Heartwishes (29 page)

Gemma didn’t wait for introductions. “What’s wrong?” she asked as she moved close to him. It was almost as though she wanted to protect him.

“They’ll see me,” he said in a deep, guttural voice that sounded as though it was rarely used.

She didn’t waste time asking who. She looked down the aisle on the left and saw three women dressed as though they’d just come from church. They were in what appeared to be a very serious discussion about a jar of jam. The next aisle contained two women, dressed the same, but studying the label on a can of soup. There was no way Mr. Lang could race past either aisle and not be seen.

Gemma looked back at the little man. He was now lifting one foot after another, looking more desperate for escape with each second.

Gemma’s mind raced. Was there some way she could use her body to conceal him and get him out of the store? If it were winter she could have thrown a coat over him, but she had nothing, saw nothing she could use.

With every second, her protective instinct grew stronger. She
had
to safeguard him! If she’d had a sword she would have stood in front of him and brandished it.

When she turned back, she saw a young store clerk walking past carrying a huge, empty box that had contained paper towels.

Gemma didn’t give herself time to think but ran the few steps to the young man and grabbed the box. Mr. Lang seemed to have read her mind as he moved to the front of the big glass case. Gemma lifted the box over him and he obligingly sank down and the box rim went flat to the floor.

Seconds later, the five women came to the end of the aisles and
they stopped at the sight of the big container in front of the glass case.

“It’s not like Ellie to be so messy,” one woman said.

“I think the overall service here has gone down in the last years,” a second woman said.

“Do you think Ellie’s in financial trouble?”

“For heaven’s sake!” the tallest woman said. “Some clerk left a box behind. It isn’t Ellie’s fault. Let’s just move the thing.”

Gemma stepped around the box to put herself in front of the women. “I think it covers up something that spilled. You’d better not get your shoes near it,” she said quickly.

“I hope it’s not toxic,” a woman said.

Gemma feared she was single-handedly destroying Ellie’s reputation. “Actually, I think it’s a broken bottle of maple syrup.”

“I bet that Hausinger boy did it,” a woman in a pink dress said. “I just saw him with his mother. That child is never disciplined.”

“Where is someone to help us?” one of the women asked. “I need some sliced ham.” She pounded on the bell on top of the case.

Gemma stepped between the women and the counter. Now all she had to do was keep the store workers from lifting the box and taking it away.

When Ellie came out of the back, Gemma wasn’t sure how to tell her to play along. The women all started talking at once, very upset about the big box in front of the glass case. Gemma used the noise to slip to the back of the women and began waving her arms and vigorously shaking her head at Ellie. She pointed at the box and mouthed, “No!”

When one of the women looked back at Gemma, she dropped her hands.

Ellie doesn’t miss a beat. “What can I get for you ladies today? The red snapper just came in.” She had to listen to the women’s
complaints about the aisle being blocked, all of it presented in a way that was meant to sound constructive, even caring, but wasn’t. When Ellie encouraged them to give their orders, one of the women looked at Gemma as though wondering who she was and said she was there first.

Gemma put her hand on top of the box, leaning on it in a proprietary way, and said that she hadn’t made up her mind yet.

Ellie filled the orders of the women and dispatched them in record time. When one of them dawdled over the price, Ellie said she’d forgotten that for today only it was on sale at half price.

The second the women turned to leave, Ellie ran to the front of the counter. She told a clerk to follow the women to make sure they didn’t double back, then she looked at Gemma. “What have you trapped? Please tell me it’s not a rat.”

Gemma couldn’t help grinning mischievously as the two women lifted the big box straight up. Sitting on the floor, his legs crossed and looking perfectly content, was Mr. Lang.

“That’s recycling at its finest,” Ellie said, making Gemma laugh.

With the agility of a much younger person, Mr. Lang stood up and stared at Gemma for a moment. He started to leave, but then he turned back and said, “Thank you.” He disappeared down an aisle.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him say those words before,” Ellie said as she nodded to a clerk to take the box away.

“You mind telling me what that was all about?” Gemma asked.

“Was Lang afraid the women would see him?”

“He acted like they had rifles and he was their prey.”

Ellie chuckled. “If anyone did that it would be me. I’d go after him for overcharging me for his produce. Anyway, Lang knows about people in Edilean back to the 1930s, and he’s become much sought after to answer people’s questions about their ancestors.”

“He’s a genealogist?”

“Ha! Lang is a snoop, has been all his life. He likes to listen in on people and spy on them.”

“That’s not nice,” Gemma said.

“Lang never tries to be ‘nice.’”

“So who are the women?”

“They are members of the Edilean Ladies League and they want him to speak at their next meeting.”

“But isn’t that an honor? Or is he afraid of public speaking?”

“He’s afraid of being seen. He likes to remain anonymous. If he could be invisible, he would be. Being recognized keeps him from being able to do his spying. He used to be somewhat feared in this town and he loved that, but now he’s almost a celebrity.” Ellie smiled. “Last fall when my daughter caught a couple of criminals, she inadvertently made Lang into a respectable person. It’s been a joy to see his misery.”

“That sounds ominous,” Gemma said, but she couldn’t help smiling at Ellie’s gleeful tone.

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

T
HE 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 look in her eyes made him take a step forward, but she put her hand on his chest. “I think we should go home.”

He stepped back. “You’re right. We need to shower and change. See you at church at ten?”