Bravo Unwrapped

If Buck had a story for her…

Oh, yeah. Just his name on the byline would be a coup. She should have thought of him. And she probably would have—if they didn’t have a serious past. If she hadn’t been so busy ignoring his phone calls. If she didn’t just happen to be pregnant with his baby…

She made herself look directly at him. “Okay. I’m listening.”

Buck smiled that charming, infuriating, warm, slow smile of his. The one that had made her fall in love with him in the first place, back in that fateful February, when they were both slaving away in the boiler room of Alpha’s circulation department. Back then, B.J., fresh out of Brandeis, was in the early stages of learning her father’s company from the ground up. Buck? Straight off a West Texas oil rig, still shaking the red dust off his boots, getting his start in the big city, determined to be a writer, though he had no formal education beyond a high-school diploma.

“Well?” she prompted, when Buck gave her nothing except that killer smile.

Her father chuckled. “Patience, B.J. How about a drink?”

“I’ll pass.”

L.T. stubbed out his hundred-dollar cigar in the brass dish beside his glass of Scotch. Then he stood and held out his hand to Jessica. With a glowing smile, she took it. He kissed her slim fingers. “Then let’s sit down to dinner, shall we?” He gestured at the round table across the room. It was set for four, with a white cloth, gleaming crystal and china rimmed in gold. “Nothing like a good meal to get the creative juices flowing.”

What a night. Face-to-face with Buck again. And now she’d be expected to eat. Her father loved nothing so much as a nice, big slab of rare red meat. Ugh. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to…freshen up a little.”

In the lavish black-marble half bath across the main hall, B.J. washed her hands and fluffed her hair and dreaded going back out there and dealing with Buck. But it had to be done and somehow, she would manage it. She would be pleasant. And professional. She’d get the damn story and—at work, at least—things would be fine until the next crisis came along.

She joined the others in the oak room, sliding into the chair between Buck and L.T. with a determined smile on her face. Roderick came in and opened the wine. Colette, one of the maids, appeared and began serving the meal.

B.J. faked drinking her wine. She even managed to get a little food down. On the polite conversation front, she nodded and made interested noises and spoke when spoken to. And she scrupulously avoided looking directly at Buck. No point in going there, nosiree.

Colette had served the main course—rare venison, wilted greens and whipped sweet potatoes—when L.T. finally got down to business.

“Arnie called me this morning and told me the problem. The solution came to me instantly, as it so often does. I thought, Buck Bravo. And immediately after, Of course. Who else? So I gave Buck a call. And wouldn’t you know? Buck was amenable and told me he could make himself available.

“The December cover feature—” L.T. raised his glass of cabernet high and then paused to knock back a mouthful “—will be Buck.”

B.J., who had her own wineglass near her lips at that moment, set it down without even pretending to drink from it. “Buck’s the story?”

Her father laughed. “Yes, indeed. Buck Bravo. His life, his past, how he got where he is now.”

B.J. turned her full glass by the stem and admitted, “All right. It’s good….”

“Good?” crowed her father. “It’s a damn sight better than good. It’s perfect. Ideal. Terrific. Better than terrific.”

Buck cut in. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far…”

“I would,” L.T. insisted. “Any story the competition would do murder to get is, unequivocally, better than terrific. Right, B.J.?”

“Right,” B.J. gave out grudgingly. Buck was, in all honesty, the man of the hour. There was talk that he’d get a Pulitzer nomination for Black Gold. The tabloids couldn’t get enough of him. To read what they wrote about him, you’d think every unattached woman in America longed only to claim him for her own.

Every woman except B.J. She didn’t long to claim him. She only longed for him to go away.

And as soon as they got the details ironed out here, he would go away. He’d go off and write his story and leave her alone to come to grips with the fact that she was going to have his baby.

Argh.

Colette cleared off the plates and began serving brandy, dessert and coffee. L.T. lit up another corona and continued to rave—about how Buck’s hometown, a tiny mountain hamlet in the mountains of California, was named New Bethlehem Flat. “Bethlehem. Could it get any better? And the Bravo family history? Pure gold—scratch that. Platinum. Platinum all the way…”

Buck’s father, the notorious Blake Bravo, the “bad seed” of the Los Angeles Bravos, had faked his own death at the age of twenty-six. Once everyone believed the evil Blake dead, he went on to kidnap his own brother’s baby son for a king’s ransom in diamonds and to litter the American landscape with illegitimate children—Buck and his three brothers among them. Blake had died for real a few years ago and the whole story had at last come out. A day late and a few dollars short, as they say. Because Blake Bravo had managed to live on for thirty years after everyone believed him dead. He’d gone to his grave without answering for a single one of his many crimes.

L.T. announced, “So it’s ‘Buck Bravo: Unwrapped.’

Could there be a better holiday cover story?” B.J. silently agreed that there couldn’t.

And it was about time she got past her personal issues with Buck and took control of this discussion. “All right, L.T. I’m convinced. It’s a great story and we’ll go with it.”

“Great? It’s—”

“I know, I know. It’s better than great.” She turned her head in Buck’s direction and looked at him without actually meeting his eyes. “I’ll settle the details with your agent tomorrow, and you’ll get going on it right away.”

“Agreed.”

“I’ll need you to pull it together in two weeks, if you can manage that. There is some leeway—just not much.”

“I understand.”

“I’m thinking I can get Lupe to go with you to California for the pictures.” Lupe Martinez was their top contributing photographer. “Is there snow in the Sierras yet?” she pondered aloud. “There had better be. This is the Christmas feature, after all.”

Buck let out a low chuckle, one that sizzled annoyingly along every one of her nerve endings. “I’ll see what I can do about the weather.”

“Thank you.” B.J. realized it was time to be gracious—and grateful. “I’m…so pleased about this, I truly am.”

“Glad to help out.”

“I know you’ll write us a terrific Christmas feature. I can’t wait to read it.”

“But I’m not writing it.”

B.J. opened her mouth to lay on more compliments—and snapped it shut without speaking. Surely she hadn’t heard him right. “Excuse me?”

“I said, I’m not writing it. You are. You’re going with me. And you’re right. We should leave tomorrow. I’m guessing L.T. will provide one of his jets.”

“Happy to help out.” Her father beamed, an over-bearing Santa in a smoking jacket. “No problem. The jet is yours.”

Stunned and appalled at the mere idea of being thrown into constant contact with Buck for days running, B.J. gaped. Openly. Her head swiveled from her father to Buck and back to her father again—and she saw the truth right there in L.T.’s pewter-gray eyes. He had known this was coming. How could he do this to her—and not even give her a heads-up in advance?

A thousand volts of pure fury blazed through her. She was certain her hair must be standing on end. Her stomach clenched tight—and then rolled. She looked down at her coffee, at the creamy chocolate dessert with its topping of fresh whipped cream. The few bites of food she’d eaten lurched upward toward her throat.

She gulped—hard. “Excuse me,” she said quietly—and then she shoved back her chair and dashed for the bathroom.

“Is she sick or something?” asked the doe-eyed Jessica as B.J. raced toward the door to the entrance hall, pointed heels tap-tap-tapping.

“Yeah. Sick of me,” Buck replied with a grim smile. Things weren’t going exactly as he’d hoped. Uh-uh. Not as he’d hoped—but pretty much as he’d expected.

“Maybe it was the venison,” said L.T. philosophically. He shrugged and blew a few smoke rings. “Seemed fine to me, though.”