Chapter 12
TRAVIS
Travis was in the doghouse.
Not the figurative doghouse. This was of the literal variety, as the puppies were his to watch for the night.
“We need to talk about Brady.” Travis held his cell up to his ear as he stretched out on his bed.
“The airplane stuff?” Gavin asked carefully.
The “airplane stuff?” It was never just the “airplane stuff.” Travis knew the look in Brady’s eye; heck, he’d experienced it himself when he was about Brady’s age.
The look that meant the kid was destined to be a pilot.
That type of desire settled deep in the soul, and there was only one solution—flight.
“Yeah,” Travis said, already knowing how the conversation would turn.
“Rachel reached out. She said you might talk to me, too.” Gavin’s resigned voice came through the other end. “She doesn’t want him to fly.”
Travis held his palm to his face. “He loves the sky. I can feel it.”
“I think he’d be a great pilot.” Gavin sighed. “But I won’t even attempt to try to overrule his mom. Rachel has her reasons; you’ll just have to convince her.”
Rachel had made it clear there was no convincing. Which meant, hell. The kid was gonna have to wait until he was old enough to do it himself.
Like Travis had.
And that stuck sideways in Travis’s craw.
“You know,” Gavin continued, “if you could not piss her off while you’re there, I’d appreciate it.”
Travis sighed. Fine. “I’ll drop it.”
For now.
“And if you might keep Mama at a distance from her, that’d be much appreciated, too,” Gavin added.
“Dane and I have it under control.” They did. They’d even agreed to a tag-team method that would keep Evelyn out of Rachel’s hair.
Gavin sighed. “Mama can just be…”
Travis glanced at the dogs lying on the other side of the mattress.
He knew exactly how their mother could be. His setup that night was his mother’s doing, and he had her number on this one.
She acted innocent enough when she’d made the arrangements for him to have two furry bedmates, but his mama worried he’d make a move on Rachel. Frankly, after the incident at the lake when he’d nearly kissed her, he’d worried about that, too.
So his mother had saddled him with the two puppies.
No doubt, she hoped they’d keep him occupied, so he’d have no time to go sniffing around for Rachel.
“She can be Mama.” Travis chuckled as he punched the pillow behind his head, willing it into place. “We’ll make sure she doesn’t go full Puffle Yum on Rachel.”
“Thanks.” Gavin said something to someone in the background. “I’ve gotta go, but I’m checking in with the boys again in the morning.”
They said their goodnights and Travis turned off the ridiculous lamp made of antlers on the bedside table. But Travis could not close his eyes. Every time he did he saw Rachel’s pink lips.
Despite what had happened earlier at the lake, he understood that logically he and Rachel should just stay friends. It kept things simple.
He liked simple.
He liked his privacy.
He did not like having his mama all up in his grill about who he was seeing romantically. Therefore, he should keep his romantic entanglements outside of anyone his mother knew, had known, or planned to know. Unfortunately, Travis was never very good at doing what he should.
A wet nose nudged his cheek.
Travis turned his head. Pete stood on the top of the bedspread, wagging his tail and nudging Travis again with his wet snout.
“I’m trying to sleep,” Travis said, adjusting his pillow and closing his eyes.
Pete nudged him again.
Travis rubbed the mutt behind the ears. “Time for bed, kid. Playtime’s over.”
He’d already taken them out and tossed some balls around with his nephews and the pups before Rachel sent the boys to bed. Then he’d taken them out again for an extra bathroom break before he’d crashed himself.
Travis cracked an eyelid as Pete lay down on his stomach, his face right up against Travis’s.
Travis pulled the blankets over his head, and rolled over, willing to dog to go crash on the doggie bed or curl up with Re-Pete at the foot of the mattress.
Pete hopped up and his little paws padded across the bedspread.
Then the distinct sound of a stream of liquid dropping onto cloth had Travis bolting upright. It sounded like someone had turned on a trickle of a faucet.
Given that that there was no faucet in the room and two barely housebroken dogs, Travis flicked on the lamp beside the bed and—with his teeth on edge—he glanced at the dogs.
Re-Pete was still sleeping.
Pete was mid-leg-lift at the edge of Travis’s bed, letting it all flow.
Shit. Well, not shit. But that sound Travis had heard wasn’t water.
It was piss.
Travis groaned and rolled out of bed.
“Dude.” He scrubbed his palms over his cheeks. “I’m
not into that. You gotta ask before you try that the first time you spend the night with a guy.”
Pete hopped from the bed and ran to the door. He paced back and forth, glancing at Travis and practically broadcasting he needed o-u-t.
“C’mon, you two.” Travis stripped the bed as fast as he could—being careful to avoid the puddle—and grabbed the two leashes. Then he nudged Re-Pete awake and hurried with the dogs outside so they could do what they needed to do and not do it on his bed.
He shivered. Damn, it was cold. Mountain air was especially crisp at eleven o’clock at night.
He should’ve grabbed a jacket or a not-peed-on blanket, because the dogs were in no hurry to finish up.
Re-Pete was now wide awake and sniffing all around the edge of the small lawn, apparently searching for just the right location to leave his gift for Mother Nature.
Pete, on the other end of the spectrum, was peeing everywhere. Lifting his leg on anything not moving.
Which was why Travis shifted from foot to foot and kept his eye on the little troublemaker.
“Your mother asked me to talk to you.” Dad’s voice came from behind.
Sheesh, Travis hadn’t even heard him approach. He blamed the fact that his teeth were chattering.
“I just bet she did,” Travis replied. He turned to his dad, then gestured to the dogs. “We’re almost done here. You think we can take this inside, so we don’t turn into Popsicles?”
His dad had had the brains to put on a bathrobe before he came out into the chill. He watched the dogs for a beat, shook his head, then glanced at Travis. “Meet me in the study.”
Dad didn’t linger, already heading back inside where it was warm. His dad was a very smart man—no one ever really argued that point.
Like Travis, Dad took the most direct approach to solve an issue or have a conversation. He was decisive but fair.
Travis leashed the dogs and then, all together, he and his new pack headed for the study. At least this was where his dad kept the good hooch.
Travis had barely entered the room, his skin slowly returning to having some kind of feeling.
“You. Rachel. No hanky-panky,” Dad said as he poured Travis a bit of amber liquid and repeated the measure for himself. “Your mother is flipping out. She’s convinced herself that you’re in Rachel’s pants.”
“This is why you tracked me down?” Travis asked. “In the middle of the night?”
“Have you met your mother? She can’t sleep, which means I can’t sleep.”
“I’m not, how you so eloquently said, in Rachel’s pants,” Travis said once they settled in. They sipped the scotch as the dogs lazed under the desk.
“All right, I’ll tell your mama that.” Dad didn’t make a move to get up. He wouldn’t, either, not until he’d finished his scotch.
“Mom should just be glad that Rachel and I are getting along and communicating,” Travis said, stretching out in the leather armchair.
His dad harrumphed. “Your mother can pull problems from thin air. Problems that didn’t exist two minutes prior.”
Pete let out a snore, apparently ready for bed now that he’d emptied the entirety of his bladder all over the property. So it was Re-Pete who hopped up to sit on Travis’s lap.
Aside from his father explaining why Travis shouldn’t consider banging his former sister-in-law, the whole thing had a very Norman Rockwell vibe.
Then again, “banging” was the wrong word. Travis didn’t want to bang Rachel.
Well, he did, because she was gorgeous, and he had been feeling some serious chemistry in the lake.
He enjoyed the way she laughed, smelled, and he was pretty much desperate to see how she tasted.
But there was more to it than that. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what that was, but there was definitely more.
Dad turned the cut-crystal tumbler around in his palms. “I’ll explain to your mama what we talked about and then maybe we can all get some sleep.” He added a, “Finally,” under his breath.
“So this is less about me and Rachel and more about you wanting some z’s?” Travis asked.
His dad nodded. “Yup. Glad we’re on the same page here.” He stood and set his now-empty glass back on the tray by the liquor.
“My mama needs to take her own advice and mind her own business when it comes to who I’m spending time with,” Travis suggested, hoping that his father would find a way to put a spin on that request that would bring his mother around.
“It’s complicated. You know that.” Dad shook his head and rested his elbows on his knees.
“What’s complicated about me being nice to the mother of my nephews? What’s complicated about wanting to make things a little easier for her?” Travis asked. This wasn’t rhetorical—he really wanted to know.
His mother had never asked him for a list of his previous hookups, previous girlfriends, previous anything.
Everything was fine until Travis started interfering with her perception of happily ever after for Gavin.
That’s, ultimately, what this boiled down to—Travis couldn’t be with Rachel because Rachel should be with Gavin.
Which, given what both of them had said, discussed, and illustrated, was never going to happen.
They’d trusted Gavin to handle her with care and he’d wrecked it. They wouldn’t trust Travis because they worried he’d wreck it again.
But he wouldn’t.
“Gavin and Rachel aren’t getting back together,” Travis said. Hell, Gavin was now engaged to someone else.
Dad nodded. “You know how your mother gets when she has an idea that something should be a certain way.”
“And she’s worried I’m going to screw that up.”
“No, not that.” Dad wasn’t much of a talker. Travis was pretty sure that’s why he’d married Mama. Mama was the talker in the relationship, which was why she must’ve been really concerned if she sent Dad to have this chat.
Dad sat again, reluctantly this time. “She’s worried that if you and Rachel get into an…
involvement…it’ll mean Gavin stops coming around and, eventually, if you and Rachel stop being…
involved…then she’ll stop coming around.
Then the boys will stop coming around. At the end of the day, it means your mother doesn’t get to see her grandkids. ”
“I’d just like to point out that the grandkids are here. Rachel is here. The only one missing is Gavin.” Travis stood. Paced. “Maybe you should be having a little chat with him.”
Dad gave a curt nod. “Not a bad idea.”
Travis studied the blue decorations on the rug as his father left the room. But when he did finally look up, he had two golden retriever puppies staring at him like they were ready to start peeing again.
“You two need to knock it off.” He pointed to one, then the other for good measure.
Then he sighed. Grabbed their leashes, set aside his unfinished glass of scotch, and headed back toward the linen closet where they stored the extra blankets.
Once he changed out the comforter, they could all get some sleep—just like his dad wanted.
Unfortunately, the closet for extra bedding was all the way on the other side of the house, so he had to pass by the second study to get there.
Yes, the house had two studies—the one his father had met with him in and the one they’d made into a makeshift office for Rachel’s personal use.
Mama included it as part of her special let’s-get-her-to-come-along package.
The light was on under the door of the second study when he passed by. He forced himself to keep walking. He got his new bedding and refused to look to see if the light was still on when he moved past again.
It was.
Now, he knew a lot of things. One of the things he knew was that he should keep right on going when he realized the light was on.
Should take the dogs and go back to bed.
Because if the light was on, then Rachel was in there, and if Rachel was in there, then he wanted to stop in and see how things were going for her.
Yes, he should keep moving. But Travis was never any good at doing what he should do. So he knocked against the thick wooden door, and he waited.