A Bravo Homecoming (3 page)

He took her by the shoulders and held her away from him so he could meet her eyes. “You going to be okay?”

She nodded and forced a smile for him. “Go on. I’ll be fine.” She stepped back from the comforting circle of his hold. He opened the door and went through it.

Instantly she wanted to reach out and grab him back. She’d always found his presence reassuring—and she could really use some reassurance about now. She took a step out into the hallway and watched him stride confidently toward the elevators.

It was kind of funny, really. She risked her life just about daily on the job. An oil rig, after all, was a pretty dangerous place. But she’d never been as scared as she was right then, in that hotel suite, watching Travis walk away from her. The very idea of having to learn to get her girly on freaked her the hell out. It would be easier if Travis could stay.

“Shut the door, Samantha.” Jonathan’s voice was almost tender.

She stepped back into the room and did what he told her to. And then she leaned her forehead against that door and thought about what a good friend Travis had been to her over the years.

At the end of the first year of their friendship, just before she turned nineteen, he’d helped her get her start in the oil business. He’d spoken up for her when she tried for her first job as a roustabout on a land rig. They didn’t want to hire her because she was a woman and what woman could hold up under the grueling physical labor that would be required of her?

Thanks to Travis, she got that job, as what they called a “worm,” the lowest of the low in the rig pecking order. She got that job and she kept up with the men. She did it all. She hauled pipe and dug trenches, cleaned up mud and oil and whatever else got all over the equipment. She cleaned threads, scraped and painted the various rig components. She worked her ass off and she never shirked.

That first job was where she’d met a certain roughneck, Zachary Gunn. She’d fallen in love with Zach—fallen in love for the first and only time in her life. And when Zach turned out to be a rotten, no-good bigmouth jerk who told everyone what he’d done with her and that she’d been really bad at it, Travis was there.

Travis beat the ever-lovin’ you-know-what out of that sorry SOB. And then kicked him off the rig.

As a rule, Sam fought her own battles. But that one time, it meant more than she could ever say to know that Travis Bravo had her back.

“Time to get started,” said Jonathan. “Tell me you’re ready.”

Sam straightened her spine and turned to face her coach. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

T
hat first day was really bad.

Before they did anything, Jonathan took a bunch of pictures of her from different angles, pictures of her standing, pictures of her sitting. Pictures from the front, the back, the side. Full-length pictures and also close-up ones.

She knew what those pictures were: the “before” pictures. She knew they were awful.

And she sincerely hoped that the “afters,” days from now, would be a whole lot better.

Once Jonathan decided he had enough ugly shots of her, he had her sign a paper giving him permission to use the pictures on his website. And then he took her to the hotel spa.

It was a nice place. Sam loved that it was simple, not froufrou or frilly in the least. It was soothing just to be there.

Until the torture started.

Jonathan said her skin needed all the help it could get. There was deep-tissue cleaning and a chemical peel. There was hot mud wrapped all around her in steaming wet towels. There was waxing—of her legs and under her arms. The bikini wax was the worst.

She’d rather take a bath in drilling mud than get that done again.

Jonathan laughed when she told him that. “You’ll get waxed, darling. And regularly. A woman should be sleek. Smooth. Excess body hair is not the least bit feminine.”

She grunted. “Gee, Jonathan. Thanks a bunch for sharing.”

There was massage. That wasn’t so bad.

But after that, there was the manicure and the pedicure. Those went on forever and involved soaking and exfoliating and scrubbing at every callous and rough spot, of which there were many.

Hours later, when they were finished with her for the day, her face was lobster-red from the peel and they’d given her booties and white gloves. She had to slather on this gooey ointment before bed nightly, they had told her at the spa, both on her hands and her feet, and then wear the gloves and booties to bed every night for the whole week.

She was starving by the time she got back to the suite. She wanted a burger and fries and a strawberry shake. Or at least a big slab of meatloaf and a mountain of mashed potatoes with a healthy side of mushy canned green beans. On the rig, the kitchen was open round-the-clock and you could get yourself a huge pile of hot food—heavy on the starches and fats and red meat—any time you got the least bit hungry.

Not here, though. Jonathan ordered room service for them.

When it came, she wanted to break down and cry. All day being waxed and plucked and pummeled in the spa. And for dinner, she got an itsy-bitsy mound of barely cooked broccoli, three tiny red potatoes. And grilled salmon.

Actually, it was delicious. But it wasn’t enough to keep a fly alive.

She begged for more. Jonathan refused to let her even have one more dinky red potato. He said she wasn’t getting enough exercise to eat the way she was apparently accustomed to eating.

It was too much. She yelled at him. “Jonathan, I would be frickin’ happy to exercise. I’ll go down to the gym right this minute and bench-press my butt off if you will only swear on your life that there’ll be a blood-rare T-bone and a baked potato slathered in butter and sour cream waiting for me when I get back up here to this frickin’ tasteful, so-classy suite.”

He only shook his head. He was a slave driver, that Jonathan.

After the piddly-ass meal, they had grammar lessons. He made her take a vow that she would never use the word
frickin’
again in this lifetime. And then he tutored her on how to eat at a table set with endless pieces of unrecognizable silverware.

It was actually pretty simple, once he explained that you started with the outermost fork or knife or spoon and worked your way in. And if in doubt, you waited to pick up the next tong or cracker or pointy lobster-picking thing until you were able to subtly observe what your host or hostess did with it.

“Subt-ly,”
Jonathan repeated, making a big deal of both syllables. “And by ‘subtly,’ I mean a sideways glance in the direction of the hostess in question. No open-mouthed ogling. One must learn, darling, to accomplish one’s goal in such a way as not to telegraph one’s ignorance to the table at large.”

“Gotcha,” she answered, feeling vaguely resentful. Yeah, okay. She did have a lot to learn, but she’d never been the kind to stare with her mouth open.

He sighed in a way that indicated she caused him endless emotional pain. “
Gotcha.
Another word you would do well to remove from your vocabulary.”

“Jonathan, you keep on like this, I won’t have any
frick
—er, darn words left.”

“But, darling, you will learn new ones. I will see to that—and as concerns your elbows…”

“Yeah, what about ’em?” She pushed back her sleeve. “They’ve been creamed and scrubbed and buffed just about down to the bone.”

“Yes, they do
look
much better.”

“Thanks, but that’s not what I was getting at.”

“It doesn’t matter what
you’re
getting at. You’re the student. You’re here to watch, listen and learn. And as to elbows, they are under no circumstances to be allowed on the surface of the table while one is still indulging in the meal. Understood?”

“Yeah, I knew that.” Not that she’d ever cared all that much where she put her elbows while she was eating. But still. Everybody knew they weren’t supposed to be on the table, even if most people didn’t give a damn either way.

“However.” There was a definite gleam in Jonathan’s beady little eyes. “
After
the meal, while one lingers, chatting, enjoying the heady conversation that so often swirls around the table when one is in good company…then, and only then, is it considered acceptable to delicately brace one, or even both elbows on the tablecloth.”

She couldn’t help grinning. “Delicately, huh?”

“Yes, well. We’ll have to work on that.”

After the lessons on which piece of silverware to use when, they moved on to her clothing. He said they would try some preliminary shopping tomorrow. He wanted her to think about what colors would work on her—bright, vivid jewel colors, he said. “And some neutrals. But. No. Gray. Ever.” He made each word a sentence. And then he elaborated. “Gray does nothing for your coloring, Samantha. Less than nothing. Gray makes you look embalmed.”

“Gee. Good to know.”

“Sarcasm is not appreciated.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Jonathan—if you will.”

There was more lecturing on the subject of natural fibers. She would wear cotton, silk, linen and wool. And
only
cotton, silk, linen and wool. “And no frills. We’ll go for simplicity with you. And some drama. But nothing fluffy or ruffled. Nothing too…precious. Because, darling, you are not the precious type.”

Of course, he had examples to show her on his laptop. She thought he was absolutely right in his judgment of what should work well for her clothing-wise, so she didn’t give him too much of a hard time during the wardrobe lesson. She listened and did her best to absorb what he taught her.

At nine-thirty that evening, she was allowed a cup of tea and an orange. He admonished her to hold her teacup just so, to sip without slurping—and never to chew with her mouth open.

Somehow, he inspired the brat in her. She longed to open her mouth good and wide and stick out her tongue at him
before
swallowing the section of orange she’d been so cautiously,
delicately
munching.

But she didn’t. She kept her mouth shut and she swallowed the orange and she sipped without slurping at her unsweetened tea.

He gave her a book to read when he sent her to bed:
Miss Manners’ Guide to the Turn-of-the-Millennium.
She turned the pages with white-gloved fingers because both of her hands were greased up and encased in the special gloves they’d given her at the spa.

She even laughed now and then. Miss Manners was funny. And most of her advice made sense really.

Once you got past the strange realization that the way Miss Manners used words was almost identical to the way Jonathan talked.

The next day was worse.

It was the shopping. She hated it.

She’d really thought she had a pretty good idea of the clothing rules Jonathan had drilled into her the evening before. But it wasn’t the same, being out there in some fancy, expensive department store, trying to choose something vivid in color with nice, simple lines—in cotton, linen, silk or wool—when there were racks and racks packed with skirts and blouses and dresses and every other damn thing you ever might consider wanting to wear.

It made her feel sick to her stomach. Suddenly she was longing to be back on the rig, wearing her boots and coveralls, slathered in drilling mud, hitting the deck as Jimmy Betts swung a length of pipe in her direction.

Plus she was starving.
Frickin’
starving, as a matter of fact—and no, she didn’t say the forbidden word out loud.

But boy, was she tempted to.

She needed a decent meal and she needed to
not
have to shop anymore.

But Jonathan was relentless. He wouldn’t let her go back to the hotel.

At noon, he took her to some prissy, ferny downtown lunch place. And he ordered her a salad and an iced tea with lemon. She wanted to kill him. She truly did. Just snap his tiny twig of a neck between her two big hands.

But then she reminded herself that she was going to do this. She was sticking out this ridiculous crash course in being a suitable pretend fiancée for Aleta Bravo’s precious prodigal son. She
needed
this, and she knew it. She wanted a chance at a new life.

And if being waxed and peeled and plucked and starved half to death, if having to shop all day and all night until she finally managed to find something simple and bright in a natural fabric—if getting
trained
in how to sip tea and sit down at a table with rich people…

If all that had to be done for her to get a fresh start, well, fine. She would do it. She would not give up.

She was made of tougher stuff than that.

So she ate her salad, slowly. Calmly. In small bites, chewing with her mouth shut. She sipped her iced tea.

And then they shopped some more.

It didn’t get easier.

In the end, after hours and hours of lurking twenty feet away, watching her
subtly
out of the corner of his eye, Jonathan came to her rescue. He started choosing things for her to try on.

Loaded down with shopping bags, they got back to the hotel at six-thirty. Sam now had five new dresses, six pairs of incredibly expensive shoes, four sweaters, three shirts, two pairs of designer jeans…and more. Much more.

Jonathan had chosen everything. His taste was just disgustingly great. Even with her chopped-off hair and no makeup and her face still red from yesterday’s peel—she wasn’t getting the hair or the makeup until near the end of her training, he had told her—she could see the difference the right clothes made.

At the hotel, he ordered quail for dinner—two of them each. Two tiny plump birds with a side of slivered carrots, which were drizzled in some heavenly sauce. She wanted to fall on those dinky birds and shove them, whole, into her wide-open mouth. She wanted to devour them, itty-bitty bones and all.

But she waited, hands and napkin in her lap, for his instructions.

He surprised her. “One eats quail with one’s hands,” Jonathan said. “Some foods are simply too small, or too bony, to be eaten any other way. In fact, the bones themselves are quite delicate and flavorful. Eat them, too, if you wish. But please, crunch in a quiet manner. And eat slowly, as always, savoring the tastes and textures, avoiding any unfortunate displays of grease or bits of meat on the lips and chin.”

Then, as she chewed the heavenly little things with her mouth closed and tried not to listen to her stomach rumbling, he told her that there would be more shopping. And she would get better at it.

She didn’t tell him he was frickin’ crazy, but she thought it.

After the meal, there were more lessons. In polite conversation. In how to sit in a chair properly, for cripes’ sake.

By the time she finally had her bedtime snack—an actual glass of milk and one slice of lightly buttered toast—she only longed to escape to her own room.

Alone, she took a shower and brushed her teeth, greased up her hands and feet and put on the booties and the gloves. She climbed into bed and started to reach for the Miss Manners book.

But then she just couldn’t. It was bad enough listening to Jonathan all day. She didn’t need more of the same in her nighttime reading.

She tossed the book to the nightstand.

It was a big book and it slid off and hit the plush bedroom carpet with a definite
smack.
She didn’t even bother to get out of bed and pick it up. Instead she grabbed the TV remote and pointed it at the television—but no. Forget TV. Forget everything.

She threw the remote down to the carpet, too. And she gathered her knees up with her greased, white-gloved hands and she put her head down on them.

And for the first time in eleven years, since way back when that rotten jerk Zachary Gunn broke her heart and she swore off men forever, she burst into tears.

She was so miserable right then that she didn’t even have enough pride left to stop being a baby and suck it up. Great, fat, sloppy tears poured down her face and she let them.

Her nose ran. She didn’t care. She let it happen, only controlling the flood in the sense that she tried her damnedest not to make a single sound. She gulped back her sobs because apparently she did have some pride left after all.

And she didn’t want Jonathan to know how frickin’ stupid and awkward and foolish she felt. She could do a man’s job in a man’s world—and do it better than most guys. She’d reached the top of the food chain on an offshore rig at an age when most men would have been proud to simply be holding their own as roughnecks. But when it came to being a woman, well, that was turning out to be a whole lot harder than it looked.