A Bravo Homecoming

by Christine Rimmer

  “Ah.” He let her go, lay back and folded his hands behind his head. “In that case, okay.” He held up a boot.

  Shaking her head, she slid off the bed, braced her feet on the rug, took the heel in one hand and the toe in the other and pulled. The boot slid off easily. She took the other one off, too, and his socks as well, while she was at it. Then she stretched out beside him again.

  Idly, he traced the line of her hair where it curled against her temple. And then he let his finger glide lower, around the line of her jaw, down the jut of her chin, the length of her throat. He lingered for a moment or two at her collarbones, tracing one and then the other. He laid his warm palm against her upper chest. It felt so good there, so right.

  Finally, he skimmed the top of her low-cut satin bra, making her sigh.

  With his gaze, he followed the slow progress of that skimming finger. “With you here, I really feel I’m…coming home at last, you know?” His voice was touched with roughness and desire. He glanced up again and their eyes met.

  She scanned his face. It was a good face, the kind of face she would never tire of looking at. “I’m glad, Travis. So glad…”

  A slight frown creased his brow. “What would you think about moving here?”

  The question surprised her. She rose up on an elbow. “South Texas Oil has something for you here, in San Antonio?”

  “Not STOI. BravoCorp.”

  BravoCorp. The family business. Davis was president and chairman of the board. Caleb was the top sales rep, Gabe the company attorney, Matt CFO and Ash CEO. BravoCorp invested in any number of different projects. Once they’d been mostly in land development, but with the economic downturn, they’d diversified. Now, they had various investments they managed all over the country, in Spain and in South America. Also, for as long as she’d known Travis, they’d put a good chunk of their capital into oil.

  She took a not-so-wild guess. “They still want you to take over the family oil interests?” He’d mentioned in the past that he could always have a place in the family business. He’d just never wanted that before.

  He rubbed her shoulder, caressed the length of her arm. “My dad brought it up yesterday. And Gabe mentioned the idea again tonight. I would be vice president in charge of petroleum exploration and development.”

  “Whoa. Way impressive.”

  “The money would be really good, a big salary, great benefits and a strong bonus structure.” He named an eye-popping figure. “Wow.”

  He was watching her closely. “Say it,” he grumbled.

  “Oh, come on. You know what I’m thinking.”

  “So come out with it.”

  “Well, you’ve always said you wanted to make your own way.”

  “I see things differently now. We’re getting married. We want to have kids, so coming home to stay, being near the family, it suddenly has a big appeal.”

  “I can understand that.” She also experienced a certain…wariness. That feeling she’d had in the restaurant, when he proposed, that they were moving awfully fast, talking about changing everything up when she’d barely gotten used to the astonishing fact that they were together and they both wanted to stay that way.

  It wasn’t that changing things was bad. She’d been making some changes herself after all. It was only…well, he surprised her. All of a sudden, he was talking about going to work with his family when he’d never been the least willing to consider such a thing before.

  He touched the flare of her hip. She shivered a little in anticipation of the other places he might touch. Her apprehensions faded as desire bloomed.

  And then he said, “We could get our own place here, in San Antonio. A really nice place in a great neighborhood. Since you’re not taking another job offshore anyway, you could just take a hiatus for a while.”

  Her misgiving came creeping back. “A hiatus? From?”

  “Work.”

  She just didn’t get it. “But, Travis, I want to work.”

  “I put that wrong. Because you would be working. It’s a full-time job, to be a mother. To raise a family.”

  “Well, yes, I can see that. I get that. But I told you, I want to get my degree, get a new job…”

  “But there’s no hurry to do that. It’s not like with kids.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re thirty years old, Sam.”

  “Well, yeah. And I—”

  “Sam.” He didn’t wait for her to finish. “We need to get on with having those kids we’ve been talking about. You know that we do. And you need to be…safe, most of all.”

  What did he mean by that? “Safe from what, exactly?”

  He wasn’t looking at her.

  She touched his face. And then she had to wait several seconds before he turned her way and she could see his eyes. “Safe?”

  He didn’t answer right way. But then, gruffly, he confessed, “I wouldn’t make it. I couldn’t do that again. If something happened to you…”

  “Travis.” She laid her palm against his beard-scratchy cheek, held it there, a touch meant to comfort, to reassure. “What happened to Rachel, you know that was a one-in-a-million thing. One of those things that could happen to anyone. Not something you could have protected her against.”

  “Not true. If I had been there, it might have been different.”

  “What? You were going to stick by her side every minute of every day?”

  “Don’t exaggerate.”

  “I’m not. It’s just, well, life itself is frickin’ hazardous. No one gets out alive.”

  He glared at her. “You know what I mean, Sam.” And then he softened his tone. “We just have to be more careful, you know?”

  She really, really did not like this. “You’re not making sense. Are you telling me I’m not supposed to walk across the street by myself?”

  His eyes were so dark, so determined. “I can protect you. I will protect you.”

  “Travis, that’s just not realistic. Some things you can’t protect another person against.”

  “You can’t know that. You can never know that. There’s always something a man can do so that the bad stuff can be prevented.”

  She could see that she needed to try a different tack with this. “Look at it this way.”

  “What way?” He didn’t look the least receptive.

  She refused to give up. “I’ve done a very dangerous job for over a decade. And see?” She gestured down the length of her body. “All in one piece, in perfect health.”

  He still wasn’t buying. “You’re purposely misunderstanding me.”

  “No.” She searched his face. “I’m not. Honestly, I’m not.”

  “I want us to get married right away.” He spoke so intently. Heatedly. “I want to buy a house. And I want to have kids.”

  She realized she had to say it right out loud. “Look, you’re…moving awfully fast, don’t you think? Maybe too fast?”

  There. She had said it. Spoken her concern out loud.

  And she instantly saw that it had done her no good.

  He refused to understand. “Fast?” He growled the word. And then he sat up and swung his feet to the floor.

  “Travis…” She tried to catch his arm. He only shrugged off her touch as he stood. “Travis, come on…”

  He ignored her plea and moved on silent feet to the window. He stared out on the dark side yard, his broad, bare back set against her. “What do you mean fast? I thought we were both agreed about what we wanted, about how it would be.”

  “Well, I just…” She tried to frame an answer, to explain how his beautiful proposal that afternoon had happened so quickly, given that they’d been lovers for only a couple of days—quickly, and also like something of a manipulation, made right out in public like that, where putting him off would have shamed him.

  But she didn’t want to go there if she didn’t have to. Because it had been a great moment. And she did want to marry him, to have children with him. It was a wonder and a miracl
e to her, that she’d finally found what for so long had been only a distant dream to her.

  But her frustration was mounting. “You know, the least you can do is look at me when I’m talking to you.”

  Slowly, he turned and faced her again. “We finally found each other. Really found each other. This is our chance. Why can’t you see that?” His eyes were shadowed, but he spoke with such passion. Somehow, that gave her hope. They did want the same things. He just wanted everything right now. She was more cautious. She just didn’t see why they needed to rush.

  Lowering her feet to the rug, she rose to her height. “Oh, Travis, please.” She went to him. He watched her approach, his jaw set, his eyes flaring to anger again. She halted a foot away from him. Somehow, it didn’t seem safe to get closer. “I know it’s our chance. I agree with you. I’m so happy that we’re together now.”

  “Right,” he spoke with a clear edge of sarcasm. “So happy you refuse to let me take care of you.”

  She kept her head high, her voice low and even. “But you can’t just ask me to give up all my dreams. To suddenly, overnight, be someone I’m not.”

  “Someone you’re not.” He repeated her words, heavy on the irony. “So what you’re really telling me is that you don’t want to marry me?”

  “I never said that. Of course I want to marry you.”

  “You don’t want to have kids, then.”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. I love you and want to marry you and have kids with you. I also want to go back to college and finish getting my degree—and then find a job that works for me. It’s the twenty-first century, Travis. I don’t see why I can’t do all those things.”

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t. I said there had to be priorities.”

  She took a slow, careful breath. “And your priorities are?”

  “I told you. I want to move ahead with our plans. I want to have a baby right away. Maybe your going to college and getting started on that new career will have to take a back seat for a while.”

  “What you mean is that you want to move ahead with your plans and my plans will have to wait.”

  “Marriage and children,” he said flatly. “That’s my plan. You told me a minute ago that you wanted that, too.”

  “I do.”

  He made a low, angry sound. Raising a hand, his bicep flexing powerfully, he raked his fingers back through his hair in a gesture that spoke all too clearly of his exasperation with her.

  They’d reached an impasse. She got that. She hadn’t spent all her working life dealing with men and finding ways to break through stalemates not to recognize a deadlock when she saw one.

  Someone had to give. She very much doubted that that someone would be Travis.

  At work, she always tried to figure out the deeper problem in a situation like this, to get down to what was holding the other guy back from working with her and moving forward, and also to admit to whatever her own issues were. Sometimes the root problem would be something as simple as the need to be right.

  A man hated to be wrong—well, so did a woman. But for a man, especially, being right seemed keyed into the drive to survive. Men had a basic need to protect others—women and children most of all. And to protect others they had to make the right decisions. They often held on to bad decisions because they couldn’t stand to face the simple fact that they’d been wrong in a judgment call, that they hadn’t been effective protectors.

  Protection.

  What had he said a few minutes ago? I can protect you. I will protect you….

  Yeah, that was the key here. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to make sure that what had happened to Rachel could never happen to her. He needed to believe that he could protect her against accidents of fate—even though what he needed to believe just wasn’t true.

  “What?” he demanded. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Where to even begin? “Travis, I…” He waited, glaring. She made herself continue. “I think that we need to…talk about Rachel.”

  His face was set against her. “What for? This has nothing to do with Rachel.”

  “I think it does—or at least, it has to do with what happened to Rachel. And what that did to you.” She held out her hand. With some reluctance, he took it. “Come on.” She pulled him back toward the bed. He went—dragging his feet a little, yeah. But he went. She sat on the edge of the mattress and pulled him down beside her.

  He sat with the same lack of enthusiasm he’d shown for giving her his hand. “Okay,” he grumbled. “Say it, whatever it is.”

  She twined her fingers with his. “It wasn’t your fault that Rachel died.”

  “I know that.” He shook his head. “I’m not a child, Sam.” He spoke more in reproach than in anger. She decided to take that as a good sign.

  “Well, all right.” She bumped her shoulder against his, squeezed his fingers. “Just checkin’.” She slanted him a glance and saw he was looking at her.

  His gaze had turned softer. “Sam…” His voice was softer, too. “It’s like some miracle, you and me. I never thought I would be willing, you know, to…go there again. To take a chance on losing everything all over again.”

  “I know. I do remember how much you loved Rachel.”

  “I couldn’t…make it work, with Wanda.”

  “I know.”

  His eyes had changed again. They were far away now. “I thought I could. But she just…wasn’t Rachel. I would look at her and wonder how I got there with her. I realized too late that she wasn’t the one for me. I wanted to prove to myself I was over Rachel. So I asked Wanda to marry me—and then I never really gave her a chance. I drove her away, into that other guy’s open arms.”

  Sam made a low noise in her throat. But she didn’t speak. This was, after all, for him to say.

  And then he was looking at her again, really seeing her. “But with you…it’s so good with you. Partly because we were friends for all those years first, I think. You really changed things up during that week with Jonathan. And I finally saw you as a woman. All woman. But you’re still Sam, still the same person I’ve always known. I don’t think of Rachel—or of anyone else—when I look at you. I just see…you. You’re all that I see.” He pulled his hand from hers—but only to wrap those gentle fingers around the back of her neck and pull her close for a slow, tender kiss.

  When they came up for air, she whispered, “I feel the same about you. Oh, Travis. You’re everything to me. I want us to work this out, to find a way that we both get what we want. We can’t…do that if you’re pushing too hard, if you’re trying to make me into someone I’m not.”

  He pressed his forehead to hers. “I get that. I do.”

  “You can’t…protect me absolutely. There is no such thing as absolute safety. We’re not safe in life. The best we can do is try to be a little bit wise, and a little bit careful. And brave. We need to be brave.”

  He rubbed his cheek against hers, his beard stubble creating a slight, lovely friction. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Had she actually gotten through to him? She did hope so. “So you’ll stop…pushing me?”

  He cradled her face in his hands. “I just want us to be married.”

  “Okay. I get that. I want to be married to you, too. But I also plan to go ahead with my education, to get my degree and—”

  “You said that. I get it.”

  Did he? She wasn’t sure. She wanted to find a way to pin him down about it.

  But another thing she’d learned through all the years of doing a man’s job—you didn’t beat an issue to death with a man. You could lose whatever ground you might have gained if you kept after him too long. Sometimes you just had to table the discussion and come back to go at it again another day.

  It was a process she’d never particularly enjoyed.

  “Sam?” He nuzzled her ear, nipped at her earlobe.

  Down below, she felt that wonderful, warm weakness. “Yeah?”

  “Marry me.”

  A low
laugh escaped her. “Wait a minute, didn’t I already say that I would?”

  “I mean let’s set the date. Let’s go for it.”

  She gulped—and started to feel railroaded again.

  But then she stopped herself. It wasn’t the wedding that she had a problem with. It wasn’t being Travis’s wife. She wanted to be his wife, she truly did. “You…have a date in mind?”

  “December. The third Saturday, I think.”

  “Uh. December. As in next month? A few weeks away…?”

  “That’s it,” he said softly. Why did that seem like much too soon? She wasn’t even sure yet that they had an understanding, that he wouldn’t be pressuring her constantly to stay home, to get pregnant ASAP, to give up college and her plans for a new career. He took her chin, guided it around so she looked in his eyes. “I was thinking we could get married here, at Bravo Ridge.”

  “Here?” she echoed weakly, still trying to get her mind around the enormity of the step they would be taking.

  He nodded. “My mom would be thrilled to help in any way she could. She’ll make sure the wedding is exactly the way you want it. We could invite the families—yours and mine. And any friends you want to be there and even some of the guys we’ve worked with over the years, if you want.”

  She was scared to death. Which probably proved that Travis wasn’t the only one with emotional issues here.

  Oh, yeah. Definitely. Setting the date was freaking her out.

  And yet, well…

  What he suggested sounded pretty much perfect. It did. Just the kind of wedding she would want if she was going to have one. Small and comfortable. The family. And a few good friends.

  Strange. To think of herself as a bride. But kind of nice, too.

  Still, she hesitated to say yes. It didn’t feel right to her. And she couldn’t decide whether it didn’t feel right because he was pushing her again—or if the problem actually was hers.

  She’d been on her own for so long, answerable to no one but herself. Being married—even to Travis, even if he backed off on his sudden campaign to make her into his happy little homemaker—well, it was pretty frickin’ huge. It really was.

  Getting married would change her life even more completely than she’d been planning on changing it.