“What do you think you’re doing?” Lucy had asked around midnight last night when Jack knocked at Mia’s door, looking for a second alone with his wife. She was the last person he’d expected to open it.
“You’re sleeping with her now?” Jack asked. “Isn’t this a little extreme, even for you?”
Lucy narrowed her eyes and lowered her voice. “Haven’t you done enough, Jack?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I haven’t. Because I am trying to keep her.”
“Keep her?” Lucy arched a dark eyebrow. “Like she’s a pet?” She started to shut the door and Jack got a hand in to push it open.
“Don’t, Lucy, don’t do that. I just…I want to try.”
“I don’t believe you,” Lucy said. “And neither does she.”
“How am I supposed to convince her if you won’t let me talk to her?”
Lucy sighed. “I see your problem,” she said.
“Great, then can I talk to her?”
“No,” she said, the meanest guard dog to ever wear Betty Boop pajamas. “Go to bed and get over it.”
She slammed the door in his face.
Jack was exhausted, frustrated and getting desperate.
Mia didn’t want him here; she wasn’t giving him the chance to fight and he was leaving in a few days to go to the board meeting at the university. His instinct told him to come back, to keep fighting, but he was beginning to wonder if he’d ever win.
Mia had hardened her heart and maybe he needed to respect that. Let them both move on.
The very thought made him sick.
Luckily, there was always plenty of work to occupy him and the first of the cattle had been moved up to the north pasture, which just left the moms and babies.
He saddled Blue and led the horse out of the barn. He whistled for the dogs, but Daisy and Bear were nowhere to be seen.
“Come on, don’t tell me Lucy’s got them, too,” he muttered, rounding the corner to the front of the barn only to find his father sitting in the old chair Mia had fallen asleep in weeks ago. The dogs sat at his feet, their mottled muzzles on his knees.
“You done spoiling the dogs?” Jack asked. “I got work to do.”
“It can keep.” Walter stood, a tall man coming all the way to his full height. There was no cane, today. He didn’t shake. He didn’t tremble. Jack stepped closer and took a whiff of his dad’s breath. No booze.
“What’s going on?” Jack asked.
Walter licked his lips, a small show of doubt that somehow made Jack nervous. “I want to be a part of your life.”
“Excuse me?”
“I want…I want to be a part of your life. I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes and maybe I can never be your father again. I understand that, but I want… I need to know where you are and what you’re doing.” Walter didn’t look at him, kept his eyes on the dogs, his hands stroking their soft ears.
“I’m trying to herd some cows up to the high pasture,”
Jack said, deliberately obtuse. This conversation was…unnecessary. Unwanted.
And then he remembered Mia’s words, about how he needed to come to grips with his past and his parents in order to have a real relationship. Maybe she was right.
She’d been right about so much.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll call you more often.”
“You’re not staying?”
“Mia’s kicking me off the ranch, Dad.”
“I want to visit you.”
Jack nearly staggered backward.
“I’m not kidding. I want to see where you live.”
“Dad, what in the world is bringing this on?”
“I’m fighting for the one damn thing I want, Jack.”
His burning eyes scorched through Jack’s skin, finding dark places, hidden places that hadn’t seen light or heat in twenty years. It hurt, and every instinct in him cried out to leave. To find some safety, a rooftop far away. But he grit his teeth and stuck it out, facing it down.
“One thing,” his father repeated. “I haven’t fought for anything my whole life. I let Victoria bully you, I let her run me away from my own son. I let her drive away the only people who made this house a home.”
Walter’s eyes were damp, his face was red, emotion rolled off him in waves. More emotion than Jack had ever seen him express.
“Calm down, Dad,” he breathed, reaching for Walter, who only shook him off.
“You could learn a lesson from me,” Walter said. “You’ll die alone, Jack. All alone, if you don’t fight for what you want.”
“What does this have to do with me?” he asked.
“We’re not that different, you and me. The way you treat Mia, have treated her for years—it’s the same way I treated you. I ignored you and left you alone, because it hurt to be with you. It hurt to count all the years I let go to waste between us, so I stayed away. Kept my head down and pretended that I wasn’t in pain.”
Pretended I wasn’t in pain.
Those words could have been ripped from Jack’s own life. He reeled slightly, trying to make sense of the fact that his father had just bashed him upside the head with the truth.
“We need to fight,” Walter said. “If we want a chance to fix things. And that’s what I’m doing. Right now. If you were a smart man, which Lord knows you are, you’d do the same. Before it’s too late.”
Too late, Jack thought, feeling a sudden call to arms.
Because failing to fight, or even giving up, leaving when she wanted him to leave and never coming back, only ensured he’d end up like his father.
Alone.
And he didn’t want that. Not anymore.
Every day here was another day of his life in the wild.
It was as if everything he wanted had broken free of the compartments he used to keep his life simple. Now, it was madness—he was overrun with desire and regret and a thousand wishes that he could make it all right.
“I am fighting,” he said, the words making it more true. “For Mia.”
Walter’s eyes narrowed. “You call what you’re doing fighting?”
“I’m trying—”
“You’re leaving in three days and every time Lucy looks at you, you cower like a puppy.”
Jack opened his mouth to argue, but what could he say? His dad was right.
“Do you love her?” Walter asked.
Jack thought of the way he’d loved Africa at the be ginning. How raw it was. How it had tugged at some thing primal and true, uncomplicated and pure, in his gut. The way he’d stepped foot on that soil and felt useful in a way he never had before. Vital. The people there who’d shown him every single moment what it meant to be gracious and joyful, not that he ever seemed to practice that.
But he wanted to. And that was new.
He thought of the way he’d loved his work. How it had felt at the beginning, as though it was just him against the problems. And how those problems had engaged him and absorbed him. Until he didn’t know who he was without the work. Until he could push away all those things in his life that weren’t easily solved.
Those emotions seemed so small when it came to Mia.
He’d thought that love was a separate entity. Something he could label, hold in the palm of his hand and quantify, but suddenly he realized it was bigger than that. It was all-encompassing.
At this moment, science failed him and he had no frame of reference for what he felt for Mia. It was as if his feelings for her were the invisible trusses, beams and joists for everything in his life.
Mia made his feelings for those other things possible. Her faith in him, her belief that he could accomplish what he set out for, made it possible to believe in himself.
Her integrity and passion for her own work inspired a passion for his.
She had always anchored him; no matter where he’d been in the world, he’d always come back to her. Be cause his home wasn’t the Rocky M, or his condo in San Luis Obispo. It wasn’t even his work. Or Africa.
Mia was his home.
And now that he was finally seeing his past for what it was—and himself for who he was—he understood that she’d owned his heart all these years.
“Yeah,” he said, feeling like a man who’d been blinded by a solar eclipse. He loved Mia. Loved her so much and so long it had become a part of his landscape.
His own body. He just hadn’t recognized it until now. “I do.”
Walter smiled, his face lighting up for a bright second, and Jack felt hurtled in time. He stood there like a kid filled with all the hero worship a son should have for his old man, before tarnish ruined everything. And Jack wanted to hold on to that sweetness. The innocence. He wanted to forget the abuse and the neglect. The way it seemed his father turned his back on him.
And he wanted to remember the good things. The good times.
The bitter knot of anger and resentment shifted side ways in his chest, opening up some new place, a hidden chamber with light and a view.
Maybe this was forgiveness?
He wished Mia was here. She would tell him for sure.
“Well,” Walter said. “I’m just letting you know. I expect you to keep in touch better than you have been.
A card now and again—”
“You want to come with me?” Jack asked. “I’m moving heifers up the fire road.”
Walter’s eyes dimmed and he ran a wrinkled hand over his barrel chest. “Can’t ride, son.”
“We’ll take the truck,” he said, not sure why he was pursuing this. “The dogs can do most of the work.”
Bear barked at the news; Daisy scratched her ear.
Dad watched him, as if he knew that Jack wasn’t convinced. That half of him wished he could swallow back the words.
“Sounds good,” Walter said, clapping Jack on the shoulder, leading the way to Mia’s beat-up truck.
Jack lingered for a second, wondering how in a conversation about fighting for what you want, he ended up riding herd with his dad for the first time in fifteen years.
Lucy wouldn’t hear Mia if she eased out of bed and snuck across the room. The door barely creaked anymore. She could be in Jack’s room, sliding under the covers, up against all that blanket-warmed bare skin and Lucy wouldn’t even stir.
But she didn’t do it.
You’re a chicken,
she told herself.
A coward. You’re letting fear rule your life.
She flopped onto her back.
He was changing, she could see it. But was it enough? Truly? Enough to risk her heart again? Every time she’d gone to one of those functions with him and she’d seen him light up at the sight of her, her heart had exploded with joy. But by the end of the night he’d be deep in conversation with Oliver about the next project and she’d once again be an afterthought.
He was focused on her now, and it was a heady delight.
But what happened when his attention wandered, back to his work, his old life, some new project? She’d be an afterthought again. And not even she was strong enough for that.
She wished she could look into his eyes and see the truth. The future.
But there was no guarantee, and if she was going to be honest with herself, she knew that was what she needed. Without it, she had to let him go. She had to. But could she really let him go without touching him one last time? Kissing him?
It seemed impossible.
She had the rest of her life to be alone and only a few more chances to be Jack’s wife.
She slipped out of the bed, glancing back at Lucy to be sure she hadn’t woken, then crept out of the room.
It was just past dawn. Jack might be awake, and if she was lucky she’d get him before he left his bed.
Before she’d taken more than two steps into the hall way, Walter’s door opened and she froze like a thief.
Walter was fully dressed for a day of work. A denim shirt rolled up over muscular arms, tucked into a pair of dark brown canvas pants.
“What are you doing?” she asked as if he’d stepped out of his room in a clown costume.
“Branding,” he said.
“So soon?” she cried. She figured that would be the first thing she’d organize once she was back full steam.
“Wanted to get it done before I left,” Jack said and she turned. She hadn’t heard his door open. He stood in the new dawn sunshine in hard-worn blue jeans and a black long-sleeved T-shirt. Her heart pounded in her chest, her mouth went dry and the grief, the grief that buzzed around her head like a fly waiting to land, was deafening.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said.
He watched her for a long time, long enough that Walter grumbled something about breakfast and headed down the hallway toward the kitchen.
“You won’t let me stay,” he said. “You won’t let me come back. You won’t let me help you.”
“I don’t need your guilt or your charity,” she said, raising her chin.
He stepped out into the hallway, taking up too much space. Too much air. “It’s not guilt,” he said. “Would you believe I like the work?”
“No.”
His smile was sharp. “Well, I do.”
“What are you doing with Walter?” she asked.
Jack shrugged and pulled his door shut. “He misses the work, and it’s easy enough to drive him up to the pasture. Let him hang out.”
“Hang out?” Mia asked, wondered if the whole world was upside down or just this ranch. “With your father?
The man you haven’t talked to in years?”
“You told me I needed to deal with my past and that’s what I’m doing.”
Flabbergasted, all she could do was nod. “How…how is that going?”
His gaze lifted over Mia’s head to the kitchen at the end of the hallway, where they could hear Walter talking to Sandra. “Better than I thought it would. It’s still not perfect, but it’s better.”
Affection and pride flooded her chest. “I’m so glad.”
“What I’m wondering,” he said, leaning closer. He tilted his head, smiling at her like a wolf. “Is what you’re doing outside my door at dawn.”
“It doesn’t matter now, does it?” she asked, feeling peevish and confused. “You’re off to brand.”
His laugh rang bells all over her body. “It matters, Mia.” He touched her cheek, her lip. “I’ll see you tonight,” he murmured and left her stewing in her own frustration.