She finished her wine and handed the glass off to a passing waiter and without a second thought, picked up another.
She was going to get drunk, and right now, with the pain lancing her body like a thousand arrows, it seemed like a great idea.
“Mia,” Claire said, “I’m not sure what the situation is between you and Jack and I certainly am not going to speculate—”
“Really?” Mia asked, not believing it for a minute. She could feel the speculation from every single person in the room like hot air suffocating her.
Claire stiffened, her eyes shooting out sparks. “No,” she said. “I’m not. But Devon and Jack are the only two on the team with wives and…”
Realization sunk in. Claire wanted someone to commiserate with. Someone to hold hands with and pray, to pore over the newspapers and pull apart embassy reports.
I have to do this? she asked herself, bitterness making her feel a million years old. She wanted to find her rusty, beat-up truck in the employee lot and head back to the land she loved and that loved her back. I have to live all of this again?
“I’m just so scared for him,” Claire breathed, and Mia couldn’t mistake the fear in the woman’s voice.
A fear she knew too well.
“Stay away from the internet,” Mia said, staring into her wineglass, sucked unwillingly into the past. The first trip Jack took to Africa, Mia had been glued to her computer and the unsubstantiated reports had given her ulcers. “Try to stay busy. Focused on something other than your husband.”
“That’s it?” Claire asked. “No internet and get a hobby?”
Mia nodded, remembering the crushing anxiety all too well and knowing that there was nothing Claire could do to really combat it.
“Unless you can convince him not to go?”
“That didn’t work with Jack, did it?” Claire asked softly.
Mia finished the wine in her glass, gulping it down without tasting it—wishing the rest of her body could go as numb as her taste buds. “I didn’t bother trying,” she said.
She and Claire made difficult small talk—it was all too obvious that Claire wanted to ask about Mia’s relationship with Jack. Hash it out, woman to woman.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
Finally, Claire made some excuse about needing a bathroom and left.
Thank God, Mia thought, stepping onto the balcony where it was quiet. A cool breeze blew off the ocean and her skin chilled. Her nose went cold and her eyes stung.
Jack was leaving. Again. It had become so common; he didn’t even bother to tell her anymore.
“There’s my girl,” a happy British voice said from behind her and Mia turned to see Jack’s partner, Oliver.
Mia wasn’t what anyone would call a hugger. But the sight of Oliver, his bright, bald head, his dashing dinner jacket with gold buttons, drove her right over the edge and she pushed herself against his barrel chest.
“Whoa there, Mia,” he said, stroking her arms. “Are you okay?”
“You’re going back,” she said against his chest. “Next month.”
“He didn’t tell you?” Oliver whispered, and at her silence he swore.
“The government and JEM signed a cease-fire.”
“That doesn’t comfort me, Oliver.”
“We’ll be fine, Mia. You know that. We have lots of security—”
“And you don’t take risks,” she said, finishing the line she’d heard seven times over the past four years. Jack and Oliver had the same script.
She stepped away, already regretting the show of emotion. Wishing she could take it all back.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Fine.” She flashed him a bright smile. “Great. Just surprised. How are you?” She squeezed his big shoulder, a far more Mia-like greeting.
“Bored to tears,” Oliver said. “And wishing I had a wife to liven things up at these parties.”
“Well, don’t do anything drastic,” she said, proud that her voice was light. None of her grief or bitterness leaked out.
But Oliver’s piercing eyes saw through her. “You and Jack make quite a pair,” he said, sipping at a glass of tonic water. “He’s about to bite off every single hand that’s here to feed us and you look like you’re going to cry or start a fight.”
“Jack doesn’t like these things,” she said with a shrug. “And I’m not so hot on them, either.”
He watched her carefully and she watched him right back. If she was here to be the loving wife, she’d better get her act together.
“You know that first summer when Jack and I worked together and I heard he was married, I thought it was a joke. We’d worked side by side twelve hours a day for a week and he never said a word about you.”
“Are you trying to start a fight?” she asked.
“No.” Oliver leaned against the banister, looking like a man settling in for a long chat. A chat she had no interest in. “But when I asked him about you, he wouldn’t shut up. I heard about when you were a baby and your family first moved to his ranch. I heard about how you followed him around as soon as you could walk, snuck into the bed of his truck when he drove away to college.”
“What is your point?”
“He said you were his best friend.”
Her throat tightened up and she angled her face toward the wind, the breeze cooling her burning eyes.
And that’s all I’ll ever be.
“What’s going on, Mia?” Oliver asked. “I’ve never asked. I figured whatever relationship you two had worked for you—but something is wrong. It’s all over your faces.”
It was hard, but she didn’t look away or flinch.
The tension inflated inside her like a balloon, and she couldn’t get a deep breath. But she didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say.
“You don’t let anyone in, do you?” he finally asked.
Just Jack, she thought, and that didn’t end so well.
“Don’t be dramatic, Oliver,” she said.
“I’m not, I’m simply putting my underused and underappreciated sensitive people skills to work.”
She laughed, the tension escaping. The relief was so great she couldn’t stop laughing.
“That’s more like it,” he said, grabbing two more glasses of wine from a passing waiter. “Now, let’s have a party.”
By the time Jack found them, Mia was doubled over with laughter listening to Oliver’s story about Jack eating bugs as the guest of honor in a family’s hut.
“He was picking legs out of his teeth for two hours!” Oliver said, and Mia screamed, imagining it.
“Oliver is exaggerating.” Jack’s familiar low voice sent goose bumps down her arms and over her chest. Her laughter died in her throat, the tension back in force.
Her stomach was never going to be the same.
“Don’t listen to him, Mia. You have my word,” Oliver said, putting his hand over his heart, “every syllable is the truth.”
Jack sighed and leaned against the balcony next to Mia. Static leaped between them, small currents zipping along her skin letting her know just how close he was.
And how far away.
“This night is miserable,” he said, tilting his head back.
“Because you don’t hang out with the right people,” Oliver said, winking at Mia. “Did you make anyone mad in there?” Oliver asked Jack.
“Probably,” she said.
Jack looked at her. “How much have you had to drink?” he asked.
“Are you going to scold me?” she asked.
“No.” He raised his hand and one of the ever-present waiters appeared. “I’m going to join you.”
“I’d better do some damage control,” Oliver said. “You two have fun.”
The silence left in Oliver’s wake was thick and heavy, and she wanted to collapse under the weight. The sheer volume of all the things they weren’t saying.
“You remember fun?” he asked and she knew he was looking at her. Her skin felt raw under his gaze.
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She nodded.
“I think the last time I had fun was your high school graduation.”
“Come on, isn’t Africa fun?”
“Fun?” He laughed, but it wasn’t joyful. “No, Africa is hard work and a bureaucratic nightmare.”
She wasn’t all that shocked to hear it. His emails had been increasingly rant-related.
“But your high school graduation?” His eyes twinkled. “Remember?”
She would never forget. “You drove all night from Cal Poly only to get me out of bed and drag me to the roof of the high school.”
And at dawn he drove her home and left—back to college—without once talking to his family. Without even stepping foot in the house.
“Oh, like I had to drag you,” Jack said with a laugh, and her body shook at the sound. “You jumped into my truck. And, if I remember correctly, you led the way up to the roof.”
“Only because you showed me.”
“That was probably a mistake. I spent a lot of sleep less nights in college sure you’d fallen or hurt yourself.”
“I never went up on those roofs without you,” she said.
“Really?” he asked, looking down at her in surprise.
Jack had this thing, growing up, whenever he got a chance to get into town, he would sneak around Wassau, finding his way up onto the roofs of every public building. The high school, the grocery store, the two churches.
He could walk from Second Street down Main Street without ever touching the sidewalk.
When she started following him around like a lost dog and he realized he couldn’t shake her, he took her to the roofs with him.
A whole other world existed up there. He had little forts with sleeping bags and food. Flashlights and books. Sometimes, he’d told her, he slept on those roofs.
His home away from home.
He had a thing for adventure, even then.
She just had a thing for him.
But once he was gone, the roofs were just roofs.
“I can’t believe you never got caught,” she said.
“Mom found out,” he said, his smile fading.
“Really?” she breathed. “I never knew that.”
He nodded. “The second night I did it,” he said. “I was fifteen and Dad took me into town while he had a beer at Al’s and I fell off the grocery store, came home with my clothes all torn.”
“What did your mother do?”
Because tearing clothes and climbing buildings weren’t something Victoria would let pass, and Victoria had been fond of punishment. Jack shot Mia a dubious look, which hid more pain than she could imagine. “What she always did.”
She didn’t say anything, didn’t offer any sympathy, because he hated that. Always had.
And she respected his wishes. If he didn’t want to talk about Victoria’s temper, about the abuse, that was his business.
Besides, the night was a big enough bummer as it was. Scandals. Affairs. Divorce. Painfully high heels. They didn’t need to stroll down memory lane with Victoria McKibbon.
“You hungry?” he asked, standing upright as if jerking himself away from his thoughts.
“Starving.”
“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
TEN MINUTES LATER, Jack made his way toward her with a bottle of red wine under his arm, two glasses sticking out of his coat pocket and a heaping plate of food in his hands.
The twinkle in his eye—that twinkle that she’d recognize if he was eighty years old and disfigured in some terrible accident, that twinkle that led her heart places it had no business going—was like a siren song, leading her astray.
Get ready, that twinkle said, because I’m coming for you. And I’ve got a plan.
In the past that plan usually involved a ladder and a rooftop scheme.
Her heart lurched at the sight of him. At the memory of who he’d been to her.
“You want to go on the roof?”
“Do we need a ladder?”
“Nope.”
She blinked, looking around the glittering party that was all for him, and saw just how far he’d come from the roofs of Wassau. And how much she didn’t belong here.
“Jack,” she whispered, “I’m sure you have plenty of people here you need to schmooze.”
He sighed, but the twinkle didn’t diminish. “You’re probably right.”
“See—”
“But I don’t care,” he said. “I want you to come up to the roof with me.”
She’d had just enough to drink to know that going up there wasn’t a good idea. She was sad and nostalgic and turned on by the sight of his hand around the bottle of wine.
But she was Mia and he was Jack, and the years and memories between them were a hard knot of grit and rock that neither of them could forget or gloss over.
There was a lot they needed to talk about. His dad, Walter. The ranch and the rough winter they’d had. The financial problems that only seemed to get worse every time she turned around.
“Come on, Mia,” Jack said, that twinkle turning into something far more persuasive. “Let’s go.”
And that was it. Five years after marrying him, she was throwing her hat in with the devil.
The problems could wait.
Tonight wife, she reminded herself. Tomorrow divorce.
CHAPTER THREE
JACK SWIPED a key card and opened the door to a secluded rooftop patio.
“That kind of seems like cheating,” she grumbled.
“You expected something else?”
“A little breaking and entering, yeah,” she said, following him to a cold fire pit surrounded by single and double chaise longues.
“I’ve changed my ways,” Jack said, and she snorted.
“You don’t believe me?”
“I’ve known you my whole life, Jack. And you don’t change.”
“Well, neither do you,” he said. “Pick a seat, any seat.”
Mia didn’t play coy. She took one of the doubles, setting down the plate of food he’d given her to hold and he sat down next to her.
His was a living heat, an electric presence, and her body woke up with a tingle and a start.
The Swiss Army knife he pulled out of his pocket looked as if it could launch rockets. He popped open the wine.
“You sure you should leave the party?” she asked. “I mean, it’s kind of your shindig.”
“I did my part. Oliver can handle it from here.” He handed her a glass of wine, her fingertips brushing his and as stupid as it seemed—as high school and clichéd—a zing ran through her blood, warming her from her toes to her hair and everywhere in between.
“Besides,” he added, “this might be my last night with my wife.”
He said it as a joke, but she didn’t laugh.
“You’re going back next month,” she said, glad it didn’t sound like an accusation.
He nodded. “One of the drills broke and we need to see what happened. Might be a problem with the mechanism, in which case all the pumps might malfunction at some point. Or it could be tampering by the militia.”
Something in Jack’s voice sounded beaten and she’d never heard that when he talked about his work.
“Aren’t you excited about going back?” she asked.
“Excited?” He smiled down at the food. “That’s not the right word. Resigned, maybe.”
“Because of the militia?”
“Because nothing ever changes there,” he said. “We do work and go back a few months later to do the same work all over again. I’m just…tired. I think.”
“You need a break,” she said. “You could come home—”
“Home, as in the Rocky M?”
She nodded, and he laughed. “That’s your home, Mia. Not mine. Never mine.”
He turned to her, put his hand on her wrist and her body burned at the contact. “Even with a divorce,” he said, “if something happens to me, you’ll still have power of attorney. And when Dad dies, the ra
nch will go to you.”
She gasped, turning to face him head-on. “Jack, come on, that’s your land. Your family’s land.”
“You think I care?” he asked. “It’s always meant more to you than me.”
“But with your parents gone—”
He shook his head. “The memories are bad, Mia. Except for you, nothing good happened there. It’s yours. It’s why we got married.”
She snorted before she could help it. The wine, the emotion, the anger she wanted to pretend she didn’t feel—they all coalesced into something sharp and painful.
“It was about your mom,” she said, knowing that was the truth, even though she’d spent years trying to pretend it wasn’t. “About getting back at her. Beating her at something.”
“She had no right to try to kick your family off the ranch after your dad died,” he said through his teeth.
“She lost it,” Mia agreed, remembering those months when her life was being shredded at the seams.
“And Dad certainly wasn’t about to stop her.” He shrugged. “What else could we do? Getting married was the right thing.”
The truth was she didn’t really need to marry him. Her sister, Lucy, and mother, Sandra, had already made plans to leave the ranch. To move to Los Angeles where Lucy would have more success with her jewelry and Sandra could mourn the death of her husband away from the home they’d created on the Rocky M.
And Annie Stone, at the spread nearby, had heard about Mia’s troubles and offered her the foreman job on the spot. Mia would have been fine. Perhaps not happy, an employee on someone else’s property instead of the land she’d grown up on, but she would have survived.
But Jack had proposed marriage and her heart had answered.
“Eat something,” he said, digging into crab cakes with gusto. She grabbed a skewer of beef with satay sauce and leaned back against the cushions.
“I could get used to this,” she said.
“Yeah, well, it beats your cooking.”
“Slander, Jack. I’ll have you know I’ve improved.”
“Really?” he asked.
He glanced over his shoulder at her, and his eyes glittered, traveling quickly down her body as if he hoped she wouldn’t notice the trespass.
His Wife for One Night Page 3