The Cowboy's Wife For One Night

“No, of course.” She took a deep breath. “I just don’t know how to help you. How to make it better.”

“It’s better because you’re here,” he told her. “Mia, without you I don’t think I could have gotten through dinner last night, much less today.”

She was shaking her head, his words falling on deaf ears. He wasn’t blind to her awkwardness, or to the tension between them, but it wasn’t just the situation making things difficult. And he’d own up to his part of it, but she needed to do the same.

“You came up here believing the worst,” he said, knowing it was true because he’d seen it a hundred times in her eyes, the sad set to her mouth. “You never believed this would work. We were doomed from the start.”

“I’m…” She licked her lips. “This is your world—”

“Not anymore. I quit.”

“But there are twenty people here, right now, ready to offer you other jobs.”

He blinked, taken aback. “How the hell did you know that?”

“I heard them talking in the lounge.”

“Oh, come on, Mia, you’re upset over something you overheard?”

“No, Jack. I’m upset because it’s the truth. The ranch is my world. I belong there. I’m happy there.”

“I’m happy there, too,” he said quickly. Because he was. He truly was. He was happy with her. Wherever she was, that was home.

“Then what was the offer?” she asked. “The one you were excited about on the phone.”

He licked his lips, feeling like a man being taken to the mat for something he didn’t do. But if she was ready to give up on them, it only made him ready to fight harder.

“The Water Summit this year is in Copenhagen. In two months.” He fished the pamphlet out of his pocket. “Oliver was going to be the keynote and they’ve asked if I would do it in his memory.”

She looked at the pamphlet. “A week long?” she asked.

“Four days.”

“And then…what? You’ll come back?” She looked up at him, her eyes open wounds. She started to shake her head, denying him before he even had a chance.

“I want you to come with me,” he said quickly. “We’ll go early, take a side trip to Edinburgh. I’ll show you that castle. I’ll show you everything you ever wanted to see.”

He waited, his stomach in his throat, wishing, hoping and praying that the ballsy woman he loved would break through the fear and trust him. Really trust him.

Her silence killed him.

He grabbed her hands, crushing the pamphlet in her fingers, but still she didn’t look at him.

“I thought we were done being scared,” he whispered.

“You’re going to miss your old life,” she cried. “It starts like this, a trip to Copenhagen, but soon, you’re going to wish you’d never said these things—”

“Never, Mia.”

“No, let me finish. Your life…you should be able to go back to your life when you’re ready.”

“Listen to me,” he said, gripping her head in his hands, wishing he could push the words right through her thick skull and make her believe him.

“You saved my life,” he whispered.

“No, Jack, you would have been fine. You just needed rest and time.”

“I’m not talking about after the bombing. I’m talking about when we were kids. You gave me something to be happy about. Something real. The rest of my life was crap and you gave me joy. Your faith in me made me believe I could do whatever I wanted. Without that…I don’t even know who I would be, much less what I would have done with my life.”

She was silent, and big, hot, wet tears fell onto his hands from her eyes. “And then…when you told me I needed to talk to my dad, sort out my past, it’s like you did it again. You gave me a chance to reclaim some of what I’d always thought had been taken from me.”

“I’m glad, Jack. I really am. But gratitude isn’t enough to make our marriage work. We’re from two different worlds.”

He took deep breaths, his back against the wall. All these years, all the pain between them, the missed chances, and she was going to continue to rob them of a chance at real happiness.

“There is no my world,” he said, tears building in his throat. “No my life. It’s our life. Our world. Maybe you’re right, in a few years I might miss field work, but you could come with me. See those places in your notebook.”

She jerked away from him, but he held tight. He wasn’t about to let her go. Wasn’t about to give her the chance to run. Not anymore.

“But the ranch—”

“The ranch will always be there. It’s our home. Ours.”

She blinked as if those words registered, and for a second he held his breath, waiting, hoping that she’d see it his way, but the silence continued and his heart dipped under a heavy weight of grief.