“Caleb went into some government agency he can only tell you about if he kills you after.” She laughed; he took her hand and brought it to his lips. “Jake went into the Army. He flew combat helicopters.” His smile tilted. “He was wounded. Badly. And, for a while, he lost his way...” He paused. “I—I guess I kind of lost mine, too.”
His own admission stunned him.
He had never said anything like that, not even to Jake or Caleb...but it was true.
He’d always been into risk: high stakes poker had given him the money to start his investment business, but the risks that came of being part of a war nobody could quite get their heads around had affected him.
Coming home and putting everything on the line—all his considerable winnings, his reputation, his mathematical ability—had been, in some dark, crazed way, a means of taking control of his life.
Risk everything, win everything.
All you had to be sure of was whether or not the risk was worth taking...
“Travis?”
Jennie’s voice was soft.
All at once, he felt as if every risk he’d ever taken had been nothing compared to this...
“Yes.” He cleared his throat, searched blindly for a way to change the subject. “Tell me about you.”
“There’s not a lot to tell,” she said, lying so easily it terrified her. “As I said, I’m from New Hampshire. No brothers, no sisters. Not like you, with all those brothers—”
“Only two. And three sisters. Emily, Lissa and Jaimie. Well, half sisters, but we never think of them like that. Our mother died and our father married again. We lost her, too.”
“It’s hard, losing your parents.” Jennie paused. “Mine died in a car crash when I was eighteen.”
Travis wrapped both her hands in his.
“Leaving you alone?”
“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “Tell me about your father.”
There was more to her story; he was certain of it, but if she needed to change the subject, he’d let her.
“Ah.” Travis waggled his eyebrows. “The old man is a four-star general.”
“Oh, boy.”
“Oh, boy, indeed. You can’t imagine what it’s like, growing up under the eye of somebody who thinks he’s perfect.”
Jennie smiled. “Actually, I can. Well, not exactly. My folks never said they were perfect—but they were. A pair of professors. Dad was a classicist. Mom was a medievalist. Brilliant, both of them. They had me late in life, so they were kind of overprotective.” She sighed. “And when I said I wanted to go into psych and sociology—”
“I bet that went over about as well as when I said I was leaving the military to start my own investment firm.”
“Exactly. I might as well have said I wanted to, I don’t know, to play in a sandbox for the rest of my life.”
“But you’re happy, doing—” he grinned “—doing whatever it is you do.”
Jennie laughed.
“I teach. Well, I will teach...”
Her smile, so lovely and wide, faded. Darkness filled her eyes.
“Honey? What is it?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.”
“Is it your headache? Is it back?”
“No.” She blinked, smiled, but he could see tears glittering in her eyes. “I’m fine. Really. I’m absolutely fine.”
He moved fast, leaned over the table, all but pulled her into his arms.
“Yes,” he said gruffly, “you are,” and when her tears began spilling down her cheeks, he took out his wallet, tossed a stack of bills on the table and did the only thing a man standing on the edge of a precipice could do.
He took her out of the restaurant, took her home to his place where he held her in his arms and made love to her until the tears she wept were tears of joy.
CHAPTER NINE
HE WANTED HER to spend the night with him.
She said that she couldn’t.
“I have to go home,” she said as she lay in his arms in a lounger on the terrace.
“It’s almost midnight. That means it’s almost Sunday, and Sunday’s a day when nobody has to do anything.”
She laughed. “You make that sound so logical.”
“It is logical. Would a mathematician say anything that wasn’t?”
“You’re an investment banker, Travis Wilde. You play the stock market. What’s logical about that?”
Travis clapped his hand to his heart.
“You wound me, madam.”
Jennie laughed. “Seriously. I have to go home.”
“Why?” he said, trying to make light of it because she had no way of knowing he hardly ever asked a woman to spend the night in his bed—and he was still amazed that having her do that was what he wanted. He kissed the tip of her nose. “Have to feed the cat?”
“I wish,” she said, a little wistfully.
“You like cats, huh?”
“I like animals. But—”
“But?”
“But, I never had one. My mother said pets would make a mess. And when I went away to college, you couldn’t have pets in the dorm.”
Travis thought of the big mutt he’d found wandering on campus his freshman year, and brought back to his dorm suite.
“Dogs are not allowed,” the R.A. had said with authority.
“Right,” Travis had replied...and moved the dog into his room for the rest of the semester, when he’d taken him home to El Sueño.
But Jennie wouldn’t have done that.
She was a good girl, and good girls didn’t break rules...
Except for the one about walking into a bar to pick up a guy and hand over your virginity.
Why? Why had she done something so out of character? Because now that he knew her, he could not imagine she would ever have done such a thing.
There had to be a reason.
She was keeping part of herself a secret. He knew it. And it worried him.
“Travis,” she said softly, lifting her head from his shoulder and smiling at him. “You look so serious. What are you thinking?”
He smiled back at her.
“I’m trying to come up with some brilliantly creative reason that will convince you to stay.”
She wanted to. Desperately. Hours had gone by since the headache and it might not return for even more hours. Still, if it did...
You need to keep your meds with you, Jennifer, the doctor had said, but carrying around a container of tablets and capsules would be a constant reminder of—of what was happening to her, and she wasn’t ready for that.
Not yet
He brushed his lips lightly over hers.
“Now who’s looking serious?”
Jennie forced a smile.
“I’m thinking.”
“A dangerous habit—unless you’re thinking of changing your mind about leaving me.”
A swell of emotion rose inside her.
She didn’t want to leave him. Not ever. How could you leave a man like this?
He kissed her, slid
his hand under the shirt he’d given her to wear. She caught her breath as he stroked her nipples.
“Travis—”
“I’m just helping you come up with a reason to stay.”
She laughed.
“You’re a bad influence on me,” she said, but it wasn’t true. He was a wonderful influence. In all her life, she had never been this happy, felt so alive...
Tears welled swiftly, dangerously in her eyes. She tried to bury her face against him before he could see them but she wasn’t quick enough.
“Sweetheart. What is it?”
“Allergies,” she said brightly. “Nothing to worry about.”
And, really, there was nothing to worry about, because what was the point? She couldn’t change fate, couldn’t change life...
Couldn’t change what was happening in her heart, each time Travis kissed her or touched her or said her name.
“Stay with me,” he said.
Do what your heart tells you, her alter-ego whispered.
And what it told her was to stay.
* * *
In the morning, when he staggered into the john, eyes half closed because it was Sunday and surely there was a law against fully waking up early on Sundays, Travis finished what he’d gone into the bathroom to do, flushed the toilet, washed his hands, reached for a face towel and came up, instead, with something small and silken.
His eyes flew open.
It was a pair of white panties.
Jennie’s.
Evidently, she’d rinsed them last night and left them to dry.
Travis looked at them. So honest. So unsophisticated.
So Jennie.
A funny feeling swept over him.
Among the few women who’d ever spent the night, a couple had left things on the vanity. A compact. A lipstick. He wasn’t an overly fastidious man but seeing those things in what was his space had irritated him no end.
Seeing Jennie’s panties on his towel rack sent a warmth through his veins.
He liked seeing them there.
He liked seeing her in his bed.
And he was old enough, wise enough, to know that liking those things could be dangerous to a man’s stability and sanity.
Okay. Time for her to leave. She’d stayed the night. They’d made love when they’d first gone to bed, then during the night.
He’d give her a cup of coffee, then drive her home. Phone her in a few days, ask her to dinner, to a movie, whatever.