Читать книгу A Bravo Homecoming - Christine Rimmer - Страница 11

That 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.

She cried and cried, really letting go, feeling very, very sorry for herself, biting her lip to keep from snorting and sniffling.

And then her cell rang.

She decided not to answer it. She kept on crying. In three rings, the call went to voicemail and again she was alone with her tears and her misery.

Then the room phone rang. She tried to wait it out, but the minute it stopped ringing, it only started again.

And she knew that if she didn’t pick it up, Jonathan would be tapping on her door, asking her what was the matter, hadn’t she noticed her phone was ringing?

Oh, she could just hear him now. When one’s phone rings, Samantha, it is customary to answer it.

If she let it get to that, she would have to reply and he would hear her clogged, teary voice and know that he had gotten to her, big-time.

No way was she letting him know that. She’d held her own against some burly, badass roughnecks in her time. How could she let bird-boned, big-haired Jonathan get the better of her?

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.