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“Like an experiment?” she asked.
Oh lord, she got it. Amazing. “Yes!” he cried, reaching for her. “Exactly like that.”
Something was happening to her face, something dark and stormy, and he realized that no, she didn’t get it.
“Am I the experiment?”
“No, my feelings are,” he said sheepishly.
“And what if your feelings don’t hold up?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “What if we try and it doesn’t work out?”
“Then I’ll go, just like we’re saying.”
“No!” she cried and he realized he’d set off an earthquake of pain inside of Mia, a whole wealth of emotion that he’d been clueless about. “I’m done being left by you Jack. I’m done waiting for you to realize I’m in your life. I have more pride than to let you…” She threw her hands up in the air. “Experiment! Are you kidding? Do you think so little of me?”
“No, God, Mia, no. I just…” Now he was getting angry. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Be married, or be divorced?”
“Either.”
“Well,” she snapped, “in your life there’s not much difference between the two.”
“But what if there was a chance that this would work out?”
She shook her head, her lips white. “I don’t care anymore,” she lied. He knew she was lying. “I’m tired of waiting for you, Jack. I won’t do it anymore. You said you would leave and I think…I think that’s the right thing to do.”
He couldn’t push. He didn’t have the right. He’d blown every chance he ever had with her without knowing it.
“I’m…so sorry, Mia.”
She nodded once and then held herself still, as if she’d suddenly realized she’d been standing on glass and with one move she’d fall to who knew where.
“Can you just go?” she whispered. “I need a minute.”
He wanted to argue, but in the end he simply nodded. “I’ll leave you the truck—”
“I don’t need the truck. I just need you to leave.”
There was nothing else to say. Nothing else he could do. He climbed into the truck and drove away. Leaving her in the high pasture, twilight falling down all around her.
10
By dinner he was getting worried.
“She’s a grown woman,” Walter said, chasing peas around his plate like they were greased pigs.
“Yeah, but it’s been hours,” Jack said, anxiety gnawing at his gut. He pushed away his food, looking for allies in the other cowboys.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Billy said, and Tim nodded in agreement, not looking up from the last of the chicken potpie.
Jack stared at Chris, who stared right back. “You go checking up on her,” Chris said, “and she’ll get pissed.”
“But what if she’s hurt?”
The cagey old cowboy nodded. “It’s a quandary.”
Screw quandaries, he thought. He couldn’t eat until he knew she was safe. And fine if she was just out for a ride, or doing more work, or hell, crying her eyes out in the high pasture, she damn well knew better than to be gone for hours at a time.
“She doesn’t have her cell phone?” Walter asked, and Jack spun on the old man.
“She has a cell phone?”
Four grown men blinked up at him. “We all do,” Chris said. “It’s ranch regulation now.”
I’m her damn husband and I don’t know she has a cell phone?
“What’s the number?” he bit out, and Chris rattled it off while Jack dialed on the home phone.
“This is Mia at Rocky M ranch. Leave a message.” After the beep Jack said, “You need to call us. We’re getting worried about you. It’s 6:30—”
“Uh-oh,” Tim said, and Jack spun away from the wall-mounted phone, the message forgotten. The cowboys were up, staring out the big picture window at the barn. Even Walter was slowly getting to his feet.
“What?” Jack asked. His stomach was somewhere in his feet.
Chris turned, his face creased with concern. “Blue just walked into the yard,” he said and then shook his head. “Without Mia.”
“I knew it,” Jack muttered, sweeping the keys to Mia’s truck back off the counter. If something had happened to her, it was his fault. He’d known she was too emotional, too tired to be riding down that ridge on her own.
And damn her for having every man in this house convinced that she was practically invincible.
“Wait a second, boy,” Walter said, standing up and grabbing his cane. “I’m coming with you.”
“I can go faster.”
“You need another set of eyes,” Walter said, and for a second Jack saw a glimmer of his father in the old man’s watery eyes. Implacable. Resolved. Right. “You watch the road. I’ll watch the ravine.”
Jack nodded tersely, and within moments he was back in Mia’s truck, bouncing up the old fire road, his headlights cutting bright circles out of the dark.
Walter, on the other side of the bench seat, kept watch out his side window, looking over the edge of the road for any sign of Mia. Once they got to the pasture, if they hadn’t found her, Jack would walk back down, searching more carefully. The other men were taking a look at the barns and pastures.
