Heartwishes (38 page)

Gemma put the gown back in the paper and into the bag, then took a deep drink of her smoothie. “I really need to go. I’m setting up interviews at some universities and I need to find out about them. As soon as I get approval on my subject matter, I’m going to be working on my dissertation in the evenings.”

Colin watched her gather her bags. “Wait! I haven’t told you about Luke and Mike.”

“That’s all right. I’ll get Joce to tell me, or I’ll call Sara. Anyway, I need to get Sara’s Florida address so I can send her my gift.”

“They’re moving back here.”

“How wonderful!” Gemma said as she stood up. “It was so nice talking to you.” With a smile, she left and hurried around the corner to enter the heirloom sewing shop.

“Did you forget something?” Mrs. Wingate asked as soon as Gemma was inside.

To Gemma’s absolute horror, she burst into tears.

“Oh, my goodness,” Mrs. Wingate said as she hurried forward and helped Gemma to a chair. She took her bags from her and gave her a tissue from a box on the counter.

“I don’t usually cry,” Gemma said, “but lately I haven’t been able to stop.”

“Excessive hormones will do that,” Mrs. Wingate said.

“I don’t have—” Gemma began but glanced at the woman. “How did you know?”

“I opened this shop right after my husband passed away, and you can’t imagine all that I’ve seen. So many young women come in here pretending to be looking for a gift for a relative, but they’ve really just found out about the baby they’re carrying, and they want someone to talk to.”

“What do you do with them?”

“First, I listen, then I send them to an Aldredge. Is young Tristan . . . ?”

“The father?” Gemma asked. “No.”

“Ahhh,” Mrs. Wingate said. “Have you told our sheriff yet?”

“Hell will freeze over before I—” Gemma took a breath. “I mean, no I haven’t. We had an argument and he . . .” She shrugged.

“I understand,” Mrs. Wingate said, “and you can rest assured that I’ll tell no one. Although, dear, you do know that you can’t hide the coming event for too long.”

“Especially since twins seem to infest this town.”

Mrs. Wingate smiled. “They do, don’t they? In fact, just this
morning one of the women who sews for me finished some outfits for twin boys. I have a feeling that dear Sara’s good fortune will send several people to my shop to purchase gifts for her.”

Gemma gave a sniff and smiled back. “It was good business of you to think of that.”

“I have to think ahead. I’m trying to survive in a world of mass production. Now, come with me and I’ll show you some different items.”

“Do you have a restroom?”

“I have to have one when so many
enceinte
ladies like yourself visit me. Right through there.”

Gemma smiled at the use of the French word. Her grandmother thought
pregnant
was a vulgar word and that no one with a respectable upbringing would use it.

When Gemma returned, Mrs. Wingate had spread some of the prettiest clothes she’d ever seen across the counter, and she got another lesson, this one in storybook smocking. When Gemma said that Mike would like some martial arts guys on his son’s play suits, Mrs. Wingate opened a laptop, logged on, and Gemma chose some photos that Mrs. Wingate said were suitable.

“I’ll have two outfits ready by the end of the week,” she said. “Why don’t you come back then and we’ll talk about . . . everything?”

When Gemma left the shop she felt much better, so good in fact that she’d added a fourth outfit for the baby she was going to have. Mrs. Wingate was certainly an excellent saleswoman!

As soon as Gemma got to her computer, she e-mailed Joce and asked what was going on with Mike and Luke. Joce wrote back,

Sorry I didn’t tell you, but it’s been chaos around here. Luke had an offer of a movie deal. Brad Pitt wants to play Thomas Canon. And I can’t believe no one told you about Mike. He was in a restaurant in Fort Lauderdale
and recognized some guy who was wanted for the murder of four young women. Mike brought him in and they found another woman tied up in the creep’s house. Mike saved her life! As a reward, he’s being allowed to take early retirement with a full pension. He and Sara and the boys will be moving back here permanently at the end of the summer.

Gemma slumped back against the chair. It seemed that yet more of the wishes had been given. If Luke’s movie was a hit, it could give him the immortality he’d asked for. And Mike had brought a “truly evil” person to justice—just as he’d wanted to do. She e-mailed Tris about everything, from her 7
P.M.
morning sickness to all the wishes that were being granted.

That night as she was getting ready for bed, she glanced at the silver compact in her makeup basket. She opened it and looked at the pretty little necklace. On impulse, she said, “I don’t think you’re magic but if you are, would you please make Colin come back into my life?”

When the necklace did nothing—not that she had actually expected it to—she closed the case and went to bed.

25

T
ELL HER.”

The words were so loud that Colin jolted awake. He’d fallen asleep in the big leather chair he’d bought with Gemma, and when the words were shouted, his feet came down, which made the chair spring forward. He was almost catapulted across the room.

He’d been so hard asleep that at first he didn’t know where he was. Papers had fallen off his lap and were now an inch deep on the floor. He looked around the room almost as though he expected to see someone there, but he knew he must have been dreaming.

“Tell who what?” he murmured as he got out of the chair. It was raining hard outside, but the words in his head drowned out all other sounds. “Tell her. Tell her. Tell her.” Over and over.

A crack of thunder immediately followed by a flash of lightning almost made him reach for his gun at his belt. Last night he hadn’t bothered to undress. He’d had a sandwich and a beer, then settled down in the chair to yet again go over the files about Adrian Caldwell,
aka John Caulfied, aka . . . The list was endless, but whatever name the man used, he was Jean’s criminal uncle.

In the last few days he’d talked to her often about the case. It hadn’t been easy, but he saw to it that they never mentioned anything personal, just kept to the facts about her uncle. Colin had gone to her apartment in Richmond, and twice she’d come to his office in Edilean.

As Jean told him of her relationship with her notorious uncle, Colin had been shocked that he’d known nothing about the man. Colin had lived with Jean for years and would have said that he knew everything about her, but in the last few days he’d realized that he knew next to nothing about her.

Jean told him of her childhood and how her uncle used to sneak into her bedroom in spite of an alarm system and the iron bars her mother had put on the windows. “When I asked how he got in, he laughed and said that if we could get out, he could get in,” Jean said.

She told of the two times her uncle had cleaned out her mother’s bank accounts. “Mom didn’t recover from the last time,” Jean said bitterly. “And now, no matter how many safeguards the bank puts on her money, she still worries.” She looked at Colin. “Didn’t you ever wonder why I have my assets in four banks and why I deal with three brokers?”

Colin was too embarrassed to say that he didn’t know that she did. But then, he’d been the one to pay the bills. Some male code of honor had kept him from inquiring into Jean’s finances.

She told him how she and her uncle had made up while she was in law school. “I thought that if he knew more about my mother and me, if he saw us as people, it would keep him from stealing from us.”

“But it didn’t work,” Colin said.

“No. Not at all. I think it made him feel that we owed him for
not
doing bad to us.” She told how her mother had nearly had a mental breakdown after the second time. “When I met you I was still supporting Mom, and paying off her debts. I was doing all I could to make her feel safe. I don’t know how we would have survived if you hadn’t helped with my bills.”

With every word she spoke, Colin was more shocked at how little he’d actually known about Jean. She’d kept her secrets to herself, never telling him about her past life or her current one.

But then all he’d thought about back then was how much he hated his job of trying to sell cars. He hadn’t been aware of what Jean was going through. No wonder she was always ready to have a fight with him and relieve the tension she was under.

And Colin had never seen that she was hiding horrific things, that she was under major stress, and that she always lived in fear of it happening again.

But now he was trying to make up for his past oversights. He listened carefully and watched her face and body movements, and what he saw now was that she was holding something back. With every question she answered, he had a feeling that she was hiding something. He didn’t think she was outright lying, but she was certainly being evasive.

It was his guess that Jean knew where her uncle was and had been in contact with him recently. And the more Jean talked, the more her secrecy made him fear for Gemma. During the last week, Jean had made several remarks about Colin’s new girlfriend, even saying that he’d dumped her for a “younger model.” The words, and her tone, had made the hairs on Colin’s neck stand on edge. All he could think was that he had been right to protect Gemma at all costs.

But knowing he was right hadn’t helped when he’d seen Gemma in Edilean. She’d been so cool to him, smiling, showing him baby
clothes. He’d missed her so very much, but she didn’t seem to have given their separation a thought.

Of course he’d found out that Gemma hadn’t spent a whole day with Tris. Colin knew he should have called her to apologize for accusing her of that, but an apology would have defeated the whole purpose of the separation. Right now it was better that he and Gemma were apart—and that Jean thought they wouldn’t get back together.

As for Gemma, the less she knew, the better.

But last night things had changed. Colin had been going through the paperwork of the case, and rereading transcripts of his recorded interviews with Jean. Yet again he was marveling that he’d lived with her but had known so little of the truth of her life. With a jolt he realized that he was doing the same thing to Gemma that Jean had done to him.

Since he’d been a child, Colin had had the Frazier creed that their family was different, separate from the other people, drilled into his head. His father had never spoken of it, but Colin’s paternal grandfather had talked of little else.

“We’re not like them; we’re not the same as them,” his grandfather used to say, meaning the people of Edilean.

“Why?” Colin would ask.

His grandfather had no real answer. “It’s always been that way and always will be,” the old man said. “Just remember to keep family business to yourself.”

Last night Colin had wondered if things could have been different between Jean and him if he hadn’t obeyed his grandfather so completely. What would have happened if he’d sat down with her and told the truth about how much he hated his job? How much he wanted to move back to Edilean and figure out a way to become the sheriff?

“We would have broken up years before,” he said aloud. Uncle or no, Jean deeply and truly hated the little town.

“Everyone there knows what I’m doing,” she used to say. “You have that creepy little man, Brewster Lang, skulking about. You remember that day when I forgot to lock my car? When I came out of the store, he had opened the door and was looking inside my car!”

“He didn’t know who you were,” Colin had said, defending the man who’d helped him on so many cases. Mr. Lang could spend an hour in town and hear more than all the gossips combined would know. Better yet, his information would be based on fact. That Colin had long ago decided not to delve too deeply into Lang’s methods of finding out things was something Colin didn’t want to look at too closely.

Last year, Lang had helped him find out the truth about the man Sara was planning to marry. Colin’s plan had been to present her with facts and do all he could to prevent the marriage. But Mike, who became her husband, stepped in before Colin had all the data he needed.

Another roar of thunder then lightning that made the lights flicker brought Colin back to the present. He glanced at the wall clock and saw that it was just after 2
A.M.
The words “tell her” were still echoing in his head.

He needed to go to bed and in the morning he’d go to Gemma and tell her the truth about . . . about . . . “I’ll tell her how I feel about her,” he said as he turned toward his bedroom.
Our
bedroom, he couldn’t help thinking.

He hadn’t reached the doorway when his cell phone and his landline went off simultaneously—and Colin’s heart nearly stopped. Only an emergency from home would set both phones ringing at this hour.

He answered them both at once, one at each ear. “What’s happened?”

His mother was on his cell, his father on the landline.

“Shamus didn’t come home last night,” his mother said, her voice nearly in tears. “Rachel called me.” His mother was in California with her daughter, Ariel.