Molly O'Keefe – His Wife for One Night (страница 10)

She didn’t bother answering, she just guided him home.

They both cried out, shaking against each other. She hadn’t realized how big he was, how he would fill her to the point of pain. She took a deep breath, controlling the sting and burn of his flesh splitting hers.

“Mia?” Again that question, the half knowledge that she wasn’t a virgin, but not by much, was back in his eyes.

She wrapped her legs around his hips, pulling him so close there was no air between them. He pressed his head to her shoulder, his breath shuddering over her breasts.

“You’re killing me. Honestly, honey, we should talk or—”

She squeezed him, using every internal muscle she knew how to control, and he groaned, wrapping his arms around her. His hips, beginning to push against her, slide back and push again. He rearranged her a little, lifting her slightly so when he pulled away she saw stars and that tension in her belly filled her chest. Her head.

“Oh!” She sighed, her breath broken, her body taking flight.

“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” he groaned. “But I can’t stop. I can’t—”

“Don’t!” she cried, scared he would when she needed him so badly to keep going. “Don’t stop. Don’t…I—”

He lifted his head, his face blocking out the world, and she had no choice but to stare deep into his eyes, right at the boy she loved.

“I’ve got you,” he breathed, and she exploded into the night.

“WHAT THE HELL,” Jack muttered, evaluating himself in the mirror over the sink in the small bathroom off the patio. He looked punch-drunk. His hair all over the place, his lips swollen, his eyes glowing and…happy?

“You,” he told his reflection, “are a lucky son of a bitch.”

Mia. Good God, sweet Mia.

He never expected his five years of abstinence to end in quite this way—not that he was complaining.

No. No complaints here. He smiled again, rolling his shoulders and feeling the delicious weight of his own body. He felt like he owned his skin again. Over the past five years he hadn’t given much thought to his celibate life. There was always plenty of work to do and as unconventional as their relationship was, marriage, he figured, was marriage.

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.