A Bravo Homecoming (10 page)

He
wanted to be the only man she thought of when she thought of this.

He made the first touch feather-light. With a finger, he traced her brows. A small sound escaped her—of anticipation or anxiety? He couldn’t tell which.

“You’re so beautiful, Sam….” He traced the bridge of her nose, the curve of her forehead, the tender indentation at each temple, the high crests of her cheekbones.

And then he bent close. He kissed the places he had already touched.

By the time he settled his lips onto hers, she was smiling a little. She opened to welcome him.

He drew that kiss out forever. It lasted even longer than some of the other endless kisses they had shared. With his lips and his tongue, he urged her to forget whatever fears she had, to be easy inside herself.

To let bad memories go.

As he kissed her, he touched her, slowly and thoroughly, the way he had the night before.

He cradled her breasts, teasing the nipples until she lifted toward him and moaned her excitement. Only then did he take the caress lower. He rubbed her flat belly. He ran his hands down the twin curves of her hips.

And he stroked her thighs.

In time, she began to move her hips, inviting him. She whispered breathless encouragements against his lips. “Yes. Like that. Oh, yes…” And then she eased her legs apart, the signal he was waiting for, her body’s assurance that she wanted more.

He was only too happy to give her more. He touched her intimately, parting her.

She was wet and open. She spoke against his mouth. “Oh, Travis. Please…” She rocked her hips into his touch. He caressed her more deeply.

And then he eased one leg between her thighs. She gasped—and moved her sleek thighs even wider apart. He settled himself between them, carefully, doing his best to distribute his weight so he didn’t crush her beneath him.

No, she wasn’t the kind of woman he could easily crush. But still, he didn’t want her to feel smothered or hemmed in or overpowered. Not in any way.

Only then did he lift his mouth from hers. Her eyelids fluttered open. She looked at him, her gaze glazed and hungry.

“Touch me,” he whispered. “You set the pace.”

She didn’t hesitate. She reached down between them and took him gently in her hand. She guided him home.

He braced up on his elbows to get more control. And in an agony of slowness, he pressed in.

Little by little, he entered her. Pushing in a fraction, holding still, watching her flushed face for any sign that she didn’t welcome him, that he might be hurting her.

But she only lifted toward him. She wrapped her arms around him, whispered, “Yes, it’s good. More…”

At last, he filled her. Her body stretched and gave around him. They were together in the most complete way.

She rocked her hips up to him.

He held still, letting her take him, do what she would with him, letting her set her own pace. It was pure torture, to hold back so she could lead the way.

Pure torture, but in a really good way.

She lifted up, took his mouth again, plunged her hot, wet tongue inside.

He knew then. She was okay with this. More than okay.

Her sweet, strong body called to him. He couldn’t help but answer. He rocked his hips toward her. She rose to meet him.

And after that, he was lost in sweet, consuming heat. He let go and let it happen.

The world spun away and it was only him and Sam and this miracle of pleasure that burned so hot and bright between them. There was only her kiss and the magical scent of her, the feel of her beneath him, rocking him hard and fast, holding on so tight as they rose to touch the stars.

Sam was a happy woman.

Truly happy.

Yeah, okay. Part of it was the sex. After she got past her own fears and awkwardness, it had been terrific. Better than she’d ever dreamed it might be. But also, well, she believed Travis when he said he wouldn’t let the past ruin what they’d found together. The nagging worry that something wasn’t right with him receded.

She could just enjoy being with him.

And she did. They spent Tuesday at the ranch. Tuesday night, they went to Armadillo Rose, the San Antonio bar owned by Matt’s wife, Corrine. Davis and Aleta had volunteered to stay behind and watch the children. The three younger couples—Elena and Rogan, Mercy and Luke, and Sam and Travis—rode into San Antonio in Rogan’s SUV.

Armadillo Rose, which had been owned by Corrine’s mother before her, was a funky, fun place with loud music and cute bartenders in skimpy tops and cowboy boots.

Corrine had pitchers of margaritas brought to their table, and Asher, Travis’s oldest brother, and his wife, Tessa, joined them. A few minutes later, Matt showed up. And then Marnie and Jericho, too.

They played pool. Corrine even took a break to take on Sam. Sam won that time, two out of three.

It was a family party in more ways than one. Not only were five of the seven Bravo brothers there, but Marnie and Tessa—like Elena and Mercy—were sisters. Before Marnie married Jericho and Tessa said “I do” to Ash, their last name had been Jones.

Marnie told funny stories of growing up in the wild, woolly Jones clan in a tiny town in the California Sierras. She and Tessa had a crazy old grandpa named Oggie and a stepmother they adored. Tessa said that their dad had been a wild man until he settled down with their kind and loving stepmother. They also had two much younger half brothers who, Marnie announced, were born to carry on the Jones tradition of generally raising holy hell.

Sam could so relate. She ended up telling a few stories about her dad, who had a real thing for fireworks. She even revealed his nickname, Ted the Torch. Every Fourth of July, he insisted on buying every bottle rocket and firecracker he could get his hands on. Twice he’d been cited and had to pay whopping fines for setting off fireworks where fireworks weren’t allowed.

The five couples and Matt stayed to close up the place. It was raining as Rogan drove them home, a misty kind of rain. Sam and Travis sat in the rear seat. She rested her head on his shoulder and watched the jeweled drops speckle the windshield up in front and thought that she had never in her life felt so…accepted.

Not only was Travis as gone on her as she was on him, but she also adored his family. His brothers were the greatest. And his sisters and sisters-in-law, well, Sam liked them all. They were good people. It seemed like a hundred years ago that she had worried they might look down on her.

A little while later, alone in their rooms, Travis showed her again how good it could be when a woman found the right man.

Wednesday morning, Irina, Caleb’s wife, called. She invited Travis and Sam to dinner that night. Because they were going to San Antonio in the evening anyway, she and Travis decided to spend the day in town, just the two of them.

They toured the Alamo in the morning.

Travis told her that his mom sometimes worked as a tour guide there. And that before he said he was engaged to Sam, Aleta had been planning to set him up with another tour guide named Ashley.

Sam couldn’t resist teasing him. “Maybe we should ask if Ashley’s giving the tour today….”

He put an arm around her and pulled her close. “Don’t even think about it.” He kissed her then, a quick, possessive kiss that made her breath catch in her throat. It was a revelation to her. How just being with him made every moment so full, so exciting. He spoke again in a low growl. “Keep looking at me like that and I won’t be responsible for my behavior.”

“That was my plan.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. It didn’t get any better than this. To be with him in the truest way, held close in the warm circle of his arm.

Their tour guide, as it turned out, was a tall, slim, balding man named Otis. He spoke eloquently of the history of the Alamo, explaining that it had been built as Mission San Antonio del Valero, one of five missions along San Antonio’s Mission Trail. Otis went on to tell the old story with feeling, all about how, in 1836, 189 Texan soldiers bravely defended the fort for thirteen days before finally being massacred by six thousand of Santa Anna’s troops.

After the Alamo, they had lunch at a great Mexican restaurant and bakery in Market Square. When they’d finished the meal and the waiter had cleared off their plates, Travis took her left hand across the table.

He rubbed his thumb across the big diamond on the ring he’d bought her. “It looks good on you. Really good.”

She squeezed his hand. “I love it. I do. And I have to be careful.”

He tipped his head to the side, frowning. “Be careful of what?”

“Well, I mean, lately, I could almost forget that this isn’t really my engagement ring, that we’re not really engaged.”

He brought her hand to his mouth, brushed his lips across her fingers. The touch of his mouth on her skin made her think of their nights together, made her wish for a thousand more of them. “It feels real to me, too.” He lowered her fingers to the table again, put his other hand over hers, covering the bright diamond, enclosing her hand in both of his. “I want us to
make
it real.”

Her heart stuttered in her chest, and then began racing. “Um, Travis?”

“Yeah?” His eyes gleamed.

“Did you just ask me to marry you?”

I
nstead of answering her question, he said, “Wait, I should be on my knees, right?” Which, she realized,
was
the answer to her question.

She gripped his hand, embarrassed. Thrilled. Blown away. “Oh, no, really? Right here in the restaurant?”

“Absolutely.” He was off his chair and on one knee before she could stop him.

A guy at a nearby table remarked, “Now, that’s the way you do it.”

Somebody else applauded.

Travis still held her hand in both of his. And he said with feeling, “Sam, it’s you. You’re the one for me. Say yes.”

She looked down into his eyes. And she thought how this was exactly what she’d dreamed of, what she’d longed for, in her secret heart—even when she hadn’t dared to admit that a life with Travis was what she wanted more than anything.

At the same time, an unwelcome voice in the back of her mind whispered,
Whoa, slow down. This is happening way too fast.

Sam closed her mind to that voice, to her doubts. She had everything now. She
was
the woman she’d always believed she had no chance of ever being. And Travis wanted her for his wife.

He wanted her for real, not just because his mom wouldn’t get off his back.

He was offering her what she’d always yearned for. No frickin’ way she was turning him down.

“Sam.” He looked up at her with such hopeful tenderness. “Help me out here. Give me an answer. The right answer. Say yes. Please.”

She knew half the restaurant was listening in now. Even the waiters had stopped to watch.

The annoying voice echoed in her head again.
He knows you won’t put the brakes on. Not here. In a public place. He knows you could never embarrass him that way….

No.

That wasn’t true.

It was only the voice of her doubts, the voice of her insecurities, the voice of the lonely girl she used to be. She wasn’t letting that voice stop her from grabbing her happiness with both hands.

“Sam?” Did he sound worried now?

She couldn’t stand that. “Yes!” She laughed—in nervousness and in joy. “Yes, of course. You know that. Yes.”

He swept to his feet, pulling her with him, and gathered her into his arms. Everyone in the restaurant seemed to be clapping. “You had me worried there for a minute,” he whispered.

“Sorry. You kind of caught me by surprise.”

“It’s okay. I forgive you because you gave me the answer I was looking for. Kiss me, Sam.”

She didn’t hesitate that time. She kissed him with all the love and longing she’d been holding in her heart.

Just for him.

For way too long.

At Caleb’s house that evening they held hands underneath the table.

Irina beamed at them. “Love. It makes the world go round and round.” Her gaze strayed to Caleb and they shared an intimate glance.

Who knew? Sam found herself thinking. What had started out as a lie had ended up becoming the truth. The beautiful, amazing, absolute truth.

Engaged to Travis.
If someone had told her two weeks ago that Travis would take a knee in the middle of a restaurant and propose to her for real, she would have laughed and said, “No way. Never. Not a chance.”

So much for all her old assumptions.

She had conquered her worst fears—that she wasn’t quite good enough, wasn’t woman enough, didn’t have enough class. And as a result, she had won her prince.

And speaking of princes…

Sam met a real one that night. His name was Rule.

Prince Rule Bravo DeCalibretti. He was a cousin to the Bravos, the second-born son of one of Davis’s long-lost brothers. Born in Montedoro, a tiny principality on the Mediterranean, His Highness was visiting America for the second time. Rule said he enjoyed getting to know his father’s country a little. Rule was tall and dark and handsome, as all princes should be. He was staying with Gabe and Mary Bravo and would be coming out to Bravo Ridge tomorrow to celebrate Thanksgiving—that most American of holidays—with the San Antonio branch of the family.

And Rule wasn’t the only royalty there that night. Irina was a princess. Seriously. Or she would have been, if things had been different. There was actually a book about Irina’s life. A big, fat one, with lots of glossy pictures. Sam thumbed through it, thoroughly amazed. Irina didn’t seem the least unhappy that she would never be a queen. She was the picture of contentment living in San Antonio with the husband she adored and their gorgeous little daughter.

Sam and Travis left Caleb’s at a little after eleven. They were back at the ranch before midnight.

Holding hands, they climbed the stairs to the rooms they shared. He took her in his arms the minute they shut the door behind them.

“I wanted to tell them all tonight,” he whispered. “That we’re together. That you’re really mine.”

“But they wouldn’t have understood.” She brushed a butterfly-light kiss across his mouth. “Because they all think we were already engaged.”

He claimed another kiss, a longer, deeper one. And as he kissed her, he took hold of her sweater and eased it up over her ribcage. She raised her arms. They broke the kiss long enough for him to pull the sweater over her head. He reclaimed her mouth and he turned her, continuing the kiss, and waltzed her backward to the bed. They fell across it together.

He lifted away enough to add, “And if I told them that I asked you to marry me today and you said yes, then I would have had to explain everything….”

She touched his cheek, already scratchy from a day’s worth of beard. “It’ll make a good story, one of these days.”

He smiled. “Something to tell our kids, when they think we’re old and boring.”

“Our kids…” She considered that possibility. “I never thought…you and me. Kids.” She nudged off her shoes, heard them plunk to the bedside rug.

“Well, think about it now,” he said gruffly, sitting up to get rid of his own sweater. “Because it’s going to happen.”

“And I’m so glad.” She pushed him back down and leaned over him, laying her hand on his chest, which was so wonderfully broad and deep and heavy with muscle.

Another kiss. She caressed him, running the backs of her fingers along the side of his neck. Then she pushed away and sat up.

He caught her arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”

She gave a lazy shrug. “Well, I
was
going to help you with your boots….”

“Ah.” He let her go, lay back and folded his hands behind his head. “In that case, okay.” He held up a boot.

Shaking her head, she slid off the bed, braced her feet on the rug, took the heel in one hand and the toe in the other and pulled. The boot slid off easily. She took the other one off, too, and his socks as well, while she was at it. Then she stretched out beside him again.

Idly, he traced the line of her hair where it curled against her temple. And then he let his finger glide lower, around the line of her jaw, down the jut of her chin, the length of her throat. He lingered for a moment or two at her collarbones, tracing one and then the other. He laid his warm palm against her upper chest. It felt so good there, so right.

Finally, he skimmed the top of her low-cut satin bra, making her sigh.

With his gaze, he followed the slow progress of that skimming finger. “With you here, I really feel I’m…coming home at last, you know?” His voice was touched with roughness and desire. He glanced up again and their eyes met.

She scanned his face. It was a good face, the kind of face she would never tire of looking at. “I’m glad, Travis. So glad…”

A slight frown creased his brow. “What would you think about moving here?”

The question surprised her. She rose up on an elbow. “South Texas Oil has something for you here, in San Antonio?”

“Not STOI. BravoCorp.”

BravoCorp. The family business. Davis was president and chairman of the board. Caleb was the top sales rep, Gabe the company attorney, Matt CFO and Ash CEO. BravoCorp invested in any number of different projects. Once they’d been mostly in land development, but with the economic downturn, they’d diversified. Now, they had various investments they managed all over the country, in Spain and in South America. Also, for as long as she’d known Travis, they’d put a good chunk of their capital into oil.

She took a not-so-wild guess. “They still want you to take over the family oil interests?” He’d mentioned in the past that he could always have a place in the family business. He’d just never wanted that before.

He rubbed her shoulder, caressed the length of her arm. “My dad brought it up yesterday. And Gabe mentioned the idea again tonight. I would be vice president in charge of petroleum exploration and development.”

“Whoa. Way impressive.”

“The money would be really good, a big salary, great benefits and a strong bonus structure.” He named an eye-popping figure. “Wow.”

He was watching her closely. “Say it,” he grumbled.

“Oh, come on. You know what I’m thinking.”

“So come out with it.”

“Well, you’ve always said you wanted to make your own way.”

“I see things differently now. We’re getting married. We want to have kids, so coming home to stay, being near the family, it suddenly has a big appeal.”

“I can understand that.” She also experienced a certain…wariness. That feeling she’d had in the restaurant, when he proposed, that they were moving awfully fast, talking about changing everything up when she’d barely gotten used to the astonishing fact that they were together and they both wanted to stay that way.

It wasn’t that changing things was bad. She’d been making some changes herself after all. It was only…well, he surprised her. All of a sudden, he was talking about going to work with his family when he’d never been the least willing to consider such a thing before.

He touched the flare of her hip. She shivered a little in anticipation of the other places he might touch. Her apprehensions faded as desire bloomed.

And then he said, “We could get our own place here, in San Antonio. A really nice place in a great neighborhood. Since you’re not taking another job offshore anyway, you could just take a hiatus for a while.”

Her misgiving came creeping back. “A hiatus? From?”

“Work.”

She just didn’t get it. “But, Travis, I want to work.”

“I put that wrong. Because you
would
be working. It’s a full-time job, to be a mother. To raise a family.”

“Well, yes, I can see that. I get that. But I told you, I want to get my degree, get a new job…”

“But there’s no hurry to do that. It’s not like with kids.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re thirty years old, Sam.”

“Well, yeah. And I—”

“Sam.” He didn’t wait for her to finish. “We need to get on with having those kids we’ve been talking about. You know that we do. And you need to be…safe, most of all.”

What did he mean by that? “Safe from what, exactly?”

He wasn’t looking at her.

She touched his face. And then she had to wait several seconds before he turned her way and she could see his eyes. “Safe?”

He didn’t answer right way. But then, gruffly, he confessed, “I wouldn’t make it. I couldn’t do that again. If something happened to you…”

“Travis.” She laid her palm against his beard-scratchy cheek, held it there, a touch meant to comfort, to reassure. “What happened to Rachel, you know that was a one-in-a-million thing. One of those things that could happen to anyone. Not something you could have protected her against.”

“Not true. If I had been there, it might have been different.”

“What? You were going to stick by her side every minute of every day?”

“Don’t exaggerate.”

“I’m not. It’s just, well, life itself is frickin’ hazardous. No one gets out alive.”

He glared at her. “You know what I mean, Sam.” And then he softened his tone. “We just have to be more careful, you know?”

She really, really did not like this. “You’re not making sense. Are you telling me I’m not supposed to walk across the street by myself?”

His eyes were so dark, so determined. “I can protect you. I
will
protect you.”

“Travis, that’s just not realistic. Some things you can’t protect another person against.”

“You can’t know that. You can never know that. There’s always something a man can do so that the bad stuff can be prevented.”

She could see that she needed to try a different tack with this. “Look at it this way.”

“What way?” He didn’t look the least receptive.

She refused to give up. “I’ve done a very dangerous job for over a decade. And see?” She gestured down the length of her body. “All in one piece, in perfect health.”

He still wasn’t buying. “You’re purposely misunderstanding me.”

“No.” She searched his face. “I’m not. Honestly, I’m not.”

“I want us to get married right away.” He spoke so intently. Heatedly. “I want to buy a house. And I want to have kids.”

She realized she had to say it right out loud. “Look, you’re…moving awfully fast, don’t you think? Maybe too fast?”

There. She had said it. Spoken her concern out loud.

And she instantly saw that it had done her no good.

He refused to understand. “Fast?” He growled the word. And then he sat up and swung his feet to the floor.

“Travis…” She tried to catch his arm. He only shrugged off her touch as he stood. “Travis, come on…”

He ignored her plea and moved on silent feet to the window. He stared out on the dark side yard, his broad, bare back set against her. “What do you mean fast? I thought we were both agreed about what we wanted, about how it would be.”

“Well, I just…” She tried to frame an answer, to explain how his beautiful proposal that afternoon had happened so quickly, given that they’d been lovers for only a couple of days—quickly, and also like something of a manipulation, made right out in public like that, where putting him off would have shamed him.

But she didn’t want to go there if she didn’t have to. Because it
had
been a great moment. And she
did
want to marry him, to have children with him. It was a wonder and a miracle to her, that she’d finally found what for so long had been only a distant dream to her.