Читать книгу Too Wild - Jamie Sobrato - Страница 10

JENNA SURVEYED THE apartment she’d called home for the past year, feeling yet another burst of anger at the person who’d invaded her privacy and stolen her most valued possessions. It took all her willpower not to kick something—more proof that she needed to unwind. She glanced down at the duffel bag and backpack that held everything she planned to take with her, then up at Travis Roth, who apparently was stunned silent by her proposition.

“I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to…unwind,” he finally said, “but don’t you think it might be awkward?”

“If it is, we won’t do it. Just give it a chance tonight, and if it feels wrong, we’ll pretend we never had this conversation. Deal?”

If he turned her down, Jenna really was going to kick something. Namely, him. In the ass. Right out her door.

“Okay.” He smiled, and the sexy gaze he pinned her with warmed her body in all the right places. “You have a deal. I’d be crazy to turn you down, after all.”

She did a mental happy dance. Look out Travis Roth, you’re in for the weekend of a lifetime.

Jenna switched off all the lights except the one near the door, then started to pick up her bags, but Travis grabbed them first. After he took them out the door, she switched off the last light and locked up her tiny apartment, with the odd feeling that when she returned, her life was going to be very, very different.

While Travis loaded her bags into the trunk of his pristine silver Mercedes, Jenna settled back into the plush gray leather of the passenger seat and tried not to think too hard about what she’d just gotten herself into. She’d focus on the fun part for tonight—do a little flirting, find out what had put all that tension into her companion’s shoulders, and do her best to work it out.

It seemed her desire to focus on the positive was not to be fulfilled though. They’d barely been on the road for five minutes when Travis brought up the one subject she most wanted to forget for the weekend.

“Care to tell me why you think someone broke into your apartment and ransacked it?”

“I guess you won’t leave the subject alone until I do.”

“Probably not.”

“I’m researching a story that someone doesn’t want written. This was supposed to be the piece that established my reputation as a serious journalist.”

“What’s the subject?”

“An exposé on the beauty-pageant industry—on the exploitation and behind-the-scenes stuff most people don’t know.”

Travis nodded. “Sounds interesting. How can you be sure that’s why your apartment was broken into?”

“Pretty quickly after I began researching the story, I started receiving threatening phone calls, then other strange things started happening.”

“Like what?”

“I was nearly run down by a car earlier this week. It actually drove up onto the sidewalk where I was walking, and it didn’t have license plates on the front or back.”

His eyebrows shot up. “You don’t think it was an accident?”

“An almost identical accident happened with a different car the day before.”

“Who knew you were writing the article?”

Jenna pressed her fingers to her temples. Her left eye was starting to twitch, a sure sign that she was overstressed. “More than a few people. Let’s talk about this another time, okay? Right now, I just want to pretend I have a normal life.”

“So tell me why you and Kathryn don’t speak to each other.”

Yet another pleasant subject. Jenna stared out the window at the city lights passing by on the East Bay. The eye twitch was getting worse.

“I think I have a right to know what I’m dealing with here. Kathryn said she had no idea why you hated her so much, but I’m betting she wasn’t telling the whole story.”

“You’d win that bet.”

“She has a tendency to only remember stories that make her look favorable, doesn’t she?”

“Yep, that’s my sis.”

“So tell me your side.”

“My mother used to enter my sister and I in these horrible beauty pageants all the time—Little Miss Twin California, Little Miss Twin U.S.A., Little Miss Twin America—we did the whole circuit.” She scoffed. “I hated it, and Kathryn adored it. That basically sums up our differences.”

“You didn’t ever want to be Little Miss Twin America?”

“I hated dressing up, wearing makeup, being gawked at by crowds, the whole bit. By the time we were eight, we knew how to apply mascara flawlessly.”

“Makeup on an eight-year-old?”

“You think that’s young? I have photos of myself wearing lipstick at the age of three.”

“So that explains your interest in the beauty-pageant story.”

“I’ve wanted to do this story as long as I’ve been a journalist.”

Travis nodded. “I had no idea your mother was such a…”

“Wacko? That’s why I’m not exactly close to her, either.”

“Wacko is not quite the word I was looking for, but if you had the kind of mother who dressed you up in matching twin outfits, why not matching names, too, like Kelly and Nelly?”

“It’s almost as bad, Jenna Kathleen and Kathryn Jennifer.”

“Oh.” He fought a smile. “But these pageants were when you were kids, right? Why all the bad feelings after so many years?”

“That was just the beginning. Kathryn always resented me for dropping out of the pageant circuit during our freshman year in high school, thereby ruining her chances of being Miss Twin Anything. It was her big dream to win a pageant, and she never did.”

“And that made your mother angry, too?”

“She never said so in so many words, but I knew she was disappointed. She always identified more with Kathryn, and by the time we were teenagers, my sister and I had an all-out rivalry going. She stole my boyfriends, my favorite sweaters and my study notes.”

“So you rebelled?”

“In a big way. Where Kathryn was always Miss Perfect—at least to the outside world—I turned into the wild one. I started dating the bad boys she wouldn’t dream of being caught with, wearing clothes way too sexy for her taste and I dyed my hair whatever color suited my mood.”

“I have to admit, that sounds like an effective way of solving your problems with her.”

Jenna smiled nostalgically. “She never once stole one of my black lace see-through tops.”

“How long has it been since you’ve spoken to Kathryn?”

Jenna frowned, unable to immediately recall. “Maybe at a family Christmas get-together a few years ago. And even then, I doubt we said more than ‘pass the turkey.’”

“That’s too bad. I know Kathryn isn’t the deepest person in the world, but she seems to have matured in the time she’s been dating my brother. Maybe this wedding will give you a chance to reconcile with her.”

Reconciling with her sister sounded about as appealing as diving into a pit of snakes, but she kept silent as she mulled over the possibility. Maybe it was time to let go of her resentment, forgive Kathryn and move on. Or maybe it was just time to get a good laugh at her sister with her new jumbo lips and chipmunk cheeks. Part of Jenna did secretly hope they remained permanently inflated.

“What about you and your brother?” she asked, not ready to discuss something as heavy as forgiveness. “Your relationship with him can’t exactly be normal if you’re going through all this trouble to hold his wedding together, and I remember you saying he’s your father’s favorite.”

“Blake has never grown up. He’s still a little boy playing office at our family business, and our clients can tell.”

“So you have to cover for him?”

“In his business life only, up until now.”

“You don’t have to go around covering for my sister’s mistakes, too, you know.”

“If I want this wedding to go smoothly, I do.” His grip seemed to tighten on the steering wheel.

Jenna stared at his profile as he drove, trying to fathom exactly how much loosening up Travis needed. Definitely more than she’d first suspected.

“What about the rest of your family—do they know what a screwup your brother is?”

“Everyone else finds his boyishness charming. Father wants him at the forefront of the company because he says Blake has the personality to win clients and keep them. He thinks I’m too stiff and serious.”

“Hmm. Do you agree with him?”

“I’ve brought in most of our newer clients myself. When people look for someone to invest their money, they want to know they’re leaving their savings in stable hands.”

Stability. Why did that quality suddenly sound so sexy, when applied to Travis? Okay, so he could probably make doing a crossword puzzle look sexy, and maybe recent events were causing her to crave stability in her life, but still…

“Have you ever let things slide? Just relaxed and not worried about other people’s mistakes?”

“Not when it comes to business—no.”

Jenna studied his profile again. He seemed to be in deep thought, and she imagined him fantasizing about suddenly not being so responsible. Maybe she was helping him loosen up already. She settled back into her seat and stared out the window, content with the silence after such a harrowing afternoon.

They’d been driving for almost a half hour when Jenna came out of her trance and glanced over at Travis again. His gaze dropped to the dash as they passed a sign for a town in another mile.

“We’d better stop to find some dinner and a gas station. Are you hungry?”

“Starved. I know a place at the next exit that has great ribs.” She’d stopped there once with a friend on their way back to the city after a weekend hiking in the mountains.