Heartwishes (25 page)

“Oh, but that’s right. You bought a house, didn’t you? I spent months—years—trying to get you to buy a house with me, but you wouldn’t. You’ve just met this . . . this hermaphrodite and you buy one for
her
?!”

Abruptly, all the anger left her, and she dropped down on the couch and began to cry.

Colin knew he could have left her rage and false accusations, but he couldn’t leave her in tears. Reluctantly, he closed the door and went to sit beside her. Her sobs were shaking her shoulders, and when she leaned against him, he put his arm around her.

“Jean, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for all the hurt I’ve caused you. I didn’t leave you because I was jealous of your job.”

“Then why?” she asked. “I thought we were good together. I thought we had everything.”

If he told the truth, he’d have to say that they’d had nothing
together,
that it had all been hers—or his father’s. He left to pursue his own dreams, and that maybe he’d learned how to do that from her. Jean would never have taken a job she hated.

“Listen,” he said softly and with sympathy in his voice, “why don’t you stay here tonight?”

“You’re going to your house? The one you bought for
her
?”

Colin dropped his arm from around her shoulder. “I bought a house here in Edilean before I ever met Gemma. Jean, I want to live here. In
this
town. What did you call the place? ‘Incestuous,’ wasn’t it? You told me you wouldn’t live in Edilean even if you were in a coffin. You must see that it could never work between us.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this years ago? Now I’m thirty-six and—”

He stood up. “If I’d known it, I would have told you. And please don’t try to make me think that you’re now so old and plain you can’t get another man. From what I hear, you already have one. Or is he actually your brother?”

“Elliot is a guy I work with. I’m mentoring him.”

“As I remember it, you’re a
great
mentor to young men.” For a moment, they almost exchanged smiles, and Colin knew it was time for him to leave. “Jean, I’m going to go now. I’d say I’d call you, but I don’t think I should. For all your anger, you knew this was coming. My mistake was in leaving it too long. I’ll . . .” He was at the door. “I’m sure I’ll see you around the courthouses.” He left the apartment, feeling part sad for what was gone from his life, and part elated at the mystery of the future that awaited him.

Inside the apartment, Jean stopped the tears and anger instantly.

“Bastard!” she said aloud, then went to the cabinet and poured herself a Scotch. One thing about Colin was that he had good taste in liquor—and he could afford the best.

She looked through the tiny, ugly kitchen to see what she could cook. Nothing. She hadn’t eaten one of those revolting burgers at Colin’s boring friends’ house. She hated the things anyway. Besides, the sight of that girl in her tiny shorts and even tinier tank top slamming away at that hunk of a man, Mike Newland, made Jean lose what appetite she’d had.

Afterward, when Colin had dismissed Jean as though she weren’t important, she’d been furious—but she didn’t show it. In backwater Edilean, she knew to smile until her face ached.

When her glass was half empty, she called her uncle. “Have you eaten?” she asked as casually as she could, but she made sure there was a little hiccup in her voice.

“No. Jean, are you all right?”

“It’s been a rough day.”

“Come over and we’ll talk about it.”

Jean hung up, smiling.

16

Y
AWNING,
G
EMMA SCRAMBLED
a couple of eggs and put two slices of whole wheat bread in the toaster. Last evening Ramsey and Tess had driven her home. Gemma hadn’t wanted to ride with them, but Joce had nudged her forward. She’d felt instant camaraderie with nearly everyone she’d met in Edilean, but there’d been animosity between her and Tess.

Tess started talking the minute Rams pulled out of the driveway. “Okay,” she said, “I think I came on too strong and made a bad first impression.”

“You scared her to death,” Rams said.

“Not really—” Gemma began.

“Mike likes you,” Tess said.

“That means you could commit murder and Tess would testify in your defense,” Rams said.

“Would you mind?” Tess said to her husband. “I’m trying to apologize.” She looked back at Gemma but didn’t seem to know what to say.

Gemma searched for a common ground between them. “It’s all right. Maybe after the baby is born, we can work out together.”

“If Mike had his way, Sara and I’d be in the gym now,” Tess said.

“That’s a good idea,” Gemma said. “You could do light leg extensions and some arm work.”

Tess shook her head. “You and Mike!”

Gemma was glad when Rams pulled into the Frazier driveway and let her off at the guesthouse. She thanked them, said good-bye, and unlocked her door. They only left when she was safely inside.

She was glad for the quiet after the long day. She picked up her canvas reading bag, put her cell phone and a box of letters dated 1775 in it, and went outside to read.

She was still searching for Winnie, still trying to find out more about the Heartwishes Stone. One thing she’d decided was that she would
not
make her dissertation about the Stone. Seeing the way the people of Edilean were so fascinated with the idea of being granted wishes, with everyone thinking what they’d wish for, made Gemma see the Stone as dangerous. What if the story of Nell’s wish coming true got out? No amount of telling people that everything that happened was just a coincidence would stop what could become a stampede. People would descend on little Edilean in massive numbers—or on the Fraziers.

Gemma didn’t like to imagine all the things that could happen if the world heard about a Stone that could grant wishes.

To not make the Stone the basis of her dissertation wasn’t an easy decision for her. A paper on an unusual subject that was backed up by facts could get her a very good grade—and that would help her get an excellent job.

But it wasn’t worth it, she thought. A good grade, even a great job wasn’t worth the risk. Besides, she’d rather get the job on her own merits, not because she’d started a riot.

She was in bed by ten. At midnight, she was awakened by her phone buzzing. It was a text message from Colin asking if she’d help him buy furniture for his new house. She knew what he meant, but she couldn’t help texting,

The stores are closed now. Go to bed.

He texted back.

Funny. Meet me at Fresh Market at 9 a.m. tomorrow?

Will be there.

she wrote back and turned off her phone.

This morning after she’d eaten, she took some time deciding what to wear. Was this to be considered their first date? she wondered. Were they going to one of those splendid furniture stores where everything cost a lot, or to one of those warehouses with no heating or cooling?

She had her hand on her only silk blouse when she thought that Mrs. Frazier and Jean would go to the classy place. Colin was a warehouse-type man. She put on jeans and a pink linen shirt.

When she got to the grocery—she’d used MapQuest to find it—she didn’t see Colin. When he stepped out of a big black pickup truck, she smiled. “I guess the Fraziers change vehicles often.”

“What?” Colin asked. “Oh, yeah, sure. You ready to go? I have drinks in the cab.”

He got in the driver’s side, leaving Gemma to get in by herself. She had to step up high to get in. There was a gym bag on the floor and his hair was wet. It looked like he’d worked out this morning. She wished he’d invited her, but from the bleak expression he was wearing, maybe he’d needed to be alone. It was obvious that something was bothering him.

Colin started the big truck and pulled onto the road. “It’ll take over an hour to get to the store. Hope that’s okay.”

She said it was, but then they were silent. After about ten minutes, Gemma couldn’t take it anymore. “Are you one of those men who wants a woman to beg him to tell her what’s wrong?”

He glanced at her. “What does that mean?”

“You know, the man sighs loud enough to blow magazines off the coffee table, she asks what’s wrong, he says nothing is, and it goes from there. It can take hours to get him to tell her that he’s angry about something his boss did.”

“That’s not me,” Colin said. “At least not usually. But tell me, if a man’s that much trouble, why does she bother trying to get him to tell her what’s wrong?”

Gemma threw up her hands. “Survival! He won’t leave her alone until she does drag it out of him, that’s why! He won’t let her read, watch TV, talk on the phone, nothing until he’s told her whatever he’s fretting about.”

Colin raised an eyebrow. “Last boyfriend?”

“Last
two
boyfriends!”

“All right, I won’t be number three. Jean and I had it out yesterday, and the things she said are still bothering me.”

Gemma waited for him to continue, but he said nothing. “So you
are
one of those men who needs to be coaxed?”

“I’m trying to figure out where to begin.”

“That’s my problem too,” she said. “I want to know about the Heartwishes Stone, but I think I need to go back to the beginning, to the first Frazier who came to the U.S.”

“Was that a subtle way to tell me to start at the beginning?”

“I didn’t think it was subtle.”

Colin didn’t smile as she’d hoped he would. Finally, he said, “The real, basic truth is that my relationship with Jean hasn’t been the usual one, and I’m concerned that if I tell you, you’ll think less of me.”

“I believe that people are the sum of what they’ve been through in their lives. From what I’ve seen, you dedicate your life to helping
others. If whatever you went through with Jean helped to lead you to that, then it couldn’t be too bad.”

He looked away from the road for a moment to glance at her. “I like that philosophy,” he said and thought, And I like
you
. “Okay, here goes.”

As he drove he began to talk, and he didn’t have to tell her that he’d never told the story to anyone else before. Her impression from having seen him with his friends and the town residents was that people thought Colin Frazier didn’t have any problems in life. He grew up comfortably well off, with no money difficulties. He’d been great at sports all through school, made good grades, and now he had a job he loved. What could be wrong?

But as Gemma listened, she heard a deeper story. Colin tried to be lighthearted when he said that his father had “talked him into” working for him, but Gemma had met Mr. Frazier, and her impression was that he could be a tyrant. From what Colin was telling her, Peregrine Frazier had bullied, badgered, and belittled his eldest son into taking a job he hated.

Colin told how bad he was at the job. His example of “bad” was when a single mother with three kids came in with a clunker with 140,000 miles on it. Colin set her up with a car for less than the dealership had paid for it. His father had deducted the discrepancy from Colin’s paycheck. “My father believes in teaching lessons and being fair. He would have done the same thing to any of his other employees, so of course he’d do it to his son.”

“Of course,” Gemma said, but she didn’t agree. Colin was there as a favor to his father, so shouldn’t he have returned some favors?

Colin went on to tell of meeting Jean, and of being so in awe of her beauty and her general demeanor that he’d hardly said a word. “If she hadn’t called me, I would never have seen her again.”

From Colin’s mood today, Gemma wondered if that would have been a bad thing.

When he said that he’d moved to Richmond to live in an apartment with Jean, there was sadness in his voice. But when he told of helping her with her cases, his voice came alive. “I learned a lot about the law, how it worked, and what could and couldn’t be done, and I even did some footwork for the cases.”

Gemma wanted to say “She used you as a free paralegal and a PI,” but she didn’t. She did say, “Roy said you were good at solving mysteries. Did you figure out any of Jean’s?”

Colin gave a shrug of modesty. “A few. Now and then. Not many. I remember one where Jean was defending a man who said he was in another state when his wife was murdered, but his credit card receipts showed that he was near the scene of the crime. I posed as a truck driver and asked some questions at a place where the man’s card had been used. I found out that it was his mistress who’d used the card. She knocked over a display so no one would pay attention to how she signed the receipt. It was a revenge killing because he’d told her he’d decided to go back to his wife.”

“Looks like you were doing the work of a sheriff before you actually were one.”

Colin gave his first smile of the day. “You’re making me remember things I haven’t thought of in years.”

“So when did you break up with Jean? The first time, that is?”

“When the bad of my life outweighed the good. Dad and I were fighting because for six months I’d been almost giving cars away.”

“Did he charge you for them?”

“Oh yeah,” Colin said, “but I didn’t care.”

“Because Jean’s salary was supporting the two of you?” Gemma didn’t realize that she was frowning.

“No. She kept her salary. I paid for everything except her clothes. If I’d done that, I’d have been bankrupted.” He obviously meant to make Gemma laugh, but she didn’t.

“I’m confused,” Gemma said. “Your father debited your paycheck,
but you supported Jean? Oh, wait. I bet you have a trust fund set up by an ancestor.”

Colin told her about the software program that was now being used by many of the car dealerships across the country.

She took a moment to digest that information. “So I guess you can afford a house and furniture.” He was looking at her to see how this new information would affect her, but she kept her face blank. “What happened with you and Jean?”

He went on to tell about the earlier breakup, how he’d just walked out. “It was cowardly of me,” he said. “If I’d stayed and talked to her back then, maybe I could have kept her from thinking what she told me last night.”