When You Wish (Contemporary Romance) (3 page)

The two of them climbed the stairs to the second floor, which had once housed six bedrooms. The previous owner had knocked out walls, constructing a great room with a western window exposure. As Grace and Dan reached the top of the stairs, the chitter-chatter from the Jewels reached their ears, and Grace couldn’t help but smile. She’d had the Jewels in her life, together or in various combinations, since the day she was born. She adored them, eccentricities and all.

After crossing the few short steps from the landing to the curved archway of the great room, Grace gazed at the familiar scene. Three elderly ladies could make quite a mess when given free reign with scissors, fabric, batting, and thread. They liked to work amidst clutter, and since they were geniuses, she let them.

“Aunt Em?” she called.

“Aunt Em?” Dan echoed. “As in Auntie Em, there’s no place like home?”

Grace rolled her eyes. “No, as in Emerald. You met Garnet downstairs; the redhead is Ruby. My mother’s sisters, known as ‘The Jewels of Dublin.’”

“Ireland?”

“South Dakota.”

Dan continued to contemplate the piles of fabric and batting, as well as
the three tiny ladies who flitted among them. “I’m confused.”

“Don’t be. It’s
quite simple. My great-grandparents, on my mother’s side, came from Ireland. They started a little town in the West. My grandparents had four daughters.”

“The Jewels.”

“Right.

“And your mother’s name?

“Diana?”

Grace snorted. The man had no imagination whatsoever. But w
hat could she expect from a doctor? “Diamond.”

“Your mother’s name is Diamond Lighthorse?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Of course not. I just want to be clear before I meet her.”

“You won’t. She’s no longer with us.”

He turned his head and his sympathetic gaze met hers. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Doctor talk. She’d heard it all before. He couldn’t help it. That’s what he was trained to say, though the sympathy in his eyes seemed real. “She’s not dead,” Grace clarified. “She’s just no longer with us.”

“Oh. I see.”

His voice said very clearly that he did not see at all, but Grace wasn’t about to share private heartaches with a stranger—even though he wasn’t quite a stranger anymore. Her mother had been unwilling to come back to Wisconsin. She’d preferred to stay in Minnesota, alone, when Grace and the Jewels went looking for a new home. Though Grace was happy to be in the land of her birth once again, she missed her mother, but at least she had Em and the others.

Grace called to her aunt, louder this time. The Jewels’s hearing wasn’t what it used to be. “Aunt Em!”

Her eldest aunt looked up, smiled, then picked her way across the room. The other two, occupied with choosing material from the stack of bolts near the far wall, merely raised a hand in hello and went back to arguing over the merits of rust over burnt- orange, their heads bobbing with the force of their customary arguments. The bickering was a sister thing Grace had never understood, since she’d never had a sister. The continuous arguing over nothing had bothered her at first until she realized they liked to argue. It was the way they showed their affection.

“Grace!” The sun through the windows sparkled across Em’s recently retouched black roots. “All done for the day?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Em’s green gaze wandered all the way up Dan’s long body, then al
l the way down. Female appreciation filled her eyes. “And you saved one for me? Thoughtful girl.”

Grace glanced at Dan to see if he was blushing again. He was. His mouth opened, then shut. He shuffled his big feet, then held out a huge hand, enveloping Em’s fingers with his own. “Ma’am, it’s a pleasure.”

Amazingly, Em blushed, too. She’d buried five husbands and was on the lookout for number six. The spark in her eye made Grace think her aunt toyed with the idea of a younger man this time around.

“Aunt Em, Dr. Chadwick is here about Project Hope.”

“Doctor? How interesting.” She pulled her hand from his, then flicked her wrist up and down.

Dan glanced at Grace, a polite half-smile at war with the confusion filling his eyes. He looked back at Em, who was still flapping her wrist like an out
raged puppeteer. “It hurts when I do this,” she said.

“Then don’t do that?” The punch line came out with the lilt of a question, as if he didn’t know that Em was asking him for advice. What kind of doctor wasn’t used to being quizzed on aches and pains at every opportunity?

“Never mind,” Grace told Em. “I stopped by to see how far you’ve gotten today.”

After sending a curious glance in Dan’s direction, Em dropped her hand. “We finished the crazy quilt, packed it up, and sent the box to FedEx with Olaf.”

“Good. What are you starting now?”

“Wedding Ring, for the Macieweski wedding.”

“I’ll be back soon to help cut the pieces.”

Em nodded, then patted Dan on the arm as if he were a lost little boy. “It’s all right, sweetie. Sometimes I pretend to be Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile. No one minds.”

She bustled off in a swish of multicolored skirts, and Dan stared after her, dumbstruck. “She thinks I’m pretending to be a doctor?”

“You have to admit, you don’t act like one.”

“I don’t?” Now he not only looked like a lost boy, he sounded like one.

Grace shook her head. “And you definitely don’t look like one.”

He grunted, as if he’d heard that before, and no doubt he had. Grace berated herself for mentioning it. She of all people should know that it was best not to judge by appearance.

“What
do
I look like?” he asked.

Viking marauder
, her mind whispered.
Romance novel cover model. All-Star wrestler.

“Lumberjack,” she blurted.

That made him smile again, and for a moment Grace just enjoyed the view. She really did like how he looked. For a woman who got looked at a lot, she should know better than to stare, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.

The longer they gazed into each other’s eyes, the harder it became to look away. His gaze dropped to her mouth and Grace caught her breath. For some insane reason, she thought he meant to kiss her. And for a lunatic second, she wanted him to.

Then Ruby’s voice shattered the thick, charged silence. “He’s a doctor! Maybe I can show him my corns.”

Dan started and looked over his shoulder, his face exhibiting an odd combination of alarm and morbid fascination.

“Come on!” Grace turned around and headed down the hall. Dan followed right on her heels.

The offices of Project Hope and Quilts to Order, the mail-order business of the Jewels, were housed in the only bedroom not ceded to the great room. Not much of an office—scratched-up desk, rotary phone, new answering machine, old kitchen chairs and a battered filing cabinet—but Project Hope was still a baby. If the grant came through, Grace would have to use some of the money to assemble a real office and maybe hire a real secretary. The Jewels should really devote all their time to making the quilts they were becoming famous for.

Grace took the chair behind the desk, and Dan took the one on the other side. The metal creaked beneath his weight and they both winced.

“Now, Doctor—” He raised an eyebrow. “I mean, Dan, you’d like more information about Project Hope? You wish
to make a donation? Money? Blankets? Time? Or maybe you can help me distribute the blankets. I have to tell you, I don’t have any hospital contacts yet. I’m still waiting for final word on a grant.”

“That’s why I’m here.”

It was Grace’s turn to be confused. “The grant? You’re from Mrs. Cabilla?”

“No, or at least not in the way you think.” He sighed, then stood and paced the tight confines of the office. His size made the movement ridiculous, and he stopped with a growl of impatience, placing both hands in the center of Grace’s desk and looming over her. “I’m the man who’s spent five years trying to discover a way to prevent paronychial
infections. If Mrs. Cabilla gives the money to Project Hope, everything I’ve done thus far will be worth nothing.”

Grace stood. She wasn’t going to let him loom over her. She knew that tactic for the intimidation ploy it was. Though why he wanted to intimidate her she had no idea. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m sure you don’t. That’s why I came to talk to you. I want you to withdraw your grant application. If you don’t, thousands, perhaps millions, of people will suffer.”

She’d ordered him out of her office, followed him down the stairs and shooed him out the front door. Good riddance! She wasn’t letting Dr.
Daniel Chadwick into her home again. The nerve of the man! Trying to take her money. Trying to kill her dream. Trying to imply that Project Hope was a joke and his research oh, so very important.

But paronychial infections did sound serious—and painful.

“Arrgh!” She slammed the door and stomped back up the stairs. Luckily the jewels were just deaf enough not to notice her grumbling and stamping, because she didn’t want to talk to anyone right then. She wanted to stew and fume, then she’d call Mrs. Cabilla and settle this once and for all.

Grace was not going to let Dr. Dan make her feel unworthy. If his research was so great, people would be standing in line to give him money. He didn’t need to take away the only chance she had to make a wish, a dream, and a promise, come true.

Grace crossed to the window overlooking the street and peeked around the curtain. He still stood next to his car, gazing at the house.

How could such a jerk be so cute? How could such a creep have such an incredible body? How could such a . . . a . . . a
stiff
pretend to be such a nice guy?

Dan’s wide shoulders slumped and he shook his head. For a moment he looked so dejected, Grace felt kind of bad. Then she reminded herself who and what he was: the enemy of her dream.

“Grace?”

“Hmm?”

She continued to stare out the window as he got in his car and drove out of her life forever. Good riddance, she thought once more. So why did she feel so bereft?

Aunt Em joined her at the window, but there was nothing left to see except a distant Lake Illusion sparkling in the sheen of the late afternoon sun. “What did Dr. Magnificent want?”

Grace smiled. Em never changed. Men were her forte. “He was, wasn’t he?”

“Magnificent? You bet your moccasins. If he hadn’t been looking at you like the last cream puff on the dessert tray, I might have snapped him up. But even with my extensive know-how, I doubt I’d be able to seduce that man away from you.”

“He won’t be looking at me again, and I won’t be looking at him.”

“Did he go medical on you?” Em asked.

Em had no patience for those who didn’t understand magic and mystery. Her grandmother had been a healer in Ireland and passed the knowledge of herbs and the like on to her eldest daughter, who in turn passed it on to her eldest daughter.

Em’s second husband—or maybe it was her first—had been a doctor and forbade Em to use her “witchy brews o
n innocent people.” When Em continued to heal those who asked for help, he’d burned her granny’s book—and dropped dead the next day. Em’s sisters always said the spirit of their grandmother had cursed him. Em merely smiled and married number three. Or had it been number two?

“He wants me to give up Project Hope,” Grace explained. “He’s received the Cabilla Grant for the past five years, and he says he’s near to curing some kind of infection.”

“That’s what they all say.”

When Grace didn’t answer, Em took her hand, and led Grace into the great room. “Come on in here and see what we’ve done on the Wedding Ring quilt.”

Ruby and Garnet joined them, chattering all at once as they explained the nuances of color they had agreed upon while she was gone.

Their handmade
quilts sold for nearly one thousand dollars apiece, as they were masterpieces of skill and beauty, and took a lot of time to make. Very few people made quilts the ancient way—with their hands, no machines—but the Jewels always had, always would. What the Jewels made selling the quilts, combined with their social security, kept them in Irish whiskey and their house.

As her aunts flitte
d about the room, gathering patterns, fabric, and the sharpest scissors, Grace reminded herself again why Project Hope was so important. She’d seen enough sick kids to know that sometimes there was nothing you could do but give them something to hold on to.

Grace reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out the tiny
scrap of peach flannel she carried with her wherever she went. She rubbed the soft fabric against her cheek, and for an instant she caught the scent of hope. This bit of blanket reminded Grace of principles she held close to her heart: peace, and love, and something to hold on to when the world dished out its worst.

If Daniel Chadwick wanted a fight, a fight he would get. Grace was not giving up Project Hope. She couldn’t and still look at her
self in the mirror each morning.