Bravo Unwrapped

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Nadine trotted up, bearing a pair of totally retro salads: iceberg lettuce and wedges of tomato drizzled all over with ranch dressing. “Here we go.” She plunked them on the table and bustled away again.

B.J. looked down at her plate—and her stomach actually growled. Amazing. For the first time in a week, out of nowhere, she was starving.

“Back to dinner out with psycho-Dad,” she prompted as she unrolled her napkin, spread it on her lap, grabbed for her fork and dug in.

It tasted so good. She had to make a conscious effort not to groan in delight at the crisp texture of the lettuce, the creamy, perfect consistency of the dressing. She gobbled down several crunchy, delicious bites before it came to her that Buck wasn’t talking.

She looked up from devouring her salad to find him watching her—again.

“Hungry?” he asked, annoyingly amused.

She took time to swallow, lick a spot of dressing off her upper lip and wipe her mouth with her napkin, before replying. “Yeah. So?”

“Last night at the Castle, you didn’t eat much of anything.”

She wisely refrained from comment on that one and instructed instead, “Your father. With lots of detail, please. If I have to write this thing, you have to give me something to work with.”

“You can be very bossy, you know that?”

“And you can be a manipulative SOB—or did I mention that already?” She dropped her napkin in her lap and forked up another huge bite of salad.

“Yeah. You mentioned it.” He stared at her mouth as he lounged back in his seat, keeping one strong arm resting on the table—to the right of his empty drink and his untouched salad. “You’re still steamed because I dragged you into this.”

She paused before stuffing that big bite into the mouth he kept staring at. “How did you guess? The story, please.”

He picked up his drink, rattled the ice cubes as Nadine rushed by—and finally continued. “We took a booth that night. The one right behind you, I think it was. I remember that Ma and my dad sat together. I sat across from them. I tried to be very, very good. And whenever my father would look at me with those scary eyes of his, I’d get this tightness in my stomach, this feeling that I wouldn’t mind so much when he went away again. Little did I know that when he left that time, he was never coming back.”

B.J., having polished off her salad, longed to pick up her plate and lick the last of the dressing from it. Somehow, she restrained herself.

And besides, there was still the bread basket. She grabbed it and peeled back the warming towel to reveal four nice, big dinner rolls. Snatching one up, she slathered on the butter and then tore off a hunk and stuck it in her mouth.

God. Bread. Delicious—and Buck was watching her again, grinning that grin of his. She made a move-it-along circular gesture with her free hand.

He took his cue. “Recently—since a few years ago, when it all came out in the papers and I found out who he really was—I’ve been learning about dear old Dad. Blake kept a home base in Norman, Oklahoma, with a woman named Tammy Rae Sandovich. He had one child with Tammy Rae. A boy, Marsh.”

She swallowed. “Your half-brother…”

“One among many. I met Marsh last year. Great guy. Blake used to beat him—and his mother, too. A lot. So in hindsight, with the information I have now, I can’t say I regret that dear old Dad didn’t show up much, or that he stopped coming around when I was so young.”

B.J. felt a faint twinge of something that might have been sympathy—for Buck, for all the left-behind children of the evil Blake. With that twinge came the urge to reach across the table, to cover Buck’s hand with her own, to reassure him, the way a friend would. It was an urge she took care to suppress.

Nadine set Buck’s second drink in front of him. “Everything okay?”

B.J. swallowed again. “Great,” she said, and popped the last of the roll into her mouth.

Nadine beamed at B.J.—and scolded Buck. “Eat your salad. Steaks are on the way.”

“I’m getting to it, Nadine.”

The waitress clucked her tongue and left them—and Buck reached over and turned off the recorder. Before B.J. could swallow that last chunk of bread and object, he leaned closer and spoke low. “I talked to Ma—about what’s up with Bowie and Glory.”

Okay, she was curious. She washed the bread down with water. “So, and?”

“Glory’s pregnant.”

“Pregnant.” She set down her glass. She probably should have guessed—and was this too close to home, or what?

“Bowie wants to marry her.”

“So he said—more than once. And she said no. Repeatedly. At the top of her lungs, as I recall.”

Buck finally picked up his fork. “It doesn’t matter what she said. He’ll marry her, one way or the other.”

“Not if she keeps saying no.”

“You just don’t get it.”

“That’s right, I don’t.”

“Bowie’s a Bravo.”

“And that explains…what?”

“Everything.”

“Oh. Well. To you, maybe.”

He wore an excessively patient expression. “My brothers and I were raised minus a father. That’s not going to happen to our kids.”

“Ah.” And given her own circumstances, B.J. wasn’t sure she liked the sound of this. “Okay. Just to recap here. Bowie’s a Bravo. So he has to marry Glory—because she’s going to have his baby?”

“Yeah.”

“As in, one and one equals two?”

“That’s right.”

“Buck. Hello. Twenty-first century, U.S. of A.”

He waved his fork for silence. “Look. A Bravo may make mistakes in life. Big ones. But you can bet your favorite pair of sexy shoes that when there’s an innocent kid involved, a Bravo will always find a way to do the right thing.”

A stream of perfectly valid arguments scrolled through B.J.’s brain: that sometimes marriage just isn’t the right solution, that a child can have a productive, happy life without her parents being married. That some people—herself among them—just aren’t meant for marriage, that a bad marriage is never a good thing, for the child, or her parents….

She kept those arguments to herself. This was much too dangerous a subject to get into right now.

Chewing on another roll, she watched him as he ate his salad, thinking, I am now going to turn on the tape recorder and get on with the interview.

But then again…

Okay. She had to ask. “You, too, Buck? You’d marry some woman you didn’t care about, didn’t…love, just because she was having your baby?”

He speared a tomato wedge. “Bowie does love Glory. He said so.”

“Well, yeah. To convince her to do things his way.”

“Uh-uh. I don’t think so. I think he really does love her.”

“And you determined this, how?”

He considered a moment. “Call it an informed opinion. He’s my baby brother. I grew up with him. It’s my informed opinion that he meant what he said. He loves Glory.”

There was a moment. They looked at each other and B.J. felt…sparks. Heat. That burning energy, way too sexual, zipping back and forth between them.

Why this guy? she thought, as she’d thought a thousand times before. Why, always, in the end: Buck?

Nadine appeared with their steaks. She served them and took their salad plates away.

Buck started in on his T-bone. B.J. sipped her water and told herself not to go there—after which, she promptly went there. “And anyway, I wasn’t asking about Bowie. I was asking about you. If you got a woman pregnant, would you think you had to marry her, whether you really wanted to or not?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just curious,” she baldly lied.

Those eyes of his seemed to bore holes right through her. And then he lifted one hard shoulder, sketching a shrug. “Honestly, I can’t say for certain. It hasn’t happened.” Then he frowned. “Wait a minute. Are you trying to tell me something?”

“No. No, I’m not.” Well, it was the truth. Barely. She wasn’t trying to tell him. Not now. Not yet…

“I’ll say this much.”

She gulped. “Yeah?”

“Any kid of mine is going to know his dad and know him well.” His steak knife glinted as he sliced his T-bone.

B.J. realized she’d been holding her breath and let it out. Slowly. “Buck?”

He set the knife aside. “Yeah?”

“Why are we doing this?”

He arched a dark brow. “Because it’s dinnertime? Because we have to eat—by the way, your filet’s getting cold.”

Stop, a voice inside her head commanded. Drop it. Now. But her mouth kept right on talking. “No. I don’t mean dinner. I mean this whole thing. You and me, here in your hometown. Why did you find it necessary to drag me across the country with you? We both know there’s no reason you can’t write this damn piece yourself.”

“No denying it now,” he said wryly. “You are talking to me.”

“Against my better judgment,” she shot back, then cut the sarcasm enough to ask, “And will you please answer my question?”

He looked at her in a measuring sort of way. The seconds ticked by. At last, he said, “Eat your steak so we can get out of here.”

“And then?”

“You’ll get your answer.”

Buck said nothing after they left the restaurant. In the chilly Sierra darkness, they strolled down the street, around the corner and across the bridge. The stars overhead, no city lights to mute them, shone thick and bright against the black-as-velvet night sky.

At the Sierra Star, the curtains at the front window were still open. Inside, as they mounted the steps, B.J. could see Chastity, sitting alone by the fire, reading a paperback book, an orange tabby cat curled in her lap.

Buck opened the door and ushered B.J. in—still without saying a word. Evidently, he’d decided against explaining why he’d forced her to head for the hills with him.

Fine. She was having second thoughts, anyway, wondering what had possessed her to ask him why in the first place. Whatever his reasoning, she didn’t need to hear it.

And it had been a long day. She’d go upstairs, enjoy a soak in her own private claw-footed bathtub and then watch some TV. Maybe jot a few notes for the story. Play a computer game. Read a book.

Whatever.

The keyword here was disengage. When it came to Buck, prolonged contact inevitably meant trouble. If she didn’t watch herself, she’d start obsessing over how attractive he was, how smart, how funny. In no time she’d be thinking that maybe they could get something going, after all.

It could end up just like that night in September—with her naked on top of him, demanding more. Or beneath him, begging for more. Or…

Now, see? See what she was doing? All it took was dinner and a little semi-friendly conversation, and she was back with the vivid images of the two of them doing things they were never going to do again. Italics intended.

Chastity looked up from her book. “Did you two have a nice dinner?”

“Great,” said Buck.

“We did,” B.J. agreed. She brought her hand to her mouth as she faked a yawn. “I’m pretty tired, though. Jet lag, I guess. Goodnight.”

“Sleep well,” said Chastity with a serene little smile. The cat looked up at Buck’s mother and twitched its caramel-colored tail. Chastity petted it as she turned her attention back to her book.

Buck said nothing. Why? What was he thinking? What did his silence mean?

Bad questions. Pointless questions. Keyword: disengage. B.J. turned for the stairs.

He fell in behind her. He walked softly. Still, she could feel him at her back all the way up the stairs and down the hall to their side-by-side rooms. She had her key ready. She slid it smoothly into the lock and pushed the door open. Stepping swiftly in, she turned to shut it behind her—to shut him out. She almost made it, too.

At the last possible second, he said, “Five minutes.”

Disengage, disengage. Without a word, she shut the door the rest of the way and shot the bolt, heard that reassuring click as the lock slid home. She turned with a groan and sagged against the door.

“Shit,” she said to the empty room. Five minutes. What did that mean?