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“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 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.
Not yet, she thought. She wanted this to last all night. All night for the rest of her life. She pushed away his hands and shook back her hair, feeling powerful and womanly. Alive in all the very best ways.
And Jack, sweet Jack, just like when they were kids, kept his eyes glued to her face as if looking at her body would be disrespectful. She lifted her hands to her dress and eased the straps off her shoulders.
Jack swallowed, the smile gone now, his lips parting, his eyes wide in wonder.
She reached back and undid her bra, very aware of the revealing moonlight. Of the fact that this was Jack between her legs. Her husband. The man who’d married her and then walked away as if she and everything she loved were nothing. He’d spent the last five years being pursued by deans’ wives and probably gorgeous African women and foreign professors with giant brains and reasonable chests.
Self-consciousness crept in where she didn’t want it.
“You’re beautiful,” Jack said, snapping her attention away from her own head games. His eyes were serious. His face—the face of her best friend—earnest. “Whatever you’re thinking right now, I need to tell you that I have never seen anything in the world as beautiful as you.”
True or not, line or not, it was exactly what she needed to hear.
She dropped her dress and the bra and felt the warm breeze, the starlight, Jack’s gaze across her pale skin. Her nipples hardened in a painful cold rush.
“Oh, Mia,” he groaned, sitting up, folding her in his arms, his hands cupping her breasts, his eyes aglow. He kissed the trembling skin under her collarbone and worked, in some sort of bizarre migratory pattern, south.
Her skin blazed, every part of her thrumming with pleasure so bright and hot it almost hurt. His mouth was wet against her and all she could think was, This is Jack. Jack’s mouth on my breast. His hand in my hair. His breath against my skin.
His arms cupped her hips, his fingertips curving around her to find the damp crease that wept at his touch. She arched and he tipped them over, picking her up and shifting her into the center of the chaise. She felt a moan ripple out of her, turned on by all that blatant strength.
He leaned over her, huge and manly. His hands cupped her breasts, pushing them together, and he pressed hot, openmouthed kisses against them.
“I used to dream about you like this,” he said and chuckled against her nipple. “A lot, actually.”
She arched her back so her nipples brushed his lips. He licked and nipped at them with the sharp edge of his teeth. She groaned, rolling into him, seeking every pleasure center she could find, every point of friction between her body and his.
“Couldn’t have been any more than I thought of you like this,” she whispered.
“You’re kidding,” he said, stopping.
She shook her head. There was nothing more she could say.
I’ve loved you my whole life, she thought.
“Jack.” She sighed. “Please—”
His eyes burned in the darkness, and for a moment she thought he realized her inexperience. But then he blinked and his hands gathered her close.
And suddenly everything changed. The banked fires blazed out of control, the hum in her blood turned into a roar. The gentle press of Jack’s lips turned firm, hard. His lips didn’t kiss, they sucked, and his teeth bit. Mia groaned, pushing and pulling him closer to her.
He yanked at her dress, pulling it off her legs. His fingers found the edge of one of the ridiculous thongs her sister bought for her every birthday and he traced its edge as far as it would go and then back again.
“So naughty,” he breathed in her ear. “I had no idea.”
Shocks and sparks exploded between her legs, behind her eyes.
He shrugged off his jacket and she helped get rid of his shirt, tossing it away—a white flag against a black night. His belt clanked in the quiet and his pants rustled to the ground and she didn’t even get a chance to look at him before he was back on the chaise with her. All that hot warm skin against hers. The hair on his legs was thrilling, and she ran her feet up the sides of his shins, opening her thighs so he could slip between them.
Bitterness and regret, along with a desperation she didn’t know she felt, slipped into her head.
One night, she thought, growing out of control and emotional. One night.
Suddenly she was frantic to somehow start and end it all, eager to have this moment over and done with. So she could turn it over and over in her mind back on the ranch.
Memories of Jack were always easier to deal with than reality.
That tension low in her belly, aching between her legs, began to demand release and his fingers slid over her and then, slowly, so, so slowly into her.
She sobbed with pleasure. With pain. With nostalgia and love and years of disappointment.
“Mia?”
“More,” she said.
More so she couldn’t think. Just feel. More so she couldn’t hate him and love him all over again.
He was saying something, but she didn’t want to talk. Talking put space between them, allowed thoughts to grow, gave her too much room to think and agonize. To look into his eyes and see the boy who’d married her and walked away.
She reached between them, cupped her hands around the hard length of him. He throbbed in her palm and he hissed hard through his teeth. She lifted her lips, scooted her legs wide.
“I don’t have—”
“Shut up, Jack,” she whispered.
“No. Mia, I don’t have a condom.”
She blinked and blinked again. He didn’t know.
“I’ve been on the pill since I was sixteen,” she said. Once boys started looking at her funny, and those breasts she hated made their appearance known, Mom had taken no chances, and dragged Mia to the doctor.
“Really?” he asked.
She didn’t bother answering, she just guided him home.
They both cried out, shaking against each other. She hadn’t realized how big he was, how he would fill her to the point of pain. She took a deep breath, controlling the sting and burn of his flesh splitting hers.
“Mia?” Again that question, the half knowledge that she wasn’t a virgin, but not by much, was back in his eyes.
She wrapped her legs around his hips, pulling him so close there was no air between them. He pressed his head to her shoulder, his breath shuddering over her breasts.
“You’re killing me. Honestly, honey, we should talk or—”
She squeezed him, using every internal muscle she knew how to control, and he groaned, wrapping his arms around her. His hips, beginning to push against her, slide back and push again. He rearranged her a little, lifting her slightly so when he pulled away she saw stars and that tension in her belly filled her chest. Her head.
“Oh!” She sighed, her breath broken, her body taking flight.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” he groaned. “But I can’t stop. I can’t—”
“Don’t!” she cried, scared he would when she needed him so badly to keep going. “Don’t stop. Don’t…I—”
He lifted his head, his face blocking out the world, and she had no choice but to stare deep into his eyes, right at the boy she loved.
“I’ve got you,” he breathed, and she exploded into the night.
“WHAT THE HELL,” Jack muttered, evaluating himself in the mirror over the sink in the small bathroom off the patio. He looked punch-drunk. His hair all over the place, his lips swollen, his eyes glowing and…happy?
“You,” he told his reflection, “are a lucky son of a bitch.”
Mia. Good God, sweet Mia.
He never expected his five years of abstinence to end in quite this way—not that he was complaining.
No. No complaints here. He smiled again, rolling his shoulders and feeling the delicious weight of his own body. He felt like he owned his skin again. Over the past five years he hadn’t given much thought to his celibate life. There was always plenty of work to do and as unconventional as their relationship was, marriage, he figured, was marriage.
If he wasn’t having sex with his wife, he wasn’t having sex.
But he couldn’t totally get his head around what had just happened.
Didn’t know if he ever could.
The why of it bothered him. Why tonight? Why after talking about divorce? And something about the desperate way she’d pushed him inside her body rankled, too. She’d been so tight.
His hands stilled on the buttons of his shirt. Something sad turned over in his stomach. Divorce? Now?
Nothing made sense. Which was the theme of the night, he guessed. Before tonight, his relationship with Mia had been the one constant in his life he didn’t question. She’d needed him, he’d married her and that was that. And now in one night, she’d told him she wanted a divorce and they’d made love.
He had a thousand questions. And as much as he wanted to throw her over his shoulder and carry her back to their suite to do it all again with a couple of variations, he needed some answers first.
She won’t like that, he told himself.
And he knew that if it came down to those variations or getting the answers he needed, he’d forget about the questions.
It had, after all, been five years.
He skipped the two buttons Mia had ripped off in her enthusiasm and did his best to slick back the worst of his haywire hair.
There was no helping it, though; he looked like a man who had been well and truly laid.
By his wife.
He laughed and pushed open the door, stepping back out into the night. And perhaps it was his imagination but it seemed the air still smelled like sex and spice and Mia.
“Mia?” he called, but the quiet was deep around him.
He went over to the women’s room and knocked on the door.
No answer. A trickle of unease slid through his caveman bliss.
No, he thought, she wouldn’t.
But she would. Mia Alatore did whatever she wanted.
He pushed open the door to the women’s room, checked every stall, but it was empty. As was the patio.
He ran back downstairs to the party, not believing she’d actually go there, but the alternative was even more unbelievable.
“Oh-ho, Jack,” Oliver said, pulling Jack right back out of the party into the empty foyer. “You don’t want to go in there, right now.”
“Why? Is Mia—”
“Not there, but, Jack, you look a bit—” Oliver tilted his big bald head “—undone. And while I might appreciate a good husband-and-wife reunion, there are those here who would not.”
Jack stepped away, panic hammering him hard.
“If you see Mia—”
“I’ll send her along.”
Jack held hope in his chest like a lantern in the dark. She must have gone to the suite. Of course. Perfect sense.
He ran across the path. His heart pounding; be there, be there, be there.
But the suite was empty. Her duffel bag gone.
Mia had left.
CHAPTER FOUR
Six weeks later
MIA REACHED THROUGH the open driver’s-side window of her truck and grabbed the gasket for the well she was in the high pasture to replace.