The Right Wish

by Mankin, Michelle

  “My mom.” The dash lights were reflected in the sudden sheen in her eyes.

  “Roses were a favorite of hers?”

  “Yes, she had a rose garden at the . . . at our house. Before she got too sick to tend them, it was her favorite place to be. I loved sitting beside her. While she worked, I often shared my stories. She was my biggest fan, my biggest cheerleader, my biggest everything.”

  “I’m sorry, Cam. That’s a huge loss.”

  She nodded, and I placed my hand over hers on the wheel. Just a quick touch to remind her she wasn’t alone, and that I cared that she was sad. It was enough for now. Once we were out of this car, I was going one way—and one way only—with her. I wasn’t pulling back anymore.

  “You put a little bit of yourself and your experiences into all your stories, don’t you?”

  “Yes. My real life might not have a happy ending, but my stories do.”

  “You helped Coralee with your story.” I could never have imagined what Cam’s stories were like until I’d heard her tell one myself. “That’s a happy ending in real life.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I know so. She went straight to her piano before we were even out the door.”

  “And that’s important to her, right? Like me telling my stories. A way for her to process her emotions.”

  “Absolutely,” I said. It was that way for me with music, once upon a time. “You’re very intuitive. That makes your stories very special.” Unique and compellingly brilliant, like she was. “Did you hear Coralee talking to me about her career earlier?”

  Cam shook her head. “Your voices were too soft.”

  “When we first got to her place, she was questioning everything. Said she couldn’t hear the notes in her head.”

  “Oh. That’s pretty serious.” Cam’s brows drew together. “Like me if I couldn’t hear my characters’ voices.”

  “Yes, I imagine the two are similar.”

  “Is that how it is for you now? Are the notes completely silent inside you since you changed direction in your life?” Using the manual gears, she kicked up the Z’s speed, accelerating efficiently and smoothly onto the freeway.

  “Not silent,” I managed to reply, despite the sudden swerve inside myself. Her questions were more like accurate observations. “There’s a soundtrack running inside my head all the time.” What I didn’t say was that I kept the volume cranked way down.

  “I’m inspired to write all the time.” She gave me a quick glance. “If that’s how it is for you, what do you do with your soundtrack?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

  “I don’t understand.” Her gaze on the road, she frowned. “I’ve heard you advise Rush when he’s stuck on a song.”

  “I help him with his music. Yes.” Less now that his new sound diverged from where ours had been in the beginning.

  “Do you help all your clients like you help him?”

  “Yes, I do. When they need it.”

  “No wonder you’re so successful. And it’s cool that you’ve found a way to incorporate music into your everyday life. But which is your preference? Finance or music?”

  “Music. Always music.”

  She gave me a sharp glance. “But if it’s your preference, why doesn’t it play a more prominent role?”

  “It’s there. It plays.” Even with the volume cranked down, I couldn’t completely shut it off. “In limited amounts. Secondarily. Business first.”

  “I think I understand.” Her brow creased. “Facts and figures are practical. Predictable. After all, not every musician rises to the level of success that Rush has. But I don’t think he would be the success he is without you. You should be proud of what you’ve accomplished together. I’m sure he and the other artists you’ve helped are grateful.”

  “Thank you, Cam. I’m glad my clients and my business have done well.”

  “They’ve done well because you work incredibly hard nearly twenty-four hours a day. It’s been cool to tag along and watch you, but exhausting too. How do you unwind? When do you unwind?”

  I didn’t respond because the truth was, I didn’t relax. For me, it was business all the time. The only time I took for myself each day was the ninety minutes during my morning run.

  “But you don’t unwind, do you?” She tilted her head, making one accurate observation after the other, even as she drove. “There’s no room in your schedule for unwinding or creativity, should you choose to ever write your soundtrack down.”

  Fucking hell. How did she know that there was another world inside me that no one else could see?

  I raked a shaking hand through my hair and turned to watch the city lights and the traffic rather than look at her. She was far too observant when it came to me, and had far too little insight about herself.

  “What about you, Cam?” I returned my focus to her. Sometimes caring for someone was helping them see what they needed, not what they’d settled for. “Your stories are beautiful and hopeful, but where’s the hope in your real life?”

  Chapter 38

  * * *

  Camaro

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t look at Brad, but I could feel his gaze on me. “I’m working on it, I guess.”

  “You’re chugging on near empty. You work mainly on avoiding or escaping reality.”

  I gasped as he voiced the truth I barely acknowledged to myself. But he pressed on, seeming to see me, really see me, in a way no one else did.

  “I wonder how long that’s been your pattern. Probably since your mother passed. Did you abandon your dad first emotionally, or did he abandon you?”

  “I, um . . .” I kept my focus on the road, but only nominally. “I never thought of it that way.”

  “You were a little girl. He should have been there for you, no matter what. But fourteen years is a long time to be alone. What happened during that time? To you? To him?”

  “I don’t have direct contact with him anymore.” I kept my tone neutral, as if the past didn’t matter, and gripped the steering wheel tighter. I wanted to avoid talking about ancient history. Better to focus on the here and now. There was too much in my past to remind me of the disparity between Brad and me.

  “Do you have any contact with your father at all?”

  “No,” I said, although I saw some tidbits in the media periodically. “He . . .” I swallowed. “I tried to call him a couple of times after I came out to LA.”

  In my peripheral vision, I saw Brad nod reflectively, probably filing that information away. So I decided to give him a little more, hoping it would satisfy his curiosity.

  “I left home without his permission. The first communication we had afterward wasn’t pleasant. He shouted at me, said I’d made my bed and I had to lie in it. The only other time was the same, but worse. He’s so ashamed of me, he wouldn’t even tell me so directly.”

  Something about being in the car made me feel safer about sharing hurtful things that only Jewel knew. Maybe it was the dark. Maybe the center console between us provided the barrier I needed to retreat behind. Probably it was just Brad and his effect on me. From the beginning, I wanted to give him the real me.

  “Whose bed were you in?” Brad asked, both hands curled into fists on his lap.

  I understood that. The facts that made up the real me weren’t easy to stomach.

  “Chris was . . . he worked for my dad. I thought he cared for me. He paid attention to me, something I was desperate for. But attention wasn’t caring, and it certainly wasn’t love.”

  Brad nodded as if it weren’t a big deal to know that my self-esteem had been so low, I’d left home with a guy who gave me so little.

  “How old were you?” he asked.

  Too young. “Eighteen. I left home on my eighteenth birthday. My dad wanted me to go to college, but foolishly and naively, I followed the wrong man out to LA instead.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Nothing good.”

  “Won’t you tell me
, Cam?” he asked, his voice low and persuasively soft.

  “It’s such a cliché, it’s embarrassing. I gave my trust to the wrong man, and he lied to me. Fooled around on me. And when he was drunk, he was abusive. I left him . . . eventually, only to sink lower.”

  “The hooking.”

  “Yes, that. Unable to get another legitimate job, I did what I had to do, but I lost a little more of myself after each encounter. A slow learner, and a lot desperate, I trusted the wrong man again, one who lied to me too. He was married.” My cheeks hot with embarrassment, I glanced at Brad. “Are those the things you wanted to know about?”

  “Yes, Cam. Those.” Surprisingly, his expression was soft, like his amazing voice.

  His gentleness and compassion tantalized me. I wanted to fall into them, into him, and never climb back out.

  “I’m sorry those men mistreated you. It’s on them, the things they did.”

  “You sound like Dr. Jacoby.”

  “Good. He’s right. You lost your faith in yourself. You lost your hope.”

  The car’s GPS spouted off my next turn. I flicked on the blinker and made the turn. wondering if my careful confessions would take Brad and me in the direction I wanted us to go.

  “They didn’t see it,” Brad said. “Those men. Wanting to possess your beauty, they missed the best part of you.”

  “What?” Confused, I glanced at him. “What best part?”

  “Your heart, Cam. Your sweet, kind, caring, and incredibly beautiful heart.”

  I nearly ran off the road, and he grabbed the dash again. He was probably never going to allow me to drive the Z again, but I didn’t care. He’d just given me the most beautiful gift I’d ever received.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, blinking through the tears in my eyes.

  “It’s the truth.” He shook his head after studying me for a long moment. “If you would believe it, all the hope you need would return to you.”

  But he was wrong about that. My heart was broken, cracked into too many pieces to ever hold hope again.

  Following the last prompt, I steered the Z into the driveway. After cutting off the engine, I offered him the keys. “Thanks for letting me drive.”

  His words a revelation, I gathered them to the center of my chest like my mother had once gathered a bundle of her beloved freshly cut roses.

  “You’re welcome.” Studying me closely, he eventually took the keys from my outstretched hand.

  “My driving makes you nervous,” I said, swerving to a safer topic.

  “You have a bit of a speed demon in you.”

  “It used to be my way to unwind.” I swiveled to pop the latch to get out on my side, and heard him doing the same on his.

  “Did your father teach you to drive?” Continuing the conversation over the low roof of the Z, Brad used the fob to pop the trunk open. Moving together toward the back, me from my side and him from his, we arrived at the same place at the same time.

  Interesting analogy, that. We came from different places, different backgrounds, but if our desires were the same, was that all it would take to achieve the real togetherness with him that I wanted?

  “Are you okay?” he asked, waving away my attempt to help as he withdrew the pile of clothes himself. “I seem to have lost you again.”

  “No, I’m right here.” Gleaning hope where I could, even behind the trunk of his car.

  “So you didn’t answer my question.” He gave me a funny look. “About your driving.”

  “My dad’s hobby was fixing up old cars. He liked to soup up the engines.” Cars and driving them fast had been what Chris and I had bonded over before the truth had come out about the payment from my stepmother to take me away from my dad. After that discovery, things with us had gone from bad to worse.

  “Did your father race cars or just show them?”

  “Both.” Only he hadn’t done either himself. He hadn’t done anything himself besides run his empire after my mom died. The business end was where my stepmother had wormed her way into his life. My father’s mostly abandoned hobby was where Chris had sweet-talked his way into mine.

  “No wonder you know about cars.”

  “Yeah.” More reason than that. It was the crux of my dad’s business, after all, and his dad’s business before him. But that legacy wasn’t mine anymore.

  “Here.” Brad shook his hand. The key fob in it jingled, barely visible underneath the Mount Everest of clothes in his arms. I hadn’t realized I’d chosen so much.

  “Got it.” I took the fob, found the key, and let us in.

  For once, I held the door open for him to walk through first. But even with the roles reversed, it felt comfortable and right. Like we were a real couple coming back to our home.

  “I’ll take these up to your room,” he said.

  “I got too much. I’ll go through it again and send the rest on to someone who needs it more.”

  His foot on the first stair, Brad glanced sharply at me over his shoulder. “You’ll do no such thing. You look amazing in all of it. You’ll keep it. I want to see you wear it here.”

  “Okay,” I said, noting the stubborn glint in his eye. I would need to rethink my arguments if I wanted to sway him. “I’ll get dinner started.”

  “We’ll go out,” he shouted from halfway up the stairs.

  “No. We’ve been out all day,” I shouted back as he disappeared up the second set of stairs. “I made ziti at lunch. I just need to heat it up.”

  Hearing the echo of footsteps overhead, I dropped my bag, got the dish out of the refrigerator, and popped it into the microwave.

  “In it is.” Brad appeared again, his hair falling in his eyes as he tromped down the remaining steps. “But let me help you.”

  “Nothing to do, really.” Turning, I slipped off my new kimono and laid it around the back of one of the dining chairs. I found his gaze on me when I turned around.

  “You look good in that shade of red.”

  “Thank you.” I blushed. The heat in his eyes said I looked better than good.

  “You look hot. You always look hot.”

  He stalked closer, and my stomach flipped when he put his hands on my hips and pulled me closer still. His citrusy CEO cologne made me light-headed.

  “First thing in the morning with your hair in your eyes and your gaze on my cock, especially.”

  “You were awake.” My mind spun.

  “Hell yeah, and I think it’s time we continued where we left off.”

  He brought his hands up and framed my face. My skin burned where he touched me, and my heart raced. I wanted him. He wanted me. Our desires were finally aligned.

  I licked my tingling lips as he lowered his head, but it had been years since I’d kissed or willingly been intimate with a man. And Brad wasn’t just any man. I didn’t want to get it wrong. Didn’t want to disappoint him.

  “Dinner first.” Clutching his forearms, I pushed at him. He didn’t budge, but he froze in midmotion.

  “First before what?” His brows drew together.

  “Why don’t you go upstairs and slip into something more comfortable, and then after dinner I’ll show you what I mean.”

  His eyes flared. “Show me what, exactly?”

  “Me. All of me.” I cocked my head. “You do have something more comfortable than a business suit, right?” I asked, lightening my tone.

  “I do.”

  “Then go.” I lifted my hands, removing his from my face. They were so much larger than mine. My legs went weak at the thought of them skimming my body. My naked body.

  Soon. I could do this. Very soon.

  I took a step back and much-needed cool air rushed over me. His hands weren’t the only thing larger than most men’s.

  I lifted my chin, pointing it. “You upstairs, me down. I still have a little work to do here.”

  After dinner, I’d show him all I could do. I was determined to make tonight special . . . like the way he made me feel.

  Chapter
39

  * * *

  Bradley

  I chuckled when I came back downstairs and saw Cam’s expression. It was almost worth the delay in getting the kiss I most certainly would have—and much more besides—to see her looking so dumbfounded.

  “Told you I had more comfortable clothes, babe.”

  “Comfortable for you, maybe. An enticement for the rest of us. Is that T-shirt painted on your chest?”

  “Um, no.” I grinned. “It’ll come off easily enough.”

  “Good to know.” Her expression turning serious, she nodded at me, though her eyes still danced. “You can bring the salad over.” She swept her gaze over me again as I moved toward her. “Whose jeans are those?”

  “Mine.” Reaching the island, I smirked and picked up the large glass serving bowl from it. It was one of the many dishes she’d used that I didn’t even know I had.

  “Funny.” From her position on the other side of the island, she shook her head at me. The curl of amusement on her sexy lips was the real enticement, not me wearing casual clothes. “Where do you want it?” I said low, lifting a brow.

  “The table,” she said.

  “The table would work. It’s about the right height.”

  She blushed. Bronze skin. Pink cheeks. Brilliantly pretty. “You go first.” She took a step back from the island and leaned against the counter behind her.

  “All right.” I gave her a curious look. “Not sure about the logistics, but I can make me going first work.”

  She giggled as I moved away. I loved the sound of it. The sound, the sight of her in my kitchen, her in my life, all of it. “Yeah, you can work it, all right. Damn, Bradley Marshall, suit or jeans, you are fine from all angles.”

  I grinned huge, then set the salad bowl down and turned to look at her. I crooked my finger. “Come eat with me, my lady.”

  “Just let me grab the salad dressing.” Smiling, her eyes shimmered silver and green stardust.

  She turned away, and I settled into my chair to watch her. In motion, she reminded me of a moonbeam gliding over undulating waves.