Wish Upon a Cowboy

by Maureen Child

  "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 abilities 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 h
uman 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."

  "How?" Jonas asked, frowning.

  How, indeed? If they'd known the answer to that question, perhaps they might have stopped him before he'd gone this far.

  "I'm not really sure," she admitted, then shrugged and looked up at him. "But somehow, he's draining the strength from everyone in town and taking it for his own. He grows stronger daily while the rest of us can do nothing to stop him."

  Jonas shifted his gaze from her and looked beyond her to the snowcapped mountains. Her words rattled around inside his head and he felt himself stiffening up. He'd never liked bullies, no matter what they called themselves. Sheriff. Bartender.

  Warlock.

  Jesus, a part of his brain still refused to acknowledge that any of this was happening. Warlocks and witches, for God's sake.

  Rubbing one hand across his face, he asked, "Why don't you stand together against him? I once saw a town rise up against a bullying sheriff and ride him out of town on a rail." He lowered his gaze to hers again. "One man alone couldn't do it. But surely a whole town of witches could handle the job."

  She inhaled sharply and her mouth twisted down at the corners. "People are afraid. Maybe we could have defeated him," she said. "At the beginning. But back then, we didn't know what he was up to. We welcomed him to Creekford as one of us." She wrapped her arms around her waist and squeezed tight. "It wasn't until much too late that we discovered he wasn't there to live as one of us. But to crown himself head of the Guild and rule everything from a seat of untouchable power."

  "Why don't you all leave?" he asked.

  Her gaze snapped to his. "Quit? Then what? Where do we go? What do we do? Do we keep running from Blake?" She shook her head and pointed toward the corral, where the voices of the men were raised at their work. "You said you couldn't quit when you got thrown from a horse or you'd never have a decent animal to ride."

  Jonas winced slightly. He had said that.

  "Well, if we quit, what would we have?" she demanded, moving in on him until he took a hasty step back, instinctively retreating from the fire in her eyes. "Centuries of tradition thrown at the feet of one greedy man? Our lives ruined? Our town deserted and dying?"

  "What do you expect me to do about this, Hannah?"

  "I expect you to claim your birthright."

  "Which is what, exactly?"

  "The leadership of the Guild."

  "And do what?"

  "Help us," she said flatly. "Help your brothers and sisters rid themselves of a warlock who wants to destroy them and everything they know and believe in."

  "What if I can't?" he asked, remembering that tree in the meadow. Half straight. Half nothing changed. Could he stand against a powerful warlock and win when he didn't really believe most of this nonsense himself?

  Hell, did he even want to try?

  Those people in the Guild meant nothing to him. Oh, he thought, Hannah did. Despite his best intentions, he cared for her. More than he wanted to admit. But could he, even for Hannah, give up who and what he was to fight a battle that had nothing to do with him or his life?

  "Can‘t?" she asked tightly as if reading his mind. "Or won't?"

  She gave him one quick look up and down, then stomped past him, the dirty laundry forgotten in her angry frustration.

  Jonas moved fast, though, and caught up with her in one or two easy strides. Grabbing hold of her arm, he whirled her around to face him. Her green eyes looked like flashing emeralds, glittering with the sun and the fine, high temper riding her.

  Well, he wasn't through yet. He wanted to hear it all. Only then could he decide what to do about this.

  "There's more, isn't there?" he demanded, remembering his dream and Wolcott's obsession with having Hannah. "Something you're not telling me."

  "Isn't that enough?" she snapped, wrenching her arm free of his grasp.

  "He wants you, doesn't he?"

  She paled. He watched the color leach from her face, leaving her eyes two brilliant spots of green against milk-white skin. "Yes."

  An invisible hand closed around his heart.

  "Why?" He congratulated himself silently on squeezing that single word past a throat too tight to breathe through.

  The fight went out of her. He saw it in the slump of her shoulders and heard it in the soft tone of her voice. A sheen of water sparkled in her eyes and he hoped to hell she could keep those tears from falling.

  "Because I'm a Lowell," she said finally. "The last of the Lowells."

  "So?" What the hell did her name have to do with any of this, for God's sake?

  She gave him half a smile. "The Lowells were a powerful family in the Guild. We—Eudora and I—are the last. He knows that by marrying me, he'll strengthen his own powers by being able to draw on mine." At his look of disbelief, she added, "Oh, I'm not a very good witch, I know. But as a Lowell, the talent is there and would be passed through me to my husband. And my children."

  "So you came to me," he said tightly, trying not to flinch at the words husband and children.

  "Yes," she reached up and scrubbed the tears from her eyes with the tips of her fingers. "You're our last hope, Mackenzie. You're the only one strong enough to defeat Blake Wolcott."

  The tree, he reminded himself and thought maybe he should tell her.
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  "And when we marry, my family's power will be yours, strengthening you further. And the child we conceive will have the strength of both our lines."

  Again, he thought, groaning silently at her words. He remembered all too clearly the last time she'd spoken of marriage and children.

  She'd been stretched out naked atop his bed, offering her virtue for the sake of this damned Guild. His fingers curled into fists to keep from reaching for her. His body tightened, thickened with the memory of her smooth skin and the desire she quickened inside him.

  Briefly he gave into her fantasy, imagining her round with his child, and surprised himself by enjoying the image. But in the next instant, old memories reared up to strangle him with fear and he let that mental picture go.

  She lifted her chin and stared at him, that green gaze spearing into his. Apparently, she had no trouble guessing what he was thinking, because she assured him, "A marriage between us would only help you."

  "Maybe," he said and briefly touched her cheek with his fingertips before letting his hand fall to his side. "But it might kill you," he added. "And that's one chance I'm not willing to take."

  * * *

  "If I never see another train, it'll be too soon for me," Eudora muttered and brushed one hand across the wrinkled fabric of her skirt. Good heavens, by the time she finally reached Hannah, she would look no better than the poor disheveled men she saw stealing rides in the boxcars.

  Temper flaring, patience almost exhausted, she half turned in her seat to look at the man she'd begun thinking of as her shadow. Ed Thistlewaite no longer bothered to hide from her. Clearly, subterfuge expended too much energy to suit Ed.

  Her gaze touched his and he inclined his round head regally, like king to peasant. Eudora's gaze narrowed. It really wasn't wise to irritate her when she was already feeling tired and cranky.

  Just above Ed's head, tacked to the back wall of the train car, hung a coal scuttle, with enough black lump, inside to feed the potbellied stove in the corner. Staring at it, Eudora lifted one silver eyebrow and the bottom of the scuttle dropped out.