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His hands stilled on the buttons of his shirt. Something sad turned over in his stomach.
Divorce? Now?
Nothing made sense. Which was part of 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 pick her up 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 deep down he knew that if it came down to those variations or the answers he needed, he’d skip the questions.
It had, after all, been five years.
He ignored 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 stepped 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 punched 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 unbelievable.
“Oh-ho, Jack,” Oliver said, pulling Jack right back out of the party. “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 his suite was empty. Her duffle bag gone.
Mia had left.
4
Six weeks later
After parking beside the well, Mia reached through the open window of her truck and grabbed the black rubber gasket she was up here in the high pasture to replace.
Twilight was coming down on the far mountains, splashing pink and gold across the endless sky. It was getting warmer up here in the foothills of the Sierras; a thaw was in the air.
Green grass clawed its way up past the snow. Mud was replacing ice. Leaves battled it out on the trees. Spring was fighting the good fight against the last of winter.
After calving started, they’d work the cows up here, where they’d summer with the cooler temperatures, the greener grass. But in order to do that, they needed the well working.
And right now it was definitely not working.
Anxiety and anger pulled in separate directions in her stomach. So much work at the Rocky M, and for the first time since she’d been foreman, she hadn’t been able to hire extra seasonal guys. There just wasn’t enough money. So it was her and her skeleton winter crew. She was tough and they were good, but everything was stretched thin.
She’d come back from Santa Barbara six weeks ago to a phone call from the bookkeeper. Walter hadn’t filed taxes last year, their accounts were frozen and the current taxes were due. Things had been tight before, but now they were downright dire.
The Rocky M wasn’t going to make anyone rich, she knew that. But she just hadn’t expected it to drag her into bankruptcy. And it felt like, unless she was able to put the brakes on this downward slide, bankruptcy was where everyone was headed.
She knew it was just a matter of getting the new calves to market, but Walter didn’t seem to fully grasp all he’d done or hadn’t done. Lost in the haze of his sickness, drinking too much and saying nothing at all, Walter was half the man he used to be.
And none of the rancher.
The wind howled over the high land, and the ends of her ponytail whipped into her eyes, stinging the skin of her face. She wrestled the hair into the collar of her coat and stepped up to the round corrugated metal that protected the well and pump mechanism from snow and wind.
She pumped the handle, and while the gears screeched and had screeched for years, no water came out.
