Читать книгу Redeeming Travis - Kate Welsh - Страница 14

“Oh. Here she is now,” Lidia Vance exclaimed, beaming a smile at Tricia as she entered the café. “Tricia, it’s so good to see you! It seems so long.”

Tricia fought the urge to turn tail and run. Travis had obviously told his mother about their lunch date. This was such a bad idea. What had she been thinking? Oh right, she’d decided this was the way to trap Travis into this artificial courtship. Big mistake! Now she was trapped, as well, and she went to church with this woman she was bound to disappoint.

“Lidia, we just spoke at church on Sunday,” Tricia said, trying to pretend she hadn’t heard the note of delight and hope in the older woman’s voice.

Lidia beamed. “But today you’re eating with my Travis. Fiona! Come see who’s come for lunch with our Travis,” she called to her friend, and owner of the Stagecoach Café.

Poor Lidia, once again doomed to disappointment. How could she have forgotten hearing Travis’s mother lamenting the life Travis lived when a church member had asked what he was up to these days? Still, thanks to Tricia’s suspicions about Max Vance, she really had no choice but to insist Travis keep their ruse a secret from his family.

She fought the urge to roll her eyes at Lidia’s effusive greeting when her gaze connected with Travis’s. Then she saw that this was harder for him than it was for her and her guilt doubled. Tripled.

“You two come with me,” Fiona Montgomery said, menus in her hand as she rushed up to them. She wore a bright smile on her face and an apron tied about her ample waist.

“Well, that about tears it,” she heard Travis mutter.

And it did. Now they were well and truly stuck for the duration. The addition of Fiona to the day meant their “romance” would be telegraphed through all branches of the Montgomery and Vance families. Fiona meant no harm but she loved gossip and Western Union had nothing on her for speed or efficiency.

“This must be family day around here,” Fiona said, her artificially bright red hair bouncing as she bubbled along the row of tables. “Jake came in a few minutes ago with one of his signature blondes,” Fiona went on. “I’m going to clear my special table for you two while the four of you visit for a minute.” She shook her head and frowned, laying her hand on Travis’s arm and saying in a conspiratorial, low voice, “Try to talk some sense into him. All these women…” She tut-tutted. “It breaks his mother’s heart that he won’t settle down.”

They walked along, passing a few more tables when Travis stopped next to a well-dressed, sandy-haired man who shared one side of a table with a stylish blonde. The man’s blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he shot a crooked grin Travis’s way. “You look a little shell-shocked, pal. Forget about the way those two are, did you?” Jake asked, standing and extending his hand to Travis. “I heard your mother’s delight at this interesting turn of events all the way back here.”

Travis shook his lifelong friend’s hand. “I guess I’m out of practice. This is Major Patricia Streeter. Tricia, I’ve known Jake Montgomery since he was in the play-pen tossing his toys at those of us with the freedom of our parents’ backyards.”

She remembered the stories of Travis’s enviable childhood well. “Is this the Jake you got stuck in a tree with when you were ten or so?”

Jake took her hand, his smile utterly charming. She found herself staring into his arresting blue eyes and said, “Pleased to meet you, Jake.”

“Well, hello, pretty lady. Did he happen to tell you it was his fault I got stuck up there? He dared me to go higher and I wasn’t one to turn down a dare from one of the older kids. It would have meant I was still a baby.” He shrugged. “So I climbed higher. And got stuck. Then Travis knew he’d really catch it if he didn’t get me down, and he got stuck, too. So we both got punished. His mother made us write ‘I will not climb a tree until I’m twelve’ twenty-five times.”

Travis chuckled. “Twenty-five for you. Fifty for me, because I was older.”

Jake never took his eyes off her. It was unnerving. “Where’s Travis been hiding you?” he asked, still holding her hand.

Tricia smiled back, not knowing what else to do, and shrugged. He simply made you look at him by his sheer presence. “At Peterson Air Force Base, I guess,” she said, unsure how to handle his singular brand of attention. At the moment, with his intense eyes staring into hers, she felt like the only woman in the world. Had it been Travis looking at her like that she’d have melted, but she had no interest in a playboy of this man’s caliber.

“Oops. Sorry,” Jake said, and pulled his hand back as if he were afraid it would get bitten off. Surprised and wondering if she’d sent out some unconscious signal, she noticed Jake’s eyes were all of a sudden on Travis. “I didn’t mean to poach on your territory, Trav,” Jake added.

Tricia looked quickly toward Travis and was surprised to see his green eyes glittering with what she could only call jealousy. She felt a little thrill but then she realized he was putting on an act and the feeling evaporated like smoke on the wind. She was nothing to Travis Vance but the woman who had ruined his life.

“Just back off, Casanova,” Travis grumbled, furthering his pretense of jealousy. “Pay attention to your own date. It’s taken me years to find Tricia again.”

My, but he was putting on quite a show for the sake of their investigation. He must be more resigned to it than she’d thought. More resigned than even she was now that it had been put into motion. She only wished it was all pretense for both of them. But as much as Travis had hurt her by turning so quickly—so easily—to Allison, she was still drawn to him and she hated seeing how empty his life had become.

“Not to worry,” Jake said, grinning again. “I was just trying to figure out if Lidia and Aunt Fiona were barking up the wrong tree. Glad to see they aren’t. You deserve some happiness, Travis. Nice to meet you, Tricia.”

“Aren’t you going to introduce us, Jake?” a sultry voice asked from behind Jake.

Jake blinked and stepped to the side, then looked down at his pouting companion, clearly having forgotten her. “Oh. Uh…sorry. Cheri Wilson. This is Travis Vance and his friend, Tricia Streeter.”

Jake’s date wrinkled her nose. “Don’t you hate wearing that uniform? It’s so unfeminine. So are you a secretary or something like that at the Air Force base, Ms. Streeter?” Cheri’s catty tone wasn’t lost on either man, Tricia noticed, and neither looked particularly happy at the subtle but out-of-the-blue attack.

Tricia wondered if her response would surprise Travis. It would if he didn’t realize yet how much she’d changed. In college she would have backed down and let the prettier, richer, smarter girl win the encounter by default. But the new Tricia stuck up for herself. “That’s Major Streeter and I’m an investigator with the Air Force Office of Special Investigation. Travis, I think Fiona has that table ready. Perhaps we should leave Jake and Cheri to their meal. It was wonderful meeting such an old friend of Travis’s, Jake. Perhaps we’ll run into each other again.”

She heard Travis mutter, “Not if I have anything to say about it, you won’t.” For a split second, Tricia felt another little thrill but then Jake laughed, having heard, as well, and she was again sure Travis’s jealousy was all part of an act.

After Fiona seated them and took drink orders, she bustled off and Tricia cautioned, “I thought this was just supposed to be our first date. Your reaction to Jake was a little bit of overkill, though I commend your acting ability.”

“Well, I don’t commend yours,” he snapped. “What was all that starstruck staring into his eyes supposed to be about? The premise is that you’re here with me, beginning a wild romance, remember?”

Tricia refused to rise to the bait. She was good at her job and she wouldn’t let him undermine her confidence in herself or in her ability to do whatever was necessary to get her job done. “I have a job to do but I’m not dead. Jake’s a very attractive man. Tell me more about him.”

“He’s dangerous to women and he doesn’t even know it. That’s what makes him so dangerous. Women from two to ninety-two fall under his spell with no effort on his part. He’s left a trail of broken hearts starting from grade school, through high school and college right up to Cheri over there.”

“She looked pretty happy to me. Not very nice but pleased with herself as we moved away.”

“But what she doesn’t know is that she just overstepped the invisible boundaries of one of his relationships.”

Fiona came up and dropped off their drinks. “Are you two ready to eat? If not, I can come back later. I don’t want to intrude.”

Travis smiled indulgently and shook his head. “Let’s just let Mom feed us. She knows what I like and Tricia spent a few weekends at our house when we knew each other before. Mom never forgets anyone’s eating habits.”

“Okeedokee,” she said, scribbling on her order pad and flitting away.

“She’s a real character,” Tricia said.

Grinning Travis nodded. “Yeah, a real menace. Uh-oh. Looks like Cheri just flounced out ahead of Jake. Another one bites the dust.”

“So her jealous act really did earn her the boot. What does Jake do for a living, by the way?”

“He’s with the FBI. A computer expert.”

“Hmm. Maybe at some point we’ll be able to tap him as a resource.”

Travis pursed his lips and nodded, thinking deeply for a long moment before saying, “Yeah, maybe. I have in the past. When I first got into corporate espionage I needed to learn about computers and Jake taught me a lot. He’s a whiz.”

“If we need to call in a whiz then we’ll know who to call.”

Lidia bustled up with a tray laden with Italian delights. “I remembered how much you liked my manicotti and braciole when you visited. Made fresh this morning. Here you go, dear.”

“Thanks, Lidia. I can’t believe you remembered that after all these years.”

“A mother never forgets.”

“I thought that was ‘A Vance never forgets,’” Travis teased, then looked down at his plate as Lidia set it in front of him.