The Merciless Travis Wilde. Sandra Marton

was too near the university campus.

      So she’d headed for the Arts District, mostly because she knew it, if visiting a couple of galleries on a rainy Sunday qualified as “knowing” a place—after eight months, she was still learning about her new city—but as soon as she got there, she’d realized it, too, was a bad choice.

      The Arts District was trendy, which meant she’d feel out of place. A laugh, really, considering that she was going to feel out of place no matter where she went tonight, but it was also a neighborhood that surely would be popular with university faculty.

      Running into someone who knew her would be disaster.

      That was when Jennie had pulled to the curb, put her wheezing Civic in neutral and told herself to think fast, before her plan fell apart.

      What other parts of Dallas were there?

      Turtle Creek.

      She knew it only by reputation, and that it was home to lots of young, successful, rich professionals.

      Well, she’d thought with what might have been a choked laugh, she was young, anyway.

      Rich? Not on a teaching assistant’s stipend. Successful? Not in Turtle Creek terms, where the word surely referred to attorneys and doctors, financial gurus and industrialists.

      What kind of small talk could she make with a man who was all those things, assuming such a man would look twice at her?

      Assuming there’d be any small talk because, really, that wasn’t what tonight was all about.

      The realization sent a bolt of terror zinging along her nerve endings.

      Jennie fought against it.

      She wasn’t scared.

      Certainly not.

      She was—she was anxious, and who wouldn’t be? She’d spent weeks and weeks, planning this—this event.

      She wasn’t going to add to that anxiety by going to a bar in a place like Turtle Creek on a Friday night when—when singles mingled.

      When singles hook up, Genevieve baby, her always-until-now-oh-so-logical alter ego had suddenly whispered.

      “They mingle,” Jennie had muttered. “And my name is not—”

      Except, it was. For tonight. She’d decided that the same time she’d hatched this plan.

       Good. You remembered. You’re Genevieve. And you’re trying to pretty things up. Tonight is not about mingling, it is about—

      Jennie had stopped listening.

      Still, there was truth to it.

      Nobody could pretty this up.

      Her plan was basic.

      Find a bar. Go inside. Order a drink. Find a man she liked, flirt with him …

      Forget the metaphors.

      What she wanted was to find a man she liked enough to take home to bed.

      Her teeth chattered.

      “Stop it,” she said sharply.

      She was a grown woman. Twenty-four years old just last Sunday. That she had never slept with a man was disgraceful. It was worse than that.

      It was unbelievable.

      And the old Stones song lied.

      Time wasn’t on her side, which was why she was going to remedy that failing tonight.

      “Happy birthday to me,” she said, under her breath, and her teeth did the castanet thing again, which was ridiculous.

      She had thought about this for a long time, examined the concept from every possible angle.

      This was right. It was logical. It was appropriate.

      It was how things had to be done.

      No romance. This wasn’t about romance.

      No attachment. That part wasn’t even worth analyzing.

      She didn’t have time for attachment, or emotion, or anything but the experience.

      That was what this was all about.

      It was research. It was learning something you’d only read about.

      It was no different from what she’d done in the past, driving from New Hampshire to New York before she wrote her senior paper so that she could experience what had once been the narrow streets where Stanton Coit had established a settlement house for immigrants long before there were such things as social workers, or the trip she’d planned to see the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in Chicago …

      Her throat constricted.

      Never mind all that.

      Her days of academic research would soon be meaningless.

      What she needed now was reality research, and if there wasn’t such a branch of study, there should be.

      And she was wasting precious time.

      Jennie checked both rearview mirrors, put on her signal light and pulled away from the curb.

      She headed south.

      After a while, the streets began to change.

      They grew narrower. Darker. The houses were smaller, crammed together as if huddled against a starless Texas night.

      The one good thing was that there were lots of bars.

      Lots and lots of bars.

      She drove past them all.

      Of course, she did.

      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