemed so different, like a stranger?

She wasn’t sure. She started to feel kind of awkward, that she had maybe scared him by jumping all over him.

But then he relaxed. His arms came around her. He hugged her good and tight and he whispered, “You are drop-dead gorgeous, you know that?” He pressed his cheek to hers. “And you smell so good….”

She could have stood there, holding him tight like that forever. She liked it, so much, the glorious feel of his big, hard body pressed against hers. In his arms right then she felt so…feminine. Not soft, exactly. She was too buff for that.

But smooth. Definitely. And curvy. And very much a woman in every single way.

Reluctantly, she stepped back from him. They stared at each other, both of them grinning.

And Jonathan said, “Come along, you two. We’ll have a toast.” He’d ordered champagne. It was waiting, on ice, in a silver bucket. The bellman had already popped the cork.

Travis filled a crystal flute for each of them and then offered the first toast. “To you, Sam. I knew you could do it. And you have. You’re incredible. I always knew you were good-looking. I just didn’t realize how beautiful you really are.”

She basked in his admiration and approval, thinking that the week of torture and starvation and grueling hard work had been worth it.

And then Jonathan said, “Sam, I wish you all the success and continued admiration you so richly deserve. When you get back here to the suite from your night out with Travis, I will be gone.”

She felt teary-eyed suddenly. “Oh, no. So soon?”

He nodded his big head of beautifully highlighted hair. “Because, darling, my work here is done. I hardly expected what a triumph you would make of our time together. But you, my love, have come so far, so fast. I swear to you, my head is spinning. I will leave you my numbers. Do call now and then and tell me how you’re doing.”

“Oh, Jonathan. Yes, I will. And thank you. Thank you so much.”

He waved a hand. “The pleasure was all mine. Check my website in a few days.”

She groaned. “That’s right. The awful ‘before’ pictures.”

“Ah, yes. But also the ones I took this evening. I think any woman would be proud to look as you do right now.”

She hugged Jonathan before she and Travis left him. He seemed so tiny and fragile in her arms. She whispered more thank-yous. And she promised to call.

They had dinner at Restaurant Cinq in a gorgeous hotel and art gallery called La Colombe d’Or. The building itself had once been the mansion of an oil baron.

To start, there was Petrossian caviar with homemade blinis. Sam had never in her life had caviar before. She found she liked the salty, rich taste.

Then came the toasted goat cheese, roasted beet and mixed greens salad, the three-chili rubbed pork tender-loin with Granny Smith applesauce and roasted corn relish.

Sam remembered to eat slowly, to enjoy every bite.

And even better than the wonderful food and great service was the handsome, dark-haired guy in the beautiful charcoal wool jacket and checked silk shirt across the snowy white tablecloth from her.

He looked at her so…appreciatively. As though he couldn’t get enough of the very sight of her.

Okay, yeah. She knew this thing between them was just for now, just for tonight and the next week with his family. She knew they were only pretending, that it wasn’t, in the strictest sense, real.

But so what? She didn’t care. She was set on loving every minute of it. It was a new beginning for her. The start of a different kind of life.

Which, come to think of it, made it mostly real, after all. Yes, she was only going to be his fiancée for a week. But the woman she was tonight, in the black camisole dress with the lacy high heels and the sparkly rhinestone cuff—she actually
was
that woman now. She had recreated herself in the past week, with Jonathan’s help.

Her new self was no lie.

They talked easily, comfortably together, as always. As comfortably as they did when they’d meet for beers at some wood-paneled neighborhood sports bar right there in Houston.

But Restaurant Cinq was hardly a neighborhood bar. And the way she felt right now, looking at him across the table, the glow of candlelight shining in his eyes?

Well, it wasn’t the same as when they went out for a beer. Not the same at all.

They spoke of his family. Of his brothers and sisters, their wives and husbands and also their kids. About how much his dad had changed in the past couple of years.

“He used to be a real hardass, my father,” Travis said.

She took a slow, thoughtful sip of her wine. “I remember. You always used to roll your eyes a lot when you talked about him. You said your grandfather, James, was a tough guy, real mean. That he drove all his other sons away. Only your dad refused to go. He stuck it out.”

Travis nodded. “And inherited everything when Grandpa died. Because no one chases Davis Bravo away or denies him what’s his by birthright.” He leaned closer. “Your eyes…”

She blinked and then gave a nervous chuckle. “Uh, yeah. I have two.”

“No, I’m serious, Sam. Your eyes are amazing.” At his praise, she felt a warm glow all through her. And he wasn’t finished. “The way they tip up at the corners—and the color. Just a gorgeous blue. So bright. Are you wearing contacts, is that it?”

“Nope. But I did get some help from the excellent cosmetician at the hotel.” She sat back in her chair. “You know, I could really get used to all this flattery.”

“Uh-uh.” He frowned. “It’s not flattery, it’s…” He glanced away. He seemed almost embarrassed. “I’m having a little trouble getting used to the new you.” And then he looked at her again and grinned. “But I’m dealing. I’m working with it. And the view from my side of the table is spectacular.”

She sat forward, too. “Thank you. I mean that—and now back to your dad. You were saying he’s changed….”

“Yeah. He’s…more patient than he used to be. Not so overbearing. Not so sure he’s got all the answers before anyone even asks the question. More willing to admit that he’s not always right. He’s mellowed, I guess you could say. And that makes him a lot easier to get along with.”

“I think I’m going to like him.”

“I think you will, too.”

“And your mother?”

He shrugged. “Other than the relentless matchmaking, she’s a great person. Always there for her kids. All nine of us. She was born a Randall, which is a big name in San Antonio, and she’s involved in all the upscale social stuff. Charity work, the country club. But even with all that, she’s pretty down-to-earth. Not a snob, not in any way.”

“Good. Because I
have
been thinking, Travis.”

Twin lines formed between his dark brows. “You sound way too serious.” His fine mouth flattened out. “You’re backing out of the whole thing, right?”

“No.”

His expression relaxed. “Whew.”

She set down her fork. “But I don’t want to pretend I’m someone I’m not.”

His dark eyes grew darker. “Did I ask you to be someone else?”

“No. No, you didn’t. But I…” She put her hands to her cheeks—and was surprised all over again at how soft and smooth her skin felt. Not really like her cheeks and hands at all. “I just mean that beyond the basic lie we agreed on, beyond my pretending to be your fiancée, and also beyond the new clothes and the new look and everything Jonathan taught me about how to…behave in social situations—beyond all that, I still want to be the same Sam Jaworski I was before I walked into the Four Seasons Hotel last Monday morning.”

“That works for me. It’s not a problem.”

“Let me finish.” She put her hands in her lap, laced her fingers together. Because Jonathan had taught her not to rest her elbows on the table until she was done with the meal. “I want my own history,” she said. “I want my crazy dad who loves me and raised me after my mom left us, my dad who’s retired now, riding around the USA in his Winnebago Adventurer with his new girlfriend, Keisha, who just happens to be four years younger than I am. I want to be the girl who came from a run-down ranch in South Dakota, the one who’s just spent five weeks straight on the
Deepwater Venture
and is planning to look for a new job on land now. I want to be the girl who’s had you for a friend ever since she was a lonely, oversize eighteen-year-old hayseed.”