When You Wish (Contemporary Romance) (10 page)

Olaf loved her like the child he never spoke of, and he was not a man to be silenced for
any reason—especially when he believed inappropriateness was involved. Sometimes she wished she’d never taught him that word.

Dan shot her a look that plainly shouted, “Help!” But Grace just spread her hands. He was on his own.

Dan watched Grace shrug and turn him over to the monster in the white muscle shirt. This was what happened when you followed your instincts, kicked off your shoes, danced in the mud, and lived a little.

You ended up beaten to a pulp by a masseur.

“Hold on.” Dan held his hands out, palms up, toward Olaf. He hoped it was a gesture of surrender, or stop, even in Norwegian. The man stopped. Dan took a deep breath. “I admit I kissed Grace.”

Olaf hissed. Dan wished he’d stop doing that. It was distracting.

“But she kissed me back. Tell him, Grace.” She didn’t say anything. Dan glanced her way. “Grace?”

She stared at him with an odd expression, as if she couldn’t quite figure out what species he was. The look made him as nervous as Olaf s hovering fists. “Grace. Tell him. Don’t lie.”

Dan suddenly hung a few inches above the ground by his shirt. He’d seen people hanging from their shirts before, usually in
Lethal Weapon
movies, but he’d never actually had the procedure done to him. He doubted anyone but Olaf could manage it.

“Gracie does not lie,” Olaf said.

“Of course not,” Dan agreed, as if he were talking to an insane person, which he was starting to think Olaf was. “Grace?”

“I kissed him back.” She didn’t sound happy about it. Both Olaf and Dan frowned.

Olaf released him and Dan rubbed his neck. How was he going to keep Olaf from killing him over the next few weeks, which he must spend with Grace? They were only supposed to be working together, but the way things were going, Dan didn’t know how long he’d be able to keep from touching her again—even if touching her wasn’t healthy.

Olaf turned his back on Dan as if he weren’t there. To tell the truth, that was a bit insulting. Dan was a big guy. Not as big as Olaf, but he could do some damage. If he wanted to. He just didn’t want to. But Olaf acted as if he had nothing to fear from Dan Chadwick. Dan sighed. He honestly didn’t have a single killer instinct. His instincts had always leaned more toward life. He couldn’t help it.

“Gracie, what are you thinking kissing one such as this? Don’t you remember what happened the last time?”

The last time? What last time? Dan went still as a mouse, hoping they would forget he was there and keep on talking.

There was no moss on Grace, however. She looked at Dan over Olaf s shoulder, glared at him, then snapped at Olaf. “Of course I remember. This is different”

“How different? He seems the same to me.”

“Maybe so. But
I’m
not the same.”

Grace stalked by Olaf and headed for the car. “I’ll be back in the morning, Doctor.” She threw the words over her shoulder, as if she couldn’t wait to be gone from here, from him. Maybe she couldn’t. “We can work th
en. My afternoons and early evenings are booked by the tourists.”

“Work? Work? Work at what?” Olaf thundered.

Dan kept his mouth shut. Let Grace handle her bodyguard, bodybuilder.

Grace stopped halfway between the car and Dan, and the beam of the headlights showed him every expression on her face. Right now she looked tired and a bit sad.

“Mrs. Cabilla has asked me to help Dr. Chadwick with his research,” she said. “In turn Dr. Chadwick will help me with the hospital administrations.”

Olaf let out a stream of guttural gibberish that made Grace flinch, then blush. “There’s no cause for that language,” she said.

“You understand Norwegian?” Dan couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice.

“And Gaelic, French, English, and Ojibwe.”

“French?” Dan gritted his teeth. He sounded like a damned parrot.

She reached the car, opened the door and turned, placing her arms along the top of the window, then leaning against it. “I had
to take a language in college.”

“College?” Surprised again.

“I came, I saw, I dropped out.” She got into the car.

Dan glanced at Olaf, who still scowled at him as if he’d just ravished Grace on the ground with the entire world watching. Well almost, but not quite.

“You are not the only one who has a brain, bad man.”

Dan ignored
what seemed to be his new nickname. Arguing with Olaf felt like banging his head against a brick. No point to either one, and you got a hell of a headache. “What did Grace go to college for?”

“You will have to ask Gracie.”
Sniff
. “When you work together.”

Then he walked by Dan, bumping him with a shoulder just for the heck of it, got into the car, and slammed the vehicle into reverse.

If Grace’s car theory rang true, Olaf should drive a monster truck. Instead he drove a late 50s model Plymouth Fury, which for some reason seemed just right, though Dan couldn’t recall why. What was it about such a car that nagged at his memory?

Dan could see Grace’s incredible face through the windshield, her d
ark eyes fixed on him as she receded down the long tunnel of trees that lined his driveway. Dan felt like a child left at Boy Scout camp in disgrace.

The car disapp
eared, and the rumble of the engine as it started down the highway back toward town made Dan suddenly remember what nagged him about the Plymouth Fury.

The Fury
was
a monster car. The car that never died. A Stephen King car—Christine, by name. Perhaps there was more to Grace’s car theory than he’d given her credit for. In fact, there was a lot more to Grace Lighthorse than Dan could ever have imagined before he’d met her.

Now that he had met her, he planned to spend the next few weeks imagining a whole lot more.

Chapter Seven

Being a morning person, Grace awoke with the dawn. This practice annoyed countless people, but she could never figure out why anyone would want to lie in bed right through the most beautiful part of the day.

By the time everyone else in her household stirred, Grace would have taken her walk through town, picked up some coffee and come back to sit on the porch, stitch whatever blanket she was working on at the time—be it quilt or afghan—and watch Lake Illusion come to life.

The vista never changed, but the people did. Sure, some of them were locals, but the tourists spiced up the view, and there were always a few early runners she could watch with bemusement.

“Running?” she murmured. “Bluck!”

Why run through life when you could get where you were going much easier by walking? You’d still get there, more slowly, true, but you’d be able to experience your journey. You could stop and study anything, really
see
the world, rather than pass it by in a blur. If life was a journey, then every day was a new city on your path.

Grace picked up the material she’d been hand-quilting and jabbed h
er needle into cloth gaily decorated with balloons in primary colors.

Now, she wasn’t saying exercise was a bad thing— but hurrying everywhere was. It disturbed Grace to see kids being taught from the ground up to hurry, hurry, hurry. Get there before everyone else. Be the best. Trample those in front of you. You just had to wonder . . . did anyone stop and smell the coffee anymore?

Grace sighed and took a deep drag of her own coffee, first with her nose, then with her mouth. Half the joy in coffee was smelling it first. The dark, heated brew slid down her throat and warmed her from the inside out as she contemplated the sun bursting to life behind the trees outside of town.

One of the reasons she had left Minneapolis and come home was that she just couldn’t take the pace of the big city any longer. Especially the pace of the children.

Stress in children concerned Grace. A lot. Kids should run, and jump, and play, sweetly oblivious of the problems awaiting them when they became adults. The problems were still there once they got older—so why get excited ahead of time?

And when sick kids got stressed, that was the worst stress of all, becaus
e stress lowered the immune system, and sick kids needed immunity as much as they needed something to hold on to.

So it followed that if a comfort item lowered stress, and lower stress aided the immune system: sick kids needed blankies. She wasn’t going to let the naysayers drag her down. Not even a naysayer that kissed as good as—

“Morning!” Dan Chadwick jogged in place on the sidewalk in front of her house. Speak of the naysayer.

I should have figured
him for a bright and shiny morning runner.

“Morning,” Grace returned. No reason to be rude, even though she wanted to. She’d seen enough of
him
in her dreams.

“You always up th
is early?” He kept right on jogging, going nowhere.

Her gaze trailed
over the tautly muscled legs revealed by his shorts, taking in the miniscule amount of sweat that darkened his maroon half-shirt. These observations, combined with the fact that he could talk without huffing, and nary a puff to be heard, revealed Dr. Dan as a career runner.

Once again, that figured. She wasn’t even going to think about the washboard stomach, traced with a light dusting of golden hair revealed by that skimpy shirt. It was just too early in the morning to taste lust on the tongue, so she took a sip of coffee instead.

“I always like to greet the sun,” she answered. “And you?”

“I like to get my five miles in before breakfast.”

Five miles? Grace rolled her eyes without even trying to hide it. “Overachiever,” she mumbled.

“Excuse me?” He probably couldn’t hear her over the tromp of his busy, busy feet.

“Nothing. You jogged in from the camp?”

He smiled, happy as a puppy chewing its favorite dirty sock. If he could pretend that last night’s debacle had never happened, so could she. “Yes, from the camp to town and back is a near-perfect five miles.”

“Goody.” Now that sounded surly, like she was cranky at this hour. And she wasn’t—under most circumstances anyway—and with most people. So Grace attempted to be civil, putting down her coffee and not even picking up her quilt block so she could give Dan her full attention. “I’ve never seen you go by before.”

“Never have. Just figured I’d take a different route today.”

“Checking up on me, Doc?”

He shrugged. “You never said what time of the morning you’d come by.”

“How’s right now?”

He stopped tromping in place. “You want to jog back with me?”

She laughed. “I don’t think so. Jogging is not something I encourage in myself.”

“But it’s natural.”

“No, walking is natural. Running is something you do to get away from predators.”

And, I may do it to get away from you later
, she thought.

“How are you going to get to the lake?”

“Olaf’s car.”

“Christine?”

Grace glanced about. They were alone. Had a gear slipped in his brilliant brain? Probably from all that jogging and jiggling. “I’m Grace, Dan.”

He grinned and started to stretch—arms over the head, reaching for the sky, revealing the taut belly, making Grace crazy. Grace yanked her gaze from his stomach, and her su
dden fantasy of running her fingers through that soft hair, then pressing her lips to each individual muscle evaporated. She really needed to get a grip.

“I haven’t lost my marbles—not yet anyway. I’m talking about Olaf s Fury, which, by the way, makes your car theory seem pretty plausible.”

“How so?” She’d always thought Olaf s boat of a car fit him, too, but she wondered why Dr. Dan, the incredible, edible stiff agreed with her.

“It’s a Christine car.” He came up from a runner’s stretch and caught the look of complete blankness on her face. “You know . . . Stephen King?
Christine?
Killer car? Very Olaf.”

Down he went again, head reaching for his knee. That had to hurt, but he seemed to like it. Grace’s idea of stretching came when she reached for the coffee in the freezer.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. She did yoga when she had time, which was rarely, but yoga never seemed like exercise—more like relaxation and alignment. Grace cracked her neck. Maybe she should dust that videotape off. Just watching Dan made her tense.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. “Except that Stephen King is a writer.”

Up came his head, surprise on his face. “You’ve never read him?”

She shook her head. “Not me. I figured you for the medical journal type.”

“I am.” He went up on tiptoe, stretching his feet. “But sometimes I have to read something else. Don’t you?”