“Yeah,” Jeremiah said. “Probably below your pay grade.” Jack didn’t correct Jeremiah; he didn’t have the inclination to explain the mess of his life.
“Well…” Jeremiah sighed and stretched, his lean body curling and uncurling. “Guess I’ll have to find someone else.”
Jack didn’t tell him, but the former rodeo star had crusty Cheerios in the hair over his ear.
“Do you miss your old life?” Jack asked, loathe to go home despite the setting sun. Sandra and Lucy had arrived late last night, and Mia’s warnings about the women looking for his blood were beginning to make him nervous. “The rodeo?”
Jeremiah pushed his hand through his hair and ran into the Cheerios. “Like you wouldn’t believe,” he said with a smile, flinging the cereal into the grass. “You? You miss saving the world?”
“No,” Jack said right away. “Not at all. But…I miss the science. Using my brain that way to solve problems.”
“Herding cows doesn’t compare?”
Jack smiled. “That’s good too,” he said. “Surprisingly good. I like the guys, and the work is honest and hard, and that’s more than I would get most days from the university. Head of Research involved pushing a lot of paper around a desk.”
“And getting bombed.”
“That too.” He looked down at his boots, the dirt that covered them. “It’s no wonder I’m ready to be done with it.”
“Hey, I think it’s great you’re back,” Jeremiah said. “I mean, with your dad being sick and, you know, your wife being hot…it’s good you’re home.”
Home. Was that where he was? Because it felt like limbo. Purgatory.
Purgatory because his hot wife wanted nothing to do with him.
He thought about what she’d said the other night. About taking the place of his dream, and it couldn’t have been less true. Mia and his work occupied two different categories in his life. Two different places. Wanting one had nothing to do with the other.
“I better go,” Jeremiah said. “I need to pick Ben and Casey up.”
Jack shook his head, laughing.
Jeremiah’s smile crumpled at the corners. His blue eyes were dark and Jack realized all was not well with his old friend.
“Sometimes I wake up,” Jeremiah said, “and I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
Oddly enough, Jack felt just the opposite. He woke up and knew exactly who he was—he just didn’t know where he fit.
Jack had left the quiet house at dawn, and when he returned the scene was very different. He took off his boots in the mudroom and stepped into a party.
Keith Urban was playing. Lucy, the gypsy, was singing along, mesmerizing Tim and Billy who sat slack-jawed at the table. Walter and Mia were doing something with a bowl full of limes and the air smelled…delicious.
“Jack!” Sandra, a small, dark-haired woman who Jack realized looked exactly how he imagined Mia would look in twenty years, turned from the stove, her face alight with affection. For him.
It made him pause, realize how little affection he’d had in his life. Now that Mia was cold as ice toward him, there was no one in the world who would greet him like that when he walked into a room. No one whose face would light up at his presence.
He looked over at Mia, who was staring down at the limes she was juicing as if, without all her attention, they might fly away.
How sad was that? Thirty-five years old and he’d burned every bridge that would lead him toward family. Toward belonging to anyone.
Sandra wiped thick cornmeal goo off her hands with the tea towel tucked into the tie of her apron and crossed the kitchen to wrap him in a huge hug, her strong arms a vice around his waist.
She smelled like corn and spice and roses. And he closed his eyes and remembered a thousand of these hugs while growing up. Every day he’d come home from school, Sandra would turn from the dinner she was making and hug him, ask him about his day, bring him a cookie and a glass of milk.
In the aftermath of one of Victoria’s rampages, Sandra would be there, a small shadow offering comfort and a cold cloth. Until he grew such a hard shell he no longer believed he needed such care.
He’d forgotten the good things, pushed them away so as to keep his goals sharp. Swords that he used to hack away at the ties that bound him to this land. But there had been good things at the Rocky M. Mia, her mother and sister had been those good things.
And he’d used those swords to keep them away.
“We’re so glad you are safe,” Sandra said, looking up at him, her brown eyes warm and worried. “And here!” she cried. “Finally, where you belong.”
“Oh, come on, Mom.” Lucy, tall and thin, covered in gold bangles and bone necklaces, approached. Her eyes were acidic, her smile too sharp for comfort. “Jack belongs to the world.”