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 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. An emotion she tried so hard to suppress and restrain bubbled up, sticky and insistent.
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 past year would have carved out of him.
His intelligence still lit up his chocolate eyes like a brilliant pilot light. 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 broader, 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 him 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 had all changed. Jack McKibbon knew who he was now and it was so unbelievably sexy.
It was no wonder deans’ wives were throwing themselves at him.
The pain cut her off at the knees and she sagged farther down the door.
Maybe tomorrow 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 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.
That should have taught her the lesson she just couldn’t seem to learn.
Jack McKibbon didn’t love her.
But, once again, she drove over the mountains today, thinking this time was going to be different, too.
It’s what she always did. Five years into this nonmarriage and with every email, every phone call, the rare visit, she kept thinking things were going to change.
That he would miss her. That he would wake up in the desert and want her beside him.
You’re an idiot, she told herself for perhaps the hundredth time since climbing into her truck a few hours ago.
Her sister Lucy’s words rang in her ears. You’ve let a crush take over your life. When are you going to let go of the hope this relationship is going to be anything but an afterthought to him?
Mia’d told herself, over and over again, that if it was an afterthought, Jack would end it. And because he didn’t end it, hope lived on.
Part of her—a big, stupid part, stupid like dumb, stupid like a fool—believed that he’d invited her here because he wanted to share this moment with her. The realization of all those dreams. Dreams he’d told her about when they were kids in the back of his truck, the desert stretching out around them like the lunar landscape.
Water to the world had been his dream. A pump and drill that could build wells in the deserts of Asia and Africa. She’d been following his progress on the internet. Going into her office at night to cheer him on from her little corner of the thirsty world.
Too many nights doing that. Too many years holding the memory of him close, despite his absence.
Too many years of patiently caring for the ties that bound them together.
Marriage.
His father.
The Rocky M.
Jack had done her a favor five years ago when everyone’s lives fell apart. And she was doing him a favor now. It wasn’t as if his father could care for himself.
But Mia was kidding herself. She knew that.
Jack McKibbon was never going to see her as a woman. A real wife. Someone to love.
She pressed her head harder into the door, the pain almost distracting her from the sucking pit of embarrassment and disappointment in her stomach.
It was time for a divorce. She’d do this favor for him tonight. Play the loving wife, face down whatever gossip and scandal the night had in store and then it was time to let him go.
To let the past go.
She had to, because this situation was killing her.
She stood up, the shaking under control. Her emotions in check. No need to get dramatic, she thought. If there was one thing she knew, it was that life always went on. And she could stand here, crying over something that was never hers to begin with, or she could put on her big-girl pants and do what needed to be done.
She glanced at her watch. She had a really wrinkled dress, some makeup, jewelry that looked like torture devices and a whole bunch of instructions from her sister on how to look like a woman rather than a ranch hand.
Tonight she’d be Jack’s wife.
Tomorrow she’d work on that divorce.
CHAPTER TWO
JACK SHRUGGED into his suit jacket as he stared down at the aerial shots of the militia compounds surrounding the villages where he and Oliver were digging their wells in Darfur.
The compounds had been built up. More than before, despite the cease-fire. Going back next month wasn’t going to be easy.
As if it was ever easy.
Mustering up enthusiasm was impossible.
“Jack?”
“Hmm?” he said, distracted by the desk full of papers. Christ, if Oliver could just do this meet and greet by himself, at least one of them could get some work done tonight. “Jack!”
“Mia!” He spun. “Sorry, I got—” Jack had some expectations of how Mia would look, stepping out of her bedroom. And he’d be lying if he said those expectations were high. She was a rancher on a hardscrabble pocket of land two hundred miles from here—and she worked that land hard.
Ranching life didn’t leave much time for shopping. Or dress wearing.
