“Your mom did this to you,” she said. “How many years as a kid did you do everything you could to make her happy? You made her your responsibility.”
He ignored her and that made her even more angry.
“It’s not your fault that you’re alive and Oliver’s dead,” she said, her eyes bright and hot, and the fever in his belly grew. Behind the shower curtain, his erection throbbed.
“Do you hear me, Jack?” she asked.
No, he thought, staring as the white parts in that flannel shirt grew translucent.
“Get out of here, Mia, before I show you how alive I really am,” he said. She gaped as if she didn’t understand and so he dropped the shower curtain, standing there on fire for her.
Her lips fell open on a small gasp, and in front of his eyes, her nipples hardened, pressing against the wet flannel.
She stared up at him and he stared back, unapologetic.
You’re my wife, he thought. Not long ago, the word had meant nothing. But now he wanted to bury his hurt and confusion and guilt in her soft body. He wanted her to take his pain away. To comfort him, the way husbands and wives were supposed to.
He could see she was torn. Her love for him was probably more hurtful than it had ever been, and he was a selfish bastard to torture her. But he was feeling pretty damn tortured himself.
“Run away,” he said, grabbing the soap from the ceramic shelf it sat in. He lathered his hands and ran them over his chest, down his stomach to his erection. He stroked himself, gritting his teeth against the pleasure and agony. “Go,” he taunted her. “Back to your room. Where you don’t ever have to worry about losing anything because you never go after what you want.”
“What would you know about it, Jack?” she spat.
“I know you married me and never told me you loved me. I know that I’m here now, and you’re still too scared to try. I think it’s easier to love me when I’m far away,” he said. “It’s easier for you to live on this ranch, to bury yourself in work, to nurse all the hurts over all the years, instead of taking a risk and trying for something real.”
She gaped at him and he turned to face the water, rinsing off the soap. “Honestly, Mia, go away.”
He snapped the shower curtain shut in her face.
HER MOTHER AND SISTER arrived late the following night having left Los Angeles after Sandra’s church meeting. Walter tried to wait up with her, but he finally gave in around one, leaving her alone stretched out on the living room couch. Jack had come in after dinner, eaten Gloria’s pot roast over the sink in the kitchen and then gone to bed.
Mia would have felt invisible but for one long glance that about melted the clothes right off her body. The most sexual, erotic thing she’d ever experienced had been making love with Jack on that Santa Barbara rooftop.
Until last night.
Watching him touch himself destroyed her. Ruined her. Tore down every single wall she had built around her feelings and now things were running amok. Some dark well of fantasy, of sexual deprivation, had opened up inside her head and she was consumed by thoughts of Jack. And her.
And naked, filthy sex acts. Things she’d heard about but never fully understood or didn’t believe were physically possible. She wanted it all. And she wanted it with Jack.
He’d walked down the hallway to his room tonight and it was all she could do not to follow. Her family be damned, she was a woman. And suddenly she had needs.
But those needs were a complication. The lust and the fantasies and the constant tingle in her sad, neglected lady parts were only making an already tenuous situation impossible.
Mia needed to be back on her feet, back out in the barn so Jack could leave.
His words from last night, the way he’d taken her life and rearranged it, made every support beam that held up her world seem fragile and silly. Insubstantial.
She needed her sister here with her long memory and clearheaded cynicism to remind her that Jack McKibbon and her feelings for him were toxic. Poisonous.
Delicious, delicious poison.
She dozed off after Walter left and woke up to the sweet smell of her mother—roses and cumin. Home.
Mia lingered in that place between sleep and being awake, where her body was thick and fuzzy and the past and present were separated by cobwebs.
“Sweet girl,” her mom said, and Mia knew everything was going to be okay. The mess of her life would be put to order.
“Where’s that husband of yours?” Lucy’s acidic voice asked.
Or not.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT TOOK A WHILE for Jack to realize that Jeremiah’s eyes had glazed over.
“Sorry,” Jack murmured, replacing a pipe with the section he’d taken apart. “I get a little carried away.”
“Who doesn’t?” Jeremiah asked with a laugh. “I mean, double cross filtration systems are fascinating stuff. My question is, can you fix my irrigation rig?”
Jack shook his head. It wasn’t that he couldn’t; it was that he wouldn’t be around to do it. Fixing the irrigation system would take more time than he had left on the ranch. He was going back to the university in two weeks. By then Mia would be on her feet and his marriage would be over.
“Yeah,” Jeremiah said, “probably below your pay grade.” Jack didn’t correct him; he didn’t have the inclination to explain the mess of his life.
“Well.” Jeremiah sighed and stretched, his lean body curling and uncurling. “Guess I’ll have to find someone else.”
Jack didn’t tell him, but the former rodeo star had a Cheerio in the hair over his ear.
“Do you miss your old life?” Jack asked, loath to go home despite the setting sun. Sandra and Lucy had arrived late last night, and Mia’s warnings about the women looking for his blood were beginning to make him nervous. “The rodeo?”
Jeremiah pushed his hand through his hair and ran into that crusty Cheerio. “Like you wouldn’t believe,” he said with a smile, flinging the Cheerio into the grass.
“You? You miss saving the world?”
“No,” Jack answered right away. “Not at all. But…I miss the science. Using my brain to solve problems.”
“Herding cows doesn’t compare?”
Jack smiled. “That’s good, too,” he said. “Surprisingly good. I like the guys and the work is honest and hard, which is more than I would get most days from the university. Being head of research involved pushing a lot of paper around a desk.”
“And getting bombed.”
“That, too.” He looked down at his boots, the dirt that covered them. “It’s no wonder I’m ready to be done with it.”
“Hey, I think it’s great you’re back,” Jeremiah said. “I mean, with your dad being sick and, you know, your wife being hot…it’s good you’re home.”
Home. Is that where he was? Because it felt like limbo. Purgatory.
Purgatory because his hot wife wanted nothing to do with him.
He thought about what she’d said the other night, about taking the place of his dream. She couldn’t have been more wrong. Mia and his work occupied two different sections of his life. Two different places. Wanting one had nothing to do with the other.
“I better go,” Jeremiah said. “I need to pick Eli and Casey up at day care.”
Jack shook his head, laughing.
Jeremiah’s smile faltered at the corners. His blue eyes were dark and Jack realized all was not well with his old friend.
“Sometimes I wake up,” Jeremiah said, “and I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
Oddly enough, Jack felt just the opposite. He woke up and knew exactly who he was; he just didn’t know where he fit.
THE HOUSE HAD BEEN QUIET when Jack left at dawn and when he returned the scene was very different. He took off his boots in the mudroom and stepped into a party.
Keith Urban was playing; Lucy, the gypsy, was singing along, mesmerizing Tim and Billy who sat slack-jawed at the table. Walter and Mia were doing something with a b
owl of limes and the air smelled…amazing.
“Jack!” Sandra, a small, dark-haired woman who, Jack realized, looked exactly how he imagined Mia in twenty years, turned from the stove, her face alight with affection. For him.
It made him pause, realize how little affection he had in his life. Now that Mia was cold as ice toward him, there was no one in the world who would greet him like that. No one whose face would light up at his presence.
He looked over at Mia, who was staring down at the limes she was juicing as if they might fly away without all her attention.
How sad was that? Thirty-five years old and he’d burned every bridge that might have led him toward family. Toward belonging to anyone.
Sandra wiped the thick cornmeal goo off her hands onto the tea towel tucked into the tie of her apron, and crossed the kitchen to wrap him in a huge hug, her strong arms a vise around his waist.
She smelled like corn and spice and roses. And he closed his eyes, remembering the thousands of these hugs he’d had while growing up. Every afternoon when he came home from school, Sandra would turn from the dinner she was making and hug him, ask him about his day, bring him a cookie and a glass of milk.
In the aftermath of Victoria’s rampages, Sandra would be there, a small shadow offering comfort and a cold cloth. Until he grew such a hard shell he no longer believed he needed such care.
He’d forgotten the good things, pushed them away so as to keep his goals sharp. Those goals became the swords that he used to hack away at the ties that bound him here. But there had been good things at the Rocky M. Mia, her mother and sister had been those good things.
And he’d used those swords to keep them away.
“We’re so glad you are safe,” Sandra said, looking up at him, her brown eyes warm and worried. “And here!” she cried, “Finally, where you belong.”
“Oh, come on, Mom.” Lucy, tall and thin, covered in gold bangles and bone necklaces, approached. Her eyes caustic, her smile too bitter for comfort. “Jack belongs to the world.”
Sandra stepped aside, and Lucy breezed into her place. Jack tensed, wondering if he was about to get disemboweled.
But Lucy hugged him and leaned up to hiss in his ear, “You’re making my sister sad.”
“That’s not my intention,” he said quickly.
She stepped back, assessing him for a moment, and clearly found him lacking. “It never is, is it, you ass,” she whispered and moved away.
Her hips bounced to the beat of the music on the radio and she smiled at Jack, as if she hadn’t just called him names. “Margarita?” she asked.
“What?” he asked, feeling as if he’d fallen down the rabbit hole. This place had felt more or less like a waiting room the past few weeks. A cafeteria. And suddenly, it felt like a bar.
Or a home.
“It’s Saturday,” Tim said, as if he’d been waiting his whole life for just such a day. And the way he watched Lucy indicated he’d been waiting for just such a woman. But that was the power of Lucy.
Every woman liked her.
Every man wanted her.
“Sandra’s making tamales,” Walter said, slicing limes with a steady hand. There was something different about Walter, as if a light had been turned on. The old man’s eyes practically glowed and Jack wondered how many margaritas he’d had.
Jack’s stomach growled.
“Go,” Sandra said, pushing him toward the table, toward Mia where she sat, propped up on pillows. She was spending so much energy pretending she didn’t feel him or see him or even notice him, she could have powered the ranch for a month.
He remembered her eyes on him in the shower the other night, the way she’d tracked the touch of his hand on his body. He’d known, watching her, turning the screws with his words, that she’d wished that had been her hand almost as much as he had.
She wasn’t immune to him. But she was building that damn tower around herself higher and stronger every day. Keeping herself safe. Keeping him out.
And having Lucy here only helped her cause. Reminded her of all the ways he’d hurt her over the years. And it wasn’t as if she needed a whole lot of help in that department.
But maybe having Sandra here helped him.
A few weeks ago he’d felt inert, lost in his own life and directionless. But now, this moment, he felt himself begin to roll toward a destination. Something he wanted.
A home.
Someone to love.
He leaned over the back of her chair and kissed the top of her head. She jerked so hard she nearly broke his nose.
“How are you feeling?” he whispered, his hands on the tender skin of her neck. He could feel her heart beating, the cadence of her breath.
You don’t love her, he told himself. Because love wasn’t safe. Look at what loving him had brought her. It proved his theory that love brought nothing but pain.
But he wanted her, and right now that was enough. Maybe they could find that happy middle ground. Affection and respect and lust were powerful emotions, strong ones. You could build something with those tools. Something real, like she wanted.
Love was too capricious to be trusted.
He just needed Mia to see that.
“Fine,” she said, her voice too loud.
He was making her nervous and he stroked his thumb over her neck, just to be the devil, before dropping into the chair beside her.
Lucy stared at him like a guard dog straining at her chains, but Sandra smiled as she turned back to the tamales.
“You know what you’re doing, boy?” Walter whispered from his other side.
“Yes,” he whispered back. “Yes, I do.”
THIS WAS TURNING into one of those nights Mia used to dream about. Her family, Jack, everyone she loved around a table, laughing, eating mom’s homemade tamales.
The right side of her body was electrified, crackling with energy from Jack’s closeness.
She’d expected him to be warned off by her family’s arrival—good Lord, Lucy was doing her best stern sister act, but Jack seemed impervious. Worse than impervious; he seemed motivated by it. The sterner Lucy got, the cozier Jack got. His leg brushed hers more times than Mia could count. His arm draped across the back of her chair, his thumb brushing her hairline, for half the damn dinner.
And that was bad. It was really bad, but what was killing her was how he seemed to hold court in her home. He told stories, funny ones, scary ones. Some about Oliver that she knew were hard for him, though he didn’t once show it. He poured drinks and helped clear dishes.
Even Lucy seemed to have trouble holding on to her grudge.
Lord knows, Mia’s grudge had bitten the dust before the second pitcher of margaritas had been made.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Poland,” Lucy said, stretching out her long legs that looked even longer in the leggings she wore under her breezy green tunic. If Mia wore that she’d look like one of Robin Hood’s Merry Men. “I’ve heard there’s a beach where amber rolls onto the sand because there’s a forest under the Baltic sea.”
“A myth,” Jack answered.
“No,” Lucy moaned. “Don’t break my heart.”
Mia tried to kick her sister under the table but was too far away and her ankle still hurt.
“The most beautiful amber I’ve ever seen was in Prague,” he said and Lucy leaned forward, entranced because he was speaking to her heart. Her passion.
“The stones were practically red.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“What was your favorite place?” Walter asked, and the whole room turned to look at him. The temperature dropped from Jack’s side of the table.
“It’s a normal question,” Walter said, and Mia nodded quickly in agreement.
She felt her heart growing, filling with affection and hope for Walter. Hope that Jack would see the question was sincere. That he would at least consider accepting the olive branch, lame as it may be, that Walter was holding out.
“Prague
is lovely,” Jack finally said, and Mia took a breath. “Parts of Africa, the Rift Valley, Johannesburg—they’re the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. The Taj Mahal takes your breath away.”
“I’ll bet,” Sandra said.
“But my favorite place?” Jack asked, slowly turning to face Mia, who was suddenly very uncomfortable, “is Santa Barbara.”
Mia felt the world fall away. The room was quiet and heavy with speculation and she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything but Jack’s chocolate-brown eyes and the peace offering he was holding out to her.
Lucy broke the silence, yammering on about how much she loved the beach town. Mia stared hopelessly at Jack.
Why was he doing this? she wondered. Jack had been so predictable before and now suddenly she didn’t know this man in front of her. This man who seduced blatantly and discreetly all at the same time.
“You feeling okay?” he asked, stroking her hand.
She snatched it away.
“Mia,” Sandra asked, “do you still have that notebook?”
Her heart sank.
“Mom—” Lucy said, shaking her head. But Mom was choosing to ignore Lucy’s not-so-subtle warning and Mia pushed back in her chair, ready to end this night before it fell apart around her.
“Do you still have it?” Sandra asked. “I bet Jack—”
“I’m going to bed,” Mia said, getting to her feet. Her back ached from sitting upright so long, and her head pounded with the effort of avoiding embarrassment.
“What notebook?” Jack asked, catching her hand. The calluses on his palm, at the base of his fingers, caught at her skin and she felt the abrasion deep in her core. Her heart.
“She kept a notebook of all the places you went,” Sandra explained. “All through college and your internships and research trips. She had—”
“I threw it away,” she lied, pulling her hand back. Jack didn’t need any more proof of her childhood crush, her hero worship gone awry.
She’d told him how she felt, as honestly as she could. She’d laid out her heart and he’d offered an experiment in return.
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