Add another person to the equation, someone he had to deal with face-to-face, and he’d find a way to blow it.
“No, Mia, it’s not quite that dramatic. With you here, she won’t try anything. And people won’t…speculate about an affair. They won’t be watching me like a hawk. It will be forgotten.”
Her eyes got wide and her lips got tight.
“Because they’ll be talking about me,” she said. “I’m a distraction?”
He nodded and shrugged. Attempted a smile. “You’re my wife.”
She nodded once, anger rolling off her like the smell of burned tires. “Sure,” she said. “Makes perfect sense. I need to shower.”
“Through there,” he said, pointing to the far door. “We need to go in a half hour.”
I missed you. It’s been a long time.
Whose fault is that?
she wanted to yell. An emotion she tried so hard to suppress and restrain bubbled up, sticky and insistent.
You left me,
she thought.
You married me and left.
But that had been the deal. She’d known it going in.
This pain was her own damn fault.
If only he weren’t so handsome. So familiar and beloved.
The whole drive over the mountains she’d wondered what kind of changes the past year would have carved out of him.
His intelligence still lit up his chocolate eyes like a brilliant pilot light. The crow’s-feet growing out of the corners were deeper, from a year spent under a harsh sun. The silver hair peppered through the close-cut blond was a surprise.
His shoulders were broader, the calluses thicker.
Jack was a man who worked. Got his hands dirty and his back bent out of shape. He dug holes and built things and that kind of work made him comfortable in his own skin. Confident in himself.
Which was so different from the angry and serious kid he’d been. A kid who hadn’t known his place in his own family.
But that had all changed. Jack McKibbon knew who he was now and it was so unbelievably sexy.
It was no wonder deans’ wives were throwing themselves at him.
The pain cut her off at the knees and she sagged farther down the door.
Maybe tomorrow she’d laugh about it. Or next week. But right now it hurt.
A year and two months since she’d seen him. Since she’d gone to that dive hotel in Los Angeles thinking, like a fool,
Now…now it will change. He’s going far away, someplace dangerous, and the fear has made him realize how he feels about me. About us.
Instead, he’d had her witness his will, sign power of attorney papers. He’d taken her to dinner, thanked her when she gave him the book she got him for Christmas. He slept on his stomach, his face turned to the window in the other bed in their hotel room, while she stared at the ceiling on fire with love and pain.
That should have taught her the lesson she just couldn’t seem to learn.
Jack McKibbon didn’t love her.
But, once again, she drove over the mountains today, thinking this time was going to be different, too.
It’s what she always did. Five years into this nonmarriage and with every email, every phone call, the rare visit, she kept thinking things were going to change.
That he would miss her. That he would wake up in the desert and want her beside him.
You’re an idiot,
she told herself for perhaps the hundredth time since climbing into her truck a few hours ago.
Her sister Lucy’s words rang in her ears.
You’ve let a crush take over your life. When are you going to let go of the hope this relationship is going to be anything but an afterthought to him?
Mia’d told herself, over and over again, that if it
was
an afterthought, Jack would end it. And because he didn’t end it, hope lived on.
Part of her—a big, stupid part, stupid like dumb, stupid like a fool—believed that he’d invited her here because he wanted to share this moment with her. The realization of all those dreams. Dreams he’d told her about when they were kids in the back of his truck, the desert stretching out around them like the lunar landscape.
Water to the world had been his dream. A pump and drill that could build wells in the deserts of Asia and Africa. She’d been following his progress on the internet. Going into her office at night to cheer him on from her little corner of the thirsty world.
Too many nights doing that. Too many years holding the memory of him close, despite his absence.
Too many years of patiently caring for the ties that bound them together.
Marriage.
His father.
The Rocky M.
Jack had done her a favor five years ago when everyone’s lives fell apart. And she was doing him a favor now. It wasn’t as if his father could care for himself.
But Mia was kidding herself. She knew that.
Jack McKibbon was never going to see her as a woman. A real wife. Someone to love.
She pressed her head harder into the door, the pain almost distracting her from the sucking pit of embarrassment and disappointment in her stomach.
It was time for a divorce. She’d do this favor for him tonight. Play the loving wife, face down whatever gossip and scandal the night had in store and then it was time to let him go.
To let the past go.
She had to, because this situation was killing her.
She stood up, the shaking under control. Her emotions in check. No need to get dramatic, she thought. If there was one thing she knew, it was that life always went on. And she could stand here, crying over something that was never hers to begin with, or she could put on her big-girl pants and do what needed to be done.
She glanced at her watch. She had a really wrinkled dress, some makeup, jewelry that looked like torture devices and a whole bunch of instructions from her sister on how to look like a woman rather than a ranch hand.
Tonight she’d be Jack’s wife.
Tomorrow she’d work on that divorce.
As if it was ever easy.
Mustering up enthusiasm was impossible.
“Jack?”
“Hmm?” he said, distracted by the desk full of papers. Christ, if Oliver could just do this meet and greet by himself, at least one of them could get some work done tonight. “Jack!”
“Mia!” He spun. “Sorry, I got—” Jack had some expectations of how Mia would look, stepping out of her bedroom. And he’d be lying if he said those expectations were high. She was a rancher on a hardscrabble pocket of land two hundred miles from here—and she worked that land hard.
Ranching life didn’t leave much time for shopping. Or dress wearing.
So the version of Mia standing in the doorway to her bedroom was both expected and a sharp, shocking surprise.
“Distracted,” he finished lamely.
The dress, black and simple, was still wrinkled and didn’t fit. Too long at the knee and too tight at the bust. Probably her sister, Lucy’s. Mia looked uncomfortable just standing in the high-heeled shoes with the sexy bow on the side; he dreaded thinking of her walking in them.
That’s what his head noticed anyway.
His body was busy noticing other things and nearly roaring in approval. Her skin, God, her skin was like caramel. And the rustic gold bangles she wore at her wrists made her look like an Incan princess. Her hair was long and loose, the curls riding her back and he wanted to touch those curls, feel them clinging to his fingers, twining around his hand.
But her body…oh, man.
Growing up, he’d thrown a lot of punches against the mouths of boys who’d been too vocal in their admiration for her young body. And he’d gotten used to not looking at her below the chin, out of respect. Friendship. Because he knew how much her curves bothered her. Embarrassed her.
She didn’t seem embarrassed now.
The black dress skimmed her breasts, revealing the pillowy tops, the perfect round contours, the mysterious black valley that divided them. And he knew, as awkward as she might feel in that dress, not a single man would notice.
Because all they would see was her beauty.
“I’m going to have to punch out a lot of guys tonight,” he murmured, and she smiled.
“I doubt that.” She smoothed the front of the simple dress. “It’s wrinkled.”
“Putting it in a duffel bag will do that,” he said.
“Oh, and suddenly you’re Mr. Fashion?” She narrowed her eyes, the years melting away under their teasing. “That’s not even your suit, is it?”
“Of course it is,” he said, running his hands over the too-big jacket. “I’ve just lost some weight.”
Mia stepped forward and pulled the tie from where he’d stuffed it in his suit jacket. She flipped up the stiff edges of his collar and settled the tie around his neck. He lifted his chin, standing willingly under her ministrations. She’d tied his tie on his prom night with Missy Manning, on his graduations from high school and college. The day they got married.
It was the only time in his life, other than the day of their wedding, that Jack actually felt like a husband.
She was close. So close he could see the freckles across her nose, the small scars along her chin where she’d fallen into the barbed wire when they were kids.
Her lips…
He blinked and looked back up at the ceiling.
What a marriage,
he thought. He must be the only husband who’d never had a wedding night.
Sometimes he got the impression that Mia wanted something physical between them. She’d watch him a little too long, her eyes dilating, her breath hitching—principal signs of animal attraction.
But he’d told himself since he was twenty years old and she’d been fifteen that nothing would ever happen between them unless she started it.
And she never had.
“Well,” she sighed, patting his tie. “It’s a little crooked, but no one will notice.”
“It’s great, Mia,” he said through the tension in his throat. “Thank you.”
“We’re a fine pair,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “Let’s go cause a scandal.”
And just like that, this night, this torturous night that he’d been dreading with every fiber of his being, was fun. An adventure.
He offered her his elbow and she slipped her hand, small but so strong, up next to his ribs and then around his arm. He felt the pressure of her fingers, the weight of her palm, through his skin and down into the muscle.
“Let’s go,” he murmured and opened the door to the night.
They crossed the moonlit path from their cabana suite to the glittering main part of the hotel. A crowded patio surrounded by bougainvillea jutted up over the cliffs overlooking the ocean. She stopped, staring off at the water, the oil drills in the distance, the Channel Islands sitting like fat coins on the horizon.
“The islands are so pretty,” she said.
“They call them the North American Galápagos,” he said. “Because there are over one hundred and fifty endemic species. Plants alone there are—”
“You don’t say, Professor,” she said, her voice thick with sarcasm.
“Sorry.” He ran a hand over his forehead. “I’m—”
“Nervous?” she asked and he turned to face her. Luminous in the moonlight. If only they could stay out here all night.
“I hate these things,” he said.
“You do suck at them.”
His laugh cleared the adrenaline churning through his stomach. He sighed, and they stood in silence, staring at the islands. The blinking lights of the oil drills.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, and suddenly Mia pulled her hand away from his elbow, creating distance where he didn’t really want any.
“We need to talk,” she began. He hung his head.
“Not Dad again, Mia—”
“I think it’s time for a divorce.”
Jack blinked, his mouth suddenly dry. The apprehension exploded in his stomach again, darker, uglier this time. “Us?”
Her smile was slight, her eyes unreadable. “Yes, us.”
“Why?”
She sighed, her breath fanning his cheek. She smelled like toothpaste.
“Is there…someone else?” he asked. He hadn’t thought of that, not really. There was no time for him to meet anyone else and it had never occurred to him that Mia might.
“Someone else?” She laughed. “Someone besides my childhood friend who married me as a favor and who I’ve seen all of five times in the five years we’ve been married?”
He couldn’t read her anger. Did she want more for them? Then why the divorce?
“I want…I want a real marriage,” she said, lifting her chin. “Your mom is gone. She can’t hurt my family anymore. And I want a family. A husband who lives with me. Works with me. Builds a life with me. Loves me.”
He stiffened, unable to process what she was saying. She wanted a family? Kids?
“And that’s never going to happen with you, is it?”
“No,” he answered. She turned away, staring off at the ocean, her jawline as set in stone as he’d ever seen it. The idea of going back to the ranch was laughable. It would be like volunteering to go to hell. His work was on the other side of the world, his life was far away from where he’d been raised and abused by his parents.
“Why?” he asked, because what she wanted didn’t make sense to him. “My parents had a ‘real’ marriage. I don’t know why you’d want that.”
“My parents had a real marriage, too, Jack. And they were very happy,” she said. “Not every relationship is like your folks’.”
He didn’t say anything, because frankly, while he understood her hypothesis, he hadn’t seen enough proof to support it.
“It was always going to end this way,” she said, and he kept his eyes on her profile, wondering where this was coming from. “We knew that. It’s not like we were ever going to have…something real.”
“You’re one of the most real things in my life, Mia.”
She closed her eyes, a strange anxiety rolling off her.
“We’ll always be friends,” she finally said. “Divorce, just like the marriage, won’t change that.”
“Okay.” He had to agree, because he supposed logically, she was right.
And there was no arguing with logic.
“We can get a divorce,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want,” she said, with a definitive nod. Her mood shifted and she was suddenly cheerful. Totally at odds with the loss he felt. “I’ll put together the paperwork,” she said.
He nodded, numb and off course. He wished he could go back to his work, those charts. Even with the errors, he could read them. They made sense.
“All right, then,” she said, pulling him into motion, leading him into the party. “I need a drink.”