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As soon as Jeremiah got to his feet as a baby, he’d run wild.
But Jack had always liked the guy.
“How are you?” Jack asked, reaching out to shake his old friend’s hand.
“Not bad,” Jeremiah said.
“You visiting Annie?” Jack asked, remembering Jeremiah’s redheaded spitfire of an older sister.
Jeremiah’s eyes went dark and Mia ducked her head, coughing into her sleeve.
“Annie died,” Jeremiah said, his voice tight. “Cancer.”
“When?” Jack asked, grief for his old friend blowing through him.
“A few months ago. I’ve taken over the ranch.”
“What happened to Connor?” he asked.
“Annie’s husband died in a car accident five years back,” Jeremiah said.
Jeremiah’s face was shuttered and Jack got the firm impression there were no other questions he wanted to answer.
And there was nothing Jack understood better.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “She was a good woman.”
Jeremiah nodded, his jaw hard.
“Go on home,” Mia said, breaking the unbearable tension of the moment. “And thank you, so much.”
“No problem,” Jeremiah said. He glanced up at Jack. “You can repay me by fixing that pump up in the high pasture.”
“It’s broken again?” she asked, her voice so weary it practically fell asleep on her lips.
Jeremiah nodded, his blue eyes watching Jack. “Good thing the water man is back,” he said. He slapped Jack’s shoulder and tipped his hat again. “Night folks.”
Jeremiah walked away, leaving him and Mia alone among the nursing cows. He watched Mia stroke the soft ear of the calf beside her. Her fingers looked so small, so delicate.
“I didn’t know about his sister,” he whispered. “Or Gibson.” Start here
“I emailed you when it happened. Both times,” she said, and he winced. Probably only one of a million things that hadn’t registered on the plane of his life.
He thought of Jeremiah, the handsome cowboy, the charm that had cut through the female population of Wassau public schools like a blade through butter. The bad boy rodeo star with a wicked grin had been a potent teenager and seemed to be just as potent a man.
“Is Jeremiah why you want a divorce?”
She gaped at him for a minute before bursting into laughter, startling the cow in her lap.
“Shhh,” she cooed, coaxing the animal’s mouth back to the bottle.
“Is he?”
“No, Jack. He isn’t why I want a divorce. He’s taken over the ranch and his sister’s three boys. He barely has time to sleep, much less seduce the neighbors.”
Three boys. He looked back to where the cowboy was getting into his truck in the wide gravel lot beside the barn. Didn’t seem to fit, but then not much did these days.
Jack sat down in the grass beside Mia. His body was so grateful for the rest it nearly cheered.
“How’s the calf?” he asked, pointing to the one sucking on the bottle.
“Calf is fine, but big as all get-out and mom isn’t producing any colostrum yet.”
“You give her some extra feed?”
She nodded and the silence stretched out.
“Thanks for your help today,” she said, not looking at him, while he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her.
“You’re working too hard,” he said.
“Well, you know, `tis the season.”
“You need a few extra hands around here, Mia,” he said.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“Billy said something about there not being enough money to hire them.”
Mia’s head turned so fast her ponytail whipped the side of his face. “Billy’s a gossip.”
“Most cowboys are,” he said. “Is it true?”
She pulled the bottle from the calf who’d drained the thing and got to her feet.
“You suddenly care about this ranch?” she snapped.
“No.”
“Then stop asking—”
“I care about you, Mia. I always have.”
“Well, you have a pretty crappy way of showing it, Jack!” she snapped. “You show up here and lock yourself in your room.” She crouched and picked up her stuff, the gritty gloves, the case for vitamin E shots, mumbling under her breath. “You won’t answer my questions, I have to force you—”
He put a hand over hers. And she went still. He shouldn’t have kissed her last night. It was stupid. Made things muddy between them.
“I’m sorry,” he said, watching her.
“For what?” She lifted her face and met his eyes. The electrical current of their connection buzzed through him.
“For showing up the way I did.” Her forthright gaze was too much and he looked away. He had a lot to be sorry about. “For treating you the way I did the other night. I’ve been...” God, what could he say?
“A mess?”
He smiled. “Sure, we’ll go with a mess.”
“You have every right, Jack. What you’ve been through—”
“Well, I didn’t need to take it out on you. I’m sorry about last night.”
Perhaps it was a trick of the fading light, but it looked like she blushed, and he wondered if she had gone to bed thinking of his fingers on her face. Her lips.
A hot wave of desire rolled over him and he was suddenly desperate for the taste of her again, for a taste of life before the bombing.
