“I doubt it. But if she does, she won’t be receiving any welcome parades.” Mia sighed. “I don’t want to talk about her anymore. What’s your family like? A lot less dysfunctional than mine, I bet.”
“For the most part,” he said gruffly. “My folks are still madly in love after thirty years of marriage. My dad works hard on the ranch, and my mom takes care of the house and makes sure there’s dinner on the table when Dad comes back.”
“Do you get along with them?”
“Yeah, I do. They’re good people, easy to talk to, always there when I need ’em. I wasn’t a rebellious kid, so we never got into any screaming matches when I was growing up.” He chuckled as a memory surfaced. “I did run away once, though.”
“Really? Why?” Mia asked curiously.
“Because my dad was gonna kill my pig.”
She burst out laughing. “You had a pet pig?”
“Sorta. When I was seven, our sow gave birth to a dozen or so piglets, and I fell in love with the runt of the litter. But the little guy was damn sick. He couldn’t move, wouldn’t eat. The vet said he suffered oxygen-deprivation during the birth and that he wasn’t gonna survive, but I was determined to nurse him back to health.”
Mia sat up with a smile. “So even back then you wanted to save lives.”
“Yup. But Frankie couldn’t be saved. He was gonna die no matter what, but I refused to accept it. When I heard my folks talkin’ about putting the little guy out of his misery, I shoved a few things in a backpack, snuck into the barn to get Frankie, and ran off.”
“Where’d you go?”
He grinned. “This little cabin on the edge of our property. I was eight—I didn’t know there was a world beyond our ranch. Didn’t take long for my dad to find me.”
“Did he kill Frankie?” she said softly.
“The minute we got home.” Jackson swallowed a lump of sorrow. “I learned a hard lesson that night, which was that you can’t save everyone. Sometimes you’ve gotta know when to let go.”
“I’m sorry they killed your piglet, Jackson.” Mia leaned down and brushed a kiss over his lips. “I bet he was really cute.”
“He totally was.”
“Are you an only child?” she asked, then answered her own question. “No, wait. I remember you mentioning you had a younger sister. What’s she like?”
“Evie? She’s dang precocious. And unlike lil’ ol’ me, she absolutely went through the rebel stage in her teens. Luckily I didn’t witness most of it because she’s eight years younger and I was already outta the house by then, so I was spared her purple hair phase and countless runaway attempts. Shane wasn’t living in the main house at that point either, so he—”
“Who’s Shane?” Mia cut in.
He swallowed again. “My older brother. When he turned twenty-one, he told my folks he wasn’t gonna keep workin’ on the ranch unless he had some privacy, so my dad fixed up that cabin I was talkin’ about before.”
“So your brother and sister still live in Abbott Creek?”
“Yup. Shane works with our dad, and Evie lives at home and goes to the community college in the next town over. She’s studying to be a massage therapist.”
“Do you get to see them often?”
The lump in his throat grew bigger. He tried to gulp it down, but it stayed jammed in his throat like a piece of spoiled food, making it difficult to get any words out.
“Not as much as they’d like,” he confessed. “I haven’t been home in a few years.”
“Because you’re stationed here?” When he nodded, Mia wrinkled her forehead. “Don’t you ever get shore leave, or whatever it’s called?”
“I do, but I haven’t had a chance to get back to Texas this last stretch.”
Hadn’t wanted to was more like it, but he was reluctant to share all the sordid details with Mia. Not yet, anyway. Not when this thing between them was still so new. His past wasn’t something he liked talking about, and the last thing he wanted to do was ruin this moment of ease and connection with Mia.
“I have three days’ leave for the holidays, though,” he said roughly. “I’ll probably head home then.”
“You should,” she advised. “It sounds like you’ve got a great family who loves you. You need to hold on to that.”
Another silence drifted over them, until Mia finally let out a loud yawn. “Let’s do something before I fall asleep,” she suggested. “Do you want to watch a movie?”
“Sure. Except this time I get to pick something from your DVD collection.”
“Good luck with that. Most of the DVDs belong to Danny, and he’s really into kung-fu movies.”
Laughing, Jackson heaved himself off the bed and embarked on a search for his clothing.
“Oh, and speaking of Danny,” Mia said, “I forgot to ask you—do you want to come to his game with me tomorrow night?”
He answered with no hesitation. “I’d love to.”
“Awesome. It’ll be nice to have some company again. I get so bored watching the games by myself.”