The Cowboy's Wife For One Night

Alone.

And he didn’t want that. Not anymore.

Every day here was another day of his life in the wild. It was as if everything he wanted had broken free of the compartments he’d used to keep his life simple. Organized. Now, it was madness, he was overrun with desire and regret and a thousand wishes that he could make it all right.

“I am fighting,” he said, the words making it more true. “For Mia.”

Walter’s eyes narrowed. “You call what you’re doing fighting?”

“I’m trying—”

“You’re leaving in three days and every time Lucy looks at you, you cower like a puppy.”

Jack opened his mouth to argue, but what could he say? His dad was right.

“Do you love her?” Walter asked.

Jack thought of the way he’d loved Africa at the beginning. How raw it was. How it tugged at something primal and true, uncomplicated and pure, in his gut. The way he’d stepped foot on that soil and felt useful in a way he never had before. Vital. The people there who showed him every single moment what it meant to be gracious and joyful, not that he ever seemed to practice that.

But he wanted to. And that was new.

He thought of the way he’d loved his work. How it had felt, at the beginning, like it was just him against the problems. And how those problems engaged him and absorbed him. Until he didn’t know who he was without the work. Until he could push away all those things in his life that weren’t easily solved.

Those emotions seemed so small when it came to Mia.

He’d been thinking that love was a separate entity. Something he could label, hold in the palm of his hand and quantify, but suddenly he realized it was bigger than that. It was all-encompassing.

At this moment, science failed him and he had no frame of reference for what he felt for Mia. It was as if his feelings for her were the invisible trusses, beams and joists for everything in his life.

Mia in his life made his feelings for those other things possible. Her faith in him, her belief that he could accomplish what he set out to do, made it possible to believe in himself.

Her integrity and passion for her own work inspired in him a passion for his.

She had always anchored him; no matter where he’d been in the world, he’d always come back to her. Because his home wasn’t the Rocky M or his condo in San Luis Obispo. It wasn’t even his work. Or Africa.

Mia was his home.

And now that he was finally seeing his past for what it was, and himself for who he was, he understood that she’d owned his heart all these years.

“Yeah,” he said, feeling like a man who’d been blinded by a solar eclipse. He loved Mia. Loved her so much it had been a part of his landscape. His own body. He’d just been blind to it all this time. “I do.”

Dad smiled, his face lighting up for a bright second, and Jack felt hurtled back in time. He stood there, a kid, filled with all the hero worship a son should have for his old man, before tarnish ruined everything. And Jack wanted to hold onto that sweetness. The innocence. For an afternoon. He wanted to forget the abuse and the neglect. The way it seemed his father had turned his back on him.

And he just wanted to remember the good things. The good times.

The bitter knot of anger and resentment shifted sideways in his chest, opening up some new place, a hidden chamber with light and a view.

Maybe this was forgiveness?

He wished Mia was here; she would know for sure.

“Well,” Walter said. “I’m just letting you know. I expect you to keep in touch better than you have been. A card now and again—”

“You want to come with me?” Jack asked. “I’m moving heifers up the fire road.”

Walter’s eyes dimmed and he ran a wrinkled hand over his barrel chest. “Can’t ride, son.”

“We’ll take the truck,” Jack said, totally unsure of why he was pursuing this. “The dogs can do most of the work.”

Bear barked at the news. Daisy scratched her ear.

Dad watched him, as if he knew that Jack wasn’t sure. That half of him wished he could take back the words.

“Sounds good,” Walter said, clapping Jack on the shoulder, leading the way to Mia’s beat-up truck.

Jack lingered for a second, wondering how in the world, in a conversation about fighting for what you want, he’d ended up riding herd with his dad for the first time in fifteen years.

15

Jack was leaving in two days. It was like the calendar was embedded in her heart. Her head.

She rolled over and looked at her sister, sleeping next to her in the bed. Lucy snored. Her stylish, composed sister snored like a trucker. And slept like the dead. If it weren’t for the snoring, Mia might have been concerned.