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Chris blinked. “Jack? Fine. He’s got the boys clearing the fire road so we can move the herd.”
That was surprising. “He’s not trying to boss you, is he?”
Chris’s smile was brief. “Well, he is the boss, and frankly, so far, everything he’s wanted to do, I agree with.” He shrugged. “It’s the guy’s ranch.”
“Yeah, that he hates.”
Chris sighed. “Can I please go?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, waving him out of the room. “Be free.”
Chris left, and now it was just her and Jack’s laptop. She searched for the shortcut icon on the desktop and got sidetracked by a document entitled “I take full responsibility.”
Without a second thought, or really without giving herself a chance to have a second thought, she clicked on the document.
I take full responsibility for the mistakes that were made by the team on our return trip to El Fasher. The death of Oliver Jenkins and the destruction of the pump and drill might have been prevented had I informed the team of the errors on the new set of maps. I knew the permanent compound was being built too far from the new pump site and that, should there be an attack, we wouldn’t be able to get to safety in time.
I was aware of the problems the night of the university cocktail party in Santa Barbara and didn’t notify anyone due to my absorption in my personal problems. With my heartfelt apology, I tender my resignation to the university.
Mia stared, dumbfounded, at the screen on her lap. Was he insane? He was going to take responsibility for a militia bombing?
Did he have a God complex or what?
She remembered that night a few weeks ago when she’d fallen asleep in the chair in the living room. He’d said, yelled really, that it had all been his fault, and she’d forgotten about it.
But he’d been serious. He blamed himself for Oliver’s death.
“Oh, Jack,” she sighed, leaning back against the pillows. Picking him out of her life, like splinters out of her skin, would be so much easier if she didn’t care so damn much.
That he carried around this totally unjustified load practically swamped her with sympathy, with unwanted affection, because it was so totally like him, to take on that responsibility. The too-big responsibility, the unreasonable and unnecessary responsibility, was Jack’s specialty.
Marrying his best friend so she could stay on the ranch she loved. Bringing water to a nation dying of thirst. Taking the blame for a senseless, mindless act of terrorism because he felt like the blame needed to be put somewhere.
His mother had done that, put the weight of the world on his shoulders.
And you are not the woman to make it right, she told herself. You are not the wife he wants, not really.
Listening to herself, for once, she closed the file, opened up her program and began inputting the calving data. But she began to wonder. The map problem he’d known about that night in Santa Barbara and then claimed to have forgotten because of “personal issues”…had she been the personal issue?
He’d called and emailed relentlessly for weeks after they’d made love. And she’d dodged every call.
Oh, her stomach twisted between curiosity and sickness, terrible dread.
What was Mia doing in his room? In his bed, actually? It would have been wonderful if he and Mia were a normally married couple. But they weren’t. They were keeping their distance and now she was in his bed, making the sheets smell like herself.
He had enough problems sleeping without being haunted by Mia-scented sheets.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” he said, tossing his hat onto his desk, where it skidded across the bare surface and fell right into her lap.
“I am,” she said, tucking the hat onto her head, tipping it over one eye. “Note my reclining position.”
Oh, he’d noted. She looked like some kind of lewd cowboy fantasy in that hat.
He’d had a busy day. Stone’s alfalfa field irrigation system was pretty much shot. And when Jack had stopped by to help the guys clear the fire road, his father had been there in the middle of things, like the man he’d been. He’d been leaning against the truck, his hat down low over his eyes, and for a second Jack’d had a good memory of this place. A decent one, of the two of them clearing that road when he was a kid.
And he’d stood there on that road with the past he’d thought was dead coming back to life around him. But different. Changed.
Mia wasn’t the girl he’d thought she was.
He couldn’t cast his father as the villain. Not entirely.
And Jack had felt himself changing along with his memories.
So now he smelled like smoke and fire and he was confused.
And having Mia here was not helping. Trying not to look at her only seemed to make him more aware of her; her black curls looked stark and erotic against the snowy white pillowcase. The flannel shirt she slept in wasn’t buttoned all the way up and he saw far too much of her throat, the elegant rail of her collarbone, the mysterious shadow between her breasts.
