A Bravo Homecoming

“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.”

Chapter Two

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.

He took her by the shoulders and held her away from him so he could meet her eyes. “You going to be okay?”

She nodded and forced a smile for him. “Go on. I’ll be fine.” She stepped back from the comforting circle of his hold. He opened the door and went through it.

Instantly she wanted to reach out and grab him back. She’d always found his presence reassuring—and she could really use some reassurance about now. She took a step out into the hallway and watched him stride confidently toward the elevators.

It was kind of funny, really. She risked her life just about daily on the job. An oil rig, after all, was a pretty dangerous place. But she’d never been as scared as she was right then, in that hotel suite, watching Travis walk away from her. The very idea of having to learn to get her girly on freaked her the hell out. It would be easier if Travis could stay.

“Shut the door, Samantha.” Jonathan’s voice was almost tender.

She stepped back into the room and did what he told her to. And then she leaned her forehead against that door and thought about what a good friend Travis had been to her over the years.

At the end of the first year of their friendship, just before she turned nineteen, he’d helped her get her start in the oil business. He’d spoken up for her when she tried for her first job as a roustabout on a land rig. They didn’t want to hire her because she was a woman and what woman could hold up under the grueling physical labor that would be required of her?

Thanks to Travis, she got that job, as what they called a “worm,” the lowest of the low in the rig pecking order. She got that job and she kept up with the men. She did it all. She hauled pipe and dug trenches, cleaned up mud and oil and whatever else got all over the equipment. She cleaned threads, scraped and painted the various rig components. She worked her ass off and she never shirked.

That first job was where she’d met a certain roughneck, Zachary Gunn. She’d fallen in love with Zach—fallen in love for the first and only time in her life. And when Zach turned out to be a rotten, no-good bigmouth jerk who told everyone what he’d done with her and that she’d been really bad at it, Travis was there.

Travis beat the ever-lovin’ you-know-what out of that sorry SOB. And then kicked him off the rig.

As a rule, Sam fought her own battles. But that one time, it meant more than she could ever say to know that Travis Bravo had her back.

“Time to get started,” said Jonathan. “Tell me you’re ready.”

Sam straightened her spine and turned to face her coach. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

Chapter Three

That first day was really bad.

Before they did anything, Jonathan took a bunch of pictures of her from different angles, pictures of her standing, pictures of her sitting. Pictures from the front, the back, the side. Full-length pictures and also close-up ones.

She knew what those pictures were: the “before” pictures. She knew they were awful.

And she sincerely hoped that the “afters,” days from now, would be a whole lot better.

Once Jonathan decided he had enough ugly shots of her, he had her sign a paper giving him permission to use the pictures on his website. And then he took her to the hotel spa.

It was a nice place. Sam loved that it was simple, not froufrou or frilly in the least. It was soothing just to be there.

Until the torture started.

Jonathan said her skin needed all the help it could get. There was deep-tissue cleaning and a chemical peel. There was hot mud wrapped all around her in steaming wet towels. There was waxing—of her legs and under her arms. The bikini wax was the worst.

She’d rather take a bath in drilling mud than get that done again.

Jonathan laughed when she told him that. “You’ll get waxed, darling. And regularly. A woman should be sleek. Smooth. Excess body hair is not the least bit feminine.”

She grunted. “Gee, Jonathan. Thanks a bunch for sharing.”

There was massage. That wasn’t so bad.

But after that, there was the manicure and the pedicure. Those went on forever and involved soaking and exfoliating and scrubbing at every callous and rough spot, of which there were many.

Hours later, when they were finished with her for the day, her face was lobster-red from the peel and they’d given her booties and white gloves. She had to slather on this gooey ointment before bed nightly, they had told her at the spa, both on her hands and her feet, and then wear the gloves and booties to bed every night for the whole week.

She was starving by the time she got back to the suite. She wanted a burger and fries and a strawberry shake. Or at least a big slab of meatloaf and a mountain of mashed potatoes with a healthy side of mushy canned green beans. On the rig, the kitchen was open round-the-clock and you could get yourself a huge pile of hot food—heavy on the starches and fats and red meat—any time you got the least bit hungry.

Not here, though. Jonathan ordered room service for them.

When it came, she wanted to break down and cry. All day being waxed and plucked and pummeled in the spa. And for dinner, she got an itsy-bitsy mound of barely cooked broccoli, three tiny red potatoes. And grilled salmon.

Actually, it was delicious. But it wasn’t enough to keep a fly alive.

She begged for more. Jonathan refused to let her even have one more dinky red potato. He said she wasn’t getting enough exercise to eat the way she was apparently accustomed to eating.

It was too much. She yelled at him. “Jonathan, I would be frickin’ happy to exercise. I’ll go down to the gym right this minute and bench-press my butt off if you will only swear on your life that there’ll be a blood-rare T-bone and a baked potato slathered in butter and sour cream waiting for me when I get back up here to this frickin’ tasteful, so-classy suite.”