When You Wish (Contemporary Romance)

by Handeland, Lori

  “Yes.” Thunder rumbled in the distance. The rain slowed from a torrent to a trickle. The fire went out with a last, dying poof. The storm fled as quickly as it had come.

  Grace became aware of a rock pressing into her rump and Dan’s knee digging into her calf. What had felt good amidst the wildness of the storm had become uncomfortable as reality returned. Wasn’t that always the way?

  “Thank you for the gallant gesture . . . ” Grace shifted and the rock dug deeper. She shoved at Dan’s shoulders. He was as immovable as that rock. “But we can get up now. The storm’s gone.”

  The clouds drifted off, too, revealing the moon once more. A silver halo surrounded Dan’s head, throwing shadows all about him and making it difficult to decipher his expression. Grace didn’t see the kiss coming until his lips pressed against hers.

  She forgot the rock at her back, the knee against her legs, and the weight of the man pressing her into mud that didn’t feel quite so good anymore. Because, as before, the kiss certainly did.

  They had mud on their faces, mud on their hands, mud all over their feet and their clothes. But it just didn’t matter. All that mattered was what happened when their lips joined.

  Dan’s kiss was so incredibly good it had to be bad, Grace thought, even as she wrapped her arms about the broad shoulders that blocked out the moon, the stars, and the sky, and held him closer to her.

  There was some reason she shouldn’t be kissing this man, but she couldn’t recall what that reason was. So Grace threw caution to the winds, something she was very good at, and let him kiss her while she kissed him right back.

  He nibbled at her lips as if he had all night. Actually they did. Where were they going but into the cabin? And then . . .

  Grace pushed away those implications so she could enjoy the moment. There were a lot of good things about enjoying the moment, something her mother always preached, and her father never learned. That omission had killed him in the end.

  Her mouth opened beneath Dan’s questing tongue. He tasted of rainwater and storm wind, an arousing combination she wanted to taste again. So she swept her tongue out to meet his and they tangoed a moment or two.

  He moaned as she tugged his lip into her mouth, suckling, tasting, teasing. Her fingers tangled in his hair, holding him to her because right now she did not want to let him go.

  He shifted, and the weight of his body eased to the side. Now his knee pressed into her thigh—or perhaps it wasn’t his knee. She shifted, too, bumping her hip along that hardness. He pulled his mouth from hers on a hiss that sounded of pain, and she murmured soothing nonsense against his jaw. His hand cupped her hip and pulled her against him— hill to valley, hard to soft, man to woman.

  He resurrected their kiss; his body blotted out the night, pressing against her where she wanted him the most.

  Then headlights pinned them. They had been so engrossed in what they made each other feel, as inappropriate and dangerous as it was, that they had not heard the car approach until too late.

  Once again Dan put himself between Grace and danger, even though he’d be better off not to. She was the one at home here; he was merely meat if the wild animals ever got a hold of him. And the wildest animals of all did not live in the forest—as was proven by the man who climbed out of the car.

  “Gracie, what are you doing rolling in the mud with this very bad man?” Olaf bellowed.

  “Uh-oh,” Grace murmured.

  Dan glanced at her with a frown. “Uh-oh? Don’t say ‘Uh-oh.’”

  Grace sat up. She didn’t think lying on the ground was the best option at this point, although a moment ago rolling in the mud had been quite appealing. “What should I say?”

  “Say I’m not a very bad man. Say this was your idea” —he stood and waved a hand at the mud puddle they’d been wrestling in— “not mine.”

  Now she was annoyed. He made it sound like she’d pulled him down and taken his virtue by force. Grace stood, too, and put her hands on her hips, as she spread her bare feet wide and dug her toes into the wet earth. “I’d be happy to do that, except this wasn’t my idea.”

  “Well, it wasn’t mine either. It was an accident.”

  “Accident? Accident?” Olaf slammed the car door. Both Grace and Dan jumped. The huge man stalked toward them. “I know what means accident. There better not have been an accident with my Gracie.”

  “What does he mean by ‘my Gracie’? He’s awfully mad for a business partner.”

  Grace went from annoyed to downright furious in the space of a single sentence out of Dr. Chadwick’s mouth. She admitted to having a temper, but Dan seemed to have an uncommon ability to rile her. “Just what are you insinuating, Doctor?”

  “I just want to know why I’m about to be torn limb from limb. Is he the irate father type, or the homicidal boyfriend?”

  “Boyfriend? Are you crazy? He’s over fifty.”

  “So? Some women like that. Just tell me and I’ll step aside.”

  She wanted to slug him so bad her hands balled into fists. But she’d never been the violent type—until she met Dan.

  What did Mama always say? Hate rides the winds of love. Perhaps anger was the other side of lust. Because while she wanted very much to slug Dr. Dan, the scent of his skin, the storm-blue of his eyes, and the memory of those clever lips also made her want to kiss him all over again.

  A huge hand came down on her shoulder. “Gracie, it is time to go. No more rolling in the mud with the bad man.”

  “I am not a bad man!”

  “That is a matter of opinion.” Olaf sniffed. “My Gracie goes off, and she does not come home. Em she is worried, and when Em is worried, my heart cries. So I go to look and I find Gracie’s car, and your car, bad man, with the distributor caps missing.”

  “Distributor caps!” Grace exclaimed.

  “Ah, ha!” Dan said, and pointed his finger in the air as if he’d just discovered a new drug.

  “Perry,” Dan and Grace said at the same time.

  “Perry?” Olaf glanced at Grace. She nodded.

  Olaf’s scowl was sinister. He’d never liked Perry either. In fact, Olaf didn’t like anyone who wasn’t a Jewel or a relative thereof.

  “So you see, Olaf,” Dan said, in a perfectly reasonable, doctor-like voice, which was spoiled by the sight of him barefoot and covered in mud. “I had no nefarious designs on your Gracie.”

  “I only know what I saw. And I think to myself when I find cars and no people—where would my Gracie be? And I wonder about the bad man.”

  Dan scowled and opened his mouth to protest. Olaf ignored him. Olaf was on a roll. “Then I come here and what do I find? The bad man behaving with inappropriateness to my Gracie. Again.”

  Olaf stepped forward, and when Grace would have intervened, he silenced her with a look. Olaf had been her teacher, her mentor, her best friend, and her advisor for a very long time. When her father died and bad things began to happen, she had run away, but she had found Olaf. His no-nonsense way of looking at life and saying whatever he thought had soothed her broken heart and calmed her raging soul.

  Olaf loved her like the child he never spoke of, and he was not a man to be silenced for any reason—especially when he believed inappropriateness was involved. Sometimes she wished she’d never taught him that word.

  Dan shot her a look that plainly shouted, “Help!” But Grace just spread her hands. He was on his own.

  Dan watched Grace shrug and turn him over to the monster in the white muscle shirt. This was what happened when you followed your instincts, kicked off your shoes, danced in the mud, and lived a little.

  You ended up beaten to a pulp by a masseur.

  “Hold on.” Dan held his hands out, palms up, toward Olaf. He hoped it was a gesture of surrender, or stop, even in Norwegian. The man stopped. Dan took a deep breath. “I admit I kissed Grace.”

  Olaf hissed. Dan wished he’d stop doing that. It was distracting.

  “But she kissed me back. Tell him, Grac
e.” She didn’t say anything. Dan glanced her way. “Grace?”

  She stared at him with an odd expression, as if she couldn’t quite figure out what species he was. The look made him as nervous as Olaf s hovering fists. “Grace. Tell him. Don’t lie.”

  Dan suddenly hung a few inches above the ground by his shirt. He’d seen people hanging from their shirts before, usually in Lethal Weapon movies, but he’d never actually had the procedure done to him. He doubted anyone but Olaf could manage it.

  “Gracie does not lie,” Olaf said.

  “Of course not,” Dan agreed, as if he were talking to an insane person, which he was starting to think Olaf was. “Grace?”

  “I kissed him back.” She didn’t sound happy about it. Both Olaf and Dan frowned.

  Olaf released him and Dan rubbed his neck. How was he going to keep Olaf from killing him over the next few weeks, which he must spend with Grace? They were only supposed to be working together, but the way things were going, Dan didn’t know how long he’d be able to keep from touching her again—even if touching her wasn’t healthy.

  Olaf turned his back on Dan as if he weren’t there. To tell the truth, that was a bit insulting. Dan was a big guy. Not as big as Olaf, but he could do some damage. If he wanted to. He just didn’t want to. But Olaf acted as if he had nothing to fear from Dan Chadwick. Dan sighed. He honestly didn’t have a single killer instinct. His instincts had always leaned more toward life. He couldn’t help it.

  “Gracie, what are you thinking kissing one such as this? Don’t you remember what happened the last time?”

  The last time? What last time? Dan went still as a mouse, hoping they would forget he was there and keep on talking.

  There was no moss on Grace, however. She looked at Dan over Olaf s shoulder, glared at him, then snapped at Olaf. “Of course I remember. This is different”

  “How different? He seems the same to me.”

  “Maybe so. But I’m not the same.”

  Grace stalked by Olaf and headed for the car. “I’ll be back in the morning, Doctor.” She threw the words over her shoulder, as if she couldn’t wait to be gone from here, from him. Maybe she couldn’t. “We can work then. My afternoons and early evenings are booked by the tourists.”

  “Work? Work? Work at what?” Olaf thundered.

  Dan kept his mouth shut. Let Grace handle her bodyguard, bodybuilder.

  Grace stopped halfway between the car and Dan, and the beam of the headlights showed him every expression on her face. Right now she looked tired and a bit sad.

  “Mrs. Cabilla has asked me to help Dr. Chadwick with his research,” she said. “In turn Dr. Chadwick will help me with the hospital administrations.”

  Olaf let out a stream of guttural gibberish that made Grace flinch, then blush. “There’s no cause for that language,” she said.

  “You understand Norwegian?” Dan couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice.

  “And Gaelic, French, English, and Ojibwe.”

  “French?” Dan gritted his teeth. He sounded like a damned parrot.

  She reached the car, opened the door and turned, placing her arms along the top of the window, then leaning against it. “I had to take a language in college.”

  “College?” Surprised again.

  “I came, I saw, I dropped out.” She got into the car.

  Dan glanced at Olaf, who still scowled at him as if he’d just ravished Grace on the ground with the entire world watching. Well almost, but not quite.

  “You are not the only one who has a brain, bad man.”

  Dan ignored what seemed to be his new nickname. Arguing with Olaf felt like banging his head against a brick. No point to either one, and you got a hell of a headache. “What did Grace go to college for?”

  “You will have to ask Gracie.” Sniff. “When you work together.”

  Then he walked by Dan, bumping him with a shoulder just for the heck of it, got into the car, and slammed the vehicle into reverse.

  If Grace’s car theory rang true, Olaf should drive a monster truck. Instead he drove a late 50s model Plymouth Fury, which for some reason seemed just right, though Dan couldn’t recall why. What was it about such a car that nagged at his memory?

  Dan could see Grace’s incredible face through the windshield, her dark eyes fixed on him as she receded down the long tunnel of trees that lined his driveway. Dan felt like a child left at Boy Scout camp in disgrace.

  The car disappeared, and the rumble of the engine as it started down the highway back toward town made Dan suddenly remember what nagged him about the Plymouth Fury.

  The Fury was a monster car. The car that never died. A Stephen King car—Christine, by name. Perhaps there was more to Grace’s car theory than he’d given her credit for. In fact, there was a lot more to Grace Lighthorse than Dan could ever have imagined before he’d met her.

  Now that he had met her, he planned to spend the next few weeks imagining a whole lot more.

  Chapter Seven

  Being a morning person, Grace awoke with the dawn. This practice annoyed countless people, but she could never figure out why anyone would want to lie in bed right through the most beautiful part of the day.

  By the time everyone else in her household stirred, Grace would have taken her walk through town, picked up some coffee and come back to sit on the porch, stitch whatever blanket she was working on at the time—be it quilt or afghan—and watch Lake Illusion come to life.

  The vista never changed, but the people did. Sure, some of them were locals, but the tourists spiced up the view, and there were always a few early runners she could watch with bemusement.

  “Running?” she murmured. “Bluck!”

  Why run through life when you could get where you were going much easier by walking? You’d still get there, more slowly, true, but you’d be able to experience your journey. You could stop and study anything, really see the world, rather than pass it by in a blur. If life was a journey, then every day was a new city on your path.

  Grace picked up the material she’d been hand-quilting and jabbed her needle into cloth gaily decorated with balloons in primary colors.

  Now, she wasn’t saying exercise was a bad thing— but hurrying everywhere was. It disturbed Grace to see kids being taught from the ground up to hurry, hurry, hurry. Get there before everyone else. Be the best. Trample those in front of you. You just had to wonder . . . did anyone stop and smell the coffee anymore?

  Grace sighed and took a deep drag of her own coffee, first with her nose, then with her mouth. Half the joy in coffee was smelling it first. The dark, heated brew slid down her throat and warmed her from the inside out as she contemplated the sun bursting to life behind the trees outside of town.

  One of the reasons she had left Minneapolis and come home was that she just couldn’t take the pace of the big city any longer. Especially the pace of the children.

  Stress in children concerned Grace. A lot. Kids should run, and jump, and play, sweetly oblivious of the problems awaiting them when they became adults. The problems were still there once they got older—so why get excited ahead of time?

  And when sick kids got stressed, that was the worst stress of all, because stress lowered the immune system, and sick kids needed immunity as much as they needed something to hold on to.

  So it followed that if a comfort item lowered stress, and lower stress aided the immune system: sick kids needed blankies. She wasn’t going to let the naysayers drag her down. Not even a naysayer that kissed as good as—

  “Morning!” Dan Chadwick jogged in place on the sidewalk in front of her house. Speak of the naysayer.

  I should have figured him for a bright and shiny morning runner.

  “Morning,” Grace returned. No reason to be rude, even though she wanted to. She’d seen enough of him in her dreams.

  “You always up this early?” He kept right on jogging, going nowhere.

  Her gaze trailed over the tautly muscled legs revealed by his shorts, taking
in the miniscule amount of sweat that darkened his maroon half-shirt. These observations, combined with the fact that he could talk without huffing, and nary a puff to be heard, revealed Dr. Dan as a career runner.

  Once again, that figured. She wasn’t even going to think about the washboard stomach, traced with a light dusting of golden hair revealed by that skimpy shirt. It was just too early in the morning to taste lust on the tongue, so she took a sip of coffee instead.

  “I always like to greet the sun,” she answered. “And you?”

  “I like to get my five miles in before breakfast.”

  Five miles? Grace rolled her eyes without even trying to hide it. “Overachiever,” she mumbled.

  “Excuse me?” He probably couldn’t hear her over the tromp of his busy, busy feet.

  “Nothing. You jogged in from the camp?”

  He smiled, happy as a puppy chewing its favorite dirty sock. If he could pretend that last night’s debacle had never happened, so could she. “Yes, from the camp to town and back is a near-perfect five miles.”

  “Goody.” Now that sounded surly, like she was cranky at this hour. And she wasn’t—under most circumstances anyway—and with most people. So Grace attempted to be civil, putting down her coffee and not even picking up her quilt block so she could give Dan her full attention. “I’ve never seen you go by before.”

  “Never have. Just figured I’d take a different route today.”

  “Checking up on me, Doc?”

  He shrugged. “You never said what time of the morning you’d come by.”

  “How’s right now?”

  He stopped tromping in place. “You want to jog back with me?”

  She laughed. “I don’t think so. Jogging is not something I encourage in myself.”

  “But it’s natural.”

  “No, walking is natural. Running is something you do to get away from predators.”

  And, I may do it to get away from you later, she thought.

  “How are you going to get to the lake?”

  “Olaf’s car.”