Smooth Talking Stranger (Travis Family #3)(28)

"Good." A brief hesitation. "Do you have lunch plans?"

"No."

"Let me pick you up at noon."

"I can't afford to have another meal with you," I said, and he laughed.

"This one's on me. There's something I want to talk to you about."

"What could you possibly want to talk to me about? Give me a hint."

"You don't need a hint, Ella. All you need is to say yes."

I hesitated, thrown off-guard by the way he talked to me, friendly and yet insistent, in the way of a man who was not accustomed to being told no.

"Could it be a casual place?" I asked. "At the moment Luke and I don't have anything nice to wear."

"No problem. Just don't put pink socks on him."

To my surprise, Jack picked us up in a small hybrid SUV. I had expected a gas-guzzling monster, or maybe a hideously expensive sports car. I certainly hadn't bargained on something that Dane or one of his friends would have felt comfortable driving.

"You, in a hybrid," I said in wonder, struggling to strap the base of Luke's car seat in the back row. "I thought you'd drive a Denali or a Hummer or something."

"A Hummer," Jack repeated with a snort, handing me Luke in his carrier and gently nudging me aside. He reached in to secure the car-seat base himself. "Houston's got enough toxic emissions. I'm not going to add to the problem."

I raised my brows. "That sounds like something an environmentalist would say."

"I am an environmentalist," Jack said mildly.

"You can't be, you're a hunter."

Jack smiled. "There're two kinds of environ-mentalists, Ella. The kind who hugs trees and thinks a single-cell amoeba is as important as a Nova Scotian elk . . . and then there's my kind, which thinks of regulated hunting as part of responsible wildlife management. And since I like to be out in nature as much as possible, I'm against pollution, overfishing, global warming, deforestation, or anything else that messes with my stomping grounds."

Jack took Luke's carrier from me and carefully locked it onto the base. He paused to murmur to the baby, who was strapped in like a mini-astronaut ready for a dangerous mission.

Standing back and a little to the side, I couldn't help appreciating the view as Jack bent into the car's interior. He was a powerfully built man, tight-loomed muscles encased in boot-cut denim jeans, his big shoulders flexing beneath a light blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves. He had the kind of form ideal for a quarterback, heavy enough to take a hit from a rusher, tall enough to throw an accurate pass over linemen, lean enough to be limber and fast.

As was often the case in Houston, a drive that should have taken fifteen minutes lasted almost a half hour. But I enjoyed the ride. Not only was I happy to be out of the hotel room, but Luke was sleeping, lulled by the air-conditioning and the motion of the car.

"What happened with Dane?" Jack asked casually. "Did you break up?

"No, not at all. We're still together." I paused uncom-fortably before adding, "But we're on . . . hiatus. Just for three months, until Tara comes for her baby and I go back to Austin."

"Does that mean you're free to see other people?"

"We've always been free to see other people. Dane and I have an open relationship. No promises, no commitments."

"There is no such thing. A relationship is promises and commitments."

"To conventional people, maybe. But Dane and I believe you can't own someone."

"Sure you can," Jack said.

I raised my brows.

"Maybe it's different in Austin," Jack continued. "But in Houston, a dog doesn't share his bone."

He was so outrageous, I couldn't help laughing. "Have you ever gotten serious with anyone, Jack? Really serious, like getting engaged?"

"Once," he admitted. "But it didn't work out."

"Why not?"

"Why?"

The hesitation before his reply was long enough that I realized this was a subject he seldom discussed. "She fell in love with someone else," he finally said.

"I'm sorry," I said sincerely. "Most of the letters I get for my column are from people on the down side of a relationship. Men trying to hang on to unfaithful women, women in love with married men who are always promising to leave their wives but never do. . . ." My voice trailed away as I watched his thumb move in a restless stroke against the gleaming leather steering wheel, as if there were a rough patch he was trying to smooth out.

"What would you tell a man whose girlfriend slept with his best friend?" Jack asked.

I understood immediately. I tried to keep my sympathy concealed, sensing that he wouldn't like it. "Was it a one-time thing, or did they start dating?"

"They got married," he said grimly.

"That stinks," I said. "It's the worst when they get married, because then everyone thinks it absolves the couple of all wrongdoing. 'Oh, well, they cheated on you, but they got married so that makes everything all right.' So that leaves you having to swallow the bitter pill and send an expensive wedding present, otherwise you look like a jerk. It's a screw job on multiple levels."

His thumb stilled on the steering wheel. "That's right. How did you know?"