Read When You Wish (Contemporary Romance) Online
Authors: Lori Handeland
When You Wish (Contemporary Romance) (26 page)
“It’s a report on Project Hope. I gathered all the available data on stres
s relief in children, put it together in a scientific manner, and sent the information out to all the stiffs I knew. You can see by the letters, I think there are about fifty so far, that you’re on your way.”
“But—why?”
“Your project is deserving, you just weren’t presenting it in a language these guys could understand. I speak their language in my sleep.”
“Why would you do that for me? You need the money.”
“No, I don’t.”
“I told Mrs. Cabilla to give you the grant.”
“And I told her to give it right back to you.”
“Quit being stubborn, Dan, your work is everything to you. I saw you crying in the lab last night. I couldn’t bear to make you so sad.”
“I wasn’t crying. I was laughing.”
“Laughing? What could possibly be funny? Your life’s work is ruined.”
“No, my life’s work is done. Because you made me forget time and live a little, the answer became clear.”
“I thought your experiment was crap.”
“Very interesting crap it turns out. Marry me?”
“So you can commit the ultimate rebellion?”
“Maybe.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Come on, Grace, be rebellious for the rest of your life. Marry me.”
“Why? To annoy your parents?”
“Although that’s always fun, I don’t think it’s worth getting married over.”
Shadows from the trees danced across his face, making his eyes very hard to read, but his grin told the tale.
“You’re serious.”
“Very. You showed me your world, Grace, and it’s beautiful. I don’t want to be lost without you. I don’t want to be lost ever again. You told me once when you wish on a star, your dreams come true. Make my dream come true. Be my partner, Grace, in life and in Project Hope.”
She looked deep in her heart and saw the truth. Without him, she’d be hugging trees for the rest of her life, too.
“Marry me.” He held out his hand. “Let me hold you every night. Let me help you every day.”
Grace smiled and put her hand in his. “You know what, Doc? That’s just what I had in mind.”
Epilogue
One year later
“Yoo-hoo.” Em’s voice drifted throughout the lower level of the house on Elm Street. “It’s time.”
Dan slapped the last bit of tape on a box of blankies going to St. Cecilia’s Children’s Hospital. Next he would check his e-mail for the week’s website donations. Project Hope had taken off with such force, their first problem had been finding enough blankets to go around.
“Time for what?” he called absently.
He’d enlisted the help of area nursing homes and summer day camps, asking them to make quilts and afghans as their art projects. The response was a flood.
The job he’d taken, teaching premed courses at a nearby college, put his medical training to use, and Dan discovered he was pretty good with bright young minds.
“Time for what, do you think?” Em snapped from the entryway. “For a doctor, you are so dense.”
Em left the room, and for a minute, Dan kept working. The zone was the zone, whether it be research science or blankie delivery. But the commotion in the foyer penetrated at last.
“I will carry Gracie up the stairs.”
“Olaf, I can walk just fine.”
“And drop the baby out upon her head?”
“I doubt things will happen quite that fast.”
“Grace!” Dan jumped up and ran into the hall. Grace, huge and happy with their first child, smiled indulgently.
The Jewels and Olaf shook their heads. Dan and Olaf had worked out a peaceable coexistence because of their love for Grace, though Olaf still hissed at him once in awhile. Because Dan understood why, he let him.
“It’s too early,” he said.
“Tell that to Junior.” Grace continued her journey toward the third floor of the house, where it seemed everyone was going.
“Hey, there are hospitals for this, you know?”
“I know. Isn’t it awful? What could be more natural than to bring your child into the world right in your very own home?”
They’d been having the same argument for eight months now. As usual, Grace agreed with everything he said, and Dan kept losing, but he’d vowed to keep trying until the
bitter end. “And they have doctors who specialize in delivering babies.”
She kept right on climbing. “You’re a doctor.”
He followed and lifted her into his arms. “I’m not that kind of doctor.”
She gave him h
er amazing Grace smile. “You always say that.”
“It’s always true.”
* * *
About the author:
Lori Handeland is a Waldenbooks, Bookscan, USA Today and New York Times best-selling author, as well as a two-time recipient of the Romance Writers of America’s RITA award.
For more information on Lori or her books, please go to:
Lori also writes under the name Lori Austin.
Please scroll for an excerpt of the first book in the Once Upon a Time in the West series, BEAUTY AND THE BOUNTY HUNTER,
followed by an excerpt from the second book,
AN OUTLAW IN WONDERLAND.
Lori Austin
Alexi cursed. French? Spanish? Italian? Cat wasn't certain, but whatever language, the words, the tone, the cadence were both beautiful and brutal. Kind of like Alexi himself.
She brushed her fingertips across his face. "Why did you let him hurt you?"
"Sometimes," he said, "the hurt just happens."
She narrowed her eyes. She didn't think he was talking about Langston anymore.
Cat paced in front of the window. The urge to peer from it again was nearly overwhelming. What was out there that was bothering her? If there was a rifle, and considering the prickling of her skin, there might be, she should stay away from the window.
She sat. First on the bed. Then on the chair. Then on the bed again. Alexi ignored her, seemingly captivated with the cards.
Cat went to the door, put her hand on the knob. Alexi "tsked," and she turned away. Her gaze went again to the window, and from this angle, with the horizon framed like a picture, she saw what was wrong. She couldn't believe she hadn't noticed it before, but she'd been Meg, and Meg wouldn't recognize that vista. Only Cathleen would.
She had not been back to the farm since she had left it nearly two years ago. It only took Cat an instant to decide that she was going back now. Or at least as soon as she could get away from Alexi.
"Deal," she said. Alexi glanced up, expression curious, hands still shuffling, shuffling, shuffling
."If we have to stay in here, we can at least make it interesting."
His lips curved. "Faro?"
Cat took a chair at the table. "You know better."
Cat loathed Faro, known by many as "Bucking
the Tiger." Every saloon between St. Louis and San Francisco offered the game, and most of them cheated. Stacked decks, with many paired cards that allowed the dealer, or banker, to collect half the bets, as well as shaved decks and razored aces were common.
Alexi wouldn't stoop to such tactics; he'd consider mundane cheats beneath him. Besides, he'd already taught her how to spot them, so why bother? Certainly he cheated, but with Faro, Cat had never been able to discover just how.
He'd swindle her at poker too if she wasn't paying attention, but at least with that game she had a better than average chance of catching him.
Alexi laid out five cards for each of them. "Stakes?"
"We can't play just to pass the time?"
He didn't even bother to dignify that foolishness with an answer.
For an instant Cat considered foregoing the wayward nature of the cards and, instead, getting him drunk. But she'd attempted that before. Alexi had remained annoyingly sober, and she had been rewarded with a three-day headache, which Alexi had found beyond amusing.
She had more tolerance now--Cat O'Banyon had drunk many a bounty beneath the table--but she still doubted she could drink this man into a stupor. Sometimes she wondered if he sipped on watered wine daily just to ascertain no one ever could.
Which meant her only other choice was this.
Cat lifted her cards. She gave away nothing; neither did Alexi. After pulling her purse from her pocket, she tossed a few coins onto the table. With a lift of his brow, he did the same.
They played in silence as the day waned. The room grew hot. In the way of cards, first Alexi was ahead then Cat. She watched him as closely as he watched her. Neither one of them cheated.
Much.
There was something in his face she'd never seen before. Was he scared? Had coming a hair from a hanging frightened him at last? Or was she merely seeing in Alexi a reflection of herself?
Cat bit her lip to keep from looking at the window. Instead she continued with the game. When the sun began to slant toward dusk, and the pile of coins on both sides of the table lay about even, Cat lifted her eyes. "Wanna make this interesting?"
"
Khriso mou
," Alexi murmured. "When you say things like that . . . " He moved a card from the right side of his hand to the left. "I get excited."
"How about we raise the stakes to . . . " She drew out the moment, and even though he knew exactly what she was doing, as he was the one who had taught her to do it, eventually his anticipation caused him to lean forward. Only then did Cat give him what he sought. "Anything."
"Anything?" he repeated.
"
Oui
." He cast her an exasperated glance as she purposely mangled one of his favorite words. "I win this hand, you give me anything I ask. You win--"
"I get anything I ask." "You've played this before." "Not with you." She doubted he'd played it with anyone. What
moron would promise anything? Only someone with little left to lose or . . .
Cat considered her cards without so much as a flicker of an eyelash. Someone with a hand like hers.
“All right,” he agreed. “Who am I to turn down anything?”
Not the man she knew and--
Cat brought up short. Not the man she knew and what?
Well, not the man she knew.
Alexi turned his cards face up. Cat kept her face blank as she placed hers face down.
"You win."
AN OUTLAW IN WONDERLAND
Lori Austin
"Beth?" Ethan stepped into the room. Hands open to show he held nothing in them, he stared at her as if she was a wild thing. "What are you doing?"
"What you should have done." She tightened her grip. "Long ago."
"Honey," he began. "Shut. Up." Annabeth swung the axe. The crib shattered into several large chunks.
She continued to hack away at it until the thing lay in several dozen small ones. When she finished, she tossed the blade in the center and peered out the window. She needed to leave--this room, this house, this town, this life--but right now it was all she could do to stay on her feet.
"Why did you keep it?" she whispered. "I . . . " he began, then sighed. "I don't know." On the street below, a few people still paused and pointed, but most of Freedom had gone about their business. No doubt the doctor and his no- longer-dead wife would be a topic of conversation on street corners for weeks to come, but folks had work to do and only so much time to do it in.
Annabeth's gaze went to Lewis's Sewing and Sundry. The sun glanced off the windows bright enough to blind. Ethan came up beside her. He
didn't speak; she had told him to shut up. Annabeth still couldn't look at him.
"Why?" he murmured. She wasn't sure which why he meant. Why was she here? Why had she left? Why had she lied, spied? Why had they even tried?
Or maybe just why had she used his axe on their dead child's crib? At least for that question she had an answer.
"You might have put Cora Lewis in our bed," she said, "but you aren't putting her child in the one you made for ours."
"I wouldn't," he began.
She had no idea anymore what he would or wouldn't do, but she knew one thing for certain. "Now you can't."
They continued to peer outside. Did Ethan see the streets, the buildings, the people? Or had his vision blurred with memories too?
Standing in this room all those years ago, the town below them dustier and smaller, but back then wasn't everything? Laughing together, her belly round and taut. When he'd laid his palm against it everything in the world had seemed so right. How could it have gone so quickly, and so totally, wrong?