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“Uh-oh, this doesn’t sound good.” She crossed her arms over her flannel-covered chest, and those curves she’d always worked so hard to hide were unmistakable.
“Mia, I’m sorry—”
“Out with it, Jack. You always were a damn coward when it came to dealing with the bad stuff.”
That was a low blow and his temper flared. It was easy for her to judge him. She’d stayed. He’d left. Big freaking deal.
“Fine, because the dean has accused me of having an affair with his wife.”
She didn’t look at him. Not for a long time. The air conditioner kicked on, loud in the silence. He counted her breaths, the rise and fall of her chest, wondering why it mattered.
“Have you?” she asked.
“No, Mia. Of course not. But Beth, the dean’s wife, has been...” How did he put this? “Indiscreet.”
“She wants to have an affair with you?”
“So it would seem.”
“And you can’t just say no?” she asked, her eyes snapping.
“It’s delicate,” he said.
“You want me to tell her?” Mia asked. “You made me drive two hundred miles over the mountains two months before calving season, when I’m so busy I can’t see straight, to tell some woman to keep her hands off you?”
In a way. In his head it had made so much sense. But that was his problem—what worked in his head didn’t always translate to other people. To real life.
She picked up the duffle bag, leaving dust on the floor. This trip out to Santa Barbara was a big deal for her, he knew that. Things were busy at the Rocky M, and as far as he knew, she was still doing most of the work.
And now she was here and angry with him, which wasn’t what he wanted at all.
Give him a hundred feet of sand and seventy-mile-an-hour winds and he could make things work.
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 are my wife.”
She nodded, once, anger like the smell of burned tire rolling off her. “Sure,” she said. “Makes perfect sense. I need to shower.”
“Through there,” he said, pointing to a door. “We need to go in a half hour.”
Mia shut the door behind her and collapsed against it, the wood cool against her flaming face.
Jack, she thought, gutted. Gutted at the sight of him, the sound of his voice. Hell, the smell of that man killed her. He’d opened that door and her heart practically beat its way right up into her throat.
I missed you. It’s been a long time.
Whose fault is that? she wanted to yell, and an emotion she’d tried so hard to suppress and restrain bubbled up, sticky and insidious.
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 last year would have carved out of him.
His intelligence, like a brilliant pilot light, still lit up his chocolate eyes. 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 bigger, 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 a man 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 was all changed. Jack McKibbon knew who he was now and it was so damn sexy.
It was no wonder deans’ wives were throwing themselves at him.
The pain cut her off at the knees and she sagged slightly against the door.
Tomorrow maybe 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’d 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.
