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She grabbed the phone. “What?” she demanded in a soggy, broken whisper.
“Sam?” It was Travis. “Sam, what’s going on? You didn’t answer your cell. And I called the room twice.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” A sob got away from her, followed by a watery hiccup.
“Sam, are you all right?”
She clutched the phone harder, feeling ridiculous and needy and weak and hopeless and sad. “I’m, uh…” She put her hand over the phone, swiped at her eyes and then groped for a tissue with her white-gloved hand.
“Sam, talk to me. Please. What’s the matter with you?” He sounded so worried, so…scared even. For her.
He was worried for her.
That meant a lot.
And then he said, “Sam, I’m coming over there. I’m coming over there now.”
“No!” The word escaped her trembling mouth on a sob. “You can’t. Uh-uh.” She ripped a tissue from the tasteful beige box on the nightstand. “You know you can’t. You can’t even see me. Not until my final test.”
“Forget the test,” he said and really seemed to mean it. “It doesn’t matter. None of it matters if you’ve had enough. It’s not a big deal. We can call the whole thing off right now.”
Call the whole thing off. He wouldn’t mind or be mad at her if they called the whole thing off.
She could, she realized. She could do that. Call an end to this torture, give it up. There was no law that said she had to stick it out.
She could give it up and head straight for her private hideaway in San Diego. Walk on the beach, soak up some rays.
And then sign up for a new job on a different rig, go back to the challenging and profitable life she had made for herself.
“What about—” another sob escaped her “—your mother?”
“I’ll find some other way to get her off my back. Don’t worry about that. Just say the word, Sam. And you’re off the hook. I mean that. Sam? Did you hear me? Sam? Are you there?” Travis seemed really worried that she might have hung up on him.
But she hadn’t. She was sniffling. And thinking…
And coming to realize how very much she wanted this, how seriously invested she was in seeing the whole thing through.
“Damn it, Sam. Say something.”
And she did. “No, I don’t want that. I don’t want to give it up. I want to…get through this. I want to make good at it because it does matter. It matters a lot. And that’s why you can’t come over here. Because Jonathan wants it that way. And that’s fine with me. I am doing exactly what Just frickin’ Jonathan tells me to do.”
“Uh. You are?”
“Yeah. I am—and don’t you dare tell him I said the word frickin’. Got that?”
“Absolutely. I won’t. Whatever you say. But—”
“I can do this. I will do this. I am sticking with this program and I am going to get some serious girly going or I will die trying.” She blew her nose, good and hard. By then, well, it didn’t seem to matter all that much that Travis would figure out she’d been crying. “Sam.”
She sniffed, shamelessly that time. And it felt kind of good, really. It was kind of a relief. To let go. To cry and not care that someone might know it. “What?”
“Are you…crying?” He asked the question in a kind of awed disbelief.
“So what if I am, huh?” She grabbed another tissue and scrubbed her soggy cheeks. “So what if I am?”
“But you never cry.”
“Well, I’m crying now. Or I was.” She ripped out yet more tissue. “But at this point, I’ve moved on to mopping up the mess.”
“So, uh, what’s happened?” He sounded totally flummoxed.
She tried to explain. “Nothing. Everything. This is even harder than I thought it would be.”
“It is, huh?” His voice was gentle. Understanding. “Listen. I meant what I said. If you want to back out—”
“Uh-uh. No way. I’m not giving up. I’m going through with it, no matter what.”
“If you’re sure that’s what you want…”
“I am sure, yes. So stop asking me.” She settled back against the pillows, gave one last sniffle. “I guess I kind of expected to be bad at this. I just didn’t expect to care so much.”
“Who says you’re bad at it?” He seemed honestly puzzled.
“I say. And I ought to know—oh, and Jonathan, too. He thinks I suck the big one. He looks at me in that pained, superior way of his….”
“Wait. Jonathan told you that you suck?”
“He didn’t have to tell me. It’s written all over his snooty, pointy little face. As far as he’s concerned, I can’t do anything right.”
“But that’s not what he said to me.”
She snuggled back into the pillows. “Huh? Said to you when?”
“When he called me a few minutes ago to let me know how you were getting along. He said you were making great progress and he was really impressed with you, that he hadn’t realized at the beginning how much potential you actually had.”
Now she sat up straighter. “He didn’t. You’re lyin’, trying to make me feel better.”
“God’s truth, Sam.”
She gave a very unladylike snort—the kind of snort she wouldn’t have thought twice about making just a few days before. “And you think it would kill him to say that to me?”
Travis snorted right back. “Come on, you know how you are. The madder you get, the harder you work. Maybe he’s figured that out about you.”
She fiddled with the phone cord, twisting it around her gloved index finger. “Well, then why are you telling me he said nice things about me? Maybe I’ll get lazy now I know he’s only pretending to look down on me.”
“Not a chance. You haven’t got a lazy bone in your body—and it was pretty clear to me you needed encouragement.”
She pulled her finger free of the coil of cord, feeling better about everything, feeling ready to face tomorrow. Feeling she could even handle the awful, disgusting shopping that would happen the day after that. “You’re a good man, Travis Bravo. Thanks.”
“You need me, you call me.”
She made a soft sound low in her throat. “I think I can make it now.”
“I’m here. Just remember.”
He said goodbye a few minutes later. She hung up the phone thinking that she was a lucky person to have a friend like Travis.
Turning off the light and pulling up the covers, she lay on her back in the dark with a smile on her face. Jonathan had said he was impressed with her. Travis had been there to talk her down when she needed it.
She knew now she could make it. In only a few days, she would be ready.
She would go with Travis to San Antonio and play his bride-to-be for his family. Yes, it was a big lie and she didn’t believe in lies.
But no one was going to be hurt by the deception. She was just giving Travis’s mom an excuse to take a break from her never-ending matchmaking, giving Travis a break, too. For a while, anyway, he wouldn’t have women thrown at him constantly when he wasn’t interested in anything like that.
He’d loved Rachel Selkirk, loved her deeply and completely, the way only a good, true-hearted man can love his woman. And he didn’t want to go there again, didn’t want to take the chance of being hurt like that again. Just like Sam didn’t want to be hurt.
Sam folded her hands on top of the covers and stared up at the dark ceiling above and thought about how, maybe, after she got through the week with the Bravos, after she found her new job, she just might consider maybe going on a date again. She might consider giving love and romance and all that stuff another chance.
The thing with Zach had been so long ago. Maybe it was time she let it go, got her girly on in more ways than just her clothes and learning to sip tea without slurping.
Hey, a woman needed love in her life.
And Sam Jaworski knew now that she was just like most other women. A little taller and a lot stronger maybe. With a different kind of job history than most women had.
But with the same hungers in her lonely heart.
She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.
And dreamed of Travis.
It was a hazy, indistinct sort of dream. When she woke up the next morning, she didn’t remember much about it. Except that she and Travis were together.
And in the dream, she’d started to feel sad because she knew it was all a lie and it wasn’t going to last.
Because the honest truth was, she never wanted it to end.
Chapter Four
She got through the next day without once wishing she could wring Jonathan’s neck.
Even though he pushed her constantly to do better, to try harder, even though he remained as snooty and superior as ever, well, she was okay with that. If Travis hadn’t told her what her coach really thought about her, she never would have guessed that Jonathan believed she was doing well.
But Travis had told her, and his telling her had boosted her confidence enough that she threw herself into her training with new enthusiasm. She worked even harder than before.
And that second shopping trip on Thursday?
It wasn’t easy, but it was better. She discovered she was getting the hang of what to look for, getting an eye for spotting the finds in an endless sea of different fabrics, colors and styles.
They went back to the hotel that day with more shopping bags than the time before. Jonathan couldn’t help smiling at how well she’d done.
And she laughed. “I know you’re proud of me, Jonathan. I can see it on your face.”
“Ahem. Well. Don’t get too confident. We have a lot more to do.”
She nodded. “I know. And I’m ready for whatever you can throw at me.”
His eyelids drooped lazily over those sharp dark eyes, a look of pure satisfaction. “Perhaps you would enjoy a T-bone steak, rare, and a large baked potato this evening as a reward for work well done?”
She clapped her de-callused hands. “Oh, Jonathan. You have no idea.”
“An hour in the gym first,” he ordered gruffly.
She was only too pleased to pull on the clingy, sexy workout clothes they’d bought that day and head down to the hotel gym. She kicked butt on the treadmill and then pumped iron for all she was worth.
And at six-thirty that evening, she was treated to the most beautiful slab of beef she’d ever seen. She wanted to saw off a huge, juicy hunk and shove it in her mouth, to chew without worrying about keeping her lips together, to let the juice run down her chin.
But she didn’t. She put her napkin in her lap and she picked up her fork and knife and took her time about it. She cut each small bite smoothly and neatly—no sawing. She chewed slowly and thoroughly. She even managed to make polite conversation while she ate.
Jonathan didn’t once have to reprimand her.
And it was…. kind of fun really. Kind of graceful and satisfying. Eating slowly with care wasn’t half-bad after all.
The next day, Friday, they “worked” her wardrobe. Jonathan showed her how to mix and match the various pieces, to make several outfits out of a skirt, skinny pants, a sweater and various accessories.
They also “did” packing. He produced a gorgeous set of designer luggage and showed her how to pack for various types of excursions—from a weekend in the country to five days in Manhattan to a tropical getaway and an Alaskan cruise. She laughed at that. At the idea of Sam Jaworski packing up her designer duds and heading for the Big Apple or Jamaica or the land of the midnight sun. She also practiced packing for the week with the Bravo family.
That day, they went out for lunch and for dinner. It was important to use her new skills in the real world, Jonathan said.
And the next day, all of a sudden, it was Saturday. The last day of her training, the day of her final test.
Jonathan told her what the test would be: That night at seven, Travis would arrive to take her out for the evening.
She worked her butt off in the morning, reviewing with Jonathan. It was something of a test in itself, to prove how much she remembered of all that he’d taught her, how much she could apply with seeming effortlessness.
Over lunch at Quattro, the gorgeous Italian place in the hotel, Jonathan actually praised her outright. He said she was amazing him. He said that he was proud of her.
She went back upstairs floating on a cloud of success and good feelings.
Then came the afternoon in the spa.
It wasn’t as bad as the first time. She didn’t have to get another peel and she didn’t need waxing.
Still, there was the endless sitting as she had the manicure and the pedicure, the hair color and cut. She worked with the makeup consultant for a couple of hours, learning what products she needed, learning how to apply them.
It all took too long and she would just as soon have been down in the gym bench-pressing triple her weight, working up a good, healthy sweat.
But when it was done, well, she looked in the mirror and saw her dream self staring back at her, as tall and strong as she’d ever been—and yet, so much more. Even her too-short hair looked terrific, with highlights and lowlights, the gamine-style cut bringing out her cheekbones, kind of showing off the nice oval shape of her face. And the makeup was perfect. It enhanced her best features and minimized her flaws.
