Read A Bravo Homecoming for Free Online Page B

can do this. I will do this. I am sticking with this program and I am going to get some serious girly going or I will die trying.” She blew her nose, good and hard. By then, well, it didn’t seem to matter all that much that Travis would figure out she’d been crying. “Sam.”
    She sniffed, shamelessly that time. And it felt kind of good, really. It was kind of a relief. To let go. To cry and not care that someone might know it. “What?”
    “Are you…crying?” He asked the question in a kind of awed disbelief.
    “So what if I am, huh?” She grabbed another tissue and scrubbed her soggy cheeks. “So what if I am?”
    “But you never cry.”
    “Well, I’m crying now. Or I was.” She ripped out yet more tissue. “But at this point, I’ve moved on to mopping up the mess.”
    “So, uh, what’s happened?” He sounded totally flummoxed.
    She tried to explain. “Nothing. Everything. This is even harder than I thought it would be.”
    “It is, huh?” His voice was gentle. Understanding. “Listen. I meant what I said. If you want to back out—”
    “Uh-uh. No way. I’m not giving up. I’m going through with it, no matter what.”
    “If you’re sure that’s what you want…”
    “I am sure, yes. So stop asking me.” She settled back against the pillows, gave one last sniffle. “I guess I kind of expected to be bad at this. I just didn’t expect to care so much.”
    “Who says you’re bad at it?” He seemed honestly puzzled.
    “ I say. And I ought to know—oh, and Jonathan, too. He thinks I suck the big one. He looks at me in that pained, superior way of his….”
    “Wait. Jonathan told you that you suck?”
    “He didn’t have to tell me. It’s written all over his snooty, pointy little face. As far as he’s concerned, I can’t do anything right.”
    “But that’s not what he said to me.”
    She snuggled back into the pillows. “Huh? Said to you when?”
    “When he called me a few minutes ago to let me know how you were getting along. He said you were making great progress and he was really impressed with you, that he hadn’t realized at the beginning how much potential you actually had.”
    Now she sat up straighter. “He didn’t. You’re lyin’, trying to make me feel better.”
    “God’s truth, Sam.”
    She gave a very unladylike snort—the kind of snort she wouldn’t have thought twice about making just a few days before. “And you think it would kill him to say that to me? ”
    Travis snorted right back. “Come on, you know how you are. The madder you get, the harder you work. Maybe he’s figured that out about you.”
    She fiddled with the phone cord, twisting it around her gloved index finger. “Well, then why are you telling me he said nice things about me? Maybe I’ll get lazy now I know he’s only pretending to look down on me.”
    “Not a chance. You haven’t got a lazy bone in your body—and it was pretty clear to me you needed encouragement.”
    She pulled her finger free of the coil of cord, feeling better about everything, feeling ready to face tomorrow. Feeling she could even handle the awful, disgusting shopping that would happen the day after that. “You’re a good man, Travis Bravo. Thanks.”
    “You need me, you call me.”
    She made a soft sound low in her throat. “I think I can make it now.”
    “I’m here. Just remember.”
    He said goodbye a few minutes later. She hung up the phone thinking that she was a lucky person to have a friend like Travis.
    Turning off the light and pulling up the covers, she lay on her back in the dark with a smile on her face. Jonathan had said he was impressed with her. Travis had been there to talk her down when she needed it.
    She knew now she could make it. In only a few days, she would be ready.
    She would go with Travis to San Antonio and play his bride-to-be for his family. Yes, it was a big lie and she didn’t believe in lies.
    But no one was going to be hurt by the deception. She was just giving