Wish Upon a Cowboy (21 page)

And he needed to know why.

*  *  *

Creekford

Something had changed. Somewhere, a corner had been rounded. A difference made.

Blake Wolcott scowled and tried to put a mental finger on what it was. But the feeling was too elusive to be pinned down further than the certain knowledge that a shift in power had happened—and that it would affect him.

He shook off the odd sensation and stared into the fire blazing on the hearth. His gaze blurred and in the heart of the flames he saw Hannah's face. And Eudora's. Smiling. Laughing.

At him.

His gaze narrowed. His teeth ground together in frustrated fury. His fingers tightened on the small glass of excellent brandy he held, just before he hurled the delicate crystal tumbler into the fireplace. Flames leaped at the alcohol, licking at the brick hearth. The soft tinkle of broken glass was lost in his muttered curse as he shoved himself up from the chair to pace the elegantly furnished room.

Urgency nipped at his heels. Impatience rattled his soul. But Blake kept moving because it helped him think. He desperately needed to think clearly. Now, more than ever. Frustration shimmered all around him and small decorative objects trembled on their shelves as he passed.

"This is their fault," he muttered and stopped dead in front of the fireplace again. Curling his fingers around the mantel's edge, he stared into the gilt-edged mirror facing him. Meeting his reflected gaze, he saw what he'd always seen.

A powerful man, destined for greatness.

A man too big for the English village that had bred him. A man on the verge of snatching up the reins to more power than he'd ever known before.

"And I'll be damned in hell before I'll let those women cheat me out of my rightful place." His voice rumbled into the room, and behind him a small porcelain vase toppled from its perch and landed with a thud on the carpet.

He paid it no mind.

Turning abruptly, he crossed the floor to the front window and stared through a filmy white cloud of lace curtains at his town.

Time was passing, and along with it his hold on the Guild members. He saw it daily. They no longer feared him as thoroughly as they had before. With Hannah and then Eudora escaping him, his power over the lesser witches was fading.

"But they're not gone," he told himself. "Not really."

The man he had following Eudora was an idiot, but bright enough to know that his life depended on keeping up with the older woman and reporting to Blake when she finally—damn her for stalling and playing games with him—joined Hannah.

Once he knew where the women were, he'd go to them and resolve this entire situation with a brief, but very legal, wedding.

And when he was joined to the last of the Lowells, he told himself, staring hard at a farmer rolling into town atop a hay wagon, his victory would be complete.

Blake lifted one hand, snapped his fingers, and smiled when the neatly bound stacks of golden straw erupted into flames. The farmer screamed and fell from the high bench seat, his clothes afire. Witches and warlocks from all over town ran to help the man and Blake smiled again, sure they'd all understood his little reminder of just who was in charge here.

Chapter Twelve

At the house, Jonas reached back, took hold of Hannah's arm, and swung her down from the saddle in one easy motion. He avoided looking into her eyes, because he didn't want to see that shine of admiration for him again.

He felt as though he were straddling a barbed-wire fence and the slightest movement either way could do him a hell of a lot of damage. Already turning the horse's head toward the barn, he said simply, "Tell Elias I need to talk to him."

She grabbed at the reins, forcing him to either stop or drag her along behind the horse. He stopped.

"Don't you think you and I should have a talk first?"

"No." Steeling himself, he looked down into starlit green eyes and felt the wicked punch of desire anyway. Despite the turmoil in his mind and heart, despite not knowing anymore who—and what—he was, he wanted her. Sighing, he leaned both hands on the saddle horn. "Before we talk. I need some answers to questions I can only ask Elias."

"But Jonas," she said, and her eyes glimmered with the emotions she kept too close to the surface, "what happened tonight had to convince you. You have to know now that what I've been saying all along is true."

His insides tightened. Warlock. The word shimmered through him, stirring long-dead memories. Deliberately he fought them down. He wasn't ready yet. For them. Or for her.

"All I know," he said, squeezing the words past the knot in his throat, "is that you were luckier than you had a right to expect tonight. You could have been killed because you trusted in your supposed 'powers' to keep you safe."

He turned the horse's head again, pleased when she released the reins. As he headed for the barn, though, her voice, carried on the wind, reached him. "It was you I trusted to keep me safe, Mackenzie."

Jonas shuddered as her words stabbed at him, tearing at an old wound, leaving it open and bleeding again as it had when it was fresh. Long ago, someone else had trusted him to keep her safe. He'd failed her.

And she died. As surely as the man he'd been this morning had died a few minutes ago on a muddy field.

*  *  *

Elias walked slowly into the shadowy darkness of the barn, like a man taking the five short steps up the gallows to his own hanging. For twenty-five years, he'd known this day would come. Despite his efforts and the promise made to a dying man, he'd known the truth couldn't be kept from Jonas forever. A man would become what nature and fate intended him to become.

And nothing on earth could stop it.

Sounds, soft and familiar, led him to the stall at the end of the narrow aisle. Squinting into the darkness, he saw Jonas standing beside his black stallion, rubbing sweat from its back with a soft towel. The horse whickered as Elias drew near, but the man caring for it didn't turn, and something inside the older man broke.

Nothing would be the same after this night, he told himself and braced for the confrontation he'd been dreading.

Tension rippled between them. The air fairly sizzled with it. Still Elias held his peace, wanting to give the other man the chance to speak first.

"Tell me," Jonas finally asked, his voice hushed. "Is Hannah lying?"

There it was. Flat out and in the open at last. Elias drew an unsteady breath and realized that as hard as this was, there was almost a sense of relief accompanying it.

Sighing, he pulled off his still-rain-damp hat and studied the brim through troubled eyes. "Always figured you'd have to know someday," he said softly. "But I got to say, I never did look forward to the tellin' you."

"Damn it," Jonas muttered, not turning around, "just say it. Is she lying?"

"No."

One word, and years of trust and affection dissolved like sugar in strong coffee.

Jonas's chin hit his chest. Then he slowly turned around, fixing his gaze on the man who'd raised him. The man who'd taught him how to hunt and fish. To survive in the mountains. The man who'd been with him when Jonas's world had crashed down around him ten years ago.

The man who'd taught him that honesty and honor were the only truly important things in life.

He looked into gray eyes staring worriedly from beneath drawn-down, bushy gray brows and said the only thing he could. "Horseshit."

"You asked me." Elias said, squaring his slumped shoulders and lifting his chin. "I'm tellin' ya."

"You're as crazy as she is," Jonas muttered. Then, remembering what had just happened, he added. "Hell, we're all crazy as coots."

"I ain't never had a crazy day in my life and you damn well know it," Elias snapped.

"Until now." From a distance, the low rumble of thunder seemed to keep pace with the rising tide of fresh anger rolling inside him. "You're tryin' to tell me I'm a witch?"

"Warlock," Elias corrected. "Least, that's the word your pa used."

"My pa." A father he couldn't remember had him to be a warlock. Well, hell, who said he hadn't been crazy as well? He tossed the towel across the stall wall and shoved both hands through his hair, tugging at it and welcoming the pain. Maybe now he'd wake up from whatever nightmare he'd landed in.

"Your folks made me promise—"

"To raise me," Jonas interrupted, throwing his hand, wide. "I know."

"You don't know half what you should."

"And why's that?" His voice slashed at the still air and even the horse beside him shifted uneasily in its stall. Grumbling quietly, Jonas left the small enclosure and set the latch on the gate door behind him. "Why is it that I know next to nothing about my parents? Who I am?"

"Because that's the way they wanted it."

Jonas took a half step backward and narrowed his gaze on the old man watching him. "They wanted me to forget them?"

Christ. The whole damn world had gone loco.

Elias took a step closer and stopped at the look on Jonas's face. "It's time you heard it all," he said and started talking, words pouring from him in a tumble. "Your folks told me they'd got my name from friend of theirs. Never did tell me who, exactly," he muttered, shaking his head. "Anyhow, I agreed to lead 'em west. They were good folks," Elias said. "You should know that."

Jonas nodded.

The older man rubbed the back of his neck and went on. "We didn't have no trouble at all for weeks. Then one day I took you with me to do some hunting." He smiled wistfully as his gaze locked on a past he seemed lost in. Then his smile died as he said, "When we go back to camp, it was over. Indians had hit 'em hard and fast. Mercifully, your ma was already gone."

Jonas swallowed heavily, almost surprised an event he couldn't remember could affect him so deeply.

"It was quick, boy," he said, obviously reading the expression on Jonas's face. "I doubt she knew what had happened till she got to the Pearly Gates and Saint Peter himself told her about it."

Good, Jonas thought. Good. It didn't matter now, surely, twenty-five years later… but he was glad she hadn't suffered.

"Your pa, though." Elias went on, clearly determined now to get everything said at last, "he was still hangin' on. Like he'd waited for us to get back." The older man shook his head in silent admiration. "That was a tough man."

His voice drew a picture and Jonas thought he could almost see it. A lonely campsite, somewhere in the mountains. Two men, one of them dying, a dead woman, and a boy watching his world end.

A part of him almost remembered.

"He told me then why they'd left Massachusetts." Elias said. "About that Guild and how they wanted you to have a different life. A life you could choose for your own self. A life not burdened with other folks' expectations, he called it."

Somehow, Jonas found his voice. "He told you he—I—was a witch."

Elias snorted a choked, strained laugh. "He did. Can't say I believed him. Figured if he was, he could've stood off those Indians that had killed him and his woman. But he said how not even magic can defeat destiny," he shook his head again and smiled sadly. "He had a fine way of talking. Even then."

Jonas's heartbeat pounded in his ears. He felt every ounce of blood rushing through his veins. He measured every breath and told himself to hear it all, though all he wanted to do was leave this barn and pretend none of this had happened. He wanted his life back. As it had been yesterday. Hell, as it had been an hour ago.

Elias seemed to sense what he was feeling. His speared into Jonas's eyes, refusing to back down. Refusing to stop.

"He made me promise to care for you, which was no hardship, since I was already fond of ya."

Jonas sucked in air like a drowning man.

"And," the older man went on, "he made me promise not to tell you about them. About who you are and where you come from."

"So you lied." Three little words that summed up the last twenty-five years. "You lied to me my whole life."

It was a simple statement. One that ripped the solid floor from beneath his feet and left him floundering in uncertainty.

"It was a deathbed promise, boy," Elias told him, his voice steady and hard as it had been when he was a younger man. "I gave him my solemn word."

Jonas knew the value of a man's word. Elias had taught him that.

Honor.

Honesty.

It was laughable now, considering.

"And what about your word to me, Elias?" he snapped, feeling a fresh wave of anger rising within him "What about that? You spent my whole life keeping this from me and you can talk about honor?"

"You think it was easy hiding this from you?"

"Must've been," Jonas shot back, stalking down the center of the aisle to stare out at the starlit ranch yard beyond. Turning his head, he speared the other man with a glance. "You managed it fine for twenty-five years."

"Your folks made me swear."

"And your word to a dead man was worth more to you than me." He nodded somberly, biting down hard on the bitter taste in his mouth. "That's good to know."

"Damn it boy, that ain't the way it was."

"That's how it seems." Jonas shook his head fiercely, then marched back to take a stand in front of the man he'd loved for most of his life. Now Elias looked like a stranger to him. How many other things were tucked away in that gray head?

"Don't you see, I couldn't tell ya?" he asked.

"When I was a kid, maybe." Jonas was willing to give that. "But as I grew older, I had a right to know, damn it."

"Would you have believed me any more than you believed Hannah?"

"Probably not, but you could've tried!"

The older man rubbed his jaw and shook his head. "It wasn't just me keeping the secret, boy."

Jonas loomed over him, forcing Elias to tip his head back to meet his gaze.

"Who the hell else knows?"

"You do—or did."

This was way too much, he told himself as he threw up his hands in disgust. "Explain," he muttered, though something inside him really didn't want any more information tonight.

"To make extra sure you'd forget," Elias said, his suddenly old and tired, "your pa did somethin' to ya."