Wish Upon a Cowboy

by Maureen Child

  "What'd you expect me to do?" he demanded.

  "I expected you to say you love me, too."

  "What good would that do?" he asked, throwing his hands wide before grabbing hold of her upper arms and dragging her up onto her toes. Her face just inches from his, he carefully schooled his features, not wanting her to know what he was feeling. Just holding her like this sent a bolt of heat lightning right through the core of him. What he'd found with her was unlike anything he'd ever known.

  He looked down into her flushed cheeks and over bright green eyes and knew in that moment that he did love her. Loved her more than he'd thought possible. Her passion, her joy, her damned humming. Everything about her, he loved. Yet the knowledge solved nothing. There was still a danger to her. A warlock to face. And old fears to conquer.

  "Love doesn't solve a problem," he said tightly. "It just makes new ones. Bigger ones," he released her before he could wrap his arms around her and hold on for dear life. "Ours are big enough as it is."

  "So we ignore what we found together?"

  "We try," he said simply, even though he knew it would be like trying to ignore the beating of his own heart.

  Her eyes flashed green fire that should have singed him. "So you were lying."

  "What?" She changed subjects so fast, it could make a man's head swim.

  "When you said I had a say in what happens between us, you were lying."

  "Of course you have a say." Hell, hadn't he spent most of the last few weeks listening to her say?

  "Oh, thank you very much," she ground out from between gritted teeth. "I get an opinion, but only yours counts."

  Couldn't she see how hard this was?

  "Damn it Hannah –"

  A sound from outside caught Elias's attention and he half turned in his seat to look out the window. Frowning, he said. "Someone's coming."

  He's coming, he's coming, he's coming… The chant repeated itself in Jonas's mind and he reacted quickly. Pushing Hannah back, he stalked to the window in two quick strides. Staring through the glass, he watched a buckboard roll into the ranch yard and relief poured through him.

  "It's all right," he pulled in a deep, steadying breath. "It's a woman."

  A woman. Elias's throat closed up as he stared at the tall, elegant creature being helped from the bench seat by one of the ranch hands. He felt his jaw drop as he looked her over from the top of her tiny blue hat to the tips of her shining black shoes.

  "Sweet Jesus," he whispered around the knot in his throat. "Thank you."

  "What's wrong with you?" Jonas demanded, and his voice sounded like an annoying buzz in Elias's ears.

  "Who is it?" Hannah asked and pushed both men aside for a look. Then a moment later, she squealed with delight, shouted, "Eudora!" and raced from the room.

  "Eudora." Elias repeated the one word quietly, almost reverently.

  "Her aunt," Jonas said and focused his gaze on the woman. She didn't look like a witch, he thought, but then, neither did he. Or like Hannah.

  As her name flashed across his mind, she hurried through the main room, darted out the front door, ran across the yard, and hurled herself at the older woman. Laughing and clutching at her hat, Eudora returned her niece's hug, then held her at arm's length to look her over.

  Another witch, Jonas thought with an inward groan. He'd gone twenty-five years without knowing a damn thing about witches and magic and whatnot, and in the space of a few weeks, he was hip deep in them. Hell, if he wasn't careful, soon the place would be crawling with them.

  From a distance, he couldn't hear what was being said, but he could feel Hannah's pleasure rippling through him like a rising tide, and in spite of himself, he smiled. Gaze shifting from one to the other of them, Jonas told himself the women were as different as night and day. If he hadn't known better, he wouldn't have guessed they were related.

  As he watched, though, Jonas began to see that something about the scene was… wrong, somehow. He couldn't put his finger on it. He was still too new to this whole witchcraft business. But this was an instinctive knowledge.

  Jonas sucked in a gulp of air and kept studying the women, even as Elias stood up and took up a position alongside him.

  "Her aunt, you said," the older man muttered thickly. "Hannah's aunt."

  "Yeah." Jonas spared him a quick look. The man's eyes were wide and startled.

  "Then she's a witch?"

  "Isn't everybody?" Jonas quipped.

  "That's why," Elias whispered to himself, remembering the months he'd spent searching for her. If she was a witch, then her parents were, too—and no doubt her father had done something to keep Elias from finding his daughter. "That's why I never found her."

  "Found who?" Staring at the man, Jonas turned with him to face the doorway where the women would soon appear. A moment later, he spoke again, confused awe ringing in his tone. "You mean… Hannah's aunt Eudora is the woman you…"

  Elias hardly heard him. With his blood thundering in his ears, his mind filled with images past and present of the woman who would, in another moment, be walking back into his life. Would she know him? Did she remember, as he did, every minute of the time they'd had together? Did she ever think of him and wonder?

  Every breath cost him. His heartbeat thudded painfully in his chest. His eyes stung with a sheen of tears that were as unexpected as they were unstoppable.

  So many years, he thought. Hundreds, thousands of nights, he'd dreamed of this moment. Wished for it. Prayed for it.

  Hands trembling, mouth dry, he waited, as he'd waited the last thirty years.

  The sound of her voice reached him first. It was as familiar to him as his own. She laughed at something Hannah said and he felt himself smiling, too.

  And then she was there. In front of him. Beautiful. More beautiful than he'd remembered. He didn't see the silver in her hair or the fine lines stretching out from the corners of her eyes. Instead, he saw the pretty, sparkling young woman she had been and he knew that as long as he lived, he would always see her thus.

  She stepped into the room and the shine in her blue eyes warmed him as thoroughly as it had when he was young.

  Elias pulled in a long, shaky breath and realized that thirty years had just dropped from his shoulders. In an instant, he'd become the young cowboy who'd spotted a fine lady on a ship's deck one morning.

  He cleared his throat. "Eudora."

  She froze.

  He spoke her name again, luxuriating in the sound of it on his lips. It had been so long.

  She knew.

  She remembered.

  He saw it.

  She turned toward him slowly, as if no more able to believe this was happening than he. He watched her as she lifted one hand to cover her mouth, open now in surprise. Her eyes… those eyes that had haunted him for a life time… glimmered with a sudden sheen of tears. Her breath caught and a soft, tremulous sigh escaped her.

  "Elias?"

  He nodded.

  "Oh, my…"

  Somehow, he moved. His unsteady legs took him across the floor. His gaze locking with hers, he drank his fill of her and knew he would never tire of staring into those eyes. The other two people in the room had ceased to exist. It was only he and Eudora now. As it was always meant to be.

  "My God," she whispered brokenly as he came closer, and even the tone of her voice was like music to a man long deaf to sound. "It is you." Her breath left her in a rush. She tilted her head to one side and a slow, sad smile curved her lovely mouth. "Elias. My Elias."

  His own breath hitched in his chest. The love was still there. As it had been so long ago. As it would always be between them. "Always yours," he told her and opened his arms to her.

  She came to him, as she had then, fitting herself into his embrace, cuddling close, resting her head on his chest where she could listen to his heartbeat. And when his arms closed around her, he felt, for the first time in too many years, a whole man. Complete.

  "I didn't know," she muttered qu
ietly. "I didn't know you were still with the Mackenzie."

  "Still?" he asked, pulling his head back to look down at her. His fingers trailed along the edge of her jaw like a man retracing familiar steps. "Then it was you who sent his parents to me?"

  She looked up at him and nodded. "I knew they could trust you."

  "Why didn't you come to me then?" he asked, his heart breaking for the lost years.

  Eudora reached up, cupped his cheek in the palm of one hand, and smoothed her thumb across his lined face. "I didn't know if you would still want me." She inhaled deeply and let it go again on a sigh. "It had been five years since my father sent me away."

  "But… you're a witch," he murmured. "Couldn't you see?"

  She shook her head. "Not for myself. The crystal doesn't allow that. It's why I didn't know you were still here."

  "You shouldn't have doubted," he told her gently, regret rising in his chest for all the lost time. Time.

  He caught her hand in his and dipped his free hand into his pocket. Pulling out the tiny gold watch she'd given him so long ago, he studied it for a long moment, then placed it in her palm.

  She sniffed and smiled. "Oh, Elias, you kept it all these years?"

  Elias curled her fingers over the watch, then kissed the inside of her wrist. Looking at her again, he murmured. "Five years or fifty. Eudora. You should have known I'd be waiting."

  "Oh, my love," she whispered as a tear rolled down her cheek, "I've missed you so."

  "And I, you," he said, bending his head for the kiss he'd dreamed of claiming. Softly, sweetly, their lips met in a silent promise of a future they could finally share.

  Jonas stared at the two older people, so oblivious of their audience. Shifting his gaze from Hannah to the couple and back again, he was only slightly relieved to see that she was as confused as he.

  Destiny, he thought. Fate. Words Hannah used with regularity. Was it possible that all of this had been set into motion by some Master Planner? Were Eudora and Elias meant to bring him and Hannah together all along?

  A headache roared into life behind his eyes. Jonas looked from Hannah to her aunt, studying the two women as that sense of… wrongness reared up inside him again.

  What is it? he wondered as a small kernel of suspicion took root within him and blossomed. Wrong. Something… Narrowing his gaze until his vision was slightly out of focus. Jonas stared at the tall older woman, concentrating on her alone.

  Then he saw it.

  A light. Surrounding Eudora, the pale, iridescent glow seemed to shine from deep within her and halo around her body like a child's outlined drawing. Jonas's pulse rate jumped as he studied the sparkling color that defined her form. Like dust motes caught in a sunbeam, showers of tiny sparks enveloped her, moving with her, shining like the sun glancing off new snow.

  Magic.

  Instinctively, he knew that was what he was looking at. The proof that Eudora was a witch. The magic was a part of her. In her bones, her heart, and soul.

  He looked at Elias, still holding Eudora close. There was no light… no color around the man. No sense of magic there at all.

  Jonas's breath caught, and briefly he lifted his own hands in front of his still-out-of-focus gaze. "Damn," he whispered.

  The magic was surrounding him.

  A sparkle of light, shining softly in outline around his palms and fingers. Another shallow breath shuddered through him as he turned his hands this way and that, watching the light play and dance, but never leave him.

  More than any words he'd heard—more than any speeches about duty and what his heritage really meant this pale, shimmering light struck him to his soul. Witchcraft wasn't something he could pick up or put down. It was him. In him. With him. A part of him that he would never be free of.

  Something inside him shifted, opened, and allowed a light to enter where before there had only been darkness. And for that one brief moment, Jonas felt the power of his ancestors roaring through him. For one split second, he thought he saw the shades of his parents smiling at him.

  Then the world righted itself and he was once again, standing in his kitchen. Still a bit shaken, he let his hands fall to his sides as he looked at Elias and Eudora, still celebrating their reunion. Slowly, Jonas turned his gaze on Hannah, already anticipating her reaction when he told her about what he'd seen.

  She'd been right all along. And maybe, he thought with a small surge of hope, maybe she was right about the two of them, as well. Perhaps they were meant to be together.

  Her wide, green eyes shone with happiness. Her smile dazzled him to the soles of his feet. Smiling himself, he let his gaze shift out of focus again, wanting to see the sparkle of light that defined her. He stared at her for a long minute. Then another. His smile faded. Now he knew what had struck him as being wrong. His heartbeat staggered. He looked again. Harder this time, straining to see what he now knew wasn't there.

  This was what he'd sensed was wrong.

  It was Hannah, blast her.

  Fresh betrayal slapped at him. He'd believed her. Trusted her. Hell, he'd come damn close to admitting he loved her.

  For what?

  More lies?

  Hannah frowned as Jonas's smile faded. What could be wrong now? Couldn't he be happy for Elias and Eudora? Couldn't he feel the love swirling through the room? How could he not be affected by something as tender and touching as the scene unfolding now in front of them?

  He was looking at her as if he didn't even know her.

  Flicking a quick glance at the happy couple, Hannah turned back to him. "What is it?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

  He snorted a laugh at her, his icy blue eyes as frosty as a lake in midwinter. At the harsh sound. Elias and Eudora both turned to look at him.

  "You ought to be on the stage. Hannah," he said, glaring at her. "You're so damn convincing, you'd be a real success as a professional liar."

  "What?" Whatever she'd expected, it hadn't been this.

  "How many more lies are there?" He shrugged his shoulders and his mouth turned up in a mocking smile. "Just make a guess if you're not sure."

  "What are you talking about?" She forgot all about Eudora and Elias and took a step toward Jonas.

  "That's one," he said shortly. "You know damn well what I'm talking about."

  "I don't," she said, her voice rising slightly. "I swear I don't."

  "Another lie," he snapped. "This magic horseshit." He paused and added sarcastically, "Oh, excuse me, ladies… it all goes hand in hand with lies, doesn't it?"

  "Here, now!" Elias said.

  "Jonas –" Hannah started, but was cut off.

  "Sure it does!" He answered his own question, then went on. "Magic is making somebody see something that isn't there, right? It's making something out of nothing." He threw his hands wide and let them fall to his sides again. "It's lies. Something you're damn good at."

  It was his voice, more than his words, that slashed at her. The banked fury in his tone and the remote gleam in his eyes made her cold down to her toes.

  "Damn you, Hannah!" he shouted. He took a half step toward her before he stopped himself. "You came all the way here to force me to remember a past I wanted to keep buried. You tossed my life upside down, destroyed the first chance at peace I've known in ten years, convinced me to love you, and you're not even a witch!"

  A bright flash of lightning skittered across the sky, gilding the windowpanes with an eerie, momentary brightness. An instant later, a roll of thunder crashed down around them, rattling the crockery in the cupboards.

  "What?" she said on an outraged gasp. She couldn't even take a moment to enjoy the fact that he'd admitted to loving her. Not when he was spouting such utter nonsense, too.

  "You heard me, damn it!" he shouted over another clap of thunder.

  "Of course I'm a witch," she argued hotly, while a part of her mind tried to understand why he was doing this.

  "What are you sayin'?" Elias demanded, but no one answered.

  "
No, you're not," Jonas went on, his voice dropping to a low, furious growl. "I can see the magic in a witch. I see it in her," he jerked a thumb at Eudora. "Hell, I see it in me. But when I look at you," he finished, "all I see is a liar."

  "You're wrong," Hannah whispered, her voice tearing from her throat. "I'm a Lowell. A witch. Ask anyone back home."

  Jonas snapped a glance at Eudora and Hannah watched her aunt's face pale slightly.

  "Tell him. Eudora," she said and heard the thread of panic in her own voice. "Tell him he's wrong."

  But the tall older woman only looked at them both through eyes glimmering with sorrow. She held tight to Elias, her arms around his thick waist, burrowing close for his support.

  Jonas wasn't moved. He wouldn't be fooled again. Not by Hannah. And not by her aunt, either, damn it.

  He studied Hannah again, just to be sure in his own mind. But there was no change. No halo of light enveloped her. Not the smallest spark shimmered in the air around her.

  'There's no magic in you," he said flatly. "So just who the hell are you and why are you here at all?"

  * * *

  "Adopted?" Hannah's voice sounded oddly hollow, but she couldn't seem to help it.

  She'd expected Eudora to set Jonas straight. To tell them all that Hannah was a Lowell. The last in a long, illustrious line of witches. Her lungs trembled with the heavy task of drawing air. Her heartbeat thudded painfully in her chest. Her throat closed around a knot of regret, disillusionment, and fear.

  Adopted?

  So not only wasn't she a witch… but she also wasn't the woman she'd always thought herself to be. The ancestors of whom she'd been so proud weren't hers anymore. Her family ties were being snipped neatly, leaving her floating free, uprooted. Unbound to anyone or anything.

  Oh, God…

  Breathe, Hannah, she told herself, breathe. She looked around the table at the faces of the three people watching her. Elias, his features twisted into a mask of concern even as he kept a tight grip on Eudora's hand, as though he were afraid she'd slip away from him again. And Eudora, eyes rimmed with tears and glittering with trepidation. Finally Jonas, his expression neutral. Unreadable.

  They were all waiting for her to say something. But what could she say? Her mind worked frantically and came up empty. Dear God, she prayed silently, please give me the words I need.