His Wife for One Night (8 page)

Days like this—with the sunshine hot and the breeze cool, with pastures full of healthy cows and the work manageable—were the days she lived for. The days that reminded her that as hard as the work was, this ranch was her happy place.

Always had been.

“Mia.” Chris, who’d been at the Rocky M almost as long as her, walked over to where she stood. The dogs, Daisy and Bear, trotted behind the wiry cowboy. Daisy and Bear followed him everywhere. Everyone at the ranch joked that the dogs thought Chris was a lost calf.

Chris was brown from the sun and every year Mia thought he looked more and more like beef jerky. He was all sinew and grit, though his big blue eyes hinted at a hidden softness.

“How are the mothers-to-be?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at the field of pregnant cows. Calving season was right around the corner.

“Fat and happy.” Chris tipped his head off his forehead and sighed. “But we’re a week out,” he said. “Maybe less.”

“A week?” Perfect. More than perfect. The sooner those calves were on the ground, the sooner they could be sold and the sooner they’d all be out of this mess. There was a light at the end of the tunnel.

She smiled at Chris.

He frowned back.

Good old Chris. He could find a dark cloud on a sunny day.

“Any chance we can get some more hands?” he asked.

“No,” she said, with a sigh. Not in less than a week.

“Old man screwed up good, didn’t he?”

Mia didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. And she was trying, damn it, to hold on to her happy day.

“Heard Jack was back. He’d be handy—”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. Even if the sprained knee and broken hand weren’t a problem, Jack had barely left his room in five days. She heard him in the middle of the night, taking showers and roaming through the kitchen. She wasn’t sure if it was nightmares driving him from his bed, or pain.

She told herself every night that she didn’t care. But every night it was a battle to stay in her bed. She’d given him enough of herself over the years—she had nothing left to give.

Chris spit into the dirt, the picture of a disgusted cowboy.

“If you’ve got something to say,” she said, “then just say it.”

“It seems to me we’re carrying a lot of deadweight around here, Mia. And we can’t afford it.”

“You think I don’t know that?” she asked. She was stuck between a rock and a hard place. The old man wasn’t taking his meds, and Jack…hell, Jack was a ghost.

“I’ll ask Jeremiah,” she said.

Chris nodded after a second, the topic of Jack finished for the moment. “He’s a good man with the animals.”

She pulled on her gloves and grabbed Blue’s reins, happy to be able to solve one immediate problem. “Let’s move the heifers over to the pasture with the squeeze chute. And start feeding them at night. Maybe we can work these calves during the day for once. I’m sick of stumbling out of bed at midnight.”

“You and me both, boss,” Chris said with a laugh. He whistled and his horse Beans walked up like a big tame dog. Over the small rise, Billy and Tim appeared.

The four of them. Four of them and two dogs working maybe a hundred calves?

She could feel Chris’s anxiety a mile away. Even the dogs deserted him, darting across the field toward Billy, who had a ham sandwich in his hands.

“We’ll be fine, Chris,” she said. “The boys are good. And next year we’ll be able to hire all the extra help we need.”

“You think?”

She smiled, more optimistic than she’d been in ages, despite the problems in the house. “I’ll hire one just to make you smile all day long.”

“Better make her pretty.”

She laughed, feeling the stress roll away. Everything was going to be okay in the end. What was that saying? If it’s not okay, it’s not the end?

That could be the motto of the Rocky M.

“I know you’re worried, Chris. But everything is going to work out.” She pulled herself up onto Blue, who sighed and twitched with pleasure. “You and I have both been here long enough to know that this ranch won’t let us down.”

The men in that house, not so much.

“I hope you’re right.” Chris sighed.

“Mia!” A woman’s voice yelled from the house and Mia turned to see Gloria on the porch, waving a white dishcloth. “We have a problem.” Oh, brother.

No Walter.

A mystery for sure. But hardly one that should bring her in from the fields.

“Is he in bed?” she asked.

“Nope.” Gloria shook her head, her long silver-streaked black hair swishing across the back of her purple sweatshirt. “And I’m no nurse. If he’s caught in the bathroom again, you go fish him out.”

Gloria turned, walking back to the kitchen.

Mia watched her leave and braced herself to go find Walter to help him pull his pants up.

Needing a little extra help, she closed her eyes and thought about that notebook she kept of all the places Jack went to for his work. The deserts for digging, the cities for conferences. She scrolled through what she knew and picked Italy.

Italy, because she was starving and would kill for a pizza, and she wouldn’t have to deal with her father-in law, possibly stuck like a turtle on the bathroom floor.

Hell. She’d take the high pasture at this point.

“Good God.” Swearing in Spanish because it made her feel better, she stomped out of the living room and down the hall. He’d better have his pants on. Really. But he wasn’t in the bathroom. She rechecked his bedroom, and the bed was empty. And made. The barn? On her way down the adjacent hallway she passed the open doorway to the office and stopped. The computer was on, the white light from the screen, illuminating the weathered, bearded face of her father-in-law.

“Walter?”

“Apparently, Cal Poly is having some kind of board meeting in a month,” he said, pointing at the screen. “Jack’s supposed to be there. Answer questions about what happened in Sudan.”

His fingers, the ones pointing at the screen and the ones securely around the mouse, were shaking, but still…he was using a mouse. That would have been impossible a month ago.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Trying to find out what’s happening to my son, since he won’t come out of his room and tell me.”

“No…” She stepped into the room to get a better look at him. His face seemed to have more mobility. He seemed, ridiculously, just a little more like…Walter.

“Did you take your meds?” she asked.

Walter held up his hand, the tremors were there, but his whole hand didn’t relentlessly circle. The counterclockwise movement that could wind a watch was gone.

He had taken his meds.

“How many days?”

“Five counting this morning.”

The doctors said that within days of taking medicine regularly there’d be a decrease in symptoms.

Looked like they were right.

“How you feeling?” she asked. She didn’t want to be relieved. She didn’t want to take this as some kind of sign that maybe, please dear God, maybe things might swing north for a change.

“Can’t shit,” he said, taking a sip from a glass filled with ice and golden liquid.

She laughed. Walter, it seemed, was back—in some fashion.

Mia turned away, heading back to the kitchen to tell Gloria everything was okay, but she was sidetracked by Jack’s shut bedroom door.

Her heart, buoyed by Walter’s unprecedented step back into the land of the living, sank again.

She pressed her hand against the wood, and imagined for just a moment that she felt a heartbeat. It was a trick, of course, the rebound of her own pulse bouncing against the wood and back against her skin.

Because it certainly wasn’t Jack she felt.

The weight of her grief threatened to pull her under so she walked away from the door. From Jack. And instead thought about Walter. About Walter taking his meds and how things could change around here if he joined the land of the living for good.

It was just enough hope to keep her head above water.

But she couldn’t seem to pull herself free. The dream was quicksand and she was caught.

The horses grew wings and the flying sensation turned into falling and she fought it, fought everything.

“Mia,” Jack said and she knew that was a dream, too, because Jack didn’t come out of his room.

“For crying out loud, Mia, wake up.”

Mia’s eyes snapped open and she jerked herself upright, nearly clipping Jack in the chin.

“What’s happening?” she panted, adrenaline making a mess of her. There was a problem, right? She needed to do something? Fix something? She was in the living room, which was weird. Sitting in the recliner with her feet up. Soft light from the reading lamp beside her pooled in the folds of the red blanket over her chest.

“You were having a nightmare,” Jack said. He sat on the ottoman next to her feet and she could feel his heat through her wool socks. It was like a dream. Her husband here in the quiet night, tucking a blanket around her shoulders. Waking her from a bad dream.

It was a lingering fantasy from over from a year ago when she’d still gone to bed thinking that this marriage of hers might one day be real.

“Am I now?”

“What?”

“Dreaming.”

“No.”

“Then what the hell are you doing?”

But he still resisted.

“You looked cold,” he said and stood, his knee barely twinging. The exercises that he did in his room were improving his range of motion.

Mia sat up, and the red blanket that was pulled up to her neck fell down, revealing the paperwork in her lap he hadn’t bothered to move. Calving reports, from what he could tell. She must have dozed off while reading them.

Her eyes had purple shadows under them and he could tell she’d lost weight since Santa Barbara.

This ranch had a way of diminishing people, stripping away anything extra, until all they had was what they needed to survive.

Jack wanted to tell her to leave before this ranch did to her what it did to his mother. His father. What it would have done to him had he stayed.

But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t have the energy.

And maybe it wasn’t his business.

Wife or not, Mia had run away in Santa Barbara.

He didn’t know what that made them, but it sure as hell wasn’t friendly.

“No, what are you doing out of your room?” she asked, as if he’d escaped from his cage.

“I’m not allowed out?” he asked.

She shot him an acidic look.

“I was getting something to eat.” His voice, still rusty from lack of use but no longer raw from the smoke, creaked out from his throat, and he started to walk away.

“Where are your crutches?”

“Don’t need ’em.”

She grabbed his hand, and while no longer broken, it hurt all the same. Her touch was a fire of its own. But he didn’t turn. Didn’t want to look at her and feel anything. He wanted to go back to his room, eat a sandwich and fight off sleep.

He wanted the numbness back and he knew that as long as he was around Mia he’d never be numb.

She dropped his hand and he was grateful.

“I left you alone in your room five days ago to rot.” Her voice was sharp and he nearly smiled. “I just never thought you’d actually do it.”

“Me, neither,” he said and left her and the living room behind, heading for the kitchen and the sandwich he’d put on the counter when he heard her moaning.

The light was on over the stove, creating a warm glow that faded into the dark shadows. He hungered for the dark shadows, the insulation of the night.

“Your hand,” she said. “No more cast?”

“I took it off.” He looked down at the pale hand and arm. The scabbed-over cut between his fingers.

“Is that smart?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you see a doctor—”

“I was told the cast could come off at six weeks. I tore it off at seven.”

“Should you be going to a doctor anyway?” she persisted, following him like the kid she’d been. “For checkups or physical therapy or something?”

“I’m fine,” he said again, with a little more power behind it. He knew it was a mistake to put that blanket over her. To sit at her feet, even for a few moments, to watch the whirlwind that was Mia Alatore at rest.

“What about medication?” she asked.

Yes! Yes! Yes! The medication,
the voices cried.

“Jack, I’m just worried—”

“Worried?” He turned to her. “Really? The woman who didn’t answer a single phone call after leaving me on that roof?” He stepped a little closer until she moved back, keeping a cool distance between them that he suddenly wanted to eradicate. “Since you’re asking so many questions, how about you answer some, huh?”

Her face got tight, her eyes shuttered. She didn’t like being on the other end of the inquisition.

“Why didn’t you answer my emails?” he asked. “Or phone calls?”

She swallowed and lifted her chin, as though her show of bravery would hide the white-knuckled hold she had on her own arms. “Because we were getting a divorce. We’d agreed.”

“So that’s it? You get laid and sever all ties?”

She licked her lips, the little liar. Jack could smell the fear coming off her. She liked him in the box he occupied in her life, too, and sex on the rooftop made things a little messy for Mia. A little scary.

“It seemed like the best idea.”

“Right,” he snapped. “Worked great, Mia.” He turned to grab his sandwich and leave, but his knee got stuck under him and he lurched sideways to keep his balance.

She reached for him, but he shot her a look of such scathing anger that she backed right off.

He grabbed his sandwich and paused for a second before leaving, making sure his limbs would do as he asked without embarrassing him in front of his wife.

God,
his wife.
It sounded ridiculous.

“Look at you, you’d burn to the ground before asking anyone for help,” she said.

Pain sliced through him and he flinched. His sandwich slid off the plate to floor. He was blindsided by the smell of smoke. The screams of the dying.

Mia swore and knelt at his feet to pick up his dinner. Her curls gleamed in the half-light, and he wanted to touch them. Touch her. But he was cemented in place; the desert had a hold on him that he could not break.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” she murmured, putting his sandwich back on his plate. “That was a poor choice of words.”

I’ll say.

“How long are you staying?” she asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Maybe not to you,” she said, her temper igniting in her eyes. “But I’m curious.”

So was he, frankly. For the first time in his life he didn’t have a plan. Or any forward momentum. He was inert and he couldn’t imagine anything that would inspire movement.

“Your father said something about the board of directors having a meeting—”

He laughed, dark and gritty. “What would he know about it?”

“He saw it on the school’s website,” she said.

He picked floor fuzz off his sandwich. If Sandra had been here, she’d have had a fit. About the fuzz and the fact that he was going to eat the sandwich anyway.

The bread was soft under his fingers and it seemed like enough for the moment. As if holding the sandwich and talking to Mia was all he could handle right now.

“The meeting is in six weeks.”

“And then?”

“Then…” He shook his head. “Then I’m not sure.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked. He tried not to look at her, focusing on the hard crust of the bread, the drip of jam, because looking at her would give him another host of things he needed to deal with—desire, anger, grief and nostalgia—and the weight of it all might kill him.

His overloaded life was why he stayed in bed all day. Bed he could manage. One blank moment followed by another. No demands. Nothing more than what he could hold.

“Your job, the drill—”

“There’s no more drill, Mia,” he said.

“Well, not there, clearly. But you have others—”

Jack shook his head. He may be lost in his life, but he knew this. “Without Oliver there is no drill.”

“But the university? Your job?”

“I’m on a leave of absence.” It felt good to heave this stuff off his chest. The decisions he’d made in his hospital bed still made sense. The idea of going back to campus, to his job, made him ill.

“How long?”

“Indefinite.”

“Because of your hand—”

“Because I screwed up!” he yelled and she rocked back.

Yes, you did,
the voices cooed.
Yes, you really did.

“Screwed what up?” she asked into the electrified silence.

He looked at her for a long time, seeing his reflection in her amber eyes.

Who the hell is that guy?
he wondered in a panic. A stranger. A fool with a sandwich.

“Forget it, Mia. It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does.” She stepped in front of him when he tried to walk back down the hallway and he thought about pushing her out of his way. But she’d push back. It was what Mia did.

“Look at you, Jack. You’re skin and bones. You lock yourself up in that room all damn day and you roam the house at night. It doesn’t take a genius to see you’re not sleeping. Doesn’t take a genius to see that something is eating you up.”

“You going to be my confessor?” he asked, his voice a wicked lick of sarcasm. Something awful was waking up inside him, a beast he couldn’t contain. His hurt and anger at the way she’d left him that night in Santa Barbara, the way the events had unfolded from there, had created a two-headed monster out for blood.

“I would rather be your friend,” she said.

He licked his lips, his eyes on the hallway behind her shoulder. “Not my wife?”

She laughed, the sound finding every raw spot, every vulnerable place inside him. “You never really needed one of those, Jack.”

He practically threw the plate onto the dining table and stepped up to her, way closer than was comfortable. He walked until he could feel her breath on his face. The warmth of her body against the cold shell of his own.

“Why’d you run away that night, Mia?” he asked, nailing her to the ground with his eyes.

She opened her mouth, but no words came out.

His smile was wolfish. And his fingers—suddenly hungry for heat and the sensation of the living—touched her cheek. His thumb landed on the corner of her lush mouth, and she gasped.

Again, the voices, those whispers of self-destruction, chimed in.
We want her. Again. And again.

“I know why you left,” he whispered and her eyes flared. “Because you’re a coward.” He was close enough to kiss her, so he did, pressing his lips to hers, moving so close their chests touched and heat rippled over him.

Against her lips, he whispered, “And so am I.”

He stepped away, picked up his sandwich and started to go back to his room. The medicine bottles on the dresser. The silence.

“What am I supposed to do with you?” she whispered.

“Nothing, Mia,” he said, wishing, for her sake, that he had a better answer. “Not one damn thing.”