His Wife for One Night

He offered her his elbow and she slipped her hand, small but so strong, up next to his ribs and then around his arm. He felt the pressure of her fingers, the weight of her palm, through his skin and down into the muscle.

“Let’s go,” he murmured and opened the door to the night.

They crossed the moonlit path from their cabana suite to the glittering main part of the hotel. A crowded patio surrounded by bougainvillea jutted up over the cliffs overlooking the ocean. She stopped, staring off at the water, the oil drills in the distance, the Channel Islands sitting like fat coins on the horizon.

“The islands are so pretty,” she said.

“They call them the North American Galápagos,” he said. “Because there are over one hundred and fifty endemic species. Plants alone there are—”

“You don’t say, Professor,” she said, her voice thick with sarcasm.

“Sorry.” He ran a hand over his forehead. “I’m—”

“Nervous?” she asked and he turned to face her. Luminous in the moonlight. If only they could stay out here all night.

“I hate these things,” he said.

“You do suck at them.”

His laugh cleared the adrenaline churning through his stomach. He sighed, and they stood in silence, staring at the islands. The blinking lights of the oil drills.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, and suddenly Mia pulled her hand away from his elbow, creating distance where he didn’t really want any.

“We need to talk,” she began. He hung his head.

“Not Dad again, Mia—”

“I think it’s time for a divorce.”

Jack blinked, his mouth suddenly dry. The apprehension exploded in his stomach again, darker, uglier this time. “Us?”

Her smile was slight, her eyes unreadable. “Yes, us.”

“Why?”

She sighed, her breath fanning his cheek. She smelled like toothpaste.

“Is there…someone else?” he asked. He hadn’t thought of that, not really. There was no time for him to meet anyone else and it had never occurred to him that Mia might.

“Someone else?” She laughed. “Someone besides my childhood friend who married me as a favor and who I’ve seen all of five times in the five years we’ve been married?”

He couldn’t read her anger. Did she want more for them? Then why the divorce?

“I want…I want a real marriage,” she said, lifting her chin. “Your mom is gone. She can’t hurt my family anymore. And I want a family. A husband who lives with me. Works with me. Builds a life with me. Loves me.”

He stiffened, unable to process what she was saying. She wanted a family? Kids?

“And that’s never going to happen with you, is it?”

“No,” he answered. She turned away, staring off at the ocean, her jawline as set in stone as he’d ever seen it. The idea of going back to the ranch was laughable. It would be like volunteering to go to hell. His work was on the other side of the world, his life was far away from where he’d been raised and abused by his parents.

“Why?” he asked, because what she wanted didn’t make sense to him. “My parents had a ‘real’ marriage. I don’t know why you’d want that.”

“My parents had a real marriage, too, Jack. And they were very happy,” she said. “Not every relationship is like your folks’.”

He didn’t say anything, because frankly, while he understood her hypothesis, he hadn’t seen enough proof to support it.

“It was always going to end this way,” she said, and he kept his eyes on her profile, wondering where this was coming from. “We knew that. It’s not like we were ever going to have…something real.”

“You’re one of the most real things in my life, Mia.”

She closed her eyes, a strange anxiety rolling off her.

“We’ll always be friends,” she finally said. “Divorce, just like the marriage, won’t change that.”

“Okay.” He had to agree, because he supposed logically, she was right.

And there was no arguing with logic.

“We can get a divorce,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”

“That’s what I want,” she said, with a definitive nod. Her mood shifted and she was suddenly cheerful. Totally at odds with the loss he felt. “I’ll put together the paperwork,” she said.

He nodded, numb and off course. He wished he could go back to his work, those charts. Even with the errors, he could read them. They made sense.

“All right, then,” she said, pulling him into motion, leading him into the party. “I need a drink.”

MIA’S HEAD BUZZED. Her stomach churned. A glass of wine on a belly full of nerves and no food wasn’t her greatest idea. But she needed something to ease the worst of the pain.

Divorce.

A million times in the years she’d known him, she’d thought about telling Jack how she felt. Maybe if he knew, things would change. But right now, this moment, was why she never did. Because in her heart of hearts she’d always known Jack McKibbon could never return her feelings. Never.

His wounds were too deep, his brain was too big and his heart was just a bit too cold.

And she was always going to be little Mia Alatore.

She took another sip of her white wine and tried to ignore the whispers that buzzed around her like horseflies.

It wasn’t hard to guess who the dean’s wife was. Mia would put money on the tall redhead staring at her from the corner of the room with enough malice to cut steel.

But the rest of the women at the party were staring at Jack, who, even in his ill-fitting suit, was the handsomest man there. Tall and broad, rough around the edges, he was so different from the slick men surrounding him. Like a wild animal surrounded by domesticated cats.

She’d bet that most of the women in the room wouldn’t mind seeing Indiana Jones without the suit. Herself included.

Maybe she should try to get that wedding night before it was too late.

She snorted into her wineglass.