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"You're the eldest son I got, Travis. Those was things you needed to do."
"Yeah, well, I did them. And I'm not interested in doing anything more for—"
"'Course, you'd have to spend a little time out of that there Hollywood to do it."
"Sounds fascinating," Travis said politely. "But I'm not interested."
"This is a fancy-pants job. One that re-quires that law degree of yours and that la-di-da attitude you got about that stuff you're drinkin'."
Jonas? Wanting to use his knowledge of law as well as wine, without making it sound as if neither was masculine? It was almost enough to make Travis change his mind...
"Unless, of course, you ain't a good enough lawyer to take on somethin' for me."
Travis smiled. "Happy Birthday, Father," he said, and strolled away.
He danced some more. Flirted some more. Drank some more of the memorable champagne and discovered that the senator's daughter kissed with her mouth open. And, as he moved slowly around the dance floor with the model's lush body pressed to his, Travis came to two conclusions.
The first was that the model's incredible breasts were almost definitely her own, the second that he'd been a fool to have wasted so much time, thinking about Alex. How wrong he'd been, earlier tonight, thinking he'd have gone straight to her if, by some quirk of fate, she were in this crowd...
Until he looked across the room and saw a slender blonde with silky hair and endless legs standing with a man's arm encircling her waist. Her back was to him but he could tell she was laughing by the tilt of her head and by the look on the man's face.
"Excuse me," he said to the model, and left her in the middle of the dance floor. He strode across the room, grasped the blonde's arm and turned her toward him.
"Alex," he said ... except, it wasn't Alex. It was a pretty woman with blue eyes and blond hair but it wasn't the woman he'd spent the past two weeks wanting.
Travis apologized. He smiled charmingly. And he set off to find his father.
Jonas was in the library, holding court, surrounded by a half a dozen or so men. It was, Travis thought dryly, a Who's Who in the world of power and leadership. The room smelled of pricey bourbon, Cuban cigars and expensive cologne.
Jonas looked up as Travis entered the room. "Travis."
Travis nodded. "Father."
The man most likely to be the next president of the United States waved his glass.
"Anyway, as I was saying..."
"Say it later," Jonas said.
There was a silence. Then the man who would be president cleared his throat. "You know," he said briskly, "I've been dying to taste some of that Texas barbecue."
The room emptied. Jonas walked slowly across the handwoven Navajo rug and closed the door.
"I take it you haven't come to tell me again that your childhood was an all-fired disaster," he said.
"I never did tell you. What would have been the point?" Travis walked to the mahogany sideboard that dominated one wall, opened a bottle of mineral water and poured it, over ice, into a crystal tumbler. "What's this job you have for me?"
Jonas smiled. "Thought you wasn't interested."
"I might not be." Travis drank some of the water, put down the glass and folded his arms. "But you said it would rake me out of L.A. for a while and I'm in the mood for a change of scene. I figured I'd at least listen to the details."
Jonas folded his arms, too, and leaned back against the wall. Amazing, Travis thought. The old man was eighty-five, but he still looked as hard and wiry as ever.
"Never mind all that politeness crap you gave Marta," Jonas said. "You're not havin' much fun tonight, are you?"
"No," Travis said bluntly, "I'm not." A tight smile flickered across his mouth. "But you can't take any credit for it."
His father laughed. "Woman trouble."
"What makes you think so?"
Jonas strolled to the sideboard and poured two fingers of bourbon into his glass.
"Saw you outside with that brunette a while ago. The senator's girl." The old man tossed back half the bourbon. "Looked like she was tryin' to swallow your tongue. Am I right?"
Travis couldn't help laughing. "I'm sure there's a more romantic way to put it, Father, but yes, that's pretty accurate."
"And you was about as interested as a stallion would be in a cow."
"Father, your perceptions of my love life are all very interesting, but—"
"Sex life, Boy. Don't you make none of those stupid mistakes about love. What a man feels for a woman comes straight from his crotch. Mess it up with love, that's where the problems start."
Travis looked at the bottle of bourbon, sighed, drank down his water and poured some into his glass.
