The Merciless Travis Wilde

* * *

She ordered yogurt and fresh fruit.

He ordered pancakes, bacon and eggs.

“The menu says they use only certified humane, free-range eggs,” she said, after the waitress had brought them orange juice.

Travis raised an eyebrow.

“And that’s good, right?”

She nodded. “Absolutely. Did you ever see any of the documentaries about how chickens are raised?”

“No,” he said quickly. From the look on her face, he was happy that he hadn’t.

“Back home—”

“Where’s that?”

“New Hampshire.”

“Ah. Thought I heard a touch of New England in that accent of yours.”

She wrinkled her nose.

“You’re the one with the accent, cowboy, not me.”

He grinned. “Anyway, back home...?”

“I spent part of a summer working at an egg farm.” Her smile faded; a little shudder went through her. “‘Farm’ turned out to be the wrong way to describe it. It was an eye opener.”

He’d never thought about it before. Now he did.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ll bet.”

Their meal arrived, her bowl of yogurt heaped with big, shiny strawberries. He watched as she plucked one from the heap, brought it to her lips and bit into it.

Crimson juice ran down her chin. She got to it, fast, with her napkin.

He thought about how he could have got to it faster, with his tongue.

Not a good thing to think about, in a public place.

“So,” he said quickly shifting a little in the leather booth, “is that why you’re such an early riser?” She looked at him blankly and why wouldn’t she? Talk about non sequiturs...but it was the best he could do on the spur of the moment. “You were up with the sun this morning.”

“Oh.” She smiled. “It has nothing to do with chickens. It’s academia.” Her smile became a chuckle at the look on his face. “I have three early classes a week. I’m a T.A. A teaching—”

“A teaching assistant.”

“Uh-huh. It’s a grad course. The Psychology of Male-

Female Relationship Patterns.”

Travis nodded. Male-female relationships. He could almost feel his appetite fading.

“Must be—”

“Deadly dull.”

His eyebrows rose. She laughed.

“I know I shouldn’t say that but it is.” She brought the teaspoon to her mouth. “And what do you...” Her face pinkened.

“What?” he said, his eyes on the spoon, imagining what the coolness of the yogurt would be like in the warmth of her mouth.

“I only just realized...I don’t know anything about you.”

“You know everything about me,” he said in a low voice. “Everything that matters.”

“No. Seriously. If you and I—”

“Honey.” His gaze went from the spoonful of creamy yogurt to her rosy lips. “Save me here, will you? Put that yogurt in your mouth so I can stop working up a sweat thinking about it.”

“Thinking...?”

Man, what a mistake to have told her that. She was blushing again. He’d made love to her enough to know her chest and breasts turned that same rose-petal pink when she had an orgasm, when his lovemaking caused her orgasm...

“Do it fast,” he said hoarsely.

She put the spoon down.

“Travis. Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like—like—” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “Tell me—tell me about yourself.”

He grinned. “Change in conversation, huh?”

“Absolutely. Come on. Tell me about Travis Wilde.”

“There’s not much to tell.”

Jennie rolled her eyes. “You don’t really think I’ll fall for that, ‘shucks, ma’am, ah’m jest a plain cowboy’ stuff, do you?”

He burst out laughing.

“Talk about accents...Is that how guys in Texas sound?”

“Some of them.” She smiled. “But not you. Were you born here?”

“You mean, am I an honest-to-God Texan?” He put his knife and fork across his plate, pushed it aside, reached for his coffee. “I am. I was born here. Well, not here. Not in Dallas. I was born in Wilde’s Crossing?”

“A town with your name?”

“Wildes have been in Texas a long time, honey. You listen to my old man tell the story, we’ve been here ever since Thor the Hammer wrecked his longship on the Corpus Christi bar.”

Jennie grinned. “No, he didn’t.”

He grinned back. “Okay. Maybe not, but yeah, we go back a bit.”

“Are you ranchers?”

Amazing, he thought. He knew every inch of this woman’s luscious body, she knew his, and yet, they were only just having this conversation.

“We have a place in Wilde’s Crossing. El Sueño.”

“The Dream.”

Somehow or other, that she knew what the words meant pleased him.

“Yes. Do you know Spanish?”

“I had two years of it in high school.”

“Ah.”

“Plus two years of German. My father said, if I was going into science, it was a good idea to know German.”

Travis cocked his head. “‘The Psychology of Male-Female Relationship Patterns’ is science?”

“Yes. No. I mean, there’s this whole controversy, whether psych and sociology are sciences or not...” She made a face. “Travis Wilde. You’re trying to change the subject.”

He sat back, sighed, drank some coffee.

“Okay. I was born in Wilde’s Crossing. I grew up on El Sueño. I liked ranching well enough but math always fascinated me...”

He paused. Math? How come he was telling her that? Women had made it clear that “math” wasn’t sexy. Being a finance guy, an investor, was.

“Math,” she said. “If only I’d known you in high school.” She smiled. “I’d have flunked calculus if it hadn’t been for Mary Jane Baxter.”

Travis tried not to smile. She was full of information, his Jennie; all you had to do was find the right button and out it came.

“Mary Jane Baxter?”

“A girl I knew. See, we did a trade. I coached her in English Lit. She coached me in Calc.”

“Sounds like a good deal all around.”

“It was.” She sat back in the booth. “But you’re not a math teacher. Not with that car and condo.”

“No. Well, for a while I was in the Air Force.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “I flew planes. Jets.” Her eyes widened. “Fighter jets,” he added, watching her face.

Hell, he was boasting. He knew the effect that bit of news had on women; if their eyes glazed over at the thought of a guy doing math, they positively glowed on hearing a guy was a jet jockey—and wasn’t that pathetic? That he wanted to impress her?

“Did you serve in the war?”

He nodded, all his boasting forgotten.

“Yeah.”

“That must have been hard. Seeing things. Doing things...”

Her voice was low. Her eyes said she understood that flying a fighter jet in battle left a man with memories that weren’t entirely pleasant.

“Yeah. Sometimes, it was.”

“But other times, it must have been wonderful.”

He smiled. It occurred to him that it was a long time since he’d thought about that part of it.

“What’s it like? To soar over the world?”

“Well,” he said...

And he told her.

About the sense of freedom. The joy. About the sight of the earth, far below. About the first time he’d taken the controls from his instructor.

“It wasn’t a fighter jet, it was a crop duster. See, I loved planes, even when I was a kid. And this guy used to work for us—”

“For El Sueño.”

She’d remembered the name of the place he stil

l thought of as home. For some reason, that pleased him.

“Exactly. He taught me to fly, and then I worked like crazy all one summer on another ranch, earning enough money so I could pay for real lessons...” He paused. “I’m talking too much.”

“No. Oh, no! I love hearing about you as a little boy. I can almost picture you, boots, jeans, a cowboy hat—”

Travis laughed.

“Bumps, bruises and dirt. That was me. My brothers, too. Our mom used to say we were the reason Johnson & Johnson made Band-Aids...”

His words trailed away.

He’d told Jennie more about himself in ten minutes than he’d ever told anyone in a lifetime.

“It must be nice to have brothers.”

He cleared his throat.

“Don’t let them hear me admit it,” he said with the kind of grin that made it clear he was joking, “but they’re great guys.”

“Did they go into the Air Force, too?”