Bravo Unwrapped

“She’s upset.” Jessica, distressed, stated the obvious. Both men turned to look at her. “Well, she is,” Jessica insisted in that breathy way of hers. “I’m sorry, Buck. But, you know, I don’t think she likes you.”

“No kidding?”

“And I don’t get it. Why would you want to make her write the story? You’re the one who writes.” Jessica’s smooth brow furrowed as if great thoughts troubled her. “Aren’t you?”

L.T. chuckled and puffed on his cigar and, for once, didn’t comment.

That left Buck to make a noncommittal noise in his throat and take a sip of the excellent brandy and wonder if he was biting off a big wad more than he would ever be able to chew.

Maybe so.

Should he back down, agree to head home to California with only a photographer for company? Write the damn story and turn it in and forget it—forget B.J.?

Hell. Probably.

But then there she came, tap-tap-tapping back to the table in her skinny little skirt and dangerous black shoes, shoulders back and head high. She looked sexy as all get-out—and also ready to start spitting nails.

Buck still wanted her. He wanted her bad. The past year or so he’d come to grips with the fact that maybe he always would.

Back down? Not this time. This time he was taking it all the way. And if she wanted her damn cover story, she could come and get it—his way.

“Are you all right, B.J.?” Jessica asked, doe eyes wider than ever.

B.J. slid into her seat again. “I have been better,” she informed L.T.’s girlfriend with a stately nod of her shining blond head. “Thank you for asking.” She turned on L.T. again, eyes stormy, mouth set. “In case you might have forgotten, I have a department to run. I can’t just go traipsing off to the wilds of California. And really. Where is the sense in this? That Buck’s got the byline is half of the story.” She threw up both hands. “Oh, this is all just too, too insane. He’s going to do a much better job of writing the damn thing than I ever could. That’s what he does—write.”

L.T. waved a hand, dismissing her objections.

“Don’t worry about the features department. Giles can handle things for a week or two. And the piece shouldn’t be a memoir. It needs an objective eye.”

B.J. looked at her father as if she’d like nothing better than to grab his cigar from between his fingers and put it out in his face. “Excuse me. An objective eye?”

Her father faced her right down. “That’s what I said.”

“Oh, please. It’s better with Buck’s name on the byline, don’t try to kid me it’s not.”

L.T. nodded. Regally. “Unfortunately, he’s not offering his name on the byline. And we have to work with what we can get.”

She whipped around to glare at Buck again. “Come on. Write it yourself.”

He only shook his head.

“You…” Evil epithets lurked right behind those lips he couldn’t wait to kiss again.

But she held them in. She sat back in her chair, regrouping. Buck could practically see her quick mind working. Cornered but still swinging, she tried again. “I can’t see any reason to pay you, if you’re not doing the writing.”

“Fine. Leave my agent out of it.”

“We will. And I’ll get someone else to write the piece. Someone really good. Mike Gallato should be available, now the Wise Brothers thing fell through. I can call him right now and we can—”

“No,” said L.T. “You’re going to write it. And you’ll do a fine job. It’ll be good for you. You need to get out in the field now and then, anyway.”

“Listen very carefully,” B.J. said in a voice that could have flash-frozen the testicles off a bull. “I’m not going to do this.” Her eyes were wild, her mouth a thin line. Two bright spots of color rode high on her cheekbones. Other than that, her face was much too pale.

Buck frowned. Had Jessica been right?

Was she sick?

He wanted to ask her for himself if she was okay. But he didn’t. B.J. absolutely refused to show weakness, anytime or anywhere. If he asked, he’d get nothing but a snarled denial. No point in going there.

She said, tightly, “Buck. Listen. I assure you. If you don’t want to write this yourself, it’s going to be no problem finding someone else, someone really…top-notch. Someone much better than I would be.”

Again, for a split second, he wavered. But not long enough that she could see it in his eyes. He was going for it. Going the whole way. And, whether she liked it or not, she was going with him.

True, at the moment, she was madder than a peeled rattler at him for roping her into this. But she’d get over it. He’d have as long as he could keep her in California to make her admit that the two of them were far from over. A big job, admittedly. But Buck Bravo was accustomed to life-and-death challenges.

“No,” Buck said. “I want you, B.J. You come with me to California and write the story. Or the whole thing is off.”

L.T. sipped his brandy and waved his cigar. “Sorry, B.J. But it looks like the decision’s been made for us.”

Three

Trapped and fully aware of the fact, B.J. stewed all the way home in the back of her father’s big, black limousine.

Looks like the decision’s been made for us, L.T. had said.

“Us,” B.J. muttered under her breath as the car hummed across the Henry Hudson Bridge. Us? She should have ripped that prize rhino head off the far wall when her father said that, just got up and ripped it off the wall and stabbed him to the heart with that big, fat horn.

For the first time, as she rode through the nighttime streets of uptown Manhattan, she actually considered quitting Alpha.

But the magazine—and her dream of running the whole enterprise someday—had been her life. She simply wasn’t ready to walk away from it.

Not yet.

Not ever.

And because she wasn’t ready to walk out, she was off to California at ten tomorrow morning.

Off to California, with Buck…

Not twelve hours later, B.J., Buck and Lupe Martinez—sleek and exotic as always in her trademark black—took off from Teterboro for Reno.

B.J. kept to herself during the plane ride. She sat at the opposite end of the cabin from Buck and Lupe, put on a pair of headphones and tried to zone out with the help of her trusty iPod. She did her best not to seethe—not too much, anyway. She composed a long series of e-mails to Giles on her laptop, instructions on how to handle the various challenges he’d be facing while she was away, notes on priorities, on whom to deal with immediately and whom he could safely ignore for a while. Between e-mails, she shut her eyes, leaned back and concentrated on letting go of her anger and frustration. Anger meant tension and tension seemed to trigger unpleasant activity in her pregnancy-sensitized stomach.

She did understand that she would have to work through her rage and get past it; it would be pretty difficult to get Buck’s story if she refused to talk to him. Besides, who was she kidding? In the next few months she’d be talking to him, anyway—about his upcoming fatherhood.

Though she’d never given a thought to having kids before, now that B.J. found herself pregnant, she’d discovered she actually wanted the baby.

Okay, so maybe she wasn’t so hot at the male/female relationship thing. She’d accepted the fact that she would probably never marry. This could very well be her one chance to have a baby and she was grabbing it—even though it was bound to wreak serious havoc on her career.