His Wife for One Night

If he wasn’t having sex with his wife, he wasn’t having sex.

But he couldn’t totally get his head around what had just happened.

Didn’t know if he ever could.

The why of it bothered him. Why tonight? Why after talking about divorce? And something about the desperate way she’d pushed him inside her body rankled, too. She’d been so tight.

His hands stilled on the buttons of his shirt. Something sad turned over in his stomach. Divorce? Now?

Nothing made sense. Which was the theme of the night, he guessed. Before tonight, his relationship with Mia had been the one constant in his life he didn’t question. She’d needed him, he’d married her and that was that. And now in one night, she’d told him she wanted a divorce and they’d made love.

He had a thousand questions. And as much as he wanted to throw her over his shoulder and carry her back to their suite to do it all again with a couple of variations, he needed some answers first.

She won’t like that, he told himself.

And he knew that if it came down to those variations or getting the answers he needed, he’d forget about the questions.

It had, after all, been five years.

He skipped the two buttons Mia had ripped off in her enthusiasm and did his best to slick back the worst of his haywire hair.

There was no helping it, though; he looked like a man who had been well and truly laid.

By his wife.

He laughed and pushed open the door, stepping back out into the night. And perhaps it was his imagination but it seemed the air still smelled like sex and spice and Mia.

“Mia?” he called, but the quiet was deep around him.

He went over to the women’s room and knocked on the door.

No answer. A trickle of unease slid through his caveman bliss.

No, he thought, she wouldn’t.

But she would. Mia Alatore did whatever she wanted.

He pushed open the door to the women’s room, checked every stall, but it was empty. As was the patio.

He ran back downstairs to the party, not believing she’d actually go there, but the alternative was even more unbelievable.

“Oh-ho, Jack,” Oliver said, pulling Jack right back out of the party into the empty foyer. “You don’t want to go in there, right now.”

“Why? Is Mia—”

“Not there, but, Jack, you look a bit—” Oliver tilted his big bald head “—undone. And while I might appreciate a good husband-and-wife reunion, there are those here who would not.”

Jack stepped away, panic hammering him hard.

“If you see Mia—”

“I’ll send her along.”

Jack held hope in his chest like a lantern in the dark. She must have gone to the suite. Of course. Perfect sense.

He ran across the path. His heart pounding; be there, be there, be there.

But the suite was empty. Her duffel bag gone.

Mia had left.

CHAPTER FOUR

Six weeks later

MIA REACHED THROUGH the open driver’s-side window of her truck and grabbed the gasket for the well she was in the high pasture to replace.

Twilight was coming down on the far mountains, splashing pink and gold across the endless sky. It was getting warmer up here in the foothills of the Sierras; a thaw was in the air.

Green grass clawed its way up out of ice and snow. Leaves battled it out on the trees. Spring was fighting the good fight against the last of winter.

After calving started, they’d move the cows up here, where they’d summer with the cooler temperatures, the greener grass. But in order to do that, they needed the well working.

And right now it was definitely not working.

Anxiety and anger tugged at her stomach. So much to do at the Rocky M and for the first time since she’d been foreman, she hadn’t been able to hire extra seasonal guys. There just wasn’t enough money. So it was her and her skeleton winter crew. She was tough and they were good, but everything was stretched thin.

She’d come back from Santa Barbara six weeks ago to a phone call from the bookkeeper. Walter hadn’t filed taxes last year, their accounts were frozen and the current taxes were due. Things had been tight before, but now it was downright dire.

The Rocky M wasn’t going to make anyone rich, Mia knew that. But she hadn’t expected to sink into bankruptcy. And it felt as though, unless she was able to put the brakes on this downward slide, bankruptcy was where everyone was headed.

She knew it was just a matter of getting the new calves to market, but Walter didn’t seem to fully grasp all he’d done or hadn’t done. Lost in the haze of his sickness, drinking too much and saying nothing at all— Walter was half the man he used to be.

And none of the rancher.

The wind howled over the high land, the ends of her ponytail whipped into her eyes, stinging her face. She wrestled the hair into the collar of her coat, and climbed over to the round corrugated metal fence that protected the well and pump mechanism from snow and wind.

She pumped the handle, and while the gears screeched as they had screeched for years, no water came out.

She really hoped it was a gasket issue—because that was the extent of her well knowledge. She pulled the wrench from the pocket of her canvas barn coat and crouched, her feet sinking in the mud, and wiped the grit and mud from the pump with her numb fingers.

Her neighbor, Jeremiah Stone, who shared this well, knew even less than she did about pumps. Walter usually fixed these problems but…she shook her head, resentment flooding her. Walter was his own problem now.

Her head pounded and her stomach growled. Two more hours of work before she could head back to the ranch. At least.

Sure would be handy to have Jack around.

Before she could stop herself she glanced up at the ghostly sliver of moon in the eastern sky and wondered where he was.