Only Skin Deep (12 page)

Leaning over the counter, Travis took a combative stance. Jaclyn had tried provoking him into such a fit of fury on more than one occasion and had done little more than irritate him. This was different from such manip
ulative ploys. Travis had to believe that Lauren wouldn't play those kind of sick games.

Stepping back, Larry hastened to expound his official position.

“Listen, buddy, I'm sorry to see you in such a state, but this sounds more like a personal issue than a criminal one. I don't know how long the two of you have been together, but since when is Lauren required to report in to you?”

Travis backed off. Not because he wanted to. But because he had no other choice but to spend the night in jail if he didn't. The fact that Larry made him feel like some overprotective Neanderthal without a clue how to treat a lady didn't set well with him. Probably because he resembled the comparison more than he cared to admit.

“Sorry to take my frustrations out on you,” Travis said. “But if I don't hear something from Lauren soon, I promise I'll be back in here demanding action.”

 

Just a few short weeks ago Lauren would have been tempted to accept the stranger's offer to buy her a drink and strike up a conversation with a prospective bridegroom. Today she opted for a hot bath instead. No longer satisfied to be with just any man, she had her heart set on Travis. No one else would do.

Lauren filled the tub with hot water and eased herself in. Nothing in the world calmed her nerves like a good long soak. Placing a steaming washcloth over her face, she let the mystical properties of the bath dissolve the world beyond her skin. Much later when the water
grew tepid and her skin turned the texture of prunes, she drained the liquid from the tub and felt the tension in her body melt away. By the time she stumbled to bed and said a little prayer that the path she was meant to take would be clearly laid out in front of her tomorrow, she was already half-asleep.

L
auren squinted at the clock beside her bed. Her eyes widened in disbelief. It was almost past check-out time. She couldn't remember the last time she'd slept till noon. Awakening with a renewed sense of energy, she decided it was a whole lot easier to be a clear-thinker when Travis wasn't around to turn her brains to mush. Playing the part of the invisible woman for the past few years had certain advantages. While everyone had been busy ignoring her, Lauren learned how to think for herself and become her own person. A good night's sleep brought with it the realization that it didn't matter what anyone else thought. And that, no matter how well intended others might be, she shouldn't let anyone else define her dreams.

Quite simply Lauren wanted it all. To be married. To be a wife and a mother as well as a lover. She believed herself deserving of a tried and true happy ending complete with a preacher and a multitiered cake and a bouquet that she got to throw instead of catch for once.

As humble as her dream might be, she decided that it was worth holding out for.

Pride put a steel rod in her spine and prevented Lauren from accepting less than the real deal. She was tired of crying her eyes out over someone who didn't appreciate her, and she wasn't willing to settle for just marrying anyone for the sake of a ring and the approval of polite society, either. Nor did she want to force a man into marriage against his will. If she were pregnant with Travis's child after their last passionate encounter, she would rather die than use an innocent baby as a bargaining chip to get what she wanted from him.

“I'm an intelligent, attractive and independent woman,” she told herself. “I don't need a man to make me whole. Certainly not one with a reputation of abandoning women as soon as he grows tired of them.”

Of course, that didn't change the fact that she loved Travis.

She
was willing to stake her future on the idea of the two of them being together for a lifetime. The question was whether he loved her and was willing to take a chance on marriage. If he wasn't smart enough to see what a terrific catch she was, he could go hang out at
The Alibi for the next decade or so and wait for someone better to come along.

Lauren understood that she could no more commandeer Travis's love than she could continue to resent her father for dying. The only solution that left her a modicum of dignity was to embrace herself as a wonderful, sensual creature entitled to a lifetime of self-love and approval. Time would tell whether Travis would come around.

If he didn't love her enough to marry her, she decided that she would simply have to love herself all the more.

Lauren rushed to make herself presentable before check-out time. Staring into the mirror, she looked deep into her own eyes and assured herself that everything was going to work out all right. Then she shut off the light and headed out to do a little shopping. There were a few things she wanted to buy before confronting Travis on his home turf. They included candles, chocolate, a bottle of wine and the most elegant negligee she could find.

 

It was dark by the time Lauren got back to the ranch. An ominous sense of foreboding settled over her as she shut off her vehicle and stepped into the obscurity of a night illuminated only by the canopy of stars overhead. She suddenly felt very small.

And all alone.

There was not a single light on in either the big house or the cabin. It was one thing to imitate Katherine Hepburn's sense of independence in the bright light of day
but much harder to attempt it while fumbling for her keys in the darkness while thinking about confronting the man who made her feel as vulnerable as a kitten. She finally managed to open the front door and flip the light switch on. Everything was neat and orderly as she'd left it. The boogey man was nowhere to be seen.

And neither was Travis.

Lauren told herself that it was silly to be disappointed that he wasn't there waiting for her. That he wasn't the least bit worried about her. Not that she owed him any explanations about her whereabouts. She'd just hoped that absence might have made his heart grow fonder. All the way home, she fantasized about him waiting there for her, ready to present her with the ring he'd bought after having a change of heart.

Disappointment was a bitter, though not wholly unexpected, pill to swallow.

Unable to imagine where he could be at this time of night, Lauren assumed he simply had turned in early after a long day's work. The man did work hard—much harder in fact than she had ever supposed before getting to know him better. Travis Banks was far less of the playboy that she'd always imagined him to be and more of a regular working guy who didn't take his stewardship over the land lightly. More often than not, that meant long hours of toil in the elements and nights shortened by the necessary paperwork required to keep a ranch this size running smoothly.

Lauren couldn't help but worry that he might have been tossed from his horse and lay helpless at the bot
tom of some gulch, unconscious. Maybe he'd had an accident with some of the big equipment on the place. Maybe he was simply at the vet with a sick animal.

Alternate possibilities about where Travis might be were too painful to entertain. Just the thought of him with another woman was enough to make her physically ill.

Sanity demanded that she simply proceed with the ritual she'd devised to bolster her flagging courage, so she began setting the stage. She wasn't going to wait around any longer for the love that Travis was either unwilling or unable to give her. Lauren felt entitled to the romance that every woman craved, and didn't want to get it vicariously through movies, books or soap operas, either.

First, she placed a single long-stemmed rose in the center of the table and surrounded it with tall flickering tapers. Then she unpacked a fondue pot, broke a thick bar of imported dark chocolate into it and turned it to simmer. Wanting to believe that whatever was happening in her life was only a reflection of the limits she put on her own mind, Lauren decided it was time for her to trust the intelligence within.

It was time to woo herself and to indulge in the seduction of all of her senses.

Next she selected a CD of dreamy love songs and set a bottle of champagne into a silver bucket that she filled with ice. Then she rinsed and culled a pint of fresh strawberries the size of golf balls. These she placed in a pretty antique dish reserved for special occasions. Be
fore taking a beautifully wrapped package into her bedroom, she took a moment to stir the chocolate in the fondue pot.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, she delighted in the crinkly sound of tissue paper as she lifted an outrageously expensive negligee out of the box. The floor-length gown was a whisper of gray satin trimmed in pink lace. Lauren paused to touch the cool, slick fabric to her cheek before slipping out of her regular clothes and transforming herself into a movie star. It was as if the negligee had been custom-made to mold to the curves of her body. Twirling around in front of a full-length mirror, she'd never felt more beautiful.

And regretted only that Travis wasn't there to see her in it.

She returned to the other room to take her place of honor at a candlelit table set for one. Taking a silver skewer in one hand, she stabbed a strawberry and swirled it into the rich, dark, melted chocolate. The aroma alone was enough to make her mouth water in anticipation. It took a certain amount of self-control to admire the artistry of her creation before sinking her teeth into it.

Ah…heaven!

Lauren washed down the aphrodisiac with champagne from a delicate crystal flute. The bubbles tickled her throat. Her second glass made her feel a little bit fuzzy. Lifting it in the air, she offered a toast as a way of kicking off the symbolic private ceremony designed to mark the beginning of her life as an enlightened crea
ture capable of making herself happy—or at least being content in solitude of her own company.

“Here's to you, baby,” Lauren said to herself.

After devouring as many chocolate-covered strawberries as her stomach could hold, she gave herself over to bedtime. She didn't bother blowing the candles out. She drew back her sheets and sprinkled them with the essence of violets. Sheathed in satin, she slid between those perfumed sheets, fluffed her pillow and promptly burst into tears.

Lauren wondered just how long she'd been undiagnosed as a schizophrenic.

Love was an ill-mannered beast capable of turning a once strong-willed woman into someone incapable of making up her mind about anything: whether to sleep with Travis or not, whether to live with him or without him, whether to cry or to laugh at the ridiculousness of her dilemma. Lauren couldn't understand why it was so difficult for him to say he loved her. Why she was good enough to sleep with but not to marry? Why, in spite of her best efforts to hold herself to a higher standard, she could not simply walk away with her head held high and her dignity intact?

The answer to those questions seemed to lie in the fact that the bed was too big without Travis in it and that she hadn't managed a single bite of food all night without thinking about him.

Without missing him desperately.

All her elaborate ritual had accomplished was to prove once and for all that love was more powerful than
pride. What good was pretending when she couldn't even manage to fool herself? As a modern, enlightened woman, Lauren might not need a man to make her feel complete, but she needed Travis in order to
feel
anything at all.

In the dark of the night, in the middle her lonely bed, Lauren had an epiphany. Love didn't make demands based on what others might think or do out of a sense of obligation to the outdated dreams spawned in a young girl's heart and attached to the sentimentality of a previous era. It was wrong of her not to accept Travis as he was and where he was right now. Calling herself stupid and headstrong, she realized that Suzanne and her mother were both right.

Rather than bemoaning the fact that Travis wasn't ready for the kind of commitment she wanted, Lauren knew she should grab onto what he was offering with both hands and hang on for life. It was time for her to put aside unicorns and pixie dust and childish fairy tales. Time to grow up and act like a woman, not a little girl perpetually trying to please an absent father who would not have loved her any less without the unrealistic expectations she placed upon herself in his name.

Lauren hoped it wasn't too late and that Travis hadn't changed his mind. First thing in the morning she intended to march right over to his house and see if she couldn't set things right between them. Maybe if she arrived with her suitcase in hand, he wouldn't have the heart to turn her away.

 

When Travis pulled into the driveway well after midnight and saw Lauren's car parked in front of the cabin, he couldn't remember ever being so relieved.

Or upset.

Lauren had better have one hell of an explanation for taking off without letting him or anyone else know where she was going or what she was doing. Responsible, mature women simply didn't disappear without a word to anyone. Just thinking about her foolish behavior got him so riled up that he had half a mind to knock on her door right now, and give her a good tongue-lashing. Right after he gave her a good tongue-lashing…

Damn it, why couldn't he keep his mind off sex for more than ten minutes at a time when it came to anything having to do with Lauren? As tired as Travis was, he was surprised his body could respond like this. He felt like he'd aged more over the past forty-eight hours than in the last two years.

Didn't Lauren realize how worried he would be about her? How much he loved her?

How could she?

Guilt pierced his heart with a broken blade. Unless she was a mind reader, it would be impossible for her to know that crucial piece of information. He hadn't been able to tell her the other day when she so desperately needed to hear it. Travis himself hadn't admitted the depth of his feelings until she turned up missing and he'd gone completely out of his mind with worry. What a shame that she had to leave him just to get something so important through his thick skull.

He loved her!

By now everyone in town knew it, except Lauren herself. Travis Banks, self-proclaimed bachelor for life, was madly, passionately, head over heals, crazy in love with a woman who refused to put up with his halfhearted way of living. Oddly enough he loved her for it. He loved everything about her: her strengths and her foibles; her innocence and her lack of inhibition; her stubbornness and her pride; her strange sense of humor; her unpredictable and ever-changing mind.

Travis couldn't afford to waste another minute keeping such a wonderful revelation to himself. High on love and caffeine, he started down the path to her home determined to wake Lauren up, if necessary, to tell her exactly what was on his mind. What he had to say would probably be better articulated in the morning, but he couldn't wait that long.

He hadn't been able to sleep a wink or hold down much more than coffee—pots of the strongest stuff he could find—ever since realizing that Lauren was nowhere to be found. The combination of sleep deprivation and excessive amounts of caffeine had made him less than pleasant to be around. His friends down at the police station and the sheriff's office could testify to that fact—and probably would in court if any of them decided to press charges. Having just returned from making a scene down there in his attempt to get someone to take Lauren's disappearance seriously, he hadn't endeared himself with the local authorities.

In fact, after making a complete ass of himself, he
wasn't looking forward to telling Larry that he'd been right all along. Travis had simply overreacted, Lauren was just fine, and everything was back to normal.

Or was it?

The closer Travis got to Lauren's front door, the more bewildered he became. Candles cast a soft glow through the picture window illuminating a cozy, suggestive scene. An open bottle of champagne and the remnants of a scrumptious romantic dinner were left out on the table. And a filmy robe was draped over the back of one chair….