A Bravo Homecoming

by Christine Rimmer

At her first sight of the new Sam, Dina said, “Huh? Puh-lease. No way.”

  Mila didn’t say anything that Sam could hear. But she did whisper something behind her hand.

  Their mother burst into tears. “Oh, Samantha. You’re beautiful. Oh, Samantha. I never knew….”

  Walt, looking slightly befuddled as always behind the heavy black frames of his glasses, said, “Ahem, well. Samantha. What a nice surprise.” Sam wasn’t sure if he meant the changes in her—or that she’d finally found someone willing to marry her.

  Sam introduced them to Travis. He said how happy he was to meet them at last. He actually seemed to mean it. He shook Walt’s hand, kissed her mother on the cheek and gave each of the Terrible Twins a warm and welcoming smile. Really, he was a prince in the truest sense of the word.

  Her mother, so tiny and delicate in a pink suit and ruffled lilac-colored blouse, stared up at him, wet-eyed. “Well, I am so pleased to meet you, too, Travis. I can’t tell you how pleased…”

  Paco and one of the other hands were there, ready to help.

  Travis said, “Paco and Bobby will take your bags inside.”

  “Oh!” Her mother gave him a trembling smile of over-the-top gratitude. “Thank you so much, Travis. Yes.”

  And then Ted appeared, smoking a cigarette, bearing down on them from the driveway that led to the garage and the space beside it where he had parked the Winnebago. Keisha waddled along in his wake.

  Sam’s mother watched them approach, a look of absolute horror on her fine-boned face. “I see your father has already arrived,” she said weakly. “And he still hasn’t stopped smoking.” Was she going to faint, right there in the driveway? She’d damn well better not.

  “That’s right,” Travis said cheerfully, as if everyone’s mother got the vapors like some anemic heroine from a Victorian novel—as if everyone’s dad had a pregnant girlfriend less than half his age. “He and Keisha got here yesterday.”

  “Ah. Yes,” Jennifer said feebly. “Keisha. Of course.”

  The twins snickered and whispered to each other as their mother kind of sagged against Walt, who put his arm around her and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

  Ted descended on them. He dropped his cigarette and stomped it with his big boot. “Well, if it isn’t Jennifer and Walt and their two gorgeous girls.”

  Keisha was right behind him, her hand under her belly to stop it from bouncing as she hurried to keep up with Ted’s giant strides. “Hello! I’m Keisha! So amazing to meet you at last!”

  Inside, Sam introduced her mom and Walt and the twins to Aleta and Davis.

  Travis’s parents were great. They shook hands and smiled sincerely and said all the right things. Then Sam led the Carlsons up to their rooms.

  The twins went straight into their room and shut the door. Which was fine with Sam. Great, actually.

  She wasn’t so lucky when it came to her mom.

  Jennifer wanted to talk. She shooed Walt from the room and took Sam’s big hand in her tiny little pink one. “Samantha, sit with me.” There were a pair of ladder-back chairs by the window. Her mom led her over there and they sat. Sam couldn’t help recalling how Aleta had done more or less the same thing, that first day Sam arrived at the ranch with Travis. But somehow, when Aleta did it, Sam had felt flattered and only too happy to chat. With her mom, she dreaded what might happen next. “Now,” said Jennifer. “Tell me everything.”

  Everything. Right. “Gee, Mom. That would take a while.”

  It was, of course, totally the wrong thing to say. Her mom’s pretty face crumpled and her eyes filled with tears. “I only…I just thought we might…touch base a little. Is that so much to ask?”

  It wasn’t. Sam knew it wasn’t. “Of course not. What did you want to know?”

  Her mother pressed her lips together, put on a smile and tried again. “Well, I mean, look at you. You’re gorgeous.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “How…well, I always knew you had good bones. That you could be attractive if you’d only try. And now you’re…I have no words. I’m just stunned.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “And I would love to hear every detail.”

  Sam had to admit that her mom was being kind of sweet really. That she was only trying to be appreciative and supportive. So Sam gave her an abridged version of the makeover, leaving out the part about how it had all started because Travis needed a fake fiancée. Sam said that she had wanted to make a change and getting professional help seemed like the best way.

  When she was done, her mom clapped her little hands. “Oh, that is wonderful, Samantha. I’m so proud of you.” Jennifer. Proud of her. That was a first.

  Sam basked in the moment. “Well, thanks, Mom.”

  “And let me guess the rest. Your old friend Travis took one look at the new you and realized how blind he’d been.”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “And now, here you are, getting married to your own personal prince charming.”

  That made her smile. “He is a prince, isn’t he?”

  “I know you must be so happy at last, to be in love with a wonderful man and to know that he loves you back.”

  “I am happy. Very much so.” Not that I wasn’t before.

  “And if you had only listened to me, this could have happened years ago.”

  Bam. The sucker punch. As always. Sam kept her cool, even though her stomach had tied itself in about a hundred little knots. “Well, I didn’t listen to you. And it didn’t happen until now. And I’m more than happy with the way things have turned out.”

  Her mother shook her pretty blond head. “Oh, Samantha. Always so proud.”

  “I’m only saying that it all worked out. Can we leave it at that?”

  “Of course,” said her mother. She meant, of course not. “I just…well, I don’t have to tell you. I mean, what can your father be thinking?”

  It was pretty much what Sam had said to Travis the night before. But somehow, when her mom said it, it sounded snotty and mean-spirited. “Leave it alone, Mom.”

  “Yes, well. I suppose I should.”

  “Please.”

  “It’s a terrible embarrassment. In front of Travis’s lovely family.”

  “The Bravos don’t seem to mind. They seem to think Dad’s kind of fun. And everybody likes Keisha. I mean, what’s not to like?”

  “But is he going to marry her?”

  Sam realized that on top of her stomach hurting, she was getting a headache. “I don’t know, Mom. I figure that’s none of my business.”

  Her mother visibly flinched. “What was that? One of those barely veiled criticisms of yours?”

  You ought to know, Mom, Sam thought but somehow managed not to say. Barely veiled criticisms were her mother’s weapon of choice. Sam got up. “I don’t want to fight with you, Mom. I just don’t.”

  Her mother rose, too. “You’re right,” she said stiffly. “I don’t want to fight either. I only want for us to get along.”

  The day before the wedding continued. Endlessly.

  There was lunch in the sun room, where her mother and father actively ignored each other—her father talking too loud and too much, her mother saying little, but making small, outraged, impatient sounds and constantly pinching up her small pink lips. The twins, their sleek blond heads pressed close together, snickered constantly. Walt looked befuddled and Keisha occasionally said something harmless and sweet with the usual exclamation point after it.

  The Bravos—Davis and Aleta, Mercy and Luke and Travis, too—took it all in stride. Sam knew they weren’t bothered in the least by her dysfunctional family. They made easy conversation and filled in the hostile silences with new, interesting and yet uncontroversial topics of discussion. Little Lucas was his usual adorable self and baby Serena lived up to her name, sitting quietly with her toys around her, beaming up at anyone who stopped and spoke to her.

  Sam’s headache got worse. She wondered how she had gotten
here, in this big, beautiful house, with Travis’s wonderful family and her totally messed up one. She thought of the Deepwater Venture—of all the rigs she’d worked on. And she saw herself, tall and capable and spattered with grease and drilling mud, striding confidently across the drilling platform, secure in her idea of herself and her place in the world.

  She didn’t feel so secure now. She felt like she didn’t have a clue who she really was. She had no idea where she was going.

  Or if she would ever get there.

  Did other brides feel this way? For all their sakes—and the sake of their poor grooms—she hoped not.

  The other Bravos started arriving around four. Dinner that night was sort of a rehearsal dinner, just minus the rehearsal.

  They all came, each of Travis’s brothers and sisters, and their wives and husbands and kids, too. Dinner went nicely, Sam thought. With so many people there, her hulking, loud dad and passive-aggressive mom kind of disappeared in the crowd. She started to believe she just might make it through the weekend after all.

  After dinner, Travis’s brothers kidnapped him. All the men—Walt and Sam’s dad included—drove away in various vehicles to meet up at some agreed-upon location for an impromptu bachelor party.

  Sam and the other women stood on the porch, laughing and waving, as the men drove away.

  When he came back, Travis would sleep alone in the blue room that night. And Sam would stay in the yellow room, with the door shut between them. She’d really wanted it that way when she asked him if they could sleep separately on the last night before the wedding.

  But somehow, as the evening went on and Sam visited with her soon-to-be sisters-in-law and Aleta and Keisha, and tried to be nice to her mom and the Terrible Twins, she found herself wishing that when he came home, he would go straight to the door between their rooms, push it open and climb into bed with her. There was something about his solid presence in the bed that eased her fears and calmed her anxieties.

  With Travis’s strong arms around her, she knew who she was again. Her doubts about whether she was cut out to be his wife—to be anyone’s wife—seemed meaningless and easy to ignore.

  It was midnight when she climbed the stairs to the yellow room. She shut the door to the hall and also the one to the blue room. Then she stood at the windows for a long time and stared at the new sliver of moon out there in the wide Texas sky and wondered what was wrong with her.

  She didn’t like her mother much and she wanted to bitch-slap both of her half sisters. Her dad drove her nuts.

  But her birth family wasn’t what this weekend was about. This weekend was about her and Travis. Travis, whom she loved.

  Travis, who was just right for her, who made her body glow with pleasure and who warmed her once-lonely heart.

  She was the luckiest woman in the world.

  So why was she longing to run away from her own wedding?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Travis accepted another Jack Black on the rocks and joined in the drinking song Ted had started.

  As bachelor parties went, it was a tame one, held in one of the wood-paneled rooms at his father’s club. Tame was fine with Travis. There was some loud music—when Ted wasn’t calling for it to be shut off so he could lead them in another raunchy song. The liquor flowed freely and there were even some good-looking women there. Not that any of his brothers, his brothers-in-law or his father seemed to care. A couple of his brothers had been players back in the day. But now, they were all like him. One-woman men.

  Even Ted, who sure knew the lyrics to a lot of dirty ditties, wasn’t the least interested in the bachelor party babes. True-blue to Keisha, who certainly deserved a good man. Walt, too, apparently, had no interest in a little bachelor party fooling around. He stayed well away from the women. Because he was too shy to try anything or because Jennifer was the only woman for him, Travis couldn’t have said.

  It was kind of fun really. Kicking back with the other men of the family, drinking a little more than he probably should have, listening to rock and roll and Christmas music and singing along with Ted.

  Or it would have been fun, if Travis could only shake the scary feeling that he was going to lose Sam. The same as he’d lost Rachel. The same as he’d driven Wanda away.

  Every night the past week or so, he would wake up at three or four in the morning and just lie there, watching Sam sleeping, thinking how he’d never felt the way he felt for her—not even with Rachel—and wondering what tricks God and fate and blind misfortune might have up their sleeves for him this time.

  Yeah. All right. He had a problem. And he knew it. And he was working with it. He knew he had…issues, as a woman would put it. As Sam herself had put it a few weeks ago.

  He knew that Sam was right when she said it wasn’t his fault that Rachel had been run down by some out-of-it drunk driver. Sam was right when she said that he couldn’t protect her from every single bad thing that might ever happen to her.

  And as soon as he’d given some serious thought to those things that Sam had said, he’d taken steps to get past his own irrational terror of losing her.

  He’d made himself back off on all the plans he had that hemmed her in. He’d agreed to put off trying to have a baby. He’d made it clear to her that he would support her in getting her degree and her start in accounting. He saw that it was only right, for her to have the life she wanted. He wanted her to have the life she wanted.

  Everything seemed good between them. Everything seemed right.

  Except that sometimes, when he looked in her unforgettable blue eyes, he saw panic.

  Sometimes he was sure he was losing her, even though he’d done everything he could think of to keep from driving her away.

  He wanted the damn party to be over. He wanted to go back to the ranch and to Sam. Yeah, all right. They’d agreed to spend the night before their wedding in separate rooms.

  Too bad about that. He wanted to shove open the door that separated them—to break it down, if he had to. He wanted to take her in his arms and never let her go. He wanted to tell her that she was everything to him and it was going to be all right.

  But the bachelor party wasn’t over. And he was the groom, so he had an obligation stay to the end.

  Plus, well, what if his fears were all in his own mind?

  Hey, it was possible. Because he had issues, deep-seated fears. And if the whole point was not to hem her in or freak her out, well, what could she feel but hemmed in and freaked out if he burst in on her in the middle of the night just to make sure she wasn’t planning on running away from their wedding?

  At some point, he had trust in her. Trust in what they had together. A man couldn’t make a woman stay with him.

  He could only be the best man he could be for her.

  And let fate and God and blind misfortune do what they would.

  Ted started another song. Travis raised his glass and joined in.

  The party lasted until after three. Then he rode back to the ranch with his dad, Luke, Ted and Walt—Rogan went with Caleb; he and Elena and baby Michael were staying at Caleb and Irina’s for the weekend.

  The five men took their boots off before tiptoeing up the stairs.

  Travis entered the blue room as silently as he could. The bed was empty and the door to the yellow room was closed. Just as he and Sam had agreed it would be.

  He set his boots by the bed and went on stocking feet to that shut door. He didn’t open it.

  But he did stand there for a very long time, wanting to open it, aching to open it. And telling himself that wouldn’t be right.

  Sam woke at six on her wedding day.

  She sat straight up in bed and stared at the door to Travis’s room.

  Shut.

  She wanted to leap to her feet and race to that door, to throw it open, and run to him, to climb into bed with him and hold him and whisper…everything.

  All her fears. Her doubts. Her scary, nonsensical desire to throw on some clothes, tiptoe down t
he stairs, sneak out the front door and down the wide steps and take off along the driveway to the road.

  To run and keep running.

  To never look back.

  Until she knew who she was again.

  Until she could return to him secure in the knowledge that she was good enough. Ready enough.

  Woman enough.

  She didn’t, though—didn’t go to him, didn’t run away. She was not only riddled with doubt, but she was also a coward. Which was why she lay back down and closed her eyes and drifted off into a fitful, unhappy sleep until eight, when Mercy came to get her.

  Sam put on some jeans and a cotton shirt and followed Luke’s wife down the back stairs and out the back door where a limo was waiting, Aleta and Sam’s mom, Keisha and the Terrible Twins already inside. The limo rolled along the single-car pebbled driveway that circled the house and then down the wider driveway to the road. Keisha said what a great day it was for a wedding. Aleta and Mercy agreed. Sam’s mom was subdued. Dina and Mila were downright civil. They giggled about how cool it was, to be chauffeured in a limo.

  Not once did they snicker behind their hands.

  Sam realized she was glad they were there.

  The limo took them to Gabe and Mary Bravo’s ranch, where Travis’s sisters and his other sisters-in-law were waiting. And not only all the Bravo women.

  There was a surprise guest. He emerged from behind Mary’s Christmas tree a moment after Sam walked in the front door. He wore forest-green trousers and a festive red shirt—and the rhinestone suspenders she’d sent him when she mailed him the card inviting him to the wedding.

  Sam did not burst into tears at the sight of him. But almost. “Oh, Jonathan. I didn’t think you’d come!”

  “Darling, I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. I called Travis when I got your invitation. He had Mary get in touch. She graciously offered me accommodations here.”

  Sam hugged him, hard. “Oh, I’m so glad to see you.”

  “Don’t crush me, my love. You simply don’t know your own strength.” He wiggled from her grasp and smoothed his big hair.