The Merciless Travis Wilde

None passed muster.

One didn’t have enough vehicles parked outside.

One had too many.

One had the wrong kind.

Jennie’s alter-ego gave an impolite snort. Jennie couldn’t blame her. That made three out of three.

What was she, Goldilocks?

Okay. The very next bar would be The One. In caps. Definitely, The One.

She’d park, check her hair, her makeup—she’d never used this much makeup before and, ten to one, it was smeared …

BAR.

Her heart thumped.

There it was. Straight ahead. A bar called, appropriately enough, BAR. Well, no. That wasn’t its name—she was pretty sure of that—it was simply a description, like a sign saying “liquor” outside a liquor store, or one that said “motel” outside a motel, or …

For God’s sake, Genevieve, it’s a bar!

She slowed the car, turned on her signal light, checked the mirrors, waited patiently for an approaching vehicle a block away to pass before she pulled into the parking lot.

It was crowded.

The last available empty space was between a shiny black behemoth of a truck and a battered red van.

She pulled between them, opened her door, checked the faded white lines, saw that she hadn’t managed to center her car, shut the door, backed up carefully, shifted, pulled forward, checked again, backed up, checked one last time, saw she’d finally parked properly and shut off the engine.

Tick, tick, tick it said, and finally went silent.

Too silent.

She could hear her heart thudding.

Stop it!

Quickly, she opened her consignment-shop Dior purse, rummaged inside it, found her compact and flipped it open.

She’d spent twenty minutes this afternoon at Neiman Marcus, nervously wandering around among the endless cosmetic counters before she’d finally chosen one mostly because the clerk behind it looked a shade less unapproachable than the others.

“How may I help you, miss?” she’d said. “Foundation? Blusher? Eyebrows? Eyes? Lips? Hair? Skin?”

Translation: Sweetie, you need work!

But her smile had been pleasant and Jennie had taken a deep breath and said, “Do you do makeovers?”

Almost an hour later, the clerk—she was, she’d said, a cosmetician—put a big mirror in her hands and said, “Take a look.”

Jennie had looked.

Nobody she knew looked back.

Who was this person with the long, loose blond waves framing her face? When had her pale lashes become curly and dark? And that pouting pink mouth, those cheekbones …

Cheekbones?

“Wow,” she’d said softly.

The cosmetician had grinned.

“Wow, indeed. Your guy is gonna melt when he sees you tonight.”

“No. I mean, that’s just the point. I don’t have—”

“So,” the cosmetician had chirped, “what do we want to purchase?”

“Purchase?” Jennie had said, staring at the lineup of vials, bottles and tubes, the sprays, salves and brushes, even an instruction sheet about how to replicate the magic transformation. Her gaze had flown to the woman. “I can’t possibly …” She’d swallowed hard, pointed to a tube of thirty-dollar mascara and said, “I’ll take that.”

Nobody was happy. Not the cosmetics wizard. Not Jennie, whose last mascara purchase had cost her six bucks at the supermarket.

Had all that time and money been worth it?

It was time to find out.

Even in the badly lit parking lot, her mirror assured her that she looked different.

It also assured her that she was wearing a mask.

Well, a disguise. Which was good.

It made her feel as if she was what she’d been trained to be, a researcher. An observer. An academic who would spend the next hours in a different kind of academia than she was accustomed to.

Jennie snapped the compact shut and put it back in her purse.

Which was why she was parked outside this place with the blinking neon sign.

Upscale? No. The lot was full of pickup trucks. She knew by now that pickup trucks were Texas the same way four-wheel drives were New England, but most of these were old. There were motorcycles, too.

Weren’t motorcycles supposed to be sexy?

And there were lots of lighted beer signs in the window.

Downscale? Well, as compared to what? True, something about the place didn’t seem appealing.

It’s a bar, the dry voice inside her muttered. What are you, a scout for Better Homes and Gardens?