"Isn't it pretty?" Gemma said.

Colin touched the hem of it. "Very nice. Mrs. Wingate has lots of these things. She lives out near Tris and-" The mention of the name made Colin stop talking-and she realized that no matter how unhappy she was, he was worse. Maybe that should have cheered her up, but it didn't.

Gemma put the gown back in the paper and into the bag, then took a deep drink of her smoothie. "I really need to go. I'm setting up interviews at some universities and I need to find out about them. As soon as I get approval on my subject matter, I'm going to be working on my dissertation in the evenings."

Colin watched her gather her bags. "Wait! I haven't told you about Luke and Mike."

"That's all right. I'll get Joce to tell me, or I'll call Sara. Anyway, I need to get Sara's Florida address so I can send her my gift."

"They're moving back here."

"How wonderful!" Gemma said as she stood up. "It was so nice talking to you." With a smile, she left and hurried around the corner to enter the heirloom sewing shop.

"Did you forget something?" Mrs. Wingate asked as soon as Gemma was inside.

To Gemma's absolute horror, she burst into tears.

"Oh, my goodness," Mrs. Wingate said as she hurried forward and helped Gemma to a chair. She took her bags from her and gave her a tissue from a box on the counter.

"I don't usually cry," Gemma said, "but lately I haven't been able to stop."

"Excessive hormones will do that," Mrs. Wingate said.

"I don't have-" Gemma began but glanced at the woman. "How did you know?"

"I opened this shop right after my husband pa.s.sed away, and you can't imagine all that I've seen. So many young women come in here pretending to be looking for a gift for a relative, but they've really just found out about the baby they're carrying, and they want someone to talk to."

"What do you do with them?"

"First, I listen, then I send them to an Aldredge. Is young Tristan . . . ?"

"The father?" Gemma asked. "No."

"Ahhh," Mrs. Wingate said. "Have you told our sheriff yet?"

"h.e.l.l will freeze over before I-" Gemma took a breath. "I mean, no I haven't. We had an argument and he . . ." She shrugged.

"I understand," Mrs. Wingate said, "and you can rest a.s.sured that I'll tell no one. Although, dear, you do know that you can't hide the coming event for too long."

"Especially since twins seem to infest this town."

Mrs. Wingate smiled. "They do, don't they? In fact, just this morning one of the women who sews for me finished some outfits for twin boys. I have a feeling that dear Sara's good fortune will send several people to my shop to purchase gifts for her."

Gemma gave a sniff and smiled back. "It was good business of you to think of that."

"I have to think ahead. I'm trying to survive in a world of ma.s.s production. Now, come with me and I'll show you some different items."

"Do you have a restroom?"

"I have to have one when so many enceinte ladies like yourself visit me. Right through there."

Gemma smiled at the use of the French word. Her grandmother thought pregnant was a vulgar word and that no one with a respectable upbringing would use it.

When Gemma returned, Mrs. Wingate had spread some of the prettiest clothes she'd ever seen across the counter, and she got another lesson, this one in storybook smocking. When Gemma said that Mike would like some martial arts guys on his son's play suits, Mrs. Wingate opened a laptop, logged on, and Gemma chose some photos that Mrs. Wingate said were suitable.

"I'll have two outfits ready by the end of the week," she said. "Why don't you come back then and we'll talk about . . . everything?"

When Gemma left the shop she felt much better, so good in fact that she'd added a fourth outfit for the baby she was going to have. Mrs. Wingate was certainly an excellent saleswoman!

As soon as Gemma got to her computer, she e-mailed Joce and asked what was going on with Mike and Luke. Joce wrote back, Sorry I didn't tell you, but it's been chaos around here. Luke had an offer of a movie deal. Brad Pitt wants to play Thomas Canon. And I can't believe no one told you about Mike. He was in a restaurant in Fort Lauderdale and recognized some guy who was wanted for the murder of four young women. Mike brought him in and they found another woman tied up in the creep's house. Mike saved her life! As a reward, he's being allowed to take early retirement with a full pension. He and Sara and the boys will be moving back here permanently at the end of the summer.

Gemma slumped back against the chair. It seemed that yet more of the wishes had been given. If Luke's movie was a hit, it could give him the immortality he'd asked for. And Mike had brought a "truly evil" person to justice-just as he'd wanted to do. She e-mailed Tris about everything, from her 7 P.M. morning sickness to all the wishes that were being granted.

That night as she was getting ready for bed, she glanced at the silver compact in her makeup basket. She opened it and looked at the pretty little necklace. On impulse, she said, "I don't think you're magic but if you are, would you please make Colin come back into my life?"

When the necklace did nothing-not that she had actually expected it to-she closed the case and went to bed.

25.

TELL HER."

The words were so loud that Colin jolted awake. He'd fallen asleep in the big leather chair he'd bought with Gemma, and when the words were shouted, his feet came down, which made the chair spring forward. He was almost catapulted across the room.

He'd been so hard asleep that at first he didn't know where he was. Papers had fallen off his lap and were now an inch deep on the floor. He looked around the room almost as though he expected to see someone there, but he knew he must have been dreaming.

"Tell who what?" he murmured as he got out of the chair. It was raining hard outside, but the words in his head drowned out all other sounds. "Tell her. Tell her. Tell her." Over and over.

A crack of thunder immediately followed by a flash of lightning almost made him reach for his gun at his belt. Last night he hadn't bothered to undress. He'd had a sandwich and a beer, then settled down in the chair to yet again go over the files about Adrian Caldwell, aka John Caulfied, aka . . . The list was endless, but whatever name the man used, he was Jean's criminal uncle.

In the last few days he'd talked to her often about the case. It hadn't been easy, but he saw to it that they never mentioned anything personal, just kept to the facts about her uncle. Colin had gone to her apartment in Richmond, and twice she'd come to his office in Edilean.

As Jean told him of her relationship with her notorious uncle, Colin had been shocked that he'd known nothing about the man. Colin had lived with Jean for years and would have said that he knew everything about her, but in the last few days he'd realized that he knew next to nothing about her.

Jean told him of her childhood and how her uncle used to sneak into her bedroom in spite of an alarm system and the iron bars her mother had put on the windows. "When I asked how he got in, he laughed and said that if we could get out, he could get in," Jean said.

She told of the two times her uncle had cleaned out her mother's bank accounts. "Mom didn't recover from the last time," Jean said bitterly. "And now, no matter how many safeguards the bank puts on her money, she still worries." She looked at Colin. "Didn't you ever wonder why I have my a.s.sets in four banks and why I deal with three brokers?"

Colin was too embarra.s.sed to say that he didn't know that she did. But then, he'd been the one to pay the bills. Some male code of honor had kept him from inquiring into Jean's finances.

She told him how she and her uncle had made up while she was in law school. "I thought that if he knew more about my mother and me, if he saw us as people, it would keep him from stealing from us."

"But it didn't work," Colin said.

"No. Not at all. I think it made him feel that we owed him for not doing bad to us." She told how her mother had nearly had a mental breakdown after the second time. "When I met you I was still supporting Mom, and paying off her debts. I was doing all I could to make her feel safe. I don't know how we would have survived if you hadn't helped with my bills."

With every word she spoke, Colin was more shocked at how little he'd actually known about Jean. She'd kept her secrets to herself, never telling him about her past life or her current one.

But then all he'd thought about back then was how much he hated his job of trying to sell cars. He hadn't been aware of what Jean was going through. No wonder she was always ready to have a fight with him and relieve the tension she was under.

And Colin had never seen that she was hiding horrific things, that she was under major stress, and that she always lived in fear of it happening again.

But now he was trying to make up for his past oversights. He listened carefully and watched her face and body movements, and what he saw now was that she was holding something back. With every question she answered, he had a feeling that she was hiding something. He didn't think she was outright lying, but she was certainly being evasive.

It was his guess that Jean knew where her uncle was and had been in contact with him recently. And the more Jean talked, the more her secrecy made him fear for Gemma. During the last week, Jean had made several remarks about Colin's new girlfriend, even saying that he'd dumped her for a "younger model." The words, and her tone, had made the hairs on Colin's neck stand on edge. All he could think was that he had been right to protect Gemma at all costs.

But knowing he was right hadn't helped when he'd seen Gemma in Edilean. She'd been so cool to him, smiling, showing him baby clothes. He'd missed her so very much, but she didn't seem to have given their separation a thought.

Of course he'd found out that Gemma hadn't spent a whole day with Tris. Colin knew he should have called her to apologize for accusing her of that, but an apology would have defeated the whole purpose of the separation. Right now it was better that he and Gemma were apart-and that Jean thought they wouldn't get back together.

As for Gemma, the less she knew, the better.

But last night things had changed. Colin had been going through the paperwork of the case, and rereading transcripts of his recorded interviews with Jean. Yet again he was marveling that he'd lived with her but had known so little of the truth of her life. With a jolt he realized that he was doing the same thing to Gemma that Jean had done to him.

Since he'd been a child, Colin had had the Frazier creed that their family was different, separate from the other people, drilled into his head. His father had never spoken of it, but Colin's paternal grandfather had talked of little else.

"We're not like them; we're not the same as them," his grandfather used to say, meaning the people of Edilean.

"Why?" Colin would ask.

His grandfather had no real answer. "It's always been that way and always will be," the old man said. "Just remember to keep family business to yourself."

Last night Colin had wondered if things could have been different between Jean and him if he hadn't obeyed his grandfather so completely. What would have happened if he'd sat down with her and told the truth about how much he hated his job? How much he wanted to move back to Edilean and figure out a way to become the sheriff?

"We would have broken up years before," he said aloud. Uncle or no, Jean deeply and truly hated the little town.

"Everyone there knows what I'm doing," she used to say. "You have that creepy little man, Brewster Lang, skulking about. You remember that day when I forgot to lock my car? When I came out of the store, he had opened the door and was looking inside my car!"

"He didn't know who you were," Colin had said, defending the man who'd helped him on so many cases. Mr. Lang could spend an hour in town and hear more than all the gossips combined would know. Better yet, his information would be based on fact. That Colin had long ago decided not to delve too deeply into Lang's methods of finding out things was something Colin didn't want to look at too closely.

Last year, Lang had helped him find out the truth about the man Sara was planning to marry. Colin's plan had been to present her with facts and do all he could to prevent the marriage. But Mike, who became her husband, stepped in before Colin had all the data he needed.

Another roar of thunder then lightning that made the lights flicker brought Colin back to the present. He glanced at the wall clock and saw that it was just after 2 A.M. The words "tell her" were still echoing in his head.

He needed to go to bed and in the morning he'd go to Gemma and tell her the truth about . . . about . . . "I'll tell her how I feel about her," he said as he turned toward his bedroom. Our bedroom, he couldn't help thinking.

He hadn't reached the doorway when his cell phone and his landline went off simultaneously-and Colin's heart nearly stopped. Only an emergency from home would set both phones ringing at this hour.

He answered them both at once, one at each ear. "What's happened?"

His mother was on his cell, his father on the landline.

"Shamus didn't come home last night," his mother said, her voice nearly in tears. "Rachel called me." His mother was in California with her daughter, Ariel.

"Your little brother stayed out all night and told n.o.body where he was going," his father said. He was at the company apartment in Richmond, where he always stayed when a dealership was conducting a big sale. "I hope that boy is with a girl."

"Is that your father I hear?" Mrs. Frazier asked.

"Yeah, Mom, he's on the other phone."

"Peregrine!" Mrs. Frazier shouted. "You went off and left our son alone!"

Colin put the two phones together.

"It's not like he needs a babysitter," Mr. Frazier said. "n.o.body's gonna pick him up and put him in the trunk of a car. He barely fits in the back of a three-quarter-ton pickup."

"Always making jokes, aren't you?" Mrs. Frazier said. "My youngest son is lost because you ran off and left him to fend for himself. He's probably starving."

"Rachel will-"

"Don't you start on that again! Rachel and Pere are falling in love. Everyone but you saw it. I came here to California just to give them some privacy."

"Ha! You went there to nag poor Ariel into getting pregnant."

"I did no such-"

Colin put his cell down on the coffee table and laid the handset to the landline on top so they could yell at each other. He took a shower, put on clean jeans and a shirt, and when he returned, his parents were still arguing.

"If you'd leave that girl alone, maybe she'd find time to get pregnant," Mr. Frazier was saying. "Frank wants kids, so that's half of the battle."

"Since when does what a man want have anything to do with babies? I'm the one who had to carry your children. Did you forget that Colin weighed ten pound and two ounces when he was born?"

Colin rolled his eyes. He'd been told that once a week during his childhood. He picked up the phones. "I have to go look for my itty-bitty, helpless baby brother and I need my cell. Go to bed, both of you." He clicked both phones off at the same time and put his mobile in the leather pouch on his belt, right beside his gun.

He went out to the garage, got in his Jeep, and opened the big overhead door. When he saw the storm outside, he was glad he had his new house. In the last years at his apartment, he'd had to park on the street. At his parents' house, his dad saw every garage as a place to store his cars, either the antiques or the ones he'd paid so much for that he wouldn't allow anyone to drive them. The cars the family used-which were changed for new models every year-sat in the driveway in the rain, sun, and snow.

"At least Gemma has a carport," he said aloud, and he liked thinking of her warm and snug in her bed.

He had an idea where Shamus was. Colin didn't think any of his family knew how much time the boy spent at Gemma's place. Shamus would walk there, not driving a utility vehicle, which he said was like putting up a neon sign telling where he was.

One afternoon Colin had seen Shamus give a single tap on Gemma's door, then open it. Obviously, his visits were so familiar that he didn't need to wait for her to let him in. Two hours later, Colin had parked nearby, meaning to go in to see Gemma, but he stopped a few feet outside and looked in. Shamus was on the couch, his big body bent over a drawing pad, his feet on the coffee table beside an empty plate and gla.s.s.

Gemma was sprawled on big cushions on the floor with neat stacks of papers around her, her beloved colored pens in a row by her ankle.

It was then that Colin realized that he loved her, and that maybe he had since he'd first seen her. He suspected that at first his attraction to her had to do with her fitting an image of how he'd always seen his future. But whatever the reason, from the first moment, he'd wanted to be with her. Never in his life had he felt more comfortable with anyone than he did with Gemma. He never felt in compet.i.tion with her, as he had with Jean. With Gemma, he'd never felt anything but a deep sense of belonging, of being where he was supposed to be when it was time-and that feeling went all the way down into his very bones.

As he drove, the wipers on as fast as they'd go, Colin knew that he'd made a mistake with Gemma in not trusting her and in letting his jealousy show. Colin wondered if on some unconscious level he'd always known that Jean was concealing part of herself from him and that's why he'd done the same to her. Maybe he'd realized that to show vulnerability to someone as aggressive as Jean would be like a gladiator admitting fear.

But Gemma was different. Gemma was real.

Colin pulled into the drive, and when he saw her Volvo under the carport, he gave a sigh of relief. He knew that for the second time in his life he was going to have to bare his soul to another human being. The first time had been when he'd told Gemma what Jean had said to him on that horrible day in his apartment. He'd survived that time of revelation. And now he knew that if he wanted Gemma-and he did-then he was going to have to "tell her" everything, including the truth about how he felt about her. What was it Mr. Lang had said? "If you like her, you better work to keep her." The old man was right.

When Colin knocked on her door and Gemma didn't answer, it was as though his heart jumped into his throat. Had his ruse failed and Jean's uncle taken her? Or was she with Tris? Had Colin's stupidity driven her to another man?