Three Wishes (31 page)

“I was about here,” I said, pointing to the sand and looking up at the rock. “When you first saw me, right?”

“That’s right,” he whispered, sorrow etching each syllable.

“Javier?” I asked.

He looked at me, and I swear to God, he had tears in his big, brown eyes.

“Javier?”

He shook his head, angrily wiped his eyes, and stood there, hands on hips, staring at the ground a moment before looking my way again. “I don’t know, Zara. This feels so wrong to me. As if I should do anything I can to stop you from leaving.” He moved toward me and I backed away, up against the rock. “Perhaps if I told you—”

“No, Javier,” I begged. “Please, don’t say anything more. This is hard enough…”

“I will not say anything,” he whispered huskily, still advancing. He pulled me to him, almost angry as he kissed me, kissed me harder and deeper and for longer than I’d ever been kissed before…as if he
willed
me to understand how deep his feelings for me ran, if I wouldn’t let him tell me. My hands slipped up his shoulders, to his hair—his glorious hair—rubbing his scalp, pulling his head down closer to mine.

We paused after a while, panting, our breath intermingling before our faces, his nose rubbing my cheek. And those moments were almost more passionate than kissing, that intimacy, standing so close. “Javier—”

“Zara. Please. Please don’t go. Let us see what this is between us. Let us explore it, determine if it’s the love we both most want.”

“No,” I said, half moaning, “no,” and I shoved him back a step. “No,” I repeated a final time.

He blinked again, looking at me with such hurt hound dog eyes that I had to turn away, toward the sea. “I need to go back, Javier. As much as it pains me to do so.”

He wrapped his big hands around the curve of my bare shoulders and gently pulled, until my back rested against his chest. He wrapped his arms across my chest and over my shoulders, lowering his face down beside mine. I held on to his forearms, my nose against his sleeves, trying to memorize his scent of leather and salt and sweat and sage. “Are you certain, Zara?” he whispered.

Was I certain? Truly? Because right now, I couldn’t imagine anywhere, any
time
, I’d rather be than right now, here, in his arms.

“Are you certain you aren’t about to do something that we’ll regret forever?” he went on, tightening his grip, as if he intended to never let me go.

“No, I’m not,” I said, twisting in his arms to face him. “But I think I have to, Javier. If it’s wrong when I get back, don’t you think I could just sit down and wish those same three wishes again and return to you?”

He took my face in his hands. “Or is it a one-time opportunity? A hand of cards that might never be dealt again?”

“How do I know?” I said, with a humorless huff of a laugh.

“What
do
you know?” he whispered, nuzzling my cheek, my ear, hovering close and yet not allowing himself to get any closer. It was an agony. A sweet agony. “Zara, tell me what you know for certain.”

“That’s not fair,” I whispered back, closing my eyes, feeling it
all
as pain now, a tearing, as if my torso were being ripped in two. Half of me was called to go; half of me shouted to remain. He wanted to hear about the part that shouted. He wanted to hear that I was falling in love, just as surely as he was.

“You know what I know?” he said, wrapping me back in his arms, cradling my head to his chest. “I know my heart cries out to me to fall to my knees and beg you to remain. To profess the words in my heart that you do not want to hear. But, Zara, I was forced to return to this place, to stay here. I will not do the same to you. I care for you too much to ever force anything on you but what your own heart desires.”

I swallowed hard and nodded. “I think I must try,” I said, forcing myself to look into his eyes. He had to know that I was feeling the same kind of pain as he was over this. “If I didn’t try, I think I’d always wonder. Wonder if this was a mistake, me being here at all.”

He pinched my chin between thumb and forefinger and looked into my eyes. Then he bent to kiss my lips softly. “You will try,” he said, “and if the Lord doesn’t send you back, you will be satisfied? To remain here with me in this time?”

I nodded. That seemed right. It wasn’t up to me, not really. I didn’t have the power to send myself to one era or another. That had to be all God, all the way. There was no other explanation for it. Some weird portal wrapped up in an ancient golden lamp, a highway that transcended time.

Javier sat down in the sand, legs sprawled. He patted the sand in front of him. “Come here, future-girl. Sit with me. I will have you as close to me as I can, until you are wrenched from my grasp, if that is to be the way of it.”

I smiled sadly at him and sat down between his legs. I unwrapped my bundle that contained the lamp; he looked over my shoulder at what else it contained, nestled in the folds of my clothing and the shawl.

“You are taking the fossil? And my note?”

I gazed down at them sadly, then picked up the fossil, settling back against his chest. “It will always remind me of our day together. I needed something, to show me this all wasn’t some vivid dream.”

He was silent a moment. “And the lamp? It’s the same one my mother had?” he asked. “You both are certain?”

“It is the one that brought me here,” I said. “She seemed to think it was the same.”

“It is all so very strange. I have never heard of such a thing. Have you?”

“Time travel? Only in books. Movies,” I said.

“What are movies?”

“Something from the future,” I mused. “Pictures, in sequence, action. It’s hard to explain…”

“I scraped off the growth,” he said, a moment later, touching the lamp between my fingers, running a finger over the odd lettering.

“I see that.”

“Do you think that might have harmed its power?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Whatever animates this thing is bigger than a few shells. And your mother didn’t pause over it—as if when she received it from the merchant in Morocco, it wasn’t perfect then either.”

His hands left the lamp, and he pulled back my hair, lifting it to his face? His lips? A shiver ran down my back. “Do what you must, Zara,” he said softly, moving his hands down my bare arms, entwining his fingers between my knuckles, still covering the lamp. “I cannot bear this for long. But I am ready. Do what you must. God brought you to us. If he wills it, you shall go. I will trust him, no matter what happens.”

I didn’t hesitate. I closed my eyes and wished. Wished with everything in me. For this kind of love, just sparking between Javier and me, back home, in my own time. For family like Javier’s, for little brothers and sisters who could become like my own. For a mother like I’d never had. Men who would be like fathers. For adventure…

On and on, I wished, waiting for the pop, the flash of light. Bracing myself for the comforting warmth of Javier’s body to disappear from my back. For the sounds of cars and shrieking children and a distant train along the tracks. For the smell of asphalt and tar to mingle with the salty sea on my nose…

Again and again, I tried.

For hours more.

Until I was spent and weeping, cradled in Javier’s arms, and gave way to exhaustion…

Until the rumble of my stomach woke me, and I found I was lying beside Javier, snoring softly. We’d fallen asleep on our sides at some point, him curved behind me, the wolf-dog curled up before me. The dog smelled of wind and grass and sea salt and musk. Javier’s arm, under my cheek, smelled of leather and oranges and sagebrush. And for a moment, I just lay there, unmoving, trying on this reality for size.

I was apparently in 1840 to stay.

Relief flooded through me, making me want to shout and cry at the same time. I shuddered. My skin felt hot and tears coursed down my cheeks before I even realized I was weeping.

“Zara?” Behind me, Javier stirred, eased his arm from beneath my head, and rose up on his elbow to look down at me. “You are here,” he whispered, his own eyes welling up as he gently wiped away my tears. “But you are crying. Because you are angry?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Because I’m relieved. Because I feel like I just made a terrible decision, but was spared. Because I’m
here
. With
you
.” I reached up and caressed his face, staring into his eyes. “And Javier, there is
no
place I’d rather be.”

He took one of my hands and kissed the knuckles, staring back at me all the while. “I am so grateful, Zara. So grateful,” he repeated, swallowing hard. “What I wanted to tell you before was—”

“Shhh,” I said, lifting two fingers to his lips. “I know,” I whispered. “I know. I want to hear those words, in time. But today…Today…it’s been nearly more than I can handle. Do you understand?”

“I do,” he said, gently pushing a coil of hair from my eye. “And I shall abide by your wishes. Only if you allow me to tell you some day, and the day after that. And the day after that…”

He bent to gently kiss me on the lips, then on my eyes, then pulled me into his arms for a long hug. He sighed, rose, brushed the sand from his trousers and reached out a hand to help me up. “Sadly,
mi corazón,
we must go. There is a storm gathering,” he said, eyeing the gray skies, heavy with rain, “but I think we have time to get there in time.”

“Get where?” I asked blankly, brushing off the skirt of my dress, but mostly thinking that he’d just called me his
heart
. It made my own beat double-time.

“Where?” he asked me in confusion. “You thought you’d be gone,” he said a moment later, understanding washing over his face as he tucked my hand in the crook of his elbow and we began the climb up the sand dune. “Remember Captain Craig’s invitation? He awaits us. And happily, I shall have the prettiest woman in all of Alta California on my arm when I arrive. I confess I did not enjoy the thought of arriving alone, and trying to explain your…absence. Only my mother would have understood.”

“Your mother!” I said. “Do you think she will forgive me? For trying to leave?”

He nodded and lifted my hand again to his lips. “I wager she already has. She…
feels
for you, Zara. As my entire family does. Me, most of all.”

“Careful,” I said in mock warning, even as I smiled, aware of the L-word he was trying to avoid, feeling the ache, the glory of it in my own heart too. But it had been enough this day, all we’d said, all we’d experienced. And there was a ship captain to meet and a dinner to make it through before I slept this night.

And when I went to sleep, I knew I’d rest deeply, at peace in a home that was already becoming my own, among a family that I was eager to claim forever. To figure out just what this L-thing with Javier would look like, and discover what adventures were ahead of us, hand in hand.

Because I’d already begun to see my wishes fully granted.

My future begin to unfold.

In this great, distant past.

A SNEAK PEEK AT THE UPCOMING SEQUEL

TO
THREE WISHES...

FOUR WINDS

RELEASING FALL 2016