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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.
CHAPTER TWO
JACK SHRUGGED into his suit jacket as he stared down at the aerial shots of the militia compounds surrounding the villages where he and Oliver were digging their wells in Darfur.
The compounds had been built up. More than before, despite the cease-fire. Going back next month wasn’t going to be easy.
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.”
MIA’S HEAD BUZZED. Her stomach churned. A glass of wine on a belly full of nerves and no food wasn’t her greatest idea. But she needed something to ease the worst of the pain.
Divorce.
A million times in the years she’d known him, she’d thought about telling Jack how she felt. Maybe if he knew, things would change. But right now, this moment, was why she never did. Because in her heart of hearts she’d always known Jack McKibbon could never return her feelings. Never.
His wounds were too deep, his brain was too big and his heart was just a bit too cold.
And she was always going to be little Mia Alatore.
She took another sip of her white wine and tried to ignore the whispers that buzzed around her like horseflies.
It wasn’t hard to guess who the dean’s wife was. Mia would put money on the tall redhead staring at her from the corner of the room with enough malice to cut steel.
But the rest of the women at the party were staring at Jack, who, even in his ill-fitting suit, was the handsomest man there. Tall and broad, rough around the edges, he was so different from the slick men surrounding him. Like a wild animal surrounded by domesticated cats.
She’d bet that most of the women in the room wouldn’t mind seeing Indiana Jones without the suit. Herself included.
Maybe she should try to get that wedding night before it was too late.
She snorted into her wineglass.
