Wish Upon a Cowboy (24 page)

Against the memories already racing back into his mind.

In a whisper aimed more at himself than her, he said softly, "Lucky."

*  *  *

Hannah ran to him and Jonas jumped from his horse and opened his arms to her. Sunlight poured down on the meadow grass and sparkled in the fresh layers of snow high in the mountains.

He caught her up and swung her in circles through the meadow grass, relishing the fresh, lemony scent of her, loving the feel of her hands on his shoulders. He looked up into her laughing green eyes and felt love for her swell inside him.

He lowered her slowly, letting her slide down the length of his body, reveling in the fact that she was his. That somehow they'd found each other.

And when she framed his face with her hands and guided his mouth to hers, Jonas held his breath and thanked whatever gods had sent her to him.

Then she was gone and his arms were empty.

"Hannah!" He spun around, letting his gaze slide across the once-sun-filled meadow, now cringing from an encroaching darkness.

He watched it come, sweeping across the ground, obliterating everything in its path, cloaking the world in a black shroud that only seemed to blossom as it drew nearer. The air felt thick, poisonous. The hairs at the back of his neck prickled and he felt eyes on him watching. Waiting.

From a distance, he heard her voice, strained, scared. "Jonas!"

"Hannah, where are you?" he called, racing toward his horse as it was hidden by the blackness still creeping nearer.

"Hannah!" he called again, reacting to the urgency inside him telling him to find her. Before it was too late. Time was running out. He felt it. Knew it.

"She's with me, Mackenzie," a man said, and his voice was filled with the dark.

Jonas turned to face the shadows and watched as they twisted and writhed, shifted and tore. And at last, a man stepped out as if born from the blackness swallowing the meadow.

"Who are you?"

"The man who will destroy you and have Hannah."

"Who are you?" he demanded and vaguely heard the distant crash of thunder. But the storm wouldn't penetrate this solid wall of night. Nothing could.

"Blake Wolcott," the man said and stepped closer, smiling now at Jonas's confusion. "I've come for Hannah."

"You can't have her," he shouted, shifting to his right, preparing to fight this man any way he could. "She belongs with me."

"She belongs to whoever is strong enough to claim her."

"Come on, then," Jonas said and half crouched, arms ready to fight.

"You're a fool," Wolcott told him and his finely arched brows lowered dangerously over dark brown eyes. "You can't fight me and win."

"Only one way to find out," Jonas snapped and lunged at him.

Wolcott laughed and waved one hand. As if shot by an unseen shotgun, Jonas went staggering backward. Pain engulfed him and he was falling, falling, tail over teakettle. When he finally found his feet again, he reached for the pistol strapped to his leg. He pulled it, aimed it, and fired. Nothing happened.

"You are a fool, Mackenzie," the other man shouted, gathering the dark like a cape and swirling it around him until the entire world went black and only the two of them existed. "You can't fight me like a mortal man. This is warlocks' business and your time is finished!"

He lifted his hand again and Jonas dropped. His head fell back on his neck and he stared at the emptiness as it fell in after him. The earth gave way beneath his feet and the blackness swallowed him.

"No!"

He clawed and grabbed, trying to fight free of the emptiness, but it was all around him and the only thing with him in the darkness was Wolcott's laughter … and Hannah's screams.

*  *  *

Jonas sat straight up in bed, gasping for air as he reached blindly for the matches he kept on the table close by. He found one, scratched it, and breathed easier as the flame sputtered, flickered wildly, and then caught, creating a tiny circle of light.

Carefully, he touched the flame to the wick of the lamp, then blew it out and stood up, legs shaking. Shoving both hands through his hair, he walked unsteadily toward the window and threw it wide. Cold air rushed into the room, making the candle flame dance and clearing away the last traces of the dream.

"Wolcott," he said, rubbing one hand across his face and shivering in the breeze racing past him. "Hannah said something about a fella named Wolcott."

Glancing over his shoulder at the closed door of his room and Hannah's beyond, he wondered if he should go wake her up and ask her about this bastard.

But a moment later, he reconsidered. One thing he didn't need at the moment was to be around Hannah in the middle of the night.

Not when he had so many other things to think about.

And consider.

Chapter Fourteen

Steam lifted from the washtub, wreathing Hannah's face in a cloudy mist that dampened her hair and left curled blond tendrils on her cheeks and forehead. Positioning the scrub board, she reached into the hot, soapy water for another shirt and, fisting it in her hands, rubbed it across the metal slats.

Her shoulders ached, the small of her back throbbed from bending over the tub, but she was nearly finished and that gave her a sense of satisfaction. From around the corner of the house, she heard the men at the corral working with the horses again. The heavy slap of a body hitting the dirt told her yet another man had been thrown.

Shaking her head slightly, she muttered. "But he'll only get up again, bruised or bleeding, and climb back on the horse."

"Should he quit, instead?"

Hannah gasped and looked over her shoulder at Jonas, leaning against a log wall. One foot crossed in front of the other, his arms folded across his chest, he was watching her through eyes that set off sparks inside her.

"You startled me."

"I know."

She hadn't seen him since breakfast and just the sight of him now was enough to warm her through.

Breathing deeply, she forced herself to turn back to her task. "It would certainly be less painful if the men would just stay off once they're thrown."

"And we'd never get a horse broken around here, either."

Stilted conversation. Awkwardness colored the air between them and she wished it were different. Wished that they could simply come together as it was destined to be. As she knew it should be.

Love swelled inside her and Hannah couldn't help wondering when that love had taken root. Had it always been there, waiting for him? Had she only needed to be with him for it to blossom? Or was it a gift, handed to her by the same fates that had determined a Lowell should marry the Mackenzie?

And what did it matter now?

She remembered saying the words to him last night. And she remembered clearly that he hadn't returned them.

He walked toward her, his boots scratching against the ground. When he stopped beside her, he went down on one knee and glanced into the washtub. "I told you, you didn't have to wash my shirts."

Washing his shirts was simply another way to be close to him. To inhale the scent of him trapped in the fabric.

She shrugged. "I have to do my own, and a few more aren't so much extra trouble. Her fingers curled into the wet, dark blue fabric of his shirt. And her mind painted a picture of him without that shirt. Bare chest, muscles gleaming in the lamplight, and the feel of his arms wrapped around her.

She hadn't gotten much sleep last night. Her dreams had been haunted by the memory of his kiss and the craving for more. Her body stirred with longings she didn't know how to ease and her mind kept the image of Jonas's face before her all through the long, dark hours of the night.

But it seemed, she thought with a quick glance at him from the corner of her eye, that he hadn't slept much, either.

She couldn't help hoping it was thoughts of her and not worries over his newly discovered witchcraft abiliÂties that had kept him awake.

He reached out and scooped one finger across the soap bubbles covering the surface of the water. Lifting his hand again, he watched the bubbles pop as water rolled down his finger to soak into the cuff of his sleeve.

"Who's Blake Wolcott?"

The shirt fell from her grasp and her bare knuckles scraped painfully against the metal scrub slats. He grabbed for her hand before she could react and brought it close to his face. Smoothing one finger across the rubbed-raw skin, he looked into her eyes and said, "You mentioned his name once. You said Hepzibah—frowning, he glanced around for the cat—didn't care for him."

A sizzle of heat snaked from her hand to her arm to her chest and settled around her heart. As he touched her, the pain of the scrape lessened and she could almost feel her flesh healing over.

Hannah reminded herself to breathe. "No, she doesn't." Smiling slightly, she added, "You can stop looking for her. She's in the house."

"Good." He released her hand, but didn't move otherwise, watching her and waiting for an answer to his question.

Hannah glanced at her injured knuckles, not surprised in the least to find that her skin wasn't even red anymore.

Instead of answering him, she asked a question of her own. "How much do you remember now about the Guild?"

"Enough to know it has nothing to do with me."

"But that's not true," she said quickly and reached out to him She laid her hand on his forearm and he briefly lowered his gaze to it. "The Guild is important to all witches."

He pulled away from her, frowned, and took a seat on a relatively dry patch of ground. "Tell me."

How to explain? she thought, searching her mind for the right words. The words to convince him just how important he was. Not only to her, but to the witches in Creekford, waiting for his help.

'The Guild," she started slowly, choosing each word carefully, "is an association of witches."

He nodded.

"We banded together centuries ago," she went on with a smile, remembering all of the stories Eudora had told her as a child. "In the days of the witch hunts, we were safer as a group than by ourselves."

"I can understand that," he said. "But that doesn't answer my question."

"I'm getting to that."

He sighed.

"The members of the Guild protect the magic, keep it from being misused."

Still frowning, Jonas pulled a tuft of grass from the earth and studied it as though looking for the secrets of the universe in a few blades of green.

Sighing again, he muttered, "'The magic.'"

"Yes," Hannah said and moved away from the washtub to take a seat beside him. Sunshine spilled across her shoulders and a soft, cool breeze filtered down from the mountains to ruffle her hair and ease the hot blood coursing through her.

Gently, she laid her hand on his arm again, feeling the corded muscles beneath the soft, worn fabric of his shirt. A strong man physically, he was also strong in magic. He simply didn't know how strong yet.

"The magic doesn't belong to any one witch," she said, dipping her head to find and meet his gaze. "Magic is…" She shook her head, searching for the words and not finding them. "Alive."

His gaze narrowed on hers.

"It's in every living thing on the earth. Grass, trees, rocks, water, wind, fire… "

He laughed shortly, without humor. "A rock is alive?"

She smiled and shook her head again. "Just because you can't see it breathe doesn't mean there isn't life inside it." Sighing, she tried harder. "The magic lies within all these things. And a witch—or a warlock—is merely a human who knows how and where to look for it."

His fingers plucked at the grass in his hands, shredding it, tearing it into tiny pieces to be carried away on the wind. "Magic grass," he muttered on a choked-off laugh. "Rocks. Trees."

"They're not magic," she said, frustrated because she wasn't explaining any of this well enough. But she'd been raised with this knowledge all around her. She'd accepted it as simply a fact of life and had never before had to try and describe it to someone unfamiliar with it. After all, no witch told her secrets to an ordinary person. "Magic is the life pooled inside these things. Magic is something you can feel but not touch. Sense but not see. It's something you know," she reached out and laid her hand on his chest. "You feel it. In your heart. Your soul."

Jonas shook his head and tossed the last of the grass aside. Gently, he took her hand from his chest, breaking the connection between them.

Staring at her, he said, "You're not telling me about Wolcott. That's what I want to know. The rest is just –"

"All right," she said quickly, reacting to the impatience she sensed rising off of him in huge waves. "Blake Wolcott is a warlock."

His eyes narrowed again. "Like me."

"No," she said quickly. "Not anything like you."

Hannah shuddered at the thought. Blake Wolcott was a vicious, unprincipled warlock who killed for the sake of killing.

Jonas was a hard man, certainly. But the life he led had made him that way. Still, he was hard without being cruel. Something Blake Wolcott would never be able to understand.

"You said he was a warlock."

"He is. But he's not protecting the magic."

"Neither am I," Jonas told her and pushed himself to his feet.

She scrambled up to stand beside him. "But you're not trying to steal the magic for yourself, either, are you?"

"Can he do that?"

"Can and is," she said softly, before strengthening her voice again. "He came to Creekford about a year ago from England."

"England!" Jonas snorted the word. "Yeah, we've seen a few of those Englishmen out here, too. Come looking to be cowboys and usually get themselves killed."

"Blake isn't interested in anything but power."

"Power?"

"It's all he cares about," Hannah went on. She'd longed to tell him this whole story since the first day she was here. Maybe if she had, they would be closer now than they were. Maybe he would have accepted his destiny already.

But regrets wouldn't help her now. She had to trust that everything would come about as it should.

"He's strong," she said, drawing up the mental image of Blake's sharp features. "Stronger than any of the rest of us. And since he's been here, he's only weakened us further."