Sandra Marton - The Merciless Travis Wilde

He’d gotten some looks when he walked through the door. That figured. He was an unknown in a place where people almost certainly knew each other or at least recognized each other.

Physically, at least, he blended in.

He was tall. Six foot three in his bare feet, lean and muscled, the result of years riding and breaking horses growing up on El Sueño , the family’s half-million acre ranch a couple of hours from Dallas. High school and college football had honed him to a tough edge, and Air Force training had done the rest.

At thirty-four, he worked out every morning in the gym in his Turtle Creek condo and he still rode most weekends, played pickup games of touch football with his brothers …

Correction, he thought glumly.

He used to play touch football with Caleb and Jacob, but they didn’t have much time for that anymore.

Which was one of the reasons he was in this bar tonight. His brothers didn’t have much time for anything anymore and, dammit, no, he wasn’t feeling sorry for himself—he was a grown man, after all.

What he was, was mourning the loss of a way of life.

Travis tilted the bottle of Bud to his lips, took a long swallow and stared at his reflection in the fly-specked mirror behind the bar.

Bachelorhood. Freedom. No responsibility to or for anyone but yourself.

Yes, his brothers were giving life on the other side of that line a try and God knew, he wished them all the best but, though he’d never say it to them, he had a bad feeling how that would end up.

Love was an ephemeral emotion. Here today, gone tomorrow. Lip service, at best.

How his brothers had missed that life-lesson was beyond him.

He, at least, had not.

Which brought him straight back to what had been the old Friday night routine of steaks, beer …

And the one kind of bond you could count on.

The bond between brothers.

He’d experienced it growing up with Jake and Caleb, at college when he played football, in the Air Force, first in weeks of grueling training, then in that small, elite circle of men who flew fighter jets.

Male bonding, was the trendy media term for it, but you didn’t need fancy words to describe the link of trust you could forge with a brother, whether by blood or by fate.

That was what those Friday nights had been about.

Sitting around, talking about nothing in particular—the safety the Cowboys had just signed. The wobbly fate of the Texas Rangers. Poker, a game they all liked and at which Travis was an expert. Which was more of an icon, Jake’s vintage Thunderbird or Travis’s ’74 Stingray ’Vette, and was there any reasonable explanation for Caleb driving that disgustingly new Lamborghini?

And, naturally, they’d talked about women.

Except, the Wildes didn’t talk about women anymore.

Travis sighed, raised the bottle again and drank.

Caleb and Jake. His brothers.

Married.

It still seemed impossible but it was true. So was what went with it.

He’d spoken with each of his brothers as recently as yesterday, reminded them—and when, in the past, had they needed reminding?—that Friday was coming up and they’d be meeting at seven at that bar near his office.

“Absolutely,” Caleb had said.

“See you then,” Jake had told him.

And here he was. The Lone Ranger.

The worst of it was, he wasn’t really surprised.

No reflection on his sisters-in-law.

Travis was crazy about both Addison and Sage, loved them as much as he loved his own three sisters, but why deny it?

Marriage—commitment—changed everything.

“I can’t make it tonight, Trav,” Caleb had said when he’d phoned in midafternoon. We have Lamaze.”

“Who?”

“It’s not a who, it’s a what. Lamaze. You know. Childbirth class. It’s usually on Thursday but the instructor had to cancel so it’s tonight, instead.”

Childbirth class. His brother, the tough corporate legal eagle? The one-time spook? Childbirth class?

“Travis?” Caleb had said. “You there?”

“I’m here,” he’d said briskly. “Lamaze. Right. Well, have fun.”

“Lamaze isn’t about fun, dude.”

“I bet.”

“You’ll find out someday.”

“Bite your tongue.”

Caleb had laughed. “Remember that housekeeper we had right after Mom died? The one who used to say, First comes love, then comes marriage …”

Thinking back to the conversation, Travis shuddered.

Why would any of that ever apply to him?

Even if—big “if”—even if marriage worked, it changed a man.

Besides, love was just a nice word for sex, and why be modest?

He already had all the sex a man could handle, without any of the accompanying complications.

No “ I love you and I’ll wait for you,” which turned out to mean “I’ll wait a couple of months before I get into bed with somebody else.”

Been there, done that, his first overseas tour.

Truth was, once he’d moved past the anger, it hadn’t meant much. He’d been young; love had been an illusion.

And he should have known better, anyway, growing up in a home where your mother got sick and died and your father was too busy saving the world to come home and be with her or his sons …

And, dammit, what was with his mood tonight?

Travis looked up, caught the bartender’s eye and signaled for another beer.

The guy nodded. “Comin’ up.”

Jake’s phone call had followed on the heels of Caleb’s.

“Hey,” he’d said.

“Hey,” Travis had replied, which didn’t so much mark him as a master of brilliant dialogue as it suggested he knew what was coming.

“So,” Jake had said, clearing his throat, “about getting together tonight—”

“You can’t make it.”

“Yes. I mean, no. I can’t.”

“Because?”

“Well, it turns out Addison made an appointment for us to meet with—with this guy.”

“What guy?”

“Just a guy. About the work we’ve been doing, you know, remodeling the house.”

“I thought that was your department. The extension, the extra bathrooms, the new kitchen—”

“It is. This guy does—he does other stuff.”

“Such as?”

“Jeez, don’t you ever give up? Such as recommending things.”

“Things?”

“Wallpaper,” Jake had all but snarled. “Okay? The guy’s bringing over ten million wallpaper samples and Adoré told me about it days ago but I forgot and it’s too late to—”

“Yeah. Okay. No problem,” Travis had said because what right did he have to embarrass his war-hero brother more than he’d already embarrassed himself? The proof was right there, in Jake using his supposedly-unknown-to-the-rest-of-humanity pet name for his wife.

“Next week,” Jake had said. “Right?”

Right, Travis thought, oh, yeah, right.

By next week, Caleb would be enrolled in Baby Burping 101 and Jake would be staring at fabric swatches, or whatever you called squares of cotton or velvet.

Domesticity was right up there with Lamaze.

Nothing he wanted to try.

Not ever.

He liked his life just the way it was, thank you very much. There was a big world out there, and he’d seen most of it—but not all. He still had places to go, things to do …

Things that might get the taste of war and death out of his mouth.

People talked about cleansing your palette between wine tastings but nobody talked about cleansing your soul after piloting a jet into combat missions …

And, damn, what was he doing?

A flea-bitten bar in the wrong part of town absolutely was not the place for foolish indulgence in cheap philosophy.

Travis finished his beer.

Without being asked, the bartender opened a bottle, put it in front of him.