Molly O'Keefe - His Wife for One Night

“Jack doesn’t like these things,” she said with a shrug. “And I’m not so hot on them, either.”

He watched her carefully and she watched him right back. If she was here to be the loving wife, she’d better get her act together.

“You know that first summer when Jack and I worked together and I heard he was married, I thought it was a joke. We’d worked side by side twelve hours a day for a week and he never said a word about you.”

“Are you trying to start a fight?” she asked.

“No.” Oliver leaned against the banister, looking like a man settling in for a long chat. A chat she had no interest in. “But when I asked him about you, he wouldn’t shut up. I heard about when you were a baby and your family first moved to his ranch. I heard about how you followed him around as soon as you could walk, snuck into the bed of his truck when he drove away to college.”

“What is your point?”

“He said you were his best friend.”

Her throat tightened up and she angled her face toward the wind, the breeze cooling her burning eyes.

And that’s all I’ll ever be.

“What’s going on, Mia?” Oliver asked. “I’ve never asked. I figured whatever relationship you two had worked for you—but something is wrong. It’s all over your faces.”

It was hard, but she didn’t look away or flinch.

The tension inflated inside her like a balloon, and she couldn’t get a deep breath. But she didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say.

“You don’t let anyone in, do you?” he finally asked.

Just Jack, she thought, and that didn’t end so well.

“Don’t be dramatic, Oliver,” she said.

“I’m not, I’m simply putting my underused and underappreciated sensitive people skills to work.”

She laughed, the tension escaping. The relief was so great she couldn’t stop laughing.

“That’s more like it,” he said, grabbing two more glasses of wine from a passing waiter. “Now, let’s have a party.”

By the time Jack found them, Mia was doubled over with laughter listening to Oliver’s story about Jack eating bugs as the guest of honor in a family’s hut.

“He was picking legs out of his teeth for two hours!” Oliver said, and Mia screamed, imagining it.

“Oliver is exaggerating.” Jack’s familiar low voice sent goose bumps down her arms and over her chest. Her laughter died in her throat, the tension back in force.

Her stomach was never going to be the same.

“Don’t listen to him, Mia. You have my word,” Oliver said, putting his hand over his heart, “every syllable is the truth.”

Jack sighed and leaned against the balcony next to Mia. Static leaped between them, small currents zipping along her skin letting her know just how close he was.

And how far away.

“This night is miserable,” he said, tilting his head back.

“Because you don’t hang out with the right people,” Oliver said, winking at Mia. “Did you make anyone mad in there?” Oliver asked Jack.

“Probably,” she said.

Jack looked at her. “How much have you had to drink?” he asked.

“Are you going to scold me?” she asked.

“No.” He raised his hand and one of the ever-present waiters appeared. “I’m going to join you.”

“I’d better do some damage control,” Oliver said. “You two have fun.”

The silence left in Oliver’s wake was thick and heavy, and she wanted to collapse under the weight. The sheer volume of all the things they weren’t saying.

“You remember fun?” he asked and she knew he was looking at her. Her skin felt raw under his gaze.

She nodded.

“I think the last time I had fun was your high school graduation.”

“Come on, isn’t Africa fun?”

“Fun?” He laughed, but it wasn’t joyful. “No, Africa is hard work and a bureaucratic nightmare.”

She wasn’t all that shocked to hear it. His emails had been increasingly rant-related.

“But your high school graduation?” His eyes twinkled. “Remember?”

She would never forget. “You drove all night from Cal Poly only to get me out of bed and drag me to the roof of the high school.”

And at dawn he drove her home and left—back to college—without once talking to his family. Without even stepping foot in the house.

“Oh, like I had to drag you,” Jack said with a laugh, and her body shook at the sound. “You jumped into my truck. And, if I remember correctly, you led the way up to the roof.”

“Only because you showed me.”

“That was probably a mistake. I spent a lot of sleep less nights in college sure you’d fallen or hurt yourself.”

“I never went up on those roofs without you,” she said.

“Really?” he asked, looking down at her in surprise.

Jack had this thing, growing up, whenever he got a chance to get into town, he would sneak around Wassau, finding his way up onto the roofs of every public building. The high school, the grocery store, the two churches.

He could walk from Second Street down Main Street without ever touching the sidewalk.

When she started following him around like a lost dog and he realized he couldn’t shake her, he took her to the roofs with him.

A whole other world existed up there. He had little forts with sleeping bags and food. Flashlights and books. Sometimes, he’d told her, he slept on those roofs.

His home away from home.

He had a thing for adventure, even then.

She just had a thing for him.

But once he was gone, the roofs were just roofs.

“I can’t believe you never got caught,” she said.

“Mom found out,” he said, his smile fading.

“Really?” she breathed. “I never knew that.”

He nodded. “The second night I did it,” he said. “I was fifteen and Dad took me into town while he had a beer at Al’s and I fell off the grocery store, came home with my clothes all torn.”

“What did your mother do?”

Because tearing clothes and climbing buildings weren’t something Victoria would let pass, and Victoria had been fond of punishment. Jack shot Mia a dubious look, which hid more pain than she could imagine. “What she always did.”

She didn’t say anything, didn’t offer any sympathy, because he hated that. Always had.

And she respected his wishes. If he didn’t want to talk about Victoria’s temper, about the abuse, that was his business.

Besides, the night was a big enough bummer as it was. Scandals. Affairs. Divorce. Painfully high heels. They didn’t need to stroll down memory lane with Victoria McKibbon.

“You hungry?” he asked, standing upright as if jerking himself away from his thoughts.

“Starving.”

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

TEN MINUTES LATER, Jack made his way toward her with a bottle of red wine under his arm, two glasses sticking out of his coat pocket and a heaping plate of food in his hands.

The twinkle in his eye—that twinkle that she’d recognize if he was eighty years old and disfigured in some terrible accident, that twinkle that led her heart places it had no business going—was like a siren song, leading her astray.

Get ready, that twinkle said, because I’m coming for you. And I’ve got a plan.

In the past that plan usually involved a ladder and a rooftop scheme.

Her heart lurched at the sight of him. At the memory of who he’d been to her.

“You want to go on the roof?”

“Do we need a ladder?”

“Nope.”

She blinked, looking around the glittering party that was all for him, and saw just how far he’d come from the roofs of Wassau. And how much she didn’t belong here.

“Jack,” she whispered, “I’m sure you have plenty of people here you need to schmooze.”