As soon as Jeremiah got to his feet, as a baby, he’d run wild.
But Jack had always liked the guy.
“How are you?” Jack asked, reaching out to shake his old friend’s hand.
“Not bad,” Jeremiah said.
“You visiting Annie?” he asked, remembering Jeremiah’s redheaded spitfire of an older sister.
Jeremiah’s eyes went dark and Mia ducked her head, coughing into her sleeve.
“Annie died,” Jeremiah said, his voice tight. “Cancer.”
“When?” Jack asked, grief for his old friend blowing through him.
“A few months ago. I’ve taken over the ranch.”
“Where’s Gibson?” he asked, referring to Annie’s husband.
“He died in a car accident three years back,” Jeremiah said.
Jeremiah’s face was shuttered and Jack got the firm impression that he didn’t want to answer any other questions.
And there was nothing Jack understood better.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “She was a good woman.”
Jeremiah nodded, his jaw hard.
“Go on home,” Mia said, breaking the unbearable tension of the moment. “And thank you so much.”
“No problem,” Jeremiah said. He glanced up at Jack. “You can repay me by fixing that pump up in the high pasture.”
“It’s broken again?” she asked, her voice so weary it practically fell asleep on her lips.
Jeremiah nodded, his blue eyes watching Jack. “Good thing the water man is back,” he said. He slapped Jack’s shoulder and tipped his hat again. “’Night, folks.”
Jeremiah walked away, leaving Jack and Mia alone among the nursing cows. He watched Mia stroke the soft ear of the calf beside her. Her fingers looked so small, so delicate.
“I didn’t know about his sister,” he whispered. “Or Gibson.”
“I emailed you when it happened. Both times,” she said and he winced. Probably only one of a million things that hadn’t registered on the plane of his life.
He thought of Jeremiah, the handsome cowboy, the charm that had cut through the female population of Wassau Public School like a blade through butter. The bad-boy rodeo star with a wicked grin had been a potent teenager and seemed to be just as potent a man.
“Is Jeremiah why you want a divorce?”
She gaped at him for a moment before bursting into laughter, startling the calf in her lap.
“Shhh,” she cooed, coaxing the animal’s mouth back to the bottle.
“Is he?”
“No, Jack. He isn’t why I want a divorce. He’s taken over Stone’s Hollow and his sister’s three boys. He barely has time to sleep, much less seduce the neighbors.”
Three boys. He looked back at the cowboy getting into his truck in the wide gravel lot beside the barn. The idea of Jeremiah raising kids didn’t seem to fit, but then not much did these days.
Jack sat down in the grass beside Mia, his body so grateful for the rest it nearly cheered.
“How’s the calf?” he asked, pointing to the baby still sucking on the bottle.
“Calf is fine, big as all get-out, but Mom isn’t producing any colostrum yet.”
“You give her some extra feed?”
She nodded and the silence stretched out.
“Thanks for your help today,” she said, not looking at him, while he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her.
“You’re working too hard,” he said.
“Well, you know, ’tis the season.”
“You need a few extra hands around here, Mia,” he said.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“Billy said something about there not being enough money to hire anyone.”
Mia’s head turned so fast her ponytail whipped the side of his face. “Billy’s a gossip.”
“Most cowboys are,” he said. “Is it true?”
She pulled the drained bottle from the calf’s mouth and got to her feet.
“You suddenly care about this ranch?”
“No.”
“Then stop asking—”
“I care about you, Mia. I always have.”
“Well, you have a pretty crappy way of showing it, Jack!” she snapped. “You show up here and lock your self in your room.” She crouched and gathered her stuff, the gritty gloves, the case for vitamin E shots, mumbling under her breath. “You won’t answer my questions. I have to force you—”
He put a hand over hers and she stilled. He shouldn’t have kissed her last night. It was stupid. Made things muddy between them.
“I’m sorry,” he said, watching her.
“For what?” She lifted her face and met his eyes. The electrical current of their connection buzzed through him.
“For showing up the way I did.” Her forthright gaze was too much and he looked away. He had a lot to apologize for. “For treating you the way I did the other night.
I’ve been…” God, what could he say?
“A mess?”
He smiled. “Sure, we’ll go with a mess.”
“You have every right, Jack. What you’ve been through—”
“Well, I didn’t need to take it out on you. I’m sorry about last night.”
Perhaps it was a trick of the fading light, but it looked as if Mia was blushing and he wondered if she’d gone to bed thinking of his fingers on her face. Her lips.
A hot wave of desire rolled over him and he was suddenly desperate for the taste of her again, for a taste of life before the bombing.
“I still want a divorce,” she said, and he felt like a fool, sitting there with half an erection.
“Fine,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “I won’t stop you.”
She nodded once, looking for a moment as if she had something else to say, but in the end she just turned on her heel, took three steps and stopped again.
He would have smiled if he was still that kind of guy.
“I have to ask,” she said, bowing her head. Her neck, white in the dusk, seemed so vulnerable, so achingly appealing he wanted to press a hundred kisses to her soft skin. Her heartbeat.
“Oliver?” she asked, and he flinched, all tender thoughts obliterated. He didn’t say anything, couldn’t say anything. She turned, her eyes damp.
“What about him?” he asked, unable to push a woman with so much grief in her eyes, grief he understood far too well, away.
“Was he in pain…before he died?” she whispered. “Was he scared?”
Oh, Mia, he thought, her sorrow tearing through him.
He shook his head, wondering how to tell her that all they found of Oliver after the bombing was a shoe and his flask.
“It was fast,” he whispered and she sighed in relief.
Before he knew it, she was in front of him, wrapping her strong arms around his waist, pulling them together.
Her hands were warm and wide on his back.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “You must miss him so much.”
The contact was distracting, like very loud static. He couldn’t think past all the noise his body was making.
But slowly the comfort of her touch seeped into him, shoving aside his grief and guilt, touching him in those cold dark places that he didn’t think would ever feel warmth again.
“I do,” he breathed. And pulled her against him as if his life depended on it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT TOOK FOUR DAYS for the cows of the Rocky M to finish the calving. Mia assigned the guys to shifts and Jack was surprised to be happy about working at night alongside Chris. Despite his exhaustion, the nightmares were frequent and harrowing and he slept better during the day, or maybe not as deeply as at night.
And Chris was good company. He’d been a young hand when Jack was growing up and if he knew what was going on in the house, he didn’t say anything.
Like the other guys, Jack worked and ate and slept without any regard to a clock. He didn’t think. The voices were silent, the pills no longer a magnetic
threat on his bedside table.
Mia didn’t seem to sleep, or if she did he didn’t see it. Every time he turned around she was there with the tattoo pliers, or talking to Dr. Peuse about the three calves who had been weakened by diarrhea.
On the third day he walked into the tack room and found her snoring on a wooden upright chair.
“Don’t wake her,” Chris said over his shoulder.
“You’re kidding,” Jack said.
Chris shook his head. “You wake her and she’ll start working again. This way she’ll get a little sleep.”
“And a sore neck.”
Chris shrugged, but Jack saw the man’s concern in his blue eyes.
“This is crazy,” Jack said.
“This is the Rocky M.” Chris headed out through the barn toward the calving pasture.
Mia’s head bobbed forward onto her chest; she started, but didn’t wake.
And she calls me stubborn, he thought.
He couldn’t leave her like that. But at the same time, Chris was right, which meant he just had to be sure Mia didn’t wake up. Jack bent beside her, sliding one hand behind her back, the other under her knees.
Close up, he realized she smelled as bad as the rest of them and for some reason, that was endearing. He wanted to peel off her filthy clothes and put her in a bath. Clean her. Feed her. Put her to bed for a week.
Want and regret clashed in his chest. He was sure no one had ever done that for her before. She was thirty years old and no man had ever taken care of her, pampered her. If he’d been a real husband, it would have been his right.
His privilege.
He stood, lifting her easily in his arms. His skin, his whole body woke up at the contact.
But then so did she.
He stopped, embarrassed and slightly angry that she was so stubborn he had to resort to these cheesy tactics just to get her to bed.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.
“You fell asleep in the chair.” He sounded guilty to his own ears, like a teenager caught copping a feel. He quickly put her on her feet, trying not to notice the way her body leaned into his. Warm and lush, every curve a reminder that she was his wife and he’d been celibate a long, long time.
“And you couldn’t just wake me up?”
“I wanted you to sleep.”
“Then you should have left me alone,” she said. “I was sleeping fine.”
“That’s what Chris said.”
“What the hell, Jack? Did you bring everyone through to vote?”
“We’re just worried about you.”
“I’m fine!”
“Sure you are,” he snapped back. “Because everyone who’s fine falls asleep in a drafty barn in an upright chair. For crying out loud, Mia, go to bed before you fall over.”
“It’s none of your business, Jack.”
“I am still your husband—”
She stepped back, blinked and then howled with laughter. He burned at the sound. He was just trying to help. Just trying to make sure she didn’t collapse under the weight of this damn ranch.
“Oh, come on, Jack, don’t be mad. I’m fine. Honestly, I feel better.” She smiled. “We’ll all sleep when the week is out.”
She stepped away, heading for the stables, back to the endless work, but then she stopped. Paused in the doorway.
Hesitant. Careful. Shy, almost. He saw that shy girl she’d been in the woman of steel she’d become.
“Thanks,” she said.
And all he could do was nod.
WALTER MANAGED to be useful by pulling casserole after casserole out of the freezer for the guys. Jack ate chicken pot pie for breakfast, lunch and dinner and had no complaints. The old man made coffee so strong it could strip paint, and he made lots of it.
The laundry situation got so dire that Jack found Billy dressed in plaid Bermuda shorts, of all things, spraying a hose at five pairs of manure-and mud-crusted jeans that he’d thrown over the horse paddock’s fence.
“I’m outta jeans,” Billy said.
“You look like a cowboy surfer,” Jack said.
“You’re not much better, corporate cowboy,” Billy pointed out, flicking the hose at him.
Jack howled and leaped out of the way, but he wasn’t fast enough to keep his last pair of pants—khaki chinos—dry. “Watch it, man. I’m out of jeans, too,” he said, laughing.
He could only avoid the camaraderie among men working too hard for so long. And after a while, he didn’t even want to. It felt good to have friends again. To laugh again.
“Well, bring me your pants and we’ll hose ’em off before throwing them in the machine.”
Jack shook his head. “What about the housekeeper?” he asked. It was a rare cowboy who did his own laundry.
“Gloria’ll be in tomorrow,” Billy said. “But I’m desperate now.”
Jack was, too, and he went off to gather up the stinky pile of denim in the corner of his room.
When the last cow had given birth and the last calf was tagged at twilight on the fourth day, everyone, Jack included, fell into bed and slept for twelve hours.
But at dawn, Jack woke with a start, staring up at the white ceiling from the sagging mattress on his single bed. He knew exactly what needed to be done. It was so obvious, he couldn’t believe that Mia hadn’t thought of it herself. Although, considering how tired she was, how the nonstop work must seem like a track she couldn’t get off, it wasn’t all that surprising.
He stepped into the kitchen just after sunrise, surprised to find both Mia and Walter already sitting at the table. A pot of coffee was set between them and, oddly, what looked like a bag of sliced ham.
“Morning,” he said. Both Walter and Mia spun to face him. He didn’t even glance at his father, refusing to see the hope on that face like an open wound.
That hope was ridiculous after all his father had done. Or not done, as was more often the case.
“Morning, Jack,” Mia said. “Ham?” She lifted the bag toward him.
He shook his head, a little grossed out.
“Suit yourself,” she said and tossed a piece in her mouth.
See, he thought, she didn’t have the energy or inclination to get herself a proper breakfast. Something needed to be done and if she couldn’t see to it to do it herself, he would help.
“You guys didn’t replace Sandra with a full-time housekeeper?” he asked. Having a cook and house keeper at the ranch was a pretty integral part of the life. Cowboys had been known to leave jobs on account of crappy food.
Walter’s expression turned defensive. “Gloria comes in—”
“Part-time, I know. You need someone more than that.”
“Gloria does all right by us.” His father’s familiar voice hit Jack’s body like a barrage of dirt and small stones. It stung and he wanted to walk away, but he’d spent enough time ignoring the tailspin the ranch was in.
“What about the men?” Jack asked. “Chris and Billy and Tim, who cooks for them?”
“They manage on their own for breakfast and lunch.
Dinner, Mia heats up something that Gloria puts in the freezer. We all eat in here, like we used to.” Dad was answering his questions like a star pupil. Was, in fact, talking to him more at this moment than he had for the last two years Jack had lived in this house.
It made Jack want to smash things.
“Why all the questions, Jack?” Mia asked, her eyes narrowed.
“I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on around here.”
“Work,” she said. “Like always.”
“Right. Work with half the staff you need, and no housekeeper. No cook.” Jack pointed down at her breakfast. “After four eighteen-hour days, you’re eating ham out of a bag, Mia.”
Mia pushed the bag away. “What’s your point?”
Finally, he turned and faced his father. Walter’s face was covered with nicks and little bandages as if a raccoon had shaved his face for him. “Where’s the money?” he aske
d his dad. “Your savings, the emergency accounts?”
“It was a bad winter,” Mia interrupted as if trying to deflect his attention away from his dad.
“There have been other bad winters,” he said, not looking away from his father’s rheumy gray eyes.
“Jack—”
“I am talking to my father,” Jack snapped.
“What do you want me to say?” Walter asked. “We’re broke. Your mom took a chunk in the divorce.”
“Mom, of course,” he muttered.
“Your dad got sick,” Mia said. “The medication is expensive and a lot of it isn’t covered by insurance. There were some tax problems—”
“What kind of tax problems?” Jack asked.
“The kind that cost money,” Mia said wearily.
“How much?” Jack asked, through thin lips.
“Enough—”
“How much!”
“Fifty thousand dollars. But with the calves—”
“Holy shit, Dad. What happened?”
“I screwed up,” Walter said. “After you left and your mom and I divorced, I…screwed up.”
“Were you drinking again?” Jack asked, and Walter nodded, lifting his trembling hands toward the coffee cup in front of him. “Are you still?”
Walter said nothing and Mia’s sad sigh was all the answer Jack needed.
“All right,” he said. “That, in a way, makes things easier. Dad, I know you’re not going to agree with this, but you’ve pretty much screwed yourself out of the ability to make this decision.”
“What kind of decision?”
“I’m going to sell the ranch.”
MIA LAUGHED. She couldn’t help it. The laughter just sputtered out of her.
“You’re kidding, right?” she asked, picking up the bag of ham again.
“No, Mia, I’m not,” Jack said. She could tell by his face he wasn’t joking.
A thousand bees invaded Mia’s head, spread through out her body, making it impossible to think. To breathe.
This ranch was her home. Her life. Jack was talking about selling her life, as if it was nothing.
And he could do it.
She had no legal rights to any of what she’d built here. If he really wanted to do this, she had no say.
His Wife for One Night Page 9