Sandra Marton - The Merciless Travis Wilde

“Thanks.”

“Haven’t seen you in here before.”

Travis shrugged. “First time for everything.”

“You want somethin’ to eat before the kitchen closes?”

“Sure. A steak, medium-rare.”

“Your money, but the burgers are better.”

“Fine. A burger. Medium-rare.”

“Fries okay?”

“Fries are fine.”

“Comin’ right up.”

Travis tilted the bottle to his lips.

A couple of weeks ago, his brothers had asked him what was doing with him. Was he feeling a little off lately?

“You’re the ones who’re off,” he’d said with a quick smile. “Married. Living by the rules.”

“Sometimes, rules are what a man needs,” Jake had said.

“Yeah,” Caleb had added. “You know, it might be time to reassess your life.”

Reassess his life?

He liked his life just fine, thank you very much.

He needed precisely what he had. Life in the fast lane. Work hard. Play hard.

Nothing wrong with that.

It was how he’d always been.

His brothers, too, though war had changed them. Jake had, still was, battling through PTSD. Caleb carried a wariness inside him that would probably never go away.

Not him.

Sure, there were times he woke up, heart pounding, remembering stuff a man didn’t want to remember, but a day at his office, taking a chance on a new stock offering and clearing millions as a result, a night in bed with a new, spectacular woman who was as uninterested in settling down as he was, and he was fine again.

Maybe that was the problem.

There hadn’t been a woman lately.

And, now that he thought about it, what was with that? He wasn’t into celibacy any more than he was into domesticity and yet, it had been days, hell, weeks since he’d been with a woman …

“Burger, medium-rare, with fries,” the bartender said, sliding a huge plate across the bar.

Travis looked at the burger. It was the size of a Frisbee and burned to a crisp.

Good thing he wasn’t really hungry, he thought, and he picked up a fry and took a bite.

The place was crowding up. Almost all the stools were taken at the bar; the same for the tables. The clientele, if you could call it that, was mostly male. Big. Tough-looking. Lots of facial hair, lots of tattoos.

Some of them looked him over.

Travis didn’t hesitate to look back.

He’d been in enough places like this one, not just in Texas but in some nasty spots in eastern Europe and Asia, to know that you never flinched from eye contact.

It worked, especially because he didn’t look like a weekend cowboy out for a night among the natives.

Aside from his height and build, which had come to him courtesy of Viking, Roman, Comanche and Kiowa ancestors, it helped that he’d given up his day-at-the-office custom-made Brioni suit for a well-worn gray T-shirt, equally well-worn jeans and a pair of Roper boots he’d had for years but then, why would any guy wear a suit and everything that went with it when he could be comfortable in jeans?

The clothes, the boots, his physical build, even his coloring—ink-black hair, courtesy of his Indian forebears, deep green eyes, thanks to his pillage-rape-and-romp European ancestors—all combined to make him look like, well, like what he was, a guy who wouldn’t look for trouble but damned well wouldn’t walk away from it if it came his way.

“A gorgeous, sexy, bad boy,” one mistress had called him.

It had embarrassed the hell out of him—at least, that was what he’d claimed—but, hey, could a man fight his DNA?

The blood of generations of warriors pulsed in his veins, as it did in the veins of his brothers. Their father, the general, had raised them on tales of valor and courage and, in situations where it was necessary, the usefulness of an attitude that said don’t-screw-with-me if you’re smart.

It was a message men understood and generally respected, though there was almost always some jerk who thought it didn’t apply to him.

That was fine.

It was equally fine that women understood it, too, and reacted to it in ways that meant he rarely spent a night alone, except by choice …

“Hi, honey.”

Last time he’d checked, the barstool to his left had been empty. Not anymore. A blonde was perched on it, smiling as if she’d just found an unexpected gift under a Christmas tree.

Uh-oh.

She was surely a gift, too. For someone.

But that someone wasn’t him.

To put it kindly, she wasn’t his type.

Big hair that looked as if it had been shellacked into submission. Makeup she probably had to remove with a trowel. Tight cotton T-shirt, her boobs resting on a muffin-top of flesh forced up by too-tight jeans.

All that was bad enough.

What made it worse was that he knew the unspoken etiquette in a place like this.

A lady made a move on you, you were supposed to be flattered. Otherwise, you risked offending her—

Her, and the neighborhood aficionados who’d suddenly shifted their attention his way.

“Hello,” he said with forced politeness, and then gave all his attention to his plate.

“You’re new here.”

Travis took a bite of hamburger, chewed as if chewing were the most important thing in his life.

“I’m Bev.”

He nodded. Kept chewing.

She leaned in close, wedged one of her 40 Double D’s against his arm.

“You got a name, cowboy?”

Now what? This was not a good situation. Whatever he did, short of taking Bev’s clear invitation to heart, would almost surely lead to trouble.

She’d be insulted, her pals would think they had to ride to the rescue …

Maybe honesty, polite and up-front, was the best policy.

Travis took a paper napkin from its metal holder, blotted his lips and turned toward her.

“Listen, Bev,” he said, not unkindly, “I’m not interested, okay?” Her face reddened and he thought, hell, I’m not doing this right . “I mean, you’re a—a good-looking woman but I’m—I’m meeting somebody.”

“Really?” Bev said coldly. “You want me to believe you’re waitin’ for your date?”

“Exactly. She’ll be here any—”

“You’re waitin’ for your date, and you’re eatin’ without her?”

The guy on the other side of Bev was leaning toward them.

He was the size of a small mountain and from the look in his tiny eyes, he was hot and ready for a Friday night fight.

Slowly, carefully, Travis put down the burger and the napkin.

The Mountain outweighed him by fifty pounds, easy, and the hand wrapped around the bottle he was holding was the size of a ham.

No problem. Travis had taken on bigger men and come through just fine. If anything, it added to the kick.

Yes, but the Mountain has friends here. Many. And you, dude, are all by your lonesome .

The Voice of Reason.

Despite what his brothers sometimes said about him, Travis had been known not just to hear that voice but to listen to it.

But Bev was going on and on about no-good, scumbag liars and her diatribe had drawn the attention of several of the Mountain’s pals. Every last one of them looked happy to come to her aid by performing an act of chivalry that would surely involve beating the outsider—him—into a bloody mass of barely-breathing flesh.

Not good , said the Voice of Reason.

The bloody part was okay. He’d been there before.

But there was a problem.

He had a meeting in Frankfurt Monday morning, a huge deal he’d been working on for months, and he had the not-very-surprising feeling that the board of directors at the ultraconservative, three-hundred-year-old firm of Bernhardt, Bernhardt and Stutz would not look kindly on a financial expert who showed up with a couple of black eyes, a dinged jaw and, for all he knew, one or two missing teeth.