Heartwishes Read online

  “Maybe he came back and that’s what threw my uncle’s plans off. That I was able to sneak up on him is not something anyone else has been able to do.”

  “So where is Tristan?” Gemma demanded as she picked up the gun off the counter.

  “I don’t know where Tris is,” Jean said as she sank down to the floor. “He was going to kill me,” she said, looking at her uncle.

  Gemma’s main concern was Tris, but at the same time she didn’t dare leave Jean and her uncle unguarded. She reached into her pocket for her phone. Her texts had finally gone through. With joy, she saw that there were two texts to her, one from Roy saying that Colin was on his way, and another one from Joce saying the police were coming.

  Jean started talking. “He heard about the paintings that had been found in Edilean, and he knew I had a connection here. He was broke, so he came here to see what he could find out, if there was something worth stealing here. If he found nothing here he probably meant to get money from me. He’s good at getting into bank accounts and emptying them. I just wanted him gone.”

  “Would he have killed you?” Gemma asked. She was nervous and wanted to look for Tristan, but she couldn’t turn her back on those two.

  Jean’s voice was quiet. “You know that little trick with his hands that Colin does?”

  Gemma wasn’t sure what she meant, but then realized that Jean was talking about sex. The thought of sharing the man she loved with another woman made her hand tighten on the gun she held at her side.

  “That’s all right,” Jean said. “You don’t have to tell me. I taught Colin to do that. You know who taught me?” She looked at her uncle on the floor. “Him. When I was ten years old.”

  Gemma gasped.

  “Colin doesn’t know it, but before I changed it, my middle name was Willow. Uncle Adrian liked to rob houses with ten-year-olds in the family, and he’d leave behind a sprig of willow wrapped in a pink ribbon. He thought of it as a joke.”

  “Yet you spent time with him while you were in law school.”

  “Yeah,” Jean said with a sneer. “I thought I was protecting Mom and me. And I thought he didn’t know how much I hated him.”

  “Why did he start robbing here in Edilean?” Gemma asked. “He must have known that there’s nothing here to meet his standards.”

  “Well . . .” Jean said.

  When she didn’t look at Gemma, she understood. “You committed the robberies here, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Jean said. “I think maybe he was going to leave town, but then he heard of that damned Heartwishes Stone, so he stayed and began to watch you and Tris. He was convinced that you two had found the Stone and that’s what you were being so secretive about. I thought that if I did some robberies using his old MO, it might draw the Feds here and that they might scare him into leaving. But he knew what I was doing and why—and he was amused. They were so very amateurish, the kind of thing he did when he was a teenager.”

  Gemma was disgusted by this whole story. “I guess he had a buyer.”

  “Several,” Jean said. “If my uncle had sold that Stone, no one in the world named Frazier would have been safe.”

  They heard gravel flying outside as a car skidded to a halt. “That’s Colin,” Gemma said.

  Jean looked at her, her eyes pleading. “Look, I know the robberies were wrong, but I didn’t know what else to do. I was losing everything. On that first night at the dinner I cooked, I saw how much Colin wanted you. And I guessed that his mother had planned it all. She can be a conniving snake.”

  Gemma started to protest, but she knew that Jean was at last telling the truth.

  “Please,” Jean said. “I’m putting my life is in your hands. If you tell Colin what I did . . .”

  Gemma looked at the man on the floor. He was beginning to stir. No one had been hurt in the break-ins. “Will evidence be found against him at the robbery sites?”

  “On the last one, I left hair and a fingerprint.” Gravel was crunching; Colin was running toward them.

  This was a decision Gemma couldn’t make quickly. She needed to think about it. “How did you find the ring in the bedpost?”

  Jean gave a derogatory little snort. “The bed was homemade. The post was screwed on crooked. He taught me to first look for the obvious.”

  Colin threw open the door. His arm was around Tris, whose face was drained of color, and he was holding onto his left arm, which looked like it was broken.

  Gemma wanted to hug both men and cry in relief, but at that moment a strong wave of nausea went through her, and she put her hand over her mouth.

  Tris, in spite of the obvious pain he was in, grinned at her. “It must be seven.” He stepped away from Colin, who was looking at Gemma in fear.

  “Are you all right?” he asked as he grabbed her by the shoulders.

  Gemma’s answer was to throw up on his shoes.

  Colin erupted in anger. “I’ll kill you for hurting her,” he bellowed as he leaped toward Jean’s uncle, who was pulling himself upright.

  “Colin, no!” Tris yelled. “It’s your kid who’s making her sick.” Colin had the man by the front of his shirt, his fist drawn back to hit him, but when Tris’s words reached his mind, he dropped the man to the floor.

  “Gemma?” he asked, looking at her.

  She was fighting more nausea.

  “Get her to the sink,” Tris yelled. “It’s your turn to hold her head.”

  Outside was the sound of sirens. The police had arrived.

  “That you felt you had to keep this secret from me . . .” Colin said as he held Gemma to him. Behind them, the police and Roy were handcuffing Jean’s uncle Adrian. “I can never apologize to you enough.”

  “It’s all right now,” Gemma said.

  He ran his hand along her cheek. “No, it’s not. I thought you and Tris—”

  “I know.” She knew she should admit to her jealousy of Jean, but now was not the time. It felt too good to be held by him, to be reassured.

  “I won’t be jealous again,” Colin said. “And I promise that I’ll spend my life making it up to you.”

  “I’d like that,” she said as he kissed her.

  “I love you, Gemma. I will love you forever.”

  “And I love you,” she said, then laughed when he insisted on carrying her to the car.

  28

  OKAY?” COLIN ASKED Gemma for the thousandth time. It was the morning after Jean’s uncle had been arrested, and Gemma was on the couch in the guesthouse, a quilt over her legs.

  All she could do was smile at the way Mr. and Mrs. Frazier and even Shamus were hovering over her. Mrs. Frazier had wanted Gemma put to bed in their best guest suite, but Colin had said their house—his and Gemma’s—was better for her.

  “I’m not ill, I’m just pregnant,” Gemma had said.

  Those words had made Mrs. Frazier burst into tears—again.

  In the end, they’d compromised. Gemma was to spend the next three days in the Frazier house, looked after by Mrs. Frazier, then she’d move into Colin’s house for good.

  “You’re sure you’re all right?” Colin asked as he looked down at her with a mixture of pride and wonder.

  “Yes,” Gemma said. “Please go and take care of the case. And find out about Tristan. I want to know how he is and what happened to him.”

  Roy stepped into the room, her phone in her hand. “I can answer that. Dr. Tris was halfway to the airport when he realized he didn’t have his phone, so he went back to get it. He surprised Jean’s uncle as he was searching Tris’s house.”

  Gemma looked at Colin, and he took her hand as he nodded. She was right; Adrian had been looking for the Heartwishes Stone.

  “Tris said the man escaped out a window and Tris went after him,” Roy said.

  “He should have stayed where he was and called me,” Colin said.

  Roy continued. “Tris knows that, but he was afraid the man would go to Mrs. Wingate’s house, so that’s why he chased him. The creep