Heartwishes Read online

  Ellie waved her hand. “There’s a lot of backstory to that man. Now, what can I get you?”

  “Do you know what kind of lunch meat Colin likes?”

  “I most certainly do,” Ellie said, smiling as she went behind the counter. By the time she’d sliced the meat and packaged it, she was grinning broadly. “So you’ve conquered Colin and old man Lang too?” Her eyes were twinkling. “Welcome to Edilean, Gemma,” she said. “But then, from the moment I saw you, I knew you belonged here.”

  “Thanks,” Gemma said. Ellie had just said what Gemma had been thinking.

  She drove back to Colin’s house and put the groceries away. Her mind was fully on what had happened at the grocery. If Mr. Lang had spent his life snooping, he might be able to help Gemma piece together the mystery of Julian and Winnie and Tamsen.

  After she’d put everything away, she still hadn’t heard from Colin. Since in her experience he didn’t let her know when he’d be returning, she decided to leave and walk back to the Frazier estate. It was about four miles, and it was getting dark, but she needed the time to think.

  When she got back to what she now thought of as home, she said aloud, “I want to find out what Tamsen wrote about you . . . I mean the Stone.” She felt ridiculous at saying such a thing out loud, but she couldn’t help it, or maybe it was that she wanted to test the whole Heartwishes thing.

  Twenty minutes later, young Shamus turned over in his sleep and knocked his favorite art kit off his bedside table. He’d found the thin wooden box in the stash his mother sent back from England. He’d taken the old papers out of it and left them in the guesthouse. It was a pretty box, just the right size for his sketch pad, and Rachel had made him a cloth holder for his pencils. On the front was an intaglio carving of a tree. Lanny said it looked like the old oak tree that grew in the center of Edilean square. But their dad said the case was so old that the tree on it was long dead.

  Shamus had liked the box very much and it had rarely been out of his sight since his mother said he could keep it.

  In the morning he was not going to like that the fall had damaged the corner of the box. A piece of the wood had broken away, exposing the tip of some very old papers hidden inside.

  20

  THE NEXT MORNING, at 6:30 A.M., Gemma was outside Mike’s gym. It wasn’t yet full light and no one was about; she liked the quiet. She wondered if Colin would remember their appointment, but he opened the door to her. He was wearing a black tank top that showed his muscles and he looked very good. She felt such a spark of electricity shoot through her that she thought about grabbing his hand and heading back to her car.

  He read her expression correctly. “Me too,” he whispered, then stepped back and she saw Mike.

  He looked from one to the other. “You two here to work out or you want to be alone?”

  “To work, Master!” Gemma said loudly.

  “She’s got your number,” Colin said to Mike.

  Mike didn’t smile. If there was one thing in his life he was serious about, it was his workouts.

  For a few seconds, Gemma wasn’t sure what to do. Years before, she’d learned that it was a bad idea to go to the gym with a boyfriend. The first thing he wanted to do was establish that he knew more than Gemma, so he started telling her what to do and how to do it. One guy, a fellow history major she’d been on a date with the night before, handed her a couple of two-pound dumbbells and showed her how to do a bicep curl. “If that’s too heavy for you, let me know and I’ll get you something lighter.”

  Without a word, Gemma picked up a couple of twenty-five-pound dumbbells and started curling them. He left the gym immediately, and later he avoided her in the classroom.

  Mike solved her dilemma. “You’re used to working out with a trainer, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Yes,” she answered. “We worked out in a group, and I miss the boys I used to train with.”

  Colin seemed to understand, and he stepped back. That he wasn’t trying to play alpha male and take over made her like him more.

  Gemma went with Mike, first for some cardio, then weights, and finally they got to the boxing. Through this, Colin had been working out by himself, but she’d been watching him.

  He was phenomenally strong! He bench-pressed what it would take three average-size men to lift. He did dead lifts that would have dislocated the shoulders of most men.

  When Mike saw her looking, he said quietly, “He’s lifting light today. When he gets in here with his brothers and they start competing with each other . . . I’ve seen pros that were weaker than those guys.”

  “I could stand to see that,” Gemma said as she got off the weight bench.

  Mike told Colin he should take over the boxing with Gemma.

  “Mike,” Colin said, “you know that all I can do is pick up weight and put it down.”

  “Come on, Frazier,” Mike said, “are you afraid of her?”

  “Scared to death,” Colin answered, his eyes on Gemma.

  Mike put the big leather hand pads on Colin, then held Gemma’s gloves while she pushed her hands in their gel wraps inside. “Now, you two have each other, so I’m going to do my own workout.”

  Gemma and Colin looked at each other for a moment, then he raised the pads. “Give me what you got,” he said.

  She hesitated. If it was true that he’d never trained in boxing, he wouldn’t know how to deflect her punches, and besides, she didn’t want to hurt him. He was strong, but everyone’s skin bruised. Her first hits were light but strong enough to make the sound of leather slapping against leather that all boxers so loved.

  Stepping back, Colin looked at her in disgust. “That’s it? What about kicking? Did you forget how to do that?” He lowered his voice. “You’re going to be nice to a man who forgot all about you after a quickie?” He winked at her.

  She knew he was trying to goad her into hitting him—and it worked. “Put the side pad on,” she said seriously.

  “Too much trouble.” He smiled in a taunting way. “How could little you hurt me?”

  She didn’t think about what she did, but twirled to put a spinning back kick hard into his stomach. She faked a front kick to distract him, then did a spinning backhand to his jaw, putting her whole body behind the punch. She’d never done the moves on a person before, just on a bag, but when she’d seen it done in a ring, the recipient always went down.

  Colin staggered backward, bent forward, his hands on his knees, and tried to keep breathing.

  Mike, who had watched the whole thing, began to laugh. “You better not ever make her angry.”

  “I can see that,” Colin said as he stood up and flexed his jaw.

  “I’m—” Gemma began.

  “If you say you’re sorry I’ll take your pens away from you,” Colin said.

  She didn’t smile. “I’ve never done that to a person before, and . . .” She took a step back as Colin was coming toward her. She’d never survive one of his punches!

  When he reached her, he looked down at her in what could be called a menacing way, then he suddenly picked her up and lifted her up in an overhead press. In seconds, she was squealing in laughter as he twirled her around.

  Just at that moment, Luke and Ramsey came in the front door.

  When Rams saw Gemma high above Colin’s head, he turned back to the door. “I’m outta here.”

  Luke grabbed his cousin’s arm. “I thought you wanted to box with Gemma.”

  Colin set Gemma to the floor. “Come on, guys, let’s put you two to work.”

  It was another hour before Gemma and Colin left the gym, and she felt good.

  “Are you okay?” he asked when they got to her car.

  “The question is whether you are.” Reaching up, she touched his jaw, which was already showing a bruise. “Think kisses would make it feel better?” she asked softly, looking up at him. If it weren’t daylight and in the middle of town, she would have pulled him into the backseat of her car and had her way with him. The loo