The Merciless Travis Wilde

Who could make her tremble in his arms?

“You’re an idiot, Wilde,” he snarled.

A furious idiot, and the anger tucked away deep inside him, anger at a world that always seemed determined to prove he was unable to control it despite everything he tried, blazed hot and high.

He wanted to go back to that bar.

He knew the yahoos would be happy to see him, that he and they would step out into the night and trade blows until the darkness receded.

But he was Travis Wilde.

He was a man, not a yahoo. He was in control of his life, of himself, of his emotions.

And there was that trip coming up Monday. Not just for himself but for his clients, who had put their trust, and their millions, in his care.

He owed them better, although God only knew what he owed himself.

So he went, instead, to the workout room on the lower level of his penthouse. He ran miles on his treadmill, worked out on the Nautilus, lifted free weights until the sweat poured from his body.

Two hours later, exhausted, he showered, fell into bed and then into a dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER FIVE

TRAVIS’S WEEK PASSED quickly.

Three days in Frankfurt and a last-minute, two-day stopover in London.

Success in each place, agreements negotiated and concluded. He felt great about it—victory was always sweet—but something was missing.

He couldn’t get the woman out of his head.

And it made no sense.

Yes, the sex had been good. Great, when you came down to it. Not because she’d been a virgin but because she’d been—she’d been so sweet. So honest...

Except, she was neither of those things.

Not really.

Sweet? A woman who walked into a bar, looking for a hookup?

Honest? A woman who let a man find out she was a virgin when it was too late to change his mind?

And he would have changed it.

Of course, he would.

A man didn’t want the responsibility of taking a woman’s innocence...

Her wonderful innocence.

And, hell, what was that all about? He was not, never had been one of those smug fools who thought a guy was entitled to bed everything in sight, but a woman should live like a nun.

Apparently, Genevieve had.

Until last Friday night.

And then she’d given herself to a man.

To him.

Except, he could have been anybody. That she’d walked into that bar at the right moment had been pure chance.

She hadn’t chosen him, she’d stumbled across him.

“Stop it,” he muttered, as he sat in the comfort of his private jet, flying high above the Atlantic.

The world was filled with women, beautiful, available women.

What he needed was to call one of them, take her for drinks and dinner.

Good plan.

But it could wait until he was home.

There was no rush.

It was Friday again, they’d land in a few hours, and he could think of half a dozen women who’d drop any plans to spend an evening with him.

Hey, if a man couldn’t be honest with himself, who could he be honest with?

* * *

Still, he didn’t reach for his cell phone when he got to his condo.

He was travel-weary; even the comfort of a private jet didn’t make up for things like time zone changes. So he undressed, showered, put on a pair of old gym shorts, opened a chilled Deep Ellum IPA and took it out to the terrace, where he sank down in a lounger.

It was the kind of day Dallas rarely saw in midsummer: warm but not hot, no humidity, the sun shining from the kind of perfect blue sky he’d always associated with home.

Funny.

He’d flown fighters through equally blue skies, under the kiss of an equally hot sun, in places that were just unpronounceable names on a map to most people but those skies, that sun, had always seemed alien, as if he’d gone to sleep at home one night and awakened the next morning in a world that made no sense.

Travis lifted the bottle of ale to his lips and took a long, cooling swallow.

He knew that his brothers, who had also served their country, felt the same.

The wars of the last couple of decades had been very different from the ones their father had talked about when they were growing up.

The old man was a general. Four stars, all rules, regs, spit and polish. He’d raised them on tales of heroism that went back centuries—“The blood of valiant warriors flows in your veins, gentlemen,” he’d say—and on stories of their more recent ancestors, men who’d battled their way across the Western plains and settled in what eventually had become Texas, where they’d founded El Sueño, the family ranch—if you could call a half a million acre kingdom a “ranch.”

Problem was, their father’s stories didn’t seem to apply to the realities of the twenty-first century, but at least they’d all come home again, if not quite the same way they’d left.

Jake had been wounded in battle, Caleb had been scarred by the dark machinations of an agency nobody talked about.

He’d got off lucky.

No wounds. No scars...

Suddenly he thought back a few years, to a woman he’d dated for a while after he’d come home.

Actually she’d been a shrink with enough initials after her name to fill out the alphabet.

She’d said he had a problem.

He couldn’t connect emotionally, she said, and even though she’d sounded angry, she’d sighed and kissed him, and told him she could hear her internal clock ticking and it was time she found a man who wasn’t just willing to take risks skydiving and flying and doing who in hell knew what else, it was time to find one ready to risk everything by committing to a relationship.

Travis took another mouthful of ale.

Then she told him she knew he couldn’t help it, that he almost surely had PTSD.

But he didn’t.

He hadn’t bothered telling her that.

After all, she was a shrink and painfully certain that she knew all there was to know about the human psyche but the simple truth was, he’d come through two wars—Afghanistan and Iraq—just fine. No physical injuries, no Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

A few bad dreams, maybe.

Okay, maybe nightmares, was more like it.

But he’d survive them.

He’d survived nightmares just as bad, the ones that had almost drowned him in despair when he was little and his mother left him.

Travis frowned.

Hell.

She hadn’t left him. She’d died. Not her fault. Not anybody’s fault. And he’d come through it, gathered himself up, moved on.

One thing a man learned in life.

It wasn’t smart to become dependent on another human being.

To get emotionally involved, the way he’d done last week, with Blondie...

“Dammit,” he said.

He hadn’t gotten involved. Neither had she. Wasn’t that the point? That she’d picked him to take her to bed instead of wanting him to do it...

And why was he wasting time, thinking about her? Why was she still in his head at all?

Travis finished the ale, got to his feet and headed inside.

He didn’t need a date.

He needed a reality check, and what could be better for that than a couple of hours spent with his brothers?

He made a three-way call, got Jake and Caleb talking. After a couple of minutes of bull, he pointed out that it was Friday night.

“I always told you he was brilliant,” Jake said solemnly.

“Yeah,” Caleb said. “I bet he even knows the month and the year.”

Travis ignored the horseplay.

“So are you two up for it? Can you get away for the evening?”

“Get away?” Caleb snorted. “Of course.” And then he must have covered the phone because they heard him say, in a muffled

voice, “Honey? You okay with me spending some time tonight with Trav and Jake?”

Travis snickered. Jake didn’t. He just said getting together sounded good to him.

“You don’t want to check with Addison?” Travis said blandly.

“Why would I?” Jake said, bristling, and then he cleared his throat and said Addison was meeting with her book club tonight anyway, so—

“So,” Travis said, reminded once again, as if he needed reminding, of yet another reason why “commitment” was never going to be a word in his vocabulary, “where do you want to meet?”

Jake named a couple of places. Caleb said why didn’t they try someplace different? A client had told him good things about a new place that had opened in the Arts District.

“Local beers, good wine list, great steaks, music up front but booths in the back where, he says, you can actually hear yourself carry on a conversation.”

“Won’t it be overrun by university types?” Jake said. “You know, alfalfa sprouts, folk music, T-shirts that read, Schopenhauer Was Right?”

His brothers chuckled.

“Not if my client likes the place,” Caleb said. “His brand of philosophy leans more toward Charlie Brown than Schopenhauer.”

They all laughed. Then Jake said, “Okay. Let’s try it. Eight? That okay?”

It was perfect, Travis assured them, and he found himself whistling as he headed for the shower.