The only problem was his former girlfriend. What Gemma wondered was whether or not Jean really felt that it was over between them.

And what about his family? Gemma thought. How were they going to react to their beloved Jean no longer being in the family?

Gemma put her hands over her face. All in all, she couldn't see this as turning out well. If she had any sense, she'd tell Colin to stay away from her.

But Gemma knew she wasn't going to do that. Being altruistic was good, but throwing away a man who seemed to be everything she'd ever wanted was just plain stupid.

She headed back toward the house.

13.

GEMMA," SARA SAID as she held out a plate of some strawberry dessert, "are you sticking with your Heartwish being to get a good job?"

Gemma's mind was so full of thoughts about her and Colin that she had no idea what Sara was talking about. "I need to shower and change."

"Don't do it on our account," Rams said.

"Yeah, keep the shorts," Luke said.

Gemma looked at Mike, and he shrugged. "Sure, why not?" Gemma said as she took the plate and went to sit on the gra.s.s under the shade tree. Colin was in a chair as far from her as he could get. She didn't look at him.

Joce spoke first. "We were talking about the Heartwishes Stone and thinking about what we'd use its magic for. Luke wants immortality."

"My goodness!" Gemma said. "You certainly know how to wish big."

"My wife left out the details," Luke said. "All writers want immortality. That's why we're so vain as to think someone would want to read our thoughts. But it would be nice to think that my grandchildren will like reading my books."

"I'm sure they will," Joce said, smiling at him.

"Wives' opinions don't count in this," Rams said. "What about you, Sara? What would you wish for?"

"There's nothing I don't have. I got the house I wanted, the man, and this." She rubbed her big belly.

"Ha!" Mike said.

They all looked at him.

"I was her third choice of man," Mike said, and everyone laughed.

"Is this a joke I'm missing?" Gemma asked.

"Come over some afternoon and help me feed and diaper, and I'll tell you all of it," Joce said. "But I'll tell you now that Mike was not her third choice."

"She wouldn't have been interested in me if she'd met me in an ordinary way," Mike said.

Tess gave her brother a hard look. "I would have arranged a meeting with Sara if you'd just bothered to visit once in a while."

"I would have if-"

"Order in the court!" Rams said loudly. "You two can argue later. Let's get back on the subject. Sara, my dear cousin, there must be something you want."

"Good health and safety for the people I love."

"Boo! Hiss!" Tess said. "You love everybody in Edilean. If that wish were granted, we'd be a town with no illness, no accidents."

"Sounds great to me," Sara said.

"There is one thing you want," Mike said to his wife. "You told me just the other day."

Sara looked puzzled for a moment, then smiled. "That was a joke and don't you dare tell them what I said."

"Now you have to tell us," Luke said.

"Not me." Mike held up his hands in surrender. "I have to live with her. If she wants to confess, that's up to her."

Everyone looked at Sara.

"All right!" she said in exasperation. "I said . . ." She sighed. "It wasn't anything really. I just said that I envied Joce having twins. Tess, back me up here. Wouldn't you like to be carrying two babies, a boy and a girl?"

"Absolutely not!" Tess said. "One is all I'll be able to handle. The only mother I knew was our grandmother. n.o.body could be worse than her. I'm afraid-" She stopped talking and took a drink of her iced tea.

Mike reached out his hand and took Tess's in his and held it. His eyes told her that he was with her.

"Tess, I'm sorry," Sara said. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"Before I gave birth I was really worried whether I'd love my babies," Joce said.

"And now she won't leave them for even minutes," Luke said. "This is getting too deep for me," Colin said. "Any more of this strawberry stuff, Sara?"

"Sure, I'll get it."

"No you won't," Colin said as he got up and went to the little table. "Mike, what's your wish?"

"Easy," Mike said. "I want to take down a truly evil person."

"You and me both," Colin said as he sat back down.

"Excuse me if I'm being dense," Joce said to Mike, "but didn't you just do that last fall?"

"That was done by my wife," Mike said, smiling at Sara in pride. "And we had a lot of help. I'd like to end my career with fireworks."

Sara looked at Gemma. "My husband will soon retire from the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, and he's like a caged beast because I made him promise to take a desk job."

"Beast, am I?" Mike asked as he looked at Sara.

"You two can do that later," Rams said. "So who's left to make a wish? Colin?"

"What about you, Rams?" Colin asked.

"I got what I wanted when Tess said yes to me."

"That's nice," Gemma said.

"It's a cop-out," Luke said. "What is it? The lawyer in you can't reveal anything? You could wish for a backbone."

"You could wish for-" Rams began.

"Don't you two start!" Joce said. "I haven't had my wish yet."

They all looked at Joce. "I've decided to save my wish for when I really need it."

"I think I'll do that, too," Rams said.

"True Love!" Sara said. "One of us must wish for True Love."

Everyone looked from Gemma to Colin and back again, as they were the only unmarried people there.

"Colin is a Frazier," Gemma said, "so I'm not sure he should fool around with this."

"You believe in these wishes, don't you?" Joce asked, her eyes wide.

Gemma couldn't tell them what Tris had told her in confidence. "I'd just like to do some more research before-"

"I agree with Sara," Colin said as he stood up. "Why not wish for True Love? I've got a house now, so why not fill it?" He lifted his gla.s.s of lemonade and everyone picked up their gla.s.ses and held them aloft. "I wish that next year at this time we're all here together again, but that I will have my True Love with me."

"And she's expecting a baby," Sara added.

"Right," Colin said. "And that Sara has two babies-you better get to work, Mike-and Tess is the best mother in the world, that Mike has brought down a master of true evil, and-Who am I forgetting?"

"Luke!" Gemma said. "The writer."

"And Joce and me," Rams said.

Colin kept his gla.s.s lifted high. "Luke gets his books remembered forever, and Rams and Joce come up with something to wish for." He started to take a drink.

"What about Gemma?" Mike asked.

"The last person on earth I'd forget is Gemma," Colin said as he looked at her. "I hope you get everything you wish for in life."

Everyone turned toward Gemma and noted the way her face turned red.

"To answered wishes," Rams said and they all took deep drinks.

In Miami, sitting at her father's bedside in the hospital, Nell held up her bear. "See, Daddy, I told you."

"Told me what, sweetheart?"

"That Landy's necklace blinks."

"It sure does." He took the bear and held the necklace for a moment. It was a pretty thing, with a tiny, glistening rock inside a little cage made of gold. The necklace looked as though it could be valuable. "Where'd you get this?"

"It was in that box of junk jewelry I bought at the church rummage sale," her mother, Addy, said from the other side of the bed.

"Where'd it come from to get there?" he asked.

"I have no idea," Addy said. "Why are you interested?"

"No reason," he said. "It just doesn't look like junk and maybe somebody's looking for it."

Nell took the bear from her father. She didn't like what he was saying. She'd almost forgotten that daddies made rules that weren't to be broken.

"I don't think so," Addy said. "That necklace was stuck inside two flat pieces of lead, like somebody'd been using it for fishing. Nell and I had to use the vise on your workbench and two screwdrivers to get it open."

He chuckled. "Like mother, like daughter."

Nell clutched her bear and its necklace to her. "I like it."

"All right," he said, "you can keep it." He looked at his wife. "But later . . ." He left the rest of the sentence blank. She knew what he meant. When they got back to Edilean she'd find out where the necklace came from.

14.

COLIN LEFT MERLIN'S Farm and his friends reluctantly. He'd wanted to drive Gemma home, but she'd declined his offer. He knew what she meant, that he was to clear things with Jean before Gemma would be alone with him.

He knew that Gemma was right, but that didn't keep him from dreading the confrontation with Jean. He parked behind the sheriff's office and started to get out, but instead, he sat in his car and looked up at his apartment windows. Gemma said she wanted him to tell her about his life, but he didn't want to do that. For so many years, he'd gone in the wrong direction, trying to be what he wasn't. His lifelong obsession with wanting to help people had, at times, made him almost forget himself.

Obligations to his family, to people he'd grown up with, to his hometown, and especially to a woman he'd once loved with his whole heart, had nearly overwhelmed him. These weren't things he wanted to tell a woman he thought he might have a future with.

As he looked up at the windows of the dreary apartment he hated, he envisioned what was coming. Jean loved drama and scenes-which was why she was so good in a courtroom-and he didn't know which way she was going to play this particular episode. Would it be tears, which would end up with Colin comforting her? Or would it be anger and her shouting at him and saying that he'd betrayed her?

Back when he was younger, her scenes had been something he needed. A rip-roaring good argument with Jean-who could give as good as she got-helped release some of his own rage at the way his life was going.

After one of their fights-and the following makeup s.e.x-he'd be able to stand working at his father's car dealership for another six weeks or so. When the pressure inside him had built until he'd been ready to explode, he knew just how to push Jean's b.u.t.tons to make her angry enough that they could have a fight.

But all that had ended long ago, Colin thought, as he leaned back against the seat of his Jeep. He had walked out just as she'd taken a job in D.C.

Closing his eyes, he let himself remember those first days with Jean.