cliffs of Santa Barbara, miles from the university, in an effort to bring up the big bucks from Los Angeles. Africa was a popular charitable cause in Hollywood.
“Just try, Jack.”
“Christ, Oliver. The university is trotting us out like trained monkeys—”
“For Mia. Try to get your head out of the dirt for one night.”
Right. Mia.
“It’s been over a year—”
“I know how long it’s been,” Jack said. A year and two months, almost to the day.
The excitement of seeing her, when he remembered, was bright and hot, shooting out sparks.
But these maps…
“When is she supposed to arrive?” Oliver asked and Jack swore, checking his watch.
“Any minute,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”
He hung up and ran a hand over the scruff covering his chin. He’d wanted to be dressed—at least showered—by the time Mia showed up. As if being clean-shaven would somehow make this reunion easier.
But the maps had arrived and he’d gotten distracted.
Jack closed his burning, tired eyes. Jet lag dogged him. Not to mention the malaria he had barely recovered from. He was thirty-five and he felt a hundred and five.
The truth was, he was tired of Africa. Tired of the sand. The heat. The militias. Of coming home sick, only to turn around a few months later to go back. He was tired of never being able to meet the need, of feeling like a failure every time he left. But he couldn’t tell Oliver. He couldn’t tell anyone.
This had been his dream, water for the thirsty. And to give up on it now felt shameful. Selfish.
And this whole situation with Mia was making his crappy mood worse.
Calling Mia like this…not quite the reunion he’d dreamed about.
I owe you, she’d written in response to his email asking her to come to this event with him.
Owe me, he thought, turning the words over in his mind like a spit of meat over a fire. Logically, that was true.
But there were thirty years of friendship between them. A thousand emails. Promises made and kept.
Mia could be prickly. And his being out of the country for the past year had no doubt made her very prickly despite the daily emails.
This reunion of theirs was going to be unpredictable. And not being able to prepare for Mia’s mood made him nervous. Was she going to be angry? Happy, like him, just to see each other?
He didn’t know and it was making him crazy.
Someone pounded on the door to his hotel suite. The windows rattled as if mortars were being dropped. There was a pause and then more pounding.
It was her. Not that he could tell by the pounding. It was his internal barometer, which measured pressure and changing dynamics better than any equipment he carried into the field.
Warning, that barometer whispered. Be very, very cautious.
He ran his hand across the front of his worn T-shirt and crossed the room, his shoes soundless on the broadloom.
He was surprised to feel his heart thudding in his chest. Nerves? he wondered. Excitement?
A month ago he’d stared down a truck full of hostile militiamen and now he stared at the mahogany door, anxious about what stood on the other side.
It wasn’t the same kind of anxiety. Mia wouldn’t have weapons. He hoped. But she’d be armed with something far trickier and more insidious. Something he couldn’t negotiate with and had never known how to handle.
His past.
He opened the door and as expected, it was her.
Mia Alatore.
And his heart slipped the reins of his brain and he was so damn glad to see her. To have her here. Selfishly, she just made him feel good. The world fell away, the maps disappeared, and his whole existence was Mia.
“Good God, Jack, I thought I was going to drive right into the ocean before I found this place. You didn’t tell me we’d be hanging over a cliff.”
A whole lot of attitude in a tiny package.
She barely came up to his shoulder. Her too-big plaid shirt hung loose on her body. A ball cap, beat-up and white with dried sweat, sat low on her head, keeping her eyes shaded.
She was the same. Exactly the same and part of him rejoiced. In a world gone crazy, Mia Alatore was the same.
Her voice—laced with the sweet accent of her Hispanic heritage—was like a shot of whiskey right to his gut. He’d been to a lot of places, seen sex acts and rituals that would make a monk give up his robes. But nothing in the world was as sexy as Mia’s voice.
“I’ll keep you out of the ocean, Mia,” he said with a smile. Her head jerked up and he got a good look at her wide amber eyes.
There she had changed. Over the past five years, he’d seen her three times, not counting right now, and each time he saw her, her eyes had faded a little more. The fire and glitter worn soft over the years.
He could see the years in those eyes, the darkness where there had only been light.
“Did you have trouble?” he asked, leaning in to carefully kiss her warm, smooth cheek. She smelled like sunshine and horses.
Oddly enough, two of his favorite smells. He could have stood there, sniffing her cheek all day.
“No,” she murmured, ducking away and clearing her throat. “But they wouldn’t valet my truck. Some punk kid in a uniform made me park in the employee lot.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t make you park it in the ocean.”
“Watch it, Jack,” she said with a smile and his chest swelled with fondness. “She’ll hear you and she doesn’t like water any more than I do.”
“It’s good to see you,” he said, awkwardly patting her shoulder. “Thank you for coming.”
“Well,” she muttered, “like I said, I figure I owe you.” She stepped inside their room. Suite, actually—he made sure she had her own room off the living room. He didn’t want there to be any more awkwardness than necessary.
“Nice place,” she said, looking around. “Better than the last dump. Being Indiana Jones must pay better than it did a year ago.”
Christmas, a year ago, he’d asked her to come to Los Angeles, to sign some legal paperwork before he took his sabbatical. He’d paid little attention to the motel where they’d stayed, not realizing how crappy it was until she pointed it out.
“The university is paying for this. It’s part of the…thing.”
“The thing?” Her smile was brief but breathtaking, a lightning strike over the Sahara Desert. “You live some kind of life, Jack McKibbon, if people throwing millions of dollars at you is considered just a thing.” Her eyes were warm. Fond. He wondered for a minute if she was…proud of him?
How novel.
“It’s not at me, per se, it’s the university. I mean, it’s our research. Our pump. But the money is going to the university. For more research.” He was babbling, awkwardly talking about his work, which did not bode well for the night ahead. Another reason he hated these events.
If people wanted to talk science, he could do that all day. But explaining the complex nature of water tables and the ever-changing political nature of Sudan in lay men’s terms was impossible for him.
Oliver was better at that stuff.
“Either way. It’s a good thing you do.” Her smile