Three Wishes (26 page)

“What did you do?” I whispered, stepping up beside her. “What did you say? How did you explain yourself?”

“I didn’t,” she said, turning toward me partway, half with me, half in that moment. “And in time it didn’t matter. Because I’d found what I’d wanted in that future, right there in
that
time, where Carlos found me. Love.”

I met her gaze. “Carlos found you there? He was the one to discover you, help you?”

“Yes.” She took my hand. “And a year ago, when I tossed that same golden lamp out to the sea here, I prayed for you, dear girl. For a woman who might capture my wayward son’s heart. Captivate his mind. Intrigue him and anchor him into the destiny that is his for the taking. Making a life here, where his father worked so hard to establish a—”

“W-wait,” I said, pulling away in confusion. “You threw the lamp back into the sea? Like…
bait
for a fish?”

“I didn’t think of it in such a way,” she said. “It was a prayer, a wish. For someone seeking us with a similar prayer or wish.” She lifted her hands, brows arching together. “And here you are! God be praised!” Her face faltered. “You are not quite what I imagined, but if the blessed Father has ordained this, who am I to—”

“No. Hold on.” Anger stirring in me, I lifted a finger and waved it back and forth. “I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to leave my own
time
.”

“I understand. You wanted something bigger, more important than even your own time.” She matched every step I took away from her. “Something your heart wanted.”

“Did you not try to get back? To your own time?” I asked, lifting my hands to my head.

“I tried, yes. But don’t you see? My wish was already coming true!”

I shook my head and walked away from her. Here I had feared she’d think me crazy. But she was the crazy one. And she’d pulled me into her weird time warp!

“Zara,” she said, striding after me, trying to take my arm.

“No!” I said, wrenching away from her grasp. “Leave me alone!”

But she didn’t, following me step for step, waiting for me to slow and face her again. The danged corset was working against me. In minutes, I was gasping for breath and sat down heavily in the sand, not caring if I harmed her precious old riding habit. Surprisingly, she sank to the sand beside me.

“You’re angry,” she said simply.

“Yes, I’m angry!” I spat out. “You…you trapped me!”

“Trapped? Or gave you just the right invitation?”

“What does it matter? You pulled me here, into your time and out of my own! Now what am I supposed to do?” I cried.

She shrugged. “Allow your new destiny to unfold. If it is half as grand as my own, you will not regret it.”

I shook my head. My hat flapped on my head, and I angrily pulled the pins out and sent it flying behind me.
Just what I’d like to do to her
…

We sat in silence for a bit, staring at the waves cresting, washing over the beach, and receding. Then she dared, “May I ask what you wished for, Zara?”

I frowned. I didn’t want to tell her. I didn’t ever want to speak to her again. If I could possibly get away, I would’ve. But there wasn’t exactly a bus stop up the road…there wasn’t even a stagecoach coming through. I rubbed my face and watched the waves, willing myself back to calm. I had to think this through. Find my way. Strangling the woman who brought me here probably wouldn’t do the trick.

“I wished for adventure,” I muttered, feeling like an idiot. “To see the world and meet others from different cultures and ways of life.” Why had I ever shared something so intimate with Abuela? If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been thinking back to that conversation, right when I was holding the cursed lamp…

“You did not have much adventure in your life,” she said tentatively, “in your own time?”

“No,” I said. “We never went anywhere. There was never enough money or opportunity for such things.” I arched a brow at her. “I am no fine lady from a fine family, as you have guessed. My abuela ran a
restaurant
.”

“I see,” she said gently. “But I think your abuela must have been a very fine lady indeed, no matter where you lived. I can see it in you, Zara, despite our…differences. What else?” she asked, after silence settled between us.

“Love,” I admitted. “Real love. Apparently the curse of every girl who slips through time?” We shared a brief, wry smile before I recovered my anger again, remembering that she wasn’t my confidante. She was the one who made me come here. And she feared kidnappings! This was the Mother of all Kidnappings, wasn’t it?

“Anything else?” she prodded.

What was the harm?
I thought wearily. I’d already told her the rest. “Family,” I said with a sigh, knowing I’d played right into her hands. I closed my eyes and shook my head. “Back home, in my own time, it was just the two of us. And after Abuela died—”

“You had no one,” she finished softly. “But don’t you see, Zara? You have the potential of claiming
everything
. Here. With us. This adventurous life you seek, learning about others, perhaps even traveling—maybe even as far as Monterey or Mexico. And love?” Her lips quirked. “Family? My children already are taken with you.
All
of my children.”

“No,” I said, rising, shaking my head in anger. “I want to claim all of that at home, in my
own
time.”

“But why must you go back?” she pressed, standing up too. “Who is waiting on you? You said yourself that it was only you and your grandmother…”

“I have friends! Employees at the restaurant who are counting on me! Probably looking for me right now!”

She blinked and wrinkled her brow at me in confusion. “Employees?”

“Yes!” I didn’t want to explain any further. I was out of patience. “You listen to me, Doña Elena,” I said, shaking my finger at her. “You got me here. Now you need to get me
home
.”

She stared back at me, lifting her chin, and I faltered. It was the practiced move of every Mexican matriarch I knew, designed to instill terror in everyone younger. And most of the older ones too.

“You listen to me,
girl
,” she said sternly. “You have been granted every wish your heart cried out for. But you are too foolish to recognize it yet. I have great faith in the One who brought me to Carlos and you to Javier, so I shall pray that your foolishness will diminish in time.” She waved her hand grandly.

“Javier? What if I was brought here to meet one of the Vargases? Or Captain Worthington? Or—I don’t know…someone else? What makes you so sure it was
Javier
who was to claim my heart?”

“Because he found you first, just as Carlos found me.” She looked down her regal nose at me.

“That doesn’t mean anything. It’s just what you choose to believe.”

“You are here to stay, Zara. The sooner you accept it, the happier you will be.”

I let out a cry of rage then, clenching my fists and narrowly stifling my desire to tackle her to the sand and fill her mouth with it. “Leave me! Go home! I just want to be alone!”

She stood there, stunned a moment. Maybe no one had spoken to her in such a way for a very long time, if ever. “We shall speak again of this,” she said curtly, pivoting to walk back toward her horse. “And I shall teach you more of the social graces of our own time, to help you adjust.”

“The only instruction I want from you is how to find my way out of here!” I yelled after her.

She ignored me as if I were nothing more than a spoiled toddler throwing a tantrum.

And then I sat back down on the sand and practically did just that.

CHAPTER 19

I saw her when my tears finally seemed spent, and I was breathing in that hiccupping sort of way after a Big Cry. That wolf-dog, coming around the point, sitting down for a second, checking out the whole beach, and then turning back to me. I looked up the hill, worried that one of the guards was still there, ready to shoot at it, but Doña Elena had apparently given my custody over to whatever fates had brought us both here, to this place and this time, and honored my request to be alone.

Who knew? Maybe after the last of that conversation, she’d decided to go and fetch the lamp from the safe after all, eager to send me home. Or maybe she was hoping a kidnapper would swoop in and take me away…

The dog was a welcome distraction. At least I thought she was a dog. She had to be a blend, since she was too small to be fully wolf and too big to be fully dog. I couldn’t have said why I didn’t fear her. She just seemed tame, a guardian of sorts for me. She paused about thirty feet away, sidling back and forth, lifting her nose to the air to smell me, I supposed. My gelding, a quarter mile beyond, caught the wolf-dog’s scent and whinnied nervously, ears perked forward, but the dog didn’t seem to be on the hunt.

She was looking at me. “Come here, sweet pup,” I crooned, lifting my hand, palm up. “Come, my
centinela
,” I said, making a sound of invitation with my lips, wishing I had a treat of some sort to offer her. My guardian, my sentinel. “Centinela,” I repeated to myself. “Shall I call you that?”

She moved ten feet closer, then sat down on her haunches, again lifting her nose to the air.

“Come, sweet girl. You’re so pretty,” I said, getting up.

My movement sent her skittering away again. She loped back and forth in an arc, keeping distant. I knelt again, lifting my hand, palm up. After a moment, she ventured closer. Twenty feet away. Fifteen. Ten.

She was beautiful. Gray and white with patches of black and the brightest blue eyes. “Hello, Centinela,” I said softly. “Did you sense I needed a friend right now?”

She took another step, and then another. Just five feet away from me now, close enough that I could see sand clinging to her furry legs.

Three feet. Two. Her nose twitched. Then those bright blue eyes cast beyond me. The wolf-dog tore off, back up the beach toward George Point, and as I glanced back, the first gunshot rent the air.

“No! Stop!” I cried.

It was Javier, sliding from his saddle, aiming with his revolver across his forearm this time, even as he judged the growing distance between him and his prey. He squeezed off a second shot.

“Javier! No!” I screamed, holding my breath until I saw he had missed again.

He shoved his revolver in his holster and turned toward me, his face a mask of fury. He trudged down the sandy dune. “What were you thinking, Zara? That animal is dangerous!”

“No, she’s not!” I said, picking up my skirts and making my way toward him as fast as he was coming toward me. “She’s tame! A pet for someone!”

“Well, she’d better get off my land before she becomes a
pelt
to trade.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“I would!”

We stood there, face to face for a moment, both panting.

“What happened here?” he finally asked. “Hector came riding for me. Said you and my mother had some sort of spat, and she left you behind?”

“Yes,” I said. “By my request. I was fine! Fine,” I repeated. I turned away from him, back toward the sea. Doña Elena’s little top hat rolled across the sand toward us, as if begging me to put it back on. “I didn’t need you to ride out here for me.”

“Obviously you did,” he said, coming around me to enter my line of vision again. His white shirt was unbuttoned one more than usual, flapping a little open, giving me a generous view of the smooth, golden-brown expanse of his chest. I hurriedly looked to the water. “Because if I hadn’t,” he went on, “that wolf would’ve been having you for supper!”

“Wolves don’t attack people,” I muttered tiredly. “That’s a myth.”

“Oh no? They have no trouble attacking my sheep and cattle.”

“Well, that one wasn’t going to attack. We were becoming…friends.”

He let out a wondering laugh and came further around to face me. “Who are you, Zara? A girl who just appears on my shore, who plays the guitar like an angel, breaks the noses of her attackers, and charms wolves—”

“Dogs,” I corrected. “I think she’s a dog.”

“So be it!” he said, lifting a hand in exasperation. “Charms
wolf-dogs
to eat from her hand.” He stared at me, as if he couldn’t decide whether to throttle the truth out of me or take me into his arms. “Who are you?” he whispered, lifting a hand as if to touch my face.

“I’m no one,” I muttered, stepping away from him. “Just a traveler making her way through. I’m sorry I upset your mother. As soon as I can find other accommodations, I will—”

“Wait, I was not suggesting that you needed to
leave
.” He grabbed my arm, turning me gently back toward him. But there was no threat in his action, only concern. “You’ve been weeping,” he said, a little shocked. He lifted his hand to my cheek, gently urging me to look up at him. “What made you cry? My mother?”

I met his eyes. “There’s just so much, Javier. So much I cannot tell you.”

“Cannot, because you don’t know?” he asked, gentling his tone. “Or cannot because you do not wish to?”

“Both,” I whispered.

He leaned closer to me, his thumb tracing the curve of my cheek. “So all of your past is not truly forgotten. Some of what you hold back is a secret. Do you not yet trust me?”