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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.
It would not impress them at all if he explained that he’d done his fair share of damage. More than his fair share, because he surely would manage that.
Dammit, where were a man’s brothers when he needed them?
“The lady’s talkin’ to you.” The Mountain was leaning past Bev. God, his breath stank. “What’s the matter? You got a hearin’ problem or something, pretty boy?”
Conversation died out. People smiled.
Travis felt the first, heady pump of adrenaline.
“My name,” he said carefully, “is not ‘pretty boy.’”
“His name is not pretty boy,” The Mountain mimicked.
Bev, sporting a delighted smile, slid from her stool. Maybe he’d misjudged her purpose. Maybe setting up a fight had been her real job.
Either way, Travis saw his choices narrowing down, and rapidly.
Bev’s defender got to his feet.
“You’re making a mistake,” Travis said quietly.
The Mountain snorted.
Travis nodded, took a last swig of beer, said a mental “goodbye” to Monday’s meeting and stood up.
“Outside,” he said, “in the parking lot? Or right here?”
“Here,” a voice growled.
Three men had joined the Mountain. Travis smiled. The next five minutes might be the end of him.
Yeah, but they’d also be fun, especially considering his weird state of mind tonight.
“Fine,” he said. “Sounds good to me.”
Those words, the commitment to the inevitable, finalized things, sent hi
s adrenaline not just pumping but racing. He hadn’t been in a down-and-dirty bar brawl in a very long time. Not since Manila, or maybe Kandahar.
Yes, Kandahar, his last mission, death all around him...
Suddenly, pounding the Mountain into pulp seemed a fine idea, never mind that deal in Frankfurt.
Besides, nothing short of a miracle could save him now...
The door to the street swung open.
For some reason Travis would never later be able to explain, the enraptured audience watching him and the Mountain turned toward it.
A blast of hot Texas air swept in.
So did a tall, beautiful, sexy-looking, straight-out-of-the-Neiman-Marcus-catalogue blonde.
Silence. Complete silence.
Everybody looked at Neiman Marcus.
Neiman Marcus looked at them.
And blanched.
“Well, lookee there,” somebody said.
Lookee, indeed, Travis thought.
Sanity returned.
There she was. His salvation.
“Finally,” he said, his tone bright and cheerful. “My date.”
Before anyone could say a word, he started toward the blonde and the door with the confidence of a man holding all four aces in a game of high stakes poker.
She tilted her head back as he got closer. She was tall, especially in sexy, nosebleed-high stilettos, but she still had to do that to look up at him.
He liked it.
It was a nice touch.
“Your what?” she said, or would have said, but he couldn’t afford to let things go that far.
“Baby,” he purred, “what took you so long?”
Her eyes widened. “Excuse me?”
Travis grinned.
“Only if you ask real nice,” he said, and before she could react, he drew her into his arms, brought her tightly against him and covered her mouth with his.
