The Merciless Travis Wilde. Sandra Marton

deep booths. No Willy or Bruce. No locally-brewed beer. No grill and no steaks.

      Instead, there were half a dozen beat-up looking tables and chairs. The kind of music that made your brain go numb, blasting from the speakers. A couple of brands of beer. Burgers oozing grease, served up from a kitchen in the back.

      The best thing about the place was the bar itself, a long stretch of zinc that either spoke of earlier, better days or of dreams that had never quite materialized.

      Travis had pretty much known what he’d find as soon as he pulled into the parking lot, saw the dented pickups with their rusted fenders, the half a dozen Harleys parked together like a pack of coyotes.

      He’d also known what he wouldn’t find.

      Friendly faces. Babes that looked as if they’d just stepped out of the latest Neiman Marcus catalogue. A dartboard on one wall, photos of local sports guys on another. St. Ambrose beer and rare steaks.

      Not a great place for a stranger who was alone but if a man knew how to keep to himself, which years spent on not-always-friendly foreign soil had definitely taught him to do, he could at least grab something to eat before heading home.

      He’d gotten some looks when he walked through the door. That figured. He was an unknown in a place where people almost certainly knew each other or at least recognized each other.

      Physically, at least, he blended in.

      He was tall. Six foot three in his bare feet, lean and muscled, the result of years riding and breaking horses growing up on El Sueño, the family’s half-million acre ranch a couple of hours from Dallas. High school and college football had honed him to a tough edge, and Air Force training had done the rest.

      At thirty-four, he worked out every morning in the gym in his Turtle Creek condo and he still rode most weekends, played pickup games of touch football with his brothers …

      Correction, he thought glumly.

      He used to play touch football with Caleb and Jacob, but they didn’t have much time for that anymore.

      Which was one of the reasons he was in this bar tonight. His brothers didn’t have much time for anything anymore and, dammit, no, he wasn’t feeling sorry for himself—he was a grown man, after all.

      What he was, was mourning the loss of a way of life.

      Travis tilted the bottle of Bud to his lips, took a long swallow and stared at his reflection in the fly-specked mirror behind the bar.

      Bachelorhood. Freedom. No responsibility to or for anyone but yourself.

      Yes, his brothers were giving life on the other side of that line a try and God knew, he wished them all the best but, though he’d never say it to them, he had a bad feeling how that would end up.

      Love was an ephemeral emotion. Here today, gone tomorrow. Lip service, at best.

      How his brothers had missed that life-lesson was beyond him.

      He, at least, had not.

      Which brought him straight back to what had been the old Friday night routine of steaks, beer …

      And the one kind of bond you could count on.

      The bond between brothers.

      He’d experienced it growing up with Jake and Caleb, at college when he played football, in the Air Force, first in weeks of grueling training, then in that small, elite circle of men who flew fighter jets.

      Male bonding, was the trendy media term for it, but you didn’t need fancy words to describe the link of trust you could forge with a brother, whether by blood or by fate.

      That was what those Friday nights had been about.

      Sitting around, talking about nothing in particular—the safety the Cowboys had just signed. The wobbly fate of the Texas Rangers. Poker, a game they all liked and at which Travis was an expert. Which was more of an icon, Jake’s vintage Thunderbird or Travis’s ’74 Stingray ’Vette, and was there any reasonable explanation for Caleb driving that disgustingly new Lamborghini?

      And, naturally, they’d talked about women.

      Except, the Wildes didn’t talk about women anymore.

      Travis sighed, raised the bottle again and drank.

      Caleb and Jake. His brothers.

      Married.

      It still seemed impossible but it was true. So was what went with it.

      He’d spoken with each of his brothers as recently as yesterday, reminded them—and when, in the past, had they needed reminding?—that Friday was coming up and they’d be meeting at seven at that bar near his office.

      “Absolutely,” Caleb had said.

      “See you then,” Jake had told him.

      And here he was. The Lone Ranger.

      The worst of it was, he wasn’t really surprised.

      No reflection on his sisters-in-law.

      Travis was crazy about both Addison and Sage, loved them as much as he loved his own three sisters, but why deny it?

      Marriage—commitment—changed everything.

      “I can’t make it tonight, Trav,” Caleb had said when he’d phoned in midafternoon. We have Lamaze.”

      “Who?”

      “It’s not a who, it’s a what. Lamaze. You know. Childbirth class. It’s usually on Thursday but the instructor had to cancel so it’s tonight, instead.”

      Childbirth class. His brother, the tough corporate legal eagle? The one-time spook? Childbirth class?

      “Travis?” Caleb had said. “You there?”

      “I’m here,” he’d said briskly. “Lamaze. Right. Well, have fun.”

      “Lamaze isn’t about fun, dude.”

      “I bet.”

      “You’ll find out someday.”

      “Bite your tongue.”

      Caleb had laughed. “Remember that housekeeper we had right after Mom died? The one who used to say, First comes love, then comes marriage …”

      Thinking back to the conversation, Travis shuddered.

      Why would any of that ever apply to him?

      Even if—big “if”—even if marriage worked, it changed a man.

      Besides, love was just a nice word for sex, and why be modest?

      He already had all the sex a man could handle, without any of the accompanying complications.

      No “I love you and I’ll wait for you,” which turned out to mean “I’ll wait a couple of months before I get into bed with somebody else.”

      Been there, done that, his first overseas tour.

      Truth was, once he’d moved past the anger, it hadn’t meant much. He’d been young; love had been an illusion.

      And he should have known better, anyway, growing up in a home where your mother got sick and died and your father was too busy saving the world to come home and be with her or his sons …

      And, dammit, what was with his mood tonight?

      Travis looked up, caught the bartender’s eye and signaled for another beer.

      The guy nodded. “Comin’ up.”

      Jake’s phone call had followed on the heels of Caleb’s.

      “Hey,” he’d said.

      “Hey,” Travis had replied, which didn’t so much mark him as a master of brilliant dialogue as it suggested he knew what was