The Cowboy's Wife For One Night

She wore a pair of boxer shorts, so her long caramel-colored legs were stretched out over his unmade bed, her thin ankles crossed, her toes naked and practically taunting him.

He wanted to eat her, lick her. Spread himself on top of her like butter and melt right into her skin.

“Why aren’t you in that reclining position in your room?” he snapped, yanking his filthy tee-shirt over his head and firing it into the corner with the rest of his filthy tee-shirts.

“Because I want to talk to you,” she said. He noticed, because he noticed everything about her, that she went a little wide-eyed at the sight of his chest.

Good.

He slid open the top button on his jeans, ready to make her eyes pop right out of her head.

“What are you doing?” she squeaked.

“I need to take a shower,” he said, undoing another button.

“Can you keep your clothes on while I talk to you?”

“I suppose it depends on what you’re saying.” He grinned at her blush. Damn it but his mood was improving. Mia Alatore with a blush was about the strangest thing he’d ever seen, like seeing a dog in pants or something stupid, but it was pretty, too.

“I want to talk to you about the bombing.”

He undid the last buttons at once. “Sorry,” he said, pushing the pants right down his legs. “Not interested.”

“Stop!” she cried, all but shielding her eyes. “Stop, please Jack, I just want to talk.”

She was taking small glances at him in his underwear and then looking away for a second before her eyes came wandering back.

“Well, I don’t,” he said. “Not about Africa.”

He tucked his thumbs in the waistband of his boxers like he was about to pull them down and Mia’s eyes lurched up to his.

“I read your statement to the university,” she blurted.

That gave him pause. “Snooping around?”

She nodded, not even embarrassed. “How can you believe that the bombing was your fault?”

“I don’t believe the bombing was my fault,” he said. “I believe the fact that Oliver is dead and Trevor and I were hurt is my fault.”

“You didn’t make the decision to build the compound so far from the pump site.”

“Well, I sure as hell didn’t correct it, though, did I?”

“But neither did anyone else, Jack. And would it have mattered if you had?” she asked. “The place was bombed down to nothing. Was the compound even left standing?”

He nodded, feeling bile in his throat, wishing he had some clothes on. “The storage area was ruined, but the living quarters were practically untouched. If we’d been able to get inside when we heard the planes coming, Oliver would be alive.“

“Oh, Jack.” She sighed and he knew she understood. His guilt wasn’t for nothing; he wasn’t walking around with a God complex. There were ramifications for mistakes that he’d made. Him.

And, sure, Oliver and Trevor might have noticed the problem with the build site and chimed in, but no one else had until it was too late. And then they’d just decided to do the best they could.

“But what if you weren’t able to get inside?” she asked.

He blinked at her. “I’m not following.”

“You can’t second-guess everything. It’s a war over there, Jack. Maybe you would have told someone about the problems with the map, but maybe that would have created another problem. Perhaps wherever the compound should have been placed, it would have been leveled. Maybe you’d be dead instead of Oliver. Or all of you would be dead.”

He turned around, tired of this conversation. His towel hung on the closet doorknob and he grabbed it, throwing it over his shoulder. “I’m done talking about this,” he said and left her in his bed to go take a shower.

He’d just stepped under the hot spray when the shower curtain was jerked aside.

“Jesus, Mia,” he snapped, yanking part of it back to cover his crotch. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Trying to talk some sense into that thick head of yours. This is not your fault. You don’t need to take responsibility for every bad thing that happens.”

“Go lie down—”

“No!” she snapped. Mist sprayed over her face and hair, littering her with diamonds and sparkle. The front of her shirt got damp, outlining the full slopes of her breasts, the soft points of her nipples.

His anger toward her turned into something else, something dark and desperate.

“Your mom did this to you,” she said. “How many years as a kid did you do everything you could to make your mother happy? You made her your own responsibility.”

He ignored her and that made her even more angry.

“It’s not your fault that you’re alive and he’s dead,” she said, her eyes bright and hot, and the fever in his belly grew. Behind the shower curtain, his erection throbbed.

“Do you hear me, Jack?”

No, he thought, watching the white in that flannel shirt grow translucent.