Buch lesen: «The Wish»

Chapter One

Sobbing, Gerri ran out of the casino ballroom and into the night as though running for her life, the skirts of her gown flying in the dry evening breeze. Down the flight of stone steps to the street level she fled, but on the second to last step, her heel caught in the hem of her dress, and she tripped.

Cursing herself under her breath for her lifelong clumsiness, and with tears still streaming down her cheeks, she managed to disentangle her heel, avoiding a pratfall—but turning her already sprained ankle—as she landed upright with both feet on the sidewalk. Taking a moment to wince in pain, she took off again at a run, but when she rounded the corner of the building, she ran smack into a very solid, all male chest.

“Oof!” she said.

“Gerri?” the owner of the chest replied, surprise in his voice as he gripped her upper arms to prevent her from taking a header.

“Des?”

Unbelievable. She’d just bumped into Des, of all people, her good friend, or sort of good friend. Incredibly strong and wonderfully solid Des, solid being the operative word here. She’d just barreled into him, all six-feet-in-heels of her, but, bless him, he’d stayed right where he was, upright and planted firmly, so yet one more mishap in an evening of mishaps had been avoided.

Thank God for small favors, Gerri thought. After the social nightmare she’d just experienced, all she needed was another ungraceful, unfeminine, classless, ignominious, klutzy act on her part, and she might just as well die on the spot.

The pressure on her upper arms increased. “Hey, Gerri, what’s wrong?”

She looked up at him, then glanced away quickly, too uncomfortable to face Des’s probing gaze. “Nothing.” She shook off his grip and headed out into the night. “Thanks for catching me. I have to go home now.”

She was maybe two steps away when he caught up to her and pulled her around to face him. Again, she tried to avoid looking at him head-on, because she didn’t want him to see her face, which, as she well knew, was a total disaster. Her inexpertly applied mascara was dripping down her cheeks, her eyes were red, as was her nose, she was sure—she was not one of those women who looked beautiful when they cried. She’d long ago bitten off any lipstick she’d been wearing. The week-old bruise on her upper cheek was probably glowing all kinds of colors, making her look like a woman in need of shelter from an abusive husband. Her attempt at a hairdo had come partly loose and was hanging in funny clumps around her face. Her gown was wrong, her shoes were killing her, and although Des had surely never thought of her as anything approaching glamorous, somehow this final humiliation of his seeing her at her very worst was more than she could bear.

“Gerri?” He squeezed her arm, not unkindly, but to get her attention. “Look at me.” He followed this with a finger under her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze.

Amazingly enough, he didn’t blanch at the sight of her ruined aspect. In the glow of a nearby streetlamp, his craggy face seemed less forbidding than usual, and his startling blue eyes less hooded and mysterious. His eyebrows, black as his thick head of hair, were furrowed, but with concern, not anger. There was no judgment in his gaze, none at all.

A sudden warmth filled her chest area, making her want to cry all over again. Dear Des, the only male friend she’d ever had.

“What are you doing here?” she managed with a lopsided grin, swallowing the urge to weep all over him.

The only answer he gave was one of his noncommittal shrugs. “Tell me what happened,” he persisted.

“Nothing,” she said brightly, but couldn’t keep it up. “Everything.” The traitorous tears came barreling up through her tear ducts once again.

He pulled her into his arms, enfolding her, pushing her head against his neck, offering friendship and comfort, both of which she sorely needed at the moment. Still, her immediate reaction was to stiffen. This was the first time the two of them had touched, really, the first time she’d felt the true strength of his long arms, ropy with muscles honed from years of ranch work.

Then she relaxed against him and sobbed into his shirt collar, worrying all the time if her mascara was the waterproof kind that would stain his shirt, but then realizing that the way the stuff had been leaking all over her face answered that question. It was on the tip of her tongue to offer to launder his shirt, but then she told her brain to turn off, please, and just let her rest here, enveloped by the first pair of strong male arms she could remember in years.

However, Gerri’s brain was rarely able to turn off—it was her life’s blessing and its curse—so she pulled away from him. “Please, Des, don’t,” she told him, taking a step back and swiping her index fingers under her lower eyelids, trying to soak up the blackness of the makeup. “I don’t deserve comfort. I should have known better.”

“Known what better? Has someone hurt you?”

Had someone hurt her? How about lots of someones? How about the fact that tonight, it felt as though her whole life was one big hurt? “It doesn’t matter,” she replied. “I’m going home.”

Again, she moved away from him and hurried down the street. But again, Des wasn’t going to let her go so easily. He walked quickly beside her. “Didn’t you go to this charity thing with Rance tonight? Why isn’t he seeing you home?”

“Because—” she began, but stopped. It was too difficult to explain.

After all, how could she tell her friend Des that she’d accepted Rance’s last-minute, totally unexpected invitation to be his date for a formal charity function because she’d seen it as a golden opportunity? That even though a little voice inside her had told her to say no, she’d said yes, despite her still-bruised face and her sprained ankle, both of which she’d gotten from falling off a ladder in her book-shop?

And how could she tell her friend Des that even with the rainbow-colored abrasion under her eye and a limp, another woman could have pulled it off, could have managed to appear elegant and self-possessed, making a small joke about her less-than-stellar appearance?

But that woman was not Gerri, never had been. She’d done it wrong, all of it. The hour she’d spent at the charity function had been the hour from hell, and had been from the start.

The moment she’d walked into the ballroom, looking, she imagined, like a refugee from the backwoods, her personality—which was often sunny, funny and most definitely friendly—had undergone a total collapse. Even on the arm of Terrance Wallace III, better known as Rance, her self-confidence, which she possessed under certain conditions, plummeted to an all-time low.

She’d wilted under the scrutiny of the town’s upper crust. She’d laughed too loudly and at the wrong places, apologized for her behavior, stumbled over her words, even stepped on Rance’s foot the one time they’d danced. She’d practically worn a sign on her saying Kick Me.

The coup de grace had been in the ladies’ room, to which she’d escaped in an attempt to force her flyaway hair back into its bun. While fussing at the mirror, despair fighting tooth and nail with an inner pep talk, she’d overheard a couple of other guests talking about her from their individual stalls.

The gist of the unflattering and mean-spirited remarks, after they’d done tearing apart her hair, her face, her dress, her body, was that the only qualities she had to recommend her were her sense of humor, her brains, and her ownership of a bookstore. It might be better, they suggested, if she stopped trying to do anything or be anyone else, such as an appropriate date for Rance, the town’s most eligible bachelor.

Choking down a sob, she’d run from the bathroom, tripping over her dress as she did, all the voices of a lifetime echoing in her head: Outsider. Different. Brainiac. Plain. Clumsy.

In grade school, she’d been given the nickname of “The Giraffe,” because she’d early on developed long, skinny legs with knobby knees and a long, skinny neck—minus the knobs—to match, none of which had changed as she matured. “Giraffe” had morphed into Gerri as she got older, which was a lot better than her given name, Phoebe Minerva, so it had stuck.

But the self-image had stuck, too.

There were other social disadvantages beside physical ones. Her brains put her way ahead of others her age, so she’d skipped a couple of grades and was always younger than her classmates. She didn’t develop breasts, for heaven’s sake, until she was a senior in high school. Along the way, there had been the occasional date, the rare brave boy willing to take a chance on a girl who was taller and most probably a lot smarter than he was. But socializing with the opposite sex was always excruciatingly uncomfortable, with Gerri trying too hard to relax and the boy trying too hard to impress.

The only one who’d gotten through had been Tommy Mosher, in college. But that too had turned out badly. Very badly. Nearly ten years later, his treachery still hurt, still informed her daily life. Men did not fall for her. Men did not find her attractive. The only thing they might want from her was her brainpower and what it could do for them.

But she still had normal female urges, and even with her history, a kernel of hope remained. Maybe, she’d dreamed over the years since college, maybe one day she would encounter a worthy man who would love her.

She’d had a crush on Rance, a regular customer in her bookshop, for months, so when, earlier that day, he’d asked her to go to a formal event with him, something inside her had screamed, “Here’s your chance!” Finally she would erase the past. She would do it right this time. She would feel and act like a princess, gliding easily and gracefully through the evening.

Fool, she called herself now. People didn’t change. Sure, the prince had asked her to the ball, but she was no Cinderella, with a fairy godmother who provided magic that would make her blossom and bring her inner beauty to the surface.

Inner beauty? Hah.

“Gerri?”

Des was still waiting for the answer to his question about why Rance wasn’t seeing her home. She glanced sideways as they rushed along, his long legs having no trouble keeping up easily with her hurried pace. The expression on his face, which was arresting rather than handsome, with its deep, attractive grooves from spending days on horseback, was stormy. Oh, no, she wondered. Was he angry at her for canceling their date tonight, so she could go to the affair with Rance?

But it hadn’t been a real date. Not between her and Des. They were friends, that was all, just a bite to eat together was all it was to be. So why would he be hurt? Still, she couldn’t avoid noticing the fact that his expression was fierce and combative now, erasing the genuine concern of moments earlier.

It was confusing. The whole evening was confusing. If only she could do it over.

“Why isn’t Rance here with you?” he persisted.

“He doesn’t even know I’m gone. You don’t have to walk with me, you know,” she told him, her voice breaking again. “I just want to go home.”

“How will you get there?”

That stopped her in her tracks, while other pedestrians on the neon-lit downtown Reno street hurried past them. She hadn’t thought that far ahead. She lived a couple of miles out of town, at the end of a long country road, and didn’t have her car with her. “I’ll get a taxi.”

“I’m taking you.”

She could have argued, but didn’t have the strength. Besides, she was grateful that the problem was solved. Her stupid heels, and her ankle, were killing her.

In Des’s pickup truck, after she’d given him directions to her place, Gerri stared out the window at the black night. As soon as you got outside of Reno proper, you could see all the stars that the casino lights obscured. The vast darkness was soothing, somehow, with its tiny, mysterious pinpricks of light, and had the effect of calming her down.

They drove in silence for a while, the only sound the shifting of gears. Eventually Des spoke. “Should I ask how it went?”

She snorted a quick laugh. “Probably not a good idea.”

“It’s okay,” he said, nodding, “it’s none of my business.”

“It’s not that,” she hastily assured him. “But let’s just say tonight was not one of my most rewarding life experiences. I’m lucky you showed up.”

Why had he shown up? she wondered once again. How had he happened to be there, right outside the casino, at the very moment she was coming out? She supposed it had been some kind of coincidence, although she was not a great believer in coincidence.

When she’d asked him about it earlier, he’d shrugged it off. Des was a pretty mysterious man in some ways, and the reason they got along so well was not only that they were both a little off-beat by nature, but also that each sensed in the other areas of privacy which were respected and not pried into.

They’d met because Gerri had been boarding her horse at his ranch for the past half year or so. They’d gotten into the habit of conversing while she saddled Ruffy and when she came back from her ride. Sometimes Des even came out on the trail with her; they rode together easily, joked and chatted. Correction: She did most of the chatting, he the listening. But there was an ease between them that Gerri—given her dismal history with men—appreciated deeply.

She’d never had a friendship with a man and, although their relationship didn’t extend past these morning rides, she didn’t want to spoil it. In truth, she’d been surprised that he seemed to enjoy being with her.

After all, Des was a looker, no doubt about it; in town, she’d run into him at the grocery store a few times and she’d seen many a female pause in her tracks when they saw him. She didn’t know exactly why he’d chosen her to be friends with, but it was probably because she wasn’t after him and therefore wasn’t a threat to his single existence. By now, she’d gotten beyond his rugged, decidedly masculine looks and just plain liked the man. If she wanted to know more about him and what made him tick, well, maybe in time he’d trust her enough to open up.

He pulled up in front of her pretty little house, a narrow two-story Victorian, which would have been more appropriate placed on a San Francisco street than up a country road, surrounded by mountains. The moment she’d arrived in town two years earlier, she’d seen this house, fallen in love with its charm and eccentricity, bought it and restored it to its current pristine condition. She’d had a full bank account at the time and still had most of it in careful investments, including the property on which she’d opened The Written Word. Moving to Nevada and owning the bookstore had been a lifelong dream, and now she had both.

Ah well, she thought philosophically, as Des turned off the motor, you can’t have it all. Despite tonight’s pain and regret and humiliation, it had still been the best two years of her life. She had friends, like Didi and Des, and a business she loved and supported. Her shop had an extensive children’s section, so there were always adorable little ones around to talk to and read to. She loved kids; if she never had any of her own, wasn’t this a fine substitute?

Before she could put her hand on the door handle, Des was out of the truck and pulling open the passenger door for her. Gerri stepped out, winced for a moment when she landed on her sprained ankle. Again, he held on to her elbow till she regained her balance.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Absolutely. I’m going to soak that stupid ankle in a nice basin of warm water right now.” She put a hand on his shoulder, considered kissing him on the cheek, but nodded instead. “Thanks, Des. I appreciate it.”

“You’re all right to go in alone?”

“I’m not alone. I have George and Ashley.”

“Cats aren’t a lot of comfort.”

“Says the non-cat lover. I’ll be fine. And thanks.”

As he observed Gerri limping into her house, it was all Des could do not to follow her, scoop her up and carry her inside. She was one stubborn woman, not good at accepting help. Although they were alike that way, he admitted to himself. Independent. Not just independent. Not trusting that if they fell, there would be someone there to pick them up.

Well, he’d been there to pick her up tonight. Good thing, too. Gerri had been through something upsetting, that was apparent. But what? Had Rance said something to her, insulted her? He felt his jaw tighten as he considered it, then he forced himself to relax as she turned at her front door and waved at him before she entered. He waved back, and felt a small flutter in his chest region as she winced once more before closing the door behind her. That ankle of hers was killing her and he knew it.

He got back into his truck and slammed the door shut. Why did this particular woman get to him? He never let anyone get to him. He’d kept himself detached from others and their needs for a long time. But lately, Gerri had gotten under his skin, and that made him uneasy. He wished he could turn it off. It was dangerous to get involved with others. He’d learned that lesson a long time ago.

“Damn,” he muttered, then backed the truck up, put it in gear and headed out to the highway toward his spread. In a way he was glad she’d canceled their dinner plans tonight, because he’d been on the verge of saying something to her, something he was sure he’d regret. It wasn’t easy, feeling so…vulnerable to any woman. Who knew what he might have said, what he might have regretted the minute it popped out of his mouth?

His reaction when she’d canceled on him, however, had not been one of relief, not in the least. In a breathy voice, she’d called and said Rance had invited her to this fund-raising event and she hoped Des wouldn’t mind, as they’d had casual plans, at best. Was it okay? she’d asked him, sounding apologetic and excited at the same time.

Sure, he’d told her, no problem. She didn’t have to know about the jealous rage that filled him when he hung up. Rance? That vain, spoiled excuse for a human being? Des was being replaced tonight by him?

The strength of his reaction took him by surprise. Scared the piss out of him. He hadn’t felt that kind of emotion since Stella had run out on him. Amazing. All these years later, and he still hadn’t managed to exorcise that possessiveness, that passion, from his makeup.

It was that same passion which had led him to head downtown, a couple of hours earlier, to stand on the street outside the casino where the fund-raiser was being held, not sure why he was there or what he would do or say if he ran into Gerri and Rance. Time and again, he’d told himself to go home, but he couldn’t seem to make himself leave. Bewildered by his lack of control, he’d paced. And waited.

And been rewarded, at least, by being there for Gerri when she needed him.

Disgusted with himself, Des shook his head then hit the highway, eager to get back to his ranch. He was better there, with his animals and his books, and his little secret of what he did to unwind, the secret that no one else on earth knew about.

Tonight he’d been about to let Gerri in on his secret, which was foolish. He’d been about to trust her. What a laugh. So, yeah, it was good that she’d canceled on him. More than good. It was a kick in the pants, a warning. It was better this way, best to cut it off before it had a chance to breathe.

So then why did he feel like taking his fist and punching his dashboard? And why wouldn’t the picture of Gerri’s mascara-smeared, bruised and grief-filled face leave his head?

Gerri kicked off her shoes and plopped down on the couch, sighing with relief. Who was the monster who invented high heels, anyway? She was too tall as it was. Didi was always telling her that she should be proud of her height and not slump over as though she’d committed a sin just by existing.

Didi. Wait till she heard about tonight’s debacle. Tomorrow, though. There’d be plenty of time tomorrow for girl-type analysis and dissection.

A small meow, followed by a deeper, bolder one, let her know the babies were aware she was home. Their paws padded over the hardwood floors; in the next moment, both George and Ashley were on her lap. Or one of them was. The other was on her thighs. And both were purring.

It was dark in here, she suddenly realized. She reached over to turn on the lamp when her hand brushed against an object on the side table. The light revealed the object as her bizarre pair of reading glasses.

She picked them up and stared at them, then had to smile. They were the ugliest pair of spectacles she’d ever seen—milky turquoise, fan-edged with rhinestones all over. Like something a female impersonator might wear when assuming the character of a gossip columnist or the president of the gardening club.

Still, they were special because the children’s author Cassie Nevins had given them to her at the first book signing Gerri had held in her newly opened shop, nearly two years ago. At the time, Cassie had confided that the glasses were magic: if you rubbed them and made a wish, you’d more than likely get it.

Gerri’s belief in magic rated right up there with her belief in ghosts and time travel, which was not at all, so she’d discounted Cassie’s claim. But tonight she smiled at the plastic frames, turned them over in her hand and stroked both cats with the other. Ashley, the huge gray-and-white longhair had, as usual, gotten pride of place on Gerri’s lap. George, smaller, sleeker and black as night, managed to find purchase on her narrow thighs, his front claws digging just a little bit into her dress. Fine with her, Gerri thought. Dig away. She’d give them the damn thing to play with to their heart’s content.

“What do you think, guys, huh? Should I wish for something?”

Well, duh. The obvious thing would be to wish that everything this evening had gone differently, that her fantasy of being Grace Kelly in her twenties, reincarnated, would be granted. But she’d still have to deal with the bruised face and the limp.

“Okay,” she said out loud, rubbing her thumb over the earpiece and smiling at her silliness. “Why not make a wish, right? What can I lose?”

She took another moment to gather her thoughts. All the awfulness had started a week ago, when she’d fallen off the ladder, so…

She took in a deep breath, then said, “Here’s what I’d like. I wish I could go back to the moment before I fell and do the whole week over, knowing what I know now.”

She added for emphasis, “And this time, I’ll do it right.”