Bravo Unwrapped
Page 24
“Oh,” she said breathlessly. “You’re getting married. Isn’t that great?”
L.T. surprised them. He was happy, too. “I’m having a grandchild,” he said, “and the more I think about that, the more I like it. B.J. Buck. Feel free to thank me now.”
“Excuse me,” said B.J. “We should thank you for what?”
“For getting the two of you together, that’s what. If it wasn’t for my stepping in and talking Buck into writing the Christmas feature, the two of you wouldn’t even be on speaking terms.”
B.J. couldn’t let that go without calling him on it. “As I recall, you had me writing it.”
“Harumph. Well. And that didn’t last, now, did it? Buck wrote it and it is brilliant. Very possibly, that issue will be our bestselling ever.”
“Dad. Why is it that whenever there’s credit to be taken, you’re always the first one to claim it?”
“You think I got where I am today by being shy? So what about it? Thanks are in order and I’m ready to accept them.”
Buck spoke up then, graciously. “Thanks, L.T.”
“Ahem. All right, then. You’re welcome, both of you.”
Next, L.T. admitted that he wanted B.J. back at Alpha.
“I’ve had my ear to the ground on this,” he announced. “I happen to know you turned down the offer from TopMale. I’m guessing you want your job back and I’m willing to give it to you—in fact, I’m willing, after serious thought and weighty consideration, to move you on to the next level, after all. Editor-in-chief, B.J. Take it. It’s yours.”
“I thought I told you, with the baby coming, I’m not going to be working eighty-hour weeks anymore.”
“I know that. We’ll deal with it.”
“What about Bob Alvera?”
“I have other plans for Bob.”
“Scary,” B.J. said under her breath.
“What was that?” L.T. growled.
She twined her fingers with Buck’s. “We’ll talk shop later, Dad. Right now, let’s break out the sparkling fruit juice and share a toast.”
Jessica rang the service bell and Roderick came in bearing a sterling silver tray: champagne for Buck and Jessica, fruit juice for B.J. and L.T.
“Roderick,” said her father. “You’ll have a little bubbly with us, I trust?”
The faithful retainer allowed that just this once, he might.
B.J. took it upon herself to propose the toast.
“To the season,” she declared. “To hope. To keeping the faith—and to real men everywhere.” Her father preened. B.J. granted him a fond and tolerant smile and then turned to Buck. She raised her glass high. “Men who are strong enough to be tender, smart enough to know what they want, shrewd enough to get out and go after it—and sure enough to stay the course on the rocky road to love.”
BRAVO UNWRAPPED
BONUS FEATURES INSIDE
Author Interview: A Conversation with Christine Rimmer
Recipe: Sierra Star Pumpkin Muffins
The Ballad of Blake Bravo
The Bravos: Heroes, Heroines and Their Stories
Sneak Peek: BRAVO FAMILY WAY by Christine Rimmer
Author Interview: A conversation with CHRISTINE RIMMER
USA TODAY bestselling author Christine Rimmer has written more than fifty novels for Silhouette Books. Recently she chatted with us as she took a break from writing her latest book.
Please tell us a bit about how you began your writing career.
I always loved to write. Somewhere in my twenties I began to realize that I wanted someone to pay me to write so I could do it for a living and not have to work all those draining day jobs. For several years I kind of felt my way along. I have a background in theater; I wrote several plays. I tried my hand at poetry and short stories. I wrote scripts for self-help tapes and a pilot for a TV show. (Never sold. Title: Pet Patrol. And I think that’s all anyone needs to know.
Was there a particular person, place or thing that inspired this story?
I love a strong heroine. I wanted to write how a real powerhouse, go-getter career woman finally finds the love of her life. So I did.
What’s your writing routine?
Writing is my job. I work about eight hours a day at least five days a week.
How do you research your stories?
The usual sources: books on any given subject, sometimes interviews with experts, magazine articles. The children’s section of the library is very useful for the basic info on a setting—clear, well-organized information with lots of pictures! Oh, and the Internet. I don’t know how I got along without it. But I have it now and that’s what matters.
How you do develop your characters?
Tough question. I used to do character charts and “interview” my characters. I used to write long character histories. But over the years it’s pretty much become intuitive. I try to keep peeling down to find the deepest truth hidden within any given character’s psyche. I’m looking for the secrets they’re keeping from themselves….
If you don’t mind, could you tell us a bit about your family?
I’m a native Californian. My dad and mom grew up in the same small mountain town, two of a four-person high school class. They’re still going strong over sixty years later. I have a loving husband and two sons and two cuddly cats named Tom and Ed.
When you’re not writing, what are your favorite activities?
Reading. Playing Trivial Pursuit. Watching Lifetime movies…yum. Oh, and I enjoy gardening. And travel when I can find the time.
What are your favorite kinds of vacations? Where do you like to travel?
Someplace tropical. Blue seas and white beaches…
Do you have a favorite book or film?
Recently, I’ve been enjoying the Whitley Strieber vampire books: The Hunger, The Last Vampire and Lilith’s Dream. And I loved The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory.
Marsha Zinberg, Executive Editor, Signature Select program, spoke with Christine Rimmer at her home in Oklahoma.
Recipe: Sierra Star Pumpkin Muffins
Sierra Star Pumpkin Muffins
(with very special thanks to Barbara Ferris)
Prep time: 15 min. Cook time: 25 min. Servings: 12
1 ½ cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp salt
1/8 tsp nutmeg
½ tsp cinnamon
1 ½ cups sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 cup canned pumpkin
1/3 cup water
12 walnut halves
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine dry ingredients in mixing bowl. Mix in oil, eggs and pumpkin. On low speed, gradually mix in water until well blended. Pour batter into greased (or use paper cups) muffin pan.
Chastity Bravo’s Special Hints:
I mix mine by hand. I use a flat whip in a clear bowl so I can see that I’ve mixed everything thoroughly. A large can of pumpkin is 3 ½ cups. I triple the recipe and it makes 3 dozen muffins and a small loaf, too (bake the loaf close to 1 hour). There will be a little of the pumpkin left in the can. I do keep the muffins refrigerated after baking. They also freeze well. I use this recipe to make small loaves of bread, too. For bread, bake for 50 minutes to an hour.
The Ballad of Blake Bravo
Note to readers: The notorious and now deceased Blake is the father of several Bravo heroes, including Buck, the hero of Bravo Unwrapped.
Harry and Blake Bravo were the sons of privilege, born to Jonas Bravo, a multimillionaire who made his money in a
number of big land deals in Southern California in the 1930s and 1940s. Harry, the oldest, was a good boy, the favored son. And Blake was the troublemaker, a boy born to end up on the wrong side of the law.
By the time Blake was twenty, his father had had enough. Jonas disinherited Blake. For a number of years Harry gave Blake money whenever his ne’er-do-well brother showed up with his hand out. But then Blake ran into their father one day when Blake came to try to talk his softhearted older brother into another “loan.” Jonas ordered him out. Blake physically attacked his father, beating him badly. Harry came to his father’s aid and won the fight, trouncing Blake soundly.
Blake’s attack on their father was the final straw for Harry. He told Blake he never wanted to see his face again—and he never did. Neither did their father, Jonas, who died a couple of years later.
A year after Jonas Sr. died, Blake murdered a man with his bare hands in a barroom brawl. To evade capture and trial and a lengthy imprisonment, Blake faked his own death in an apartment fire. To this day, it is not known whose body was found in the smoldering ruins of the fire—or how Blake managed to falsify dental records so that the body’s records matched his own.
But Blake was not finished with the family that had scorned him. Five years after Harry threw Blake out of the Bravo mansion for the last time, Blake heard of the birth of Harry’s second son, Russell (later called Dekker Smith and hero of The Marriage Conspiracy). Blake hatched a plot to kidnap the baby and hold him for ransom. He talked a gullible girlfriend, Lorraine, into falling in with his scheme. They broke in to the nursery late at night to snatch the child—running into a problem when the baby’s older brother, Jonas (named after his grandfather and six at the time; hero of The Bravo Billionaire), woke in the room next door and caught Blake and Lorraine in the act. Blake grabbed the six-year-old and clamped a gloved hand over his mouth. Jonas fought valiantly to get away, while Blake told Lorraine they’d just have to take both children.
Lorraine freaked. She started arguing. She never should have agreed to do this. A baby was one thing, but how was she going to keep a six-year-old quiet while they waited for the ransom demands to be met? As the two kidnappers argued, Jonas kept struggling. Finally Blake knocked the child unconscious and he and Lorraine took off with the baby. Jonas suffered a concussion, was comatose for several hours—and ended up with amnesia when it came to the events of the night his brother was taken.
Blake dropped Lorraine and the baby off at a secret location and went about negotiating for the two-million-dollar ransom, which he demanded be paid in diamonds, as they are compact and easy to carry. Harry and his wife, Blythe, paid, as instructed, getting the diamonds from a diamond dealer. Still completely unaware that his own brother had taken his baby son, Jonas had the police in on the whole transaction in hopes of catching the kidnapper if there was a single slipup.
Blake didn’t slip up. He got away clean. And once he had the diamonds, Blake decided it would be unwise to return the baby; it would be only another opportunity to get caught. In the meantime, Lorraine, who was unable to have children herself, had developed a powerful attachment to the child.
For a year Blake, Lorraine and the baby lived under a series of aliases, keeping a very low profile, never staying in one place too long. During that year Harry died of a heart attack, leaving Blythe to suffer a mental breakdown and his older son, Jonas, without a father or a brother—or, essentially, a mother for a number of years, until Blythe recovered.
As time passed and Blake became more and more certain he had gotten away with his revenge, Lorraine began making “settling down” noises. She wanted them to get their own little house in a nice town and live like a family. Blake had little interest in spending his life with Lorraine and his dead brother’s kidnapped child. He had zero intention of playing the family man.
They were living in Oklahoma City at that point. Since it was obvious Lorraine really cared only about the boy, Blake saw his chance to get rid of both the woman he’d tired of and the child who had, to him, been only a means to an end. Through his various nefarious connections, he sold off a few diamonds and set Lorraine up with a new identity, complete with birth certificate that “proved” the baby was hers. Thus she became the widowed single mother Lorraine Smith, living in Oklahoma City, raising her “son,” Dekker, alone.
Blake himself, confident by then that he’d pulled off his revenge and gotten away scotfree, started using his own name again. He took up with a Norman, Oklahoma, woman, whom he married when she became pregnant (with Marsh, hero of The Marriage Agreement).
For three decades Blake kept the bulk of the diamonds stashed away, knowing if he ever tried to sell off too many of them, he’d be likely to get caught. Marsh’s mother died when Marsh was sixteen, leaving the teenage Marsh at the mercy of the abusive Blake. But Blake was gone a lot. And while he was gone, he took more than one unsuspecting woman as a lover. He even “married” these women, which made him a polygamist on top of all his other crimes.
When Blake Bravo finally died for real, of heart failure, in The Marriage Agreement, Marsh found the missing diamonds and, with the help of his long-lost cousin Jonas, uncovered the truth about baby Russell’s kidnapper. Since then, more than one illegitimate Bravo has discovered his Bravo family ties.
The Bravos: Heroes, Heroines and Their Stories
THE NINE-MONTH MARRIAGE—Cash Bravo and Abby Heller
MARRIAGE BY NECESSITY—Nate Bravo and Megan Kane
PRACTICALLY MARRIED—Zach Bravo and Tess DeMarley
MARRIED BY ACCIDENT—Melinda Bravo and Cole Yuma
THE MILLIONAIRE SHE MARRIED—Jenna Bravo and Mack McGarrity
THE M.D. SHE HAD TO MARRY—Lacey Bravo and Logan Severance
THE MARRIAGE AGREEMENT—Marsh Bravo and Tory Winningham
THE BRAVO BILLIONAIRE—Jonas Bravo and Emma Hewitt
MARRIAGE: OVERBOARD—Gwen Bravo McMillan and Rafe McMillan
(Online read at www.eHarlequin.com)
THE MARRIAGE CONSPIRACY—Dekker (Smith) Bravo and Joleen Tilly
HIS EXECUTIVE SWEETHEART—Aaron Bravo and Celia Tuttle
MERCURY RISING—Cade Bravo and Jane Elliott
SCROOGE AND THE SINGLE GIRL—Will Bravo and Jillian Diamond
FIFTY WAYS TO SAY I’M PREGNANT—Starr Bravo and Beau Tisdale
MARRYING MOLLY—Tate Bravo and Molly O’Dare
LORI’S LITTLE SECRET—Tucker Bravo and Lori Lee Billingsworth Taylor
Here’s a sneak peek…
BRAVO FAMILY WAY
by
Christine Rimmer
Fletcher put a hand—so lightly—at the small of her back. Cleo went where he guided her, stunningly aware of the press of his palm against the base of her spine.
They took the elevator to the office tower. As they stepped into the car, Cleo eased away from him. She turned and backed against the brass railing that ran along the mirrored elevator walls.
They looked at each other, neither of them speaking. She found herself achingly aware of how small the space was, how, with only a step or two, she would be in his arms.
Crazy. Ridiculous. She was not, under any circumstances, going to end up in Fletcher Bravo’s arms.
She shifted her gaze, and she was looking at her own reflection in the mirrored wall behind him. Did she look as guilty as she felt?
Before she could decide if she did or not, the elevator whooshed to a stop and the doors parted.
Marla had a manila envelope all ready for her. Cleo took it with a smile. “Thanks.”
From behind her, Fletcher said, “I’ll see you to your car.”
No way, she thought as she turned to him. She made a joke of her refusal. “You don’t want to do that. You saw the way I pull out of parking spaces. I might actually run over you this time.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Danny had said it that night last week. He’s after you.
And he was. He still was—his hand on hers at the table, his p
alm settling so possessively at the small of her back as they left the restaurant…
Subtle, knowing touches. What a man does to draw a woman in. Nothing obvious. Nothing blatant. Making it so very easy to pretend it isn’t happening…
But it was happening. And she had to stop denying, stop pretending it wasn’t.
Guilt tightened her stomach as she remembered how she’d assured Danny that she wasn’t interested.
Liar, she silently accused herself. She was interested. She just didn’t want to be—no. Wrong, damn it.
She wasn’t going to be. She was stopping this slow and oh-so-clever seduction, stopping it right here and now.
She drew herself up. “No,” she said firmly. “I enjoyed the lunch. Thank you.”
He held her gaze for a second too long. She felt the heat, zipping back and forth, arcing between them. And then he said silkily, “No need for thanks. I’m pleased that we’re going to be working together.”
…NOT THE END…
ISBN: 978-1-4592-4100-8
BRAVO UNWRAPPED
Copyright © 2005 by Christine Rimmer.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.