His Wife for One Night (4 page)

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.

“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 ranch 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.

She noticed, all right. And she liked it.

“I think—” he cleared his throat and went back to staring at his food “—the last time you cooked for me, you burned the pot you tried to boil water in.”

“I was twelve, and the last time you cooked for me—”

“Was the night we were on top of the Methodist Church during that rainstorm. I gave you all my beef jerky,” he said. “And went hungry. So, don’t go complaining.”

They drank and ate under a canopy of stars.

The roar of the ocean and the faint hum of the party a few floors below wrapped them in a cocoon, insulating them from the world.

Her body was flush, warm. Alive for the first time in ages. Five years of marriage, thirty years of friendship and her body still tuned to him like a radio. There were so many things they needed to talk about—his father being top of the list—but she didn’t want to fight. There would be plenty of time for that tomorrow.

The stars, the wine, the heat in her body all said tonight was for something else entirely.

Jack grinned at her over his shoulder, some kind of relish stuck to his mouth. She used her thumb to wipe his face. So very, very aware of the rough growth of his beard, the soft damp heat of his lower lip.

They were lips that had touched hers once, when the judge told Jack to kiss her. A kiss that was desperate, grateful and scared.

She wanted him to kiss her again, as a woman.

The air between them was humid, and his eyes clung to hers. All those things she thought she should say about safety and being careful were chased away by the look in his eyes.

Every coherent thought scattered like startled birds.

“Why didn’t you divorce me before?” he asked.

“Why didn’t you divorce me?” she asked right back.

“When we got…married,” he finally said, the word seemed sticky on his tongue and she went so still, listening to him, she couldn’t even breathe, “we never talked about divorce. I didn’t know what you wanted and I didn’t…I didn’t want to make your life harder or cause you trouble. I always thought that if you filed, I’d sign. No question. But you…never filed. And then life went on.”

It sounded so reasonable when he said it. Life went on.

“That’s how I felt, too,” she whispered. “I wasn’t going to thank you for everything by divorcing you if that wasn’t what you wanted.”

It wasn’t the total truth, but he didn’t need the total truth. He needed to believe he’d been a hero and she needed to keep her love a secret.

“I wanted you to be safe,” he said. “You and your mom. Lucy.”

“And we were, Jack. You helped make us safe.” She smiled, gratitude a full balloon in her chest. “Thank you.”

He watched her for a long time, and she wondered what thoughts were twirling around that big old brain of his.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, and her head jerked sideways.

“Jack—” she whispered, embarrassed.

“All night I looked over at you, expecting to see Mia, the kid who used to ride horses and herd goats. Who threw punches better than the guys on the football team and never backed down from a fight.”

“Everyone grows up,” she said, her mouth dry, her palms sweaty.

“Not like you, they don’t. I told myself I’d never…” He stopped and she held her breath.

“Never what?” she asked.

His smile was so male and sexy. “Never ask for more than you were willing to give,” he murmured.

He had no idea how much she was willing to give.

Kiss me,
she thought, waiting for him to come closer, to press those perfect lips to hers. But he didn’t. He watched her until she thought she might die from the tension. From the painful desire spilling through her body.

It hurt to want him like this and have nowhere to take it.

And she realized, she could continue to wait for Jack McKibbon. Or she could start doing things her way.

She leaned forward and kissed him.

He started and she expected him to push her away, to tell her that he didn’t feel that way about her. But he didn’t.

His fingertips touched her wrist, curled around her hand, keeping her close.

Oh,
she thought.
Oh, he wants me, too.

It was careful. Soft. Two old friends testing the waters.

His lips were firm, chapped slightly and tasted of yogurt and mint. He smelled like everything good and warm in the world. Sun-baked pine needles and clothes fresh from the laundry.

She held her breath, keeping the moment close, memorizing every detail of this kiss. The electric distance between them. The way his nose bumped her cheek, how his lips parted and his tongue tasted the corner of her mouth.

A sigh slipped from her and she let him in.

He pushed the plate of food onto the ground and she tossed the skewer of meat over her shoulder so she could get her arms around him.

Jack McKibbon in her arms.

Solid and heavy. Real.

She held him hard, her fingers finding the curves of these new muscles of his. The jacket got in the way and she pushed her hands under it, feeling the heat of his skin through his white shirt. He was so hot. So alive.

This was better than every fantasy she ever had about him. Even the ones she tried to forget.

His tongue stroked her mouth, her teeth and lips. He shifted, rearranged himself, so he could hold her tighter, kiss her deeper.

“Mia,” he breathed, his fingers toying with the hem of her dress and the painfully sensitive skin of her leg just under it.

She felt every brush of his hand on that inch of skin as if he were stroking her naked body. Just how long it had been since someone touched her came hammering home and her body practically levitated with lust.

It had been a long, long time.

Mia was thirty years old. A wife who’d never been a wife, with only one terrible night of lovemaking she wished she could forget.

All of that was about to change. Right now.

She kissed him hard, pushing him back against the cushions. Yanking at the buttons of his shirt until some thing gave and she could finally—oh, yes, yes!—get her hands on the smooth skin of his chest. The muscles of his stomach. He groaned, deep and low in his throat as if the animal in him were coming alive, and that’s what she wanted. His hands, not gentle now, slid up under her dress, cupped her ass and squeezed.

She moaned, wanting more. Wanting rough. Wanting everything.

But he leaned back, breaking the kiss, leaving her panting above him.

“I don’t want you to think that I am in any way reluctant to do this,” he said, arching slightly against her so she knew how not reluctant he was. “But…” His eyes searched hers in the moonlight, liquid and knowing. “Are you sure?”

She nearly laughed. She was wet and hot and dying.

So,
sure
just about covered it.

“We never had a wedding night,” she whispered, watching his mouth and wanting it on her breasts, between her legs.

“No,” he said, with a slow grin that made her body clench and shiver. “We never did.”

His eyes froze her. Locked her in place, aching against him.

He slid his hands out from under her dress to find the small zipper under her arm and pulled it down. The rasp was loud in the electric silence between them. The dress bagged, and he put a finger under a sleeve, lowering it oh so slowly until the dress caught on her breasts.

He blinked, the heat banked for a second. “Mia,” he whispered as if asking permission and her breath clogged in her throat.

She hated her breasts. Heavy and full. Painful at the end of the day and they always, always attracted too much attention.

But right now, Jack’s hand trembling against her shoulder, she saw the upside.

She pushed herself away from him and when he moved to sit up, as if the night were over, she pushed him back down.

“Get comfortable,” she said and that smile slid back on his lips. Confident and sexy, he lay on his back, tucking his hands behind his head. Waiting for her to make the next move.

Lifting her skirt up nearly to her waist, she straddled his hips, notched herself against the ridge under his fly and they both groaned, twitching hard against the other.

He lifted his hands to her waist, dragging her slowly up and down his erection. Oh, it was so good. So perfect and delicious. The tension in her belly got hotter, harder.