When You Wish (Contemporary Romance)

by Handeland, Lori

  “I didn’t think you’d need a compass.”

  Grace’s smile faded. “And why wouldn’t I?”

  “Don’t you just know inherently where you are, where to go?”

  Annoyance flashed through her. “Knowing how to get from here to there doesn’t come from my blood but from my brain. If you live in these woods, you need to know how to survive in these woods. Cars fail all the time. And a casual stroll can turn deadly if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “I’ve offended you again.”

  Grace sighed. She shouldn’t get so defensive, but some things never changed, and of all people, she’d thought Dan would not judge her by her cover since he didn’t like being judged by his.

  “Never mind,” she said. “We need to hurry if we don’t want to be caught in the storm.”

  “Storm?” Dan lengthened his strides to keep up with her trot. “What storm? The weather report said clear, no clouds.”

  She couldn’t help it. She just had to roll her eyes. “You listen to the weather report?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” He threw her own words back at her. She didn’t take the bait.

  “Sure, but they don’t actually believe it.”

  “Then how do you know there’s a storm coming?”

  “Inherent weather-predicting ability,” she said and plunged into the darkest part of the forest.

  Dan walked faster, keeping one eye on the hide-and-seek white of Grace’s dress through the trees and the other on the shadows, searching for bears. Grace didn’t seem to think there were any about, but Dan wasn’t so sure. She also thought it was going to storm, and there hadn’t been a cloud in the sky when they entered the woods.

  A tree branch slapped Dan in the face, yanking him from his reverie. He really was out of his element here, while Grace seemed completely at home. This was her home. He wished it had always been his.

  Dan had been born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. He’d never fit in there. For some reason neither the arid, dry desert nor the mountains surrounding the city appealed to him. Here, the whisper of the wind through the trees calmed him and the lakes soothed. The coolness in the air, every morning and every evening, made Dan feel more alive than he’d ever felt before. He should have been born here—like Grace.

  Dan blinked. He’d lost sight of her white dress while lost in thought. He hurried to catch up. The forest closed in around him, the foliage at his back thicker, the trees up ahead taller, the brush on the sides denser. Dan had no idea where he was or which way Grace had gone.

  Drawing a deep breath, he opened his mouth to shout her name, then hesitated. Grace said he was too loud. Perhaps because bears responded to screaming tourists just as sharks were drawn to the vibrations and gyrations of swimmers? He snapped his mouth closed.

  He would just keep going straight ahead. How hard could walking in a straight line be?

  Pretty hard, Dan discovered. Nothing looked straight in the dark. If he came across a fallen tree he had to climb under, go over, or inch around it. Grace had taken the flashlight with her. Where the beam had seemed bright and shiny at his side, now he could see no hint of the light around anywhere. He became disoriented. After what seemed like hours, but was probably only ten minutes, Dan panicked and stopped in a tiny clearing.

  Why, oh, why had he allowed himself to lose sight of Grace? Why had she left him behind to die?

  Dan laughed to himself. “So melodramatic.”

  “Who?” asked an owl.

  Dan jumped at the sound. Why couldn’t he get used to the noises of the flora and fauna of the forest?

  The sound of something crashing through the brush in his direction made Dan wish he’d kept his mouth shut—and stayed in Arizona. He might not be used to the noises out here, but he knew what a large, lumbering body sounded like.

  Maybe he wasn’t being so melodramatic after all. Maybe he was going to die here. Maybe Grace had planned this whole thing. In fact, that made more sense than Perry, the weasel, leaving them in a lurch. And who had been prepared for this little jaunt, with shoes in her car, flashlight in the glove compartment, and a compass in her pocket? Grace, that’s who.

  And why? With Dan out of the way, Grace got the grant.

  Another crunch and a crash, closer, made Dan push aside conspiracy theories for the moment. He had more pressing concerns. Such as—should he climb a tree?

  As if he could. The trees in this part of the forest were huge, with little in the way of footholds, and far too big for even a guy of his size to put his arms around and shimmy up. Even if he could climb one, Dan remembered hearing on the Discovery Channel that bears could climb better and quicker than people. They could also run pretty fast—especially if they were chasing something. What you were supposed to do if a bear showed up was pretend you were dead.

  No problem there. Dan was just about ready for a heart attack.

  He dropped to the ground, curled himself into a ball, with his knees beneath his chest and his hands clasped behind his head. He made a pretty large target, but if he was lucky maybe the bear was on its way to a honey tree and would run right by.

  No such luck for Dan, but then he’d never been very lucky. Thunder rumbled in the distance, like an omen. The animal crashed into the small clearing, ran across the grass—and tripped over Dan, landing right next to his head.

  Dan tensed, waiting for teeth and claws to tear him apart. Instead he caught the scent of Grace and raised his head. Their noses brushed, she was that close. Relief flashed through him a moment before the anger in her eyes made him wonder if his panicked ramblings were true. She looked mad enough to kill. But she really wasn’t the type, was she?

  “I’m going to kill you, Dr. Chadwick.”

  Hmm, maybe she was. Look at Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy. Mild-mannered-looking guys one and all. Not every murderer had “crazy” tattooed on their forehead like Manson. Too bad.

  Slowly Dan sat up, slid away from her. At least there was no bear—at the moment—though perhaps he’d be better off if there were.

  “You wanna calm down, Grace?”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down!” Her voice had a shrill edge.

  “All right.” He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I won’t.”

  She stood and her skirt swirled about her ankles. Since he was still on the ground, he got an extensive flash of skin, too. He couldn’t help it; his gaze went to her leg and stuck there.

  Snap, snap. She clicked her fingers in front of his face. “Doc? Stay with me.” She held out her hand. He just stared at that, too.

  “Get up, you’re all wet.”

  Actually he wasn’t, but he probably would be soon. Thunder rumbled again. The storm he hadn’t believed was coming, came.

  He climbed to his feet without her help, as if she could pull him to his feet. When he stood, she put her hands on her hips and scowled. “You scared me half to death,” she accused.

  “Me? You left me alone to die in the woods with the bears.”

  “There aren’t any bears.”

  “But you said—”

  She cut him off with an exasperated sound. “All right, there are, but now that you’ve knocked down half the forest, they aren’t anywhere near here. Bears are more afraid of us than we are of them.”

  “Then why—?”

  “I was playing with your head.”

  Dan rarely got mad. He just wasn’t a guy with much of a temper. So few things were worth getting angry over. Because of his size he’d always worried about what he might do if he got too angry. Right now, with the tang of terror fresh upon his tongue, he just didn’t care.

  “You let me believe there might be bears lurking behind every tree, then left me out here? I might have had a heart attack. Or was that what you were hoping for?”

  She scowled. “I didn’t leave you anywhere. You couldn’t keep up. Besides, I was sitting on your porch. All you had to do was walk straight for twenty feet. You couldn’t even do t
hat. Did you know you walked in a complete circle?”

  “I did not. I stayed on a straight line. You just left me in the middle of the forest.”

  She stomped across the short distance separating them, grabbed his hand in surprisingly strong fingers, and yanked him after her. Ten feet, straight ahead, the forest thinned. Another ten feet and they stepped into a clearing. There sat his cabin, the lake, the camp.

  Idiot.

  “So if I was walking in circles, but only twenty feet from the cabin, and there aren’t any bears, why are you trembling?” he asked.

  “Just because there aren’t any bears doesn’t mean you can’t die in the woods. It happens at least once every summer and a lot every winter.”

  “What does?”

  “A clueless tourist walks into the woods and never comes back out.”

  “I don’t see how that could happen.”

  “Look.” She pointed behind him.

  Dan turned. The forest rose, thick and tall. Dark. Mysterious. Deadly. Where they’d walked through he could not see. It was as if a path had opened for Grace and himself, then closed. Which was impossible. Logically he knew that, but from where Dan stood he could not see any way to walk through the trees back in the direction they had come. He shivered at the implications.

  Grace came up behind him, a calming presence at his back. At least he wasn’t alone. “You get disoriented when everything around you is ten times taller. If you don’t have a compass, and most of you don’t” —she said you like she might say naïve fools— “you’re in big trouble.”

  “What about the stars, the moon, the sun?”

  “If they’re out, and you’re in a part of the forest where you can see them, would you know how to guide from them?”

  Dan shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Exactly. And you’re Dan, the Wonder Doctor— think about some regular Joe out here. They’d be toast within a few days.”

  “Don’t you have trackers, dogs, cops?”

  “Sure. We’ve even got Indian guides. But if they don’t know you’re missing, or where you went in, it makes things kind of tough.”

  Dan stared at the woods, while Grace took his hand once more. He didn’t want her to let go, so he held her fingers loosely, and didn’t move a single iota. “What should I do then, if I get lost again?”

  “Hug a tree.”

  “What?” He glanced at her but she wasn’t laughing. At least not so he could tell. “I thought you said hug a tree.”

  “That’s right. Haven’t you ever seen Barney? He gives good advice.”

  “Barney? Is he some north woods survivalist?”

  “He’s a giant purple dinosaur.”

  Had she been smoking funny-smelling weed while he wandered in circles? Dan moved closer and peered into her face to observe how big her pupils were. From what he could see in the shadows, she looked fine. She still smelled like Grace and nothing else—sexy, sinful, scrumptious. Maybe he’d taken in too much night magic himself.

  Grace grinned. “Barney is a kid’s television show.”

  “You watch kid’s television a lot?”

  Her grin faded. “At hospitals. Yes.”

  Dan cursed himself for wiping the smile from her face. He suspected she’d watched television with some very sick kids while they held blankets from Project Hope. A twinge of guilt came over Dan, but he refused to allow it to take root. He needed that grant. He was too close to a cure to give up now.

  “And this amazing dinosaur says to hug a tree if you’re lost in the woods.”

  “Yes. Stay where you are. Don’t wander. Then someone can find you more easily. If you go in circles” —she raised an eyebrow at him— “you end up deeper in the forest and it’s harder to find you when you cross your own trail again and again.”

  Slowly, Dan nodded. “Easy enough and it makes sense. So did you learn all this from Barney? Or did you learn some from your dad?”

  “My dad?” Her voice rose in amazement. “Why would my dad know anything about the forest?”

  “He’s Ojibwe.”

  “So? I don’t think he stepped foot in the woods after he stepped into college.”

  The way she said that made Dan think she didn’t approve, and he had to wonder why. But before he could ask, the sky opened and poured rain on them as if it had been holding a bucket over their heads all along. Grace’s white dress plastered to her body and made Dan forget all about her dad, the attorney.

  He took one step toward the house, but Grace held back, turning her face up to the sky and letting the rain tumble down her cheeks. He’d have thought the droplets were tears if he hadn’t heard her laugh out loud.

  She let go of his hand and turned her palms up toward the raging sky, raising her arms until she stood like a sacrifice to the hidden moon. Slowly, she turned, a single, graceful revolution—a dance with the music of the night.

  Dan couldn’t move; he could only stare at her in wonder as his body clamored for hers.

  The lack of moisture all summer had made the ground hard everywhere but in the forest, and the sudden, unexpected abundance of water ran in rivulets along the dusty yard. Dan hadn’t seen the point in watering grass that was already dead. So he possessed a yard full of dirt that would soon be mud, if the rain continued to fall.

  Grace lowered her hands, lowered her head, kicked off her shoes, and wiggled her toes in the tiny river that ran by. Joy spread over her face, capturing him once again. “Ah, that feels so good after walking so long.”

  It was as if their argument had never happened. The terror in the woods gone, the tension between them moot. The woman lived in the moment, taking pleasure from whatever came along. Dan watched her and he wanted to do that, too. But he had no idea how.

  Then she smiled at him through the rain, and his heart nearly stopped. “Take off your shoes, Doc. Live a little.”

  Dan stiffened. Take off his shoes? Stand in the rain? Squelch his toes through the mud?

  He shrugged. Why not? Dan yanked off the two-hundred-dollar shoes his sister had given him on his last birthday, tossed them aside, and sent his socks tumbling after.

  Grace was right. The rain soothed his heated feet, the dirt became mud beneath his toes, and he liked it. What he liked even more was the thought of his mother’s face if she could see him right now. She’d have a kitten.

  Dan laughed out loud, then threw his head back and drank of the rain and the night.

  Chapter Six

  For Grace the world was made up of the scent of evergreens at Christmas, the flavor of lemonade on the Fourth of July, and the softness of a baby bunny’s fur at Easter. Those things were good things—tactile memories to hold in your heart and take out when life got tough.

  She added another memory right then and there. The sight of Dan Chadwick in the rain—a temptation so great she didn’t think she could resist. So she stood and watched the man come alive before her eyes.

  The rain plastered his shirt to his chest, defining the muscles, clinging to his biceps. She wanted to touch that shirt, slip her fingers beneath the neckline, rub her knuckles along his collarbone, and press her mouth to the pulse that called her name, while peeking from between the open buttons of his shirt.

  The way he’d kicked off his shoes—so stiff and jerky—as if he’d never done such a thing before, Grace had figured he wouldn’t last a minute out in the rain. As soon as the first droplet hit his head he’d run for the cabin to avoid melting like the Wicked Witch of the West.

  She’d waited for him to fold his socks neatly, or stuff them into his shoes. When he tossed them into the growing river of mud, he earned a three-point bonus from Grace.

  The rain darkened his hair; the mud squished between his toes. She could smell Dan, an enticing combination of musk and man and one more thing she couldn’t quite identify. That scent tickled the edge of her mind, just beyond the tip of her tongue, hovering, waiting . . .

  Crack!

  Lightning. Electricity. Close. Not Dan at a
ll, but danger. She grabbed him.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “We’re too close to the trees. Let’s get inside.”

  “Not yet.” He did a fancy two-step in the mud. “I thought we were going to live a little.”

  Lightning flashed. Closer. The trees were too great an enticement.

  “There’s a time to live and a time to die, which is what we’ll be doing if we get barbecued because we’re too dumb to come in from the rain.”

  She tugged on Dan’s hand again, and he reluctantly took a step after her. Grace had a funny feeling at the back of her neck, as if the hair stood on end. She picked up the pace, yanking Dan along with her, not an easy task.

  The acrid scent of electricity filled the air; the hair on Grace’s arms tingled. Her body hummed with the energy that surrounded them. Something wicked this way comes, she thought, and started to run.

  They’d almost reached the relative safety of the porch when Dan slid in the mud river. It was like watching someone skate on glare ice—someone who had no idea how to skate. Dan’s bare feet skidded a neat double furrow in the yard, right before those feet flipped up and he fell flat on his back. Unfortunately, they were connected at the hand and Grace went down, too—right on top of Dan.

  Then lightning hit where they’d been standing. The earth beneath them shook; the air sizzled. Dan dumped her unceremoniously into the mud, covering her body with his.

  The ground was cool at her back. The man was warm all along her front. The wind smelled of flames and the rain. Dan had his face pressed along her neck, and when his lips moved against her skin, a prayer or maybe a curse, she shuddered.

  He lifted his head and looked toward the trees. “There’s a fire,” he said, amazement in his voice.

  Grace followed the direction of his gaze. Mud squelched into her hair. Sure enough, one of the trees at the edge of the forest had been struck and flames shot upward. But even as she watched, rain hit the fire and a hissing noise filled the air. “It’s all right. The rain will put out the fire.”

  He turned back and lifted a mud-caked brow. “Sure?”