His Wife for One Night

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

THE MAPS were…wrong.

Jack McKibbon flipped through the latest topographical charts and compared them to last year’s. The permanent compound was being built too far away from the new drill site. His crew would have to take a damn bus between the two. He’d been staring at these maps for an hour and there was no other way to interpret the information.

Someone had screwed up, and considering they were heading back to fix the pump and redrill in El Fasher next month, these kinds of errors could cause serious problems.

He patted through the files, the aerial photos of the well site that needed repair and the embassy report on the recent cease-fire between the Sudanese government and the JEM rebel forces in the Darfur area until he felt the hard edge of his cell phone. The desks in hotels were never big enough.

He flipped open his phone and hit speed dial without even looking.

“Jack?” Oliver, his partner and friend, answered. “Is Mia—”

“Have you looked at the maps?”

“The maps? You brought the maps?” Oliver, a little more jolly than the average hydro-engineer, laughed.

“Of course. I had all the files couriered, they arrived a while ago. I thought you’d want to get a jump on things.”

“I can’t believe you brought your work to the hotel. One night is not going to make a difference, Jack. How about you take a break. We’re going to party. Mia’s coming—”

“I’d hardly call it a party,” he said, sorting through the mineral reports. He needed to recheck that silver count. That could change the water table information.

“There will be food and booze. By most standards, that actually is a party.”

“It’s a fundraiser meet and greet,” Jack scoffed. Jack was head of research at Cal Poly where Oliver chaired the hydro-engineering department. They’d been working on a lightweight drill and pump that could withstand the extreme desert conditions of Africa and Asia. And over the past four years, these fancy events had become standard operating procedure, before and after every summer, Christmas and spring break spent in the field. But after the success of their drill during last year’s sabbatical, Oliver and Jack had brought so much prestige to the school that the administration had decided that more torture, in the form of these cocktail soirees, was in order.

Particularly now, to raise some money for Jack and Oliver’s trip next month.

Which would explain why they were here, on the cliffs of Santa Barbara, miles from the university, in an effort to bring up the big bucks from Los Angeles. Africa was a popular charitable cause in Hollywood.

“Just try, Jack.”

“Christ, Oliver. The university is trotting us out like trained monkeys—”

“For Mia. Try to get your head out of the dirt for one night.”

Right. Mia.

“It’s been over a year—”

“I know how long it’s been,” Jack said. A year and two months, almost to the day.

The excitement of seeing her, when he remembered, was bright and hot, shooting out sparks.

But these maps…

“When is she supposed to arrive?” Oliver asked and Jack swore, checking his watch.

“Any minute,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

He hung up and ran a hand over the scruff covering his chin. He’d wanted to be dressed—at least showered—by the time Mia showed up. As if being clean-shaven would somehow make this reunion easier.

But the maps had arrived and he’d gotten distracted.

Jack closed his burning, tired eyes. Jet lag dogged him. Not to mention the malaria he had barely recovered from. He was thirty-five and he felt a hundred and five.

The truth was, he was tired of Africa. Tired of the sand. The heat. The militias. Of coming home sick, only to turn around a few months later to go back. He was tired of never being able to meet the need, of feeling like a failure every time he left. But he couldn’t tell Oliver. He couldn’t tell anyone.

This had been his dream, water for the thirsty. And to give up on it now felt shameful. Selfish.

And this whole situation with Mia was making his crappy mood worse.

Calling Mia like this…not quite the reunion he’d dreamed about.

I owe you, she’d written in response to his email asking her to come to this event with him.

Owe me, he thought, turning the words over in his mind like a spit of meat over a fire. Logically, that was true.

But there were thirty years of friendship between them. A thousand emails. Promises made and kept.

Mia could be prickly. And his being out of the country for the past year had no doubt made her very prickly despite the daily emails.

This reunion of theirs was going to be unpredictable. And not being able to prepare for Mia’s mood made him nervous. Was she going to be angry? Happy, like him, just to see each other?

He didn’t know and it was making him crazy.

Someone pounded on the door to his hotel suite. The windows rattled as if mortars were being dropped. There was a pause and then more pounding.

It was her. Not that he could tell by the pounding. It was his internal barometer, which measured pressure and changing dynamics better than any equipment he carried into the field.