The Wish

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.”

Chapter Two

She got her wish. Just like that.

There was no drama about it, no breath-robbing, head-spinning whirling through space, no dramatic drumrolls, no eerie voices or otherworldly music. It just…happened.

One minute Gerri was sitting on her couch at home, petting her cats, and the next, poof! she was perched on the ladder in her bookshop, in the exact position she’d been in last Friday evening, looking for an arcane book on ancient Aztec tattooing rituals for an elderly customer currently waiting on the phone. Rance stood at the foot of the ladder, as he had then, talking to her about his family, complaining some, making some jokes, generally chatting with her as he liked to do now and again, using Gerri as an available ear.

“Mother is really getting into this whole I-want-to-be-a-grandmother thing. You know, we-need-heirs-for-the-family-name, and you-aren’t-doing-your-part. On and on. Like she did about six months ago. Back then, if you recall, I managed to distract her by taking that racing car course, which about drove her crazy.”

“That would certainly do it,” Gerri found herself replying, just as she had that night.

Inside, however, her mind was doing its own speed laps. She had to hold on tightly to the sides of the ladder to keep her balance. As her eyes couldn’t seem to focus, she wasn’t able to read the words on the books’ spines yet. Dear God, she thought, her heart rate accelerating, her mind filled with confusion, wonder, even some terror.

What was going on here? one part of her asked, even as the other part answered promptly. You just made a wish by rubbing a pair of ugly reading glasses. You are now where you were a week ago. Ergo: The wish has been granted.

Even so, her scholar’s mind shifted through alternate possibilities: she was in the middle of a dream, one of the wish fulfillment types that Freud had written about in his seminal work, The Interpretation of Dreams, in which the dreamer incorporates her daily worries or fantasies into a story, one that allows the dreamer to continue sleeping, achieving needed rest. Or…

She was hallucinating. Gerri pinched her upper arm, and it hurt. She gazed down and Rance was still there. So, no hallucinations. Or…

Someone was playing a joke on her, had snuck up behind her as she sat on the couch at home, conked her over the head, hauled her here, placed her on the ladder, arranged for Rance to be in attendance.

Not likely.

But then…how…? Was she really here, back through the time-space continuum, to exactly one week ago?

There was one sure way to check it out. She ran her fingertips over her cheekbone. No pain, no swelling. The shop’s round security mirror hung just to her left, so she leaned in to peruse her image. Nope, no discoloration or bruises. Just her extremely average face, with its hazel eyes, pale eyelashes and brows, a sprinkling of freckles across an average nose, a mouth of no particular distinction, except it wasn’t too large or too small.

But no swelling or redness in the least. The evidence of her accident had been with her all week, but right now, there was none. And her sprained ankle? To make sure, she put her weight on her right foot as she balanced on the ladder rung. No pain, no weakness there.

So, then it was the week before. Had to be.

Her mind reeled, searching and discarding one more time, all kinds of other theories: sci-fi ones like an alternate universe or a time machine, mathematical ones like relativity gone berserk, malformed logarithms. Logical explanations like…

None. There were none, no other explanation. Except the one that she knew, in her gut, was the one.

The magic glasses worked. Her wish had been granted. Period, end of discussion.

It was like someone had pressed the rewind button on a videotape, to the beginning, instead of fast forwarding to the end, which in her case had been the dreadful dinner dance and her making a total fool of herself.

She would get to do the week over.

She closed her eyes. Thank you, thank you, thank you! There was to be a reprieve from Gerri the klutz, the social misfit, the tall, brainy woman unfit to be on the arm of Terrance Wallace III. Now, cautiously, she even allowed a small ray of hope to shine inside. Maybe, if she was very careful, and paid a lot of attention to her behavior this week, maybe, just maybe, the prince would finally notice the existence of the right princess for him, even though she’d been part of his universe for what seemed like years and he hadn’t gotten the message yet.

Only one year, of course, since Rance had come into her shop, searching for a coffee-table book for his uncle’s birthday, but in that year, Gerri’s fantasies and dreams had been filled with him.

The subject of her thoughts was complaining again. “I don’t know what kind of distraction I can give Mother this time. I don’t intend to marry yet, if ever. And any grandchildren are way in the future. I’m only thirty-two, for Pete’s sake.”

“Maybe you should tell her that.”

“That I’m thirty-two?”

She grinned down at him. “That marriage is way in your future. You’re pretty independent, so let her know.”

“Done it and done it. Doesn’t get through. Hey,” Rance said with a speculative gleam in his eye, “you and I would have great kids, know that? With my looks, which I’m told are passable, and your brains, which are off the scale, the kid would be a major winner. Mother would finally shut up.”

On that previous Friday night, the one before “the wish,” Rance’s remark—even tossed off as lightly and mockingly as it had been—threw her. She’d been flattered that he’d even thought of her as a woman. In fact, her always-overactive brain had conjured up a picture of the physical act involved in making children. With Rance.

That graphic image had made her lose her balance. She’d slipped off the ladder, bruised her cheek on one of the rungs and had badly sprained her ankle. For the entire next week, she’d had to wear an Ace bandage and soak her foot morning and night. She’d missed riding her horse Ruffy, missed her nice morning visits with Des, hadn’t seen or heard from him all that week, in fact, until he’d called up on Friday afternoon and casually suggested they grab a sandwich together that evening.

And last week, needless to say, she’d looked awful at the ball.

Not this time, Gerri told herself. This time she would get to do it right.

“You know,” she found herself replying to Rance with a lightness that matched his, “a famous actress once said something like that to George Bernard Shaw. She suggested they have children together because with her looks and his brains, their offspring would rule the world. ‘But, madam,’ he replied, ‘what if they had my looks and your brains?”’

When that got a nice chuckle from Rance, Gerri congratulated herself on reacting with sophisticated badinage instead of taking a header off the ladder. Her fingers skimmed along the spines of the books on the top shelf—where she kept the most old, rare and valuable books—until she came upon the object of her search. “Aha!” she said aloud. “Native American Origins of the Art of Tatau, by Reginald D’Olivier, Ph.D.”

“Sounds weird.”

“Not to those who care about skin painting,” she said, and pulled it out.

“You’re just full of comebacks tonight, aren’t you?” Rance said, finally getting off his favorite subject of himself and grinning up at her in appreciation.

Again, she met his gaze, noted those sea-green eyes, that slightly shaggy dark blond hair that fell rakishly over one eyebrow, that GQ model’s perfectly chiseled face. And for a brief moment, she was unable to speak.

Then she shook herself, made herself say lightly, “I feel amusing tonight.”

“But that book looks heavy enough to hold down a tent. Want some help?”

No, I’ll manage.

The words were almost past her lips, but she stopped them before they made the journey to the outside world. Of course she could do it herself, she could do everything by herself. But wasn’t this a chance to appear just a bit, well, feminine? Not helpless, not in the least, but at least willing to let the big strong man help with what men did so well—lifting things?

This was another test, another chance to do it differently, to practice being…what?

A flirt and a liar?

No, to allow someone—a male someone—to help her. To not be so darned capable of taking care of herself that men rarely offered to let her lean on them.

She closed her eyes for a moment, saying a silent prayer of thanks to whatever power had arranged for this wish. She would try to be worthy, she promised.

She would do it right this time. “Thanks,” she told Rance. “If you’ll take the book, I can manage me.”

Gerri stepped down a rung, carefully this time, placed the book into Rance’s outstretched hands and watched him set it down on the counter. Then turning around again, so she could keep her balance, she began to descend even more slowly and was surprised to feel two hands around her waist, helping her to the floor. As he lifted her, she waited for a telltale grunt. She might be slender, but her height made her weigh more than a typical woman.

But he wasn’t even breathing hard as he set her down on the ground. She was afraid to turn around to thank him, afraid that his touch had set her cheeks to flaming. Due to her treacherously pale skin, she had never been able to hide it when she was embarrassed.

“Merci,” she managed, keeping her back to him.

“Hey, my momma raised me to be a gentleman,” he said into her ear, then turned her around to face him.

Now her nose was two inches from his, their mouths close enough to kiss. She knew her cheeks were bright red, but she managed a dry response. “And to give her grandchildren, it seems.”

“Ouch. Don’t remind me,” he said with a grin that was both charming and self-mocking at the same time. How was it, she wondered, that some people managed to make the smallest movement attractive, made it look so easy, when others had to struggle all the time just to appear part of the human race?

She’d been pondering that same question since early childhood and had come up with no solid answer yet. But at least now she was safely on the ground.

Did it! Gerri congratulated herself silently. Got down that ladder and no accidents, no bruises. She might even have appeared graceful. Well, probably not. Or perhaps, to be kind, as graceful as she could be, which was not very. And Rance hadn’t seemed fazed by her weight, gave no outward sign of having developed a hernia or back spasms. Yay for our side.

She picked up the book, hurried behind the counter, and picked up the receiver. “Dr. Albright? I’ve got it.” She listened to the retired professor’s pleased response then said, “Yes, the third edition…Well, thanks, I’m so glad I could be of help.” She felt a huge grin split her face as the elderly man went on about how long it had taken him to locate the tome, and what a treasure Gerri’s shop was, and how grateful he was that the young woman had decided to settle here in town, filling a void in the community.

Last week, there had been nothing like this response. Gerri hadn’t found the book by the time she’d slipped off the ladder, and poor Dr. Albright had been left on hold for quite a while, while she tended to her wounds.

“Yes, I’ll hold it for you till tomorrow. Just ask for it at the cash register.”

Rance watched her, an expression of amused affection—the way you looked at a pet—on his face. When she hung up, he said, “You’re terrific, you know that?”

She wrinkled her nose, felt her face coloring again. “No I’m not.”

“No, really, you’re such a, I don’t know, a giving person. It makes you so happy to help others, your face glows with it.”

“Enough,” she said, waving his compliments away, and loving them at the same time.

He walked to her side of the counter, reached behind her, and yanked at her ponytail. “If I had a sister, I’d want her to be just like you. Well, I have to head out. See you,” he said and headed for the door.

As her inner mind was repeating the sister remark, most definitely at the top of the all time kiss-of-death-to-a-future-relationship remarks, she asked, “Where to?” careful not to let her disappointment show.

“Gotta go meet a plane.”

“Oh?” She already knew the answer to her next question. “Who’s coming in?”

“Marla Connelly,” he said with a cat-who-got-the-cream grin.

“The model?”

“Yup. I met her in New York last week. She’s looking to buy some property for a ranch. I’ve offered to show her around town a bit.” He raised his eyebrows in a Groucho Marx way, indicating his plans would go a bit further than just showing the lovely, sophisticated woman around town.

A wrench of jealousy hit her gut, just as it had last week. But…wasn’t everything supposed to be different? Hadn’t she been granted the chance to do it right this time?

Wait, she reminded herself. The ball—No, she amended quickly, not “the ball.” She really needed to stop using fairy-tale vocabulary. The charity dinner dance a week from now, that was what she was supposed to do right. It was there that Rance would finally see what had been under his nose all along. Lovely, sophisticated Princess Gerri.

“Well, go on then,” she said, accompanying him to the door. “See you soon.”

Through the glass she watched him walk away until he was out of sight. Pleased with herself at having at least avoided injury, Gerri turned around and nearly fell across a carton of books that were still waiting to be shelved. Whoops, she said silently as she righted herself against the counter. Lesson number one—you can go back in time, but if you’re a klutz, you’re a klutz, magic or no magic. Good luck with that one, she thought sardonically, as she carefully steered her way around the carton. It would take more than a miracle to make her graceful.

SATURDAY: The morning was magic. Ruffy was in fine, frisky shape today as they cantered toward the hills where the sun was just making an appearance, casting all kinds of lovely colors over the distant Sierra Nevadas and the plains below. Gerri was full of hope this morning, having slept well—no pain from bruises that weren’t there, no ankle twinges, no aspirin or ice necessary. Last week she hadn’t been able to ride, but today she could. She was wondering if Des would be joining her, as he often did in the morning, when the sound of horse’s hooves behind her told her that the man himself was making an appearance. She slowed Ruffy down to a slow trot and waited for him to catch up with her.

“Hi,” she said as he joined her.

He nodded his greeting. A man of few words, was her friend Des. The laconic, solitary rancher who never said more than what was absolutely necessary. She liked that about him, especially as he never seemed to mind her chatter.

He trotted easily beside her. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” she said, inhaling a deep lungful of cool morning air.

“Uh-huh.”

“Race you to the tree!” She took off before he answered, knowing that her mount didn’t have a chance against his sleek black gelding, but going for it nevertheless. Within moments, he’d caught up to her and passed her, but kept just ahead of her instead of racing off into the distance, as he most certainly was capable of doing.

They ran the horses for fifteen minutes or so, until Des pulled up at a grove of cottonwood trees, the tallest of which leaned over the edge of a babbling creek. She’d come to think of it as their tree and had since the day months before when she’d dismounted here to adjust her stirrups and he’d ridden by, stopped and asked if he could help. She’d accepted gratefully because, back then, this whole horse thing had been new to her.

Born and raised in New York City into a family of academics and intellectuals, Gerri’s only previous experience with equines had been to watch mounted police during parades and to observe the aging, overworked animals that pulled carriages around Central Park. But she’d always been fascinated by the beasts—their sturdy musculature, the grace of their necks—and had vowed to have her own one day. And to learn to be a good rider.

After eighteen months in the Reno area, Gerri had bought Ruffy and boarded her at Des’s place, which had been recommended to her by the horse’s previous owner. She’d taken a few lessons and was now, if she said so herself, not bad, and getting better.

Thanks to Des. In his quiet way, he’d helped her learn how to saddle her own horse, how to watch out for tree roots and the occasional snake as she rode, how to water and brush her mount at the end of the ride. He hadn’t had to do all that, she knew it, and thought he must be a very kind person to have taken the awkward city slicker under his wing.

“Whoa!” she said now, pulling up next to him. She was as out of breath as Ruffy must be, but happy. “That was fabulous!”

“You’re doing fine,” he said, “getting better and better,” he added, just the hint of smile on his usually stoic face. Beneath his well-worn cowboy hat, she observed, not for the first time, his startling blue eyes and the lines radiating out from them, formed by years in the sun. Black hair and blue eyes. Black Irish coloring, he’d told her once, in a rare moment of talking about himself. His people had come to America during the potato famine and had led a hardscrabble life. He’d bought his ranch about five years earlier. It was small, but he worked hard, and she had a sense that he, too, was fulfilling a lifelong dream of having a place—even an identity—of his own.

She was naturally curious about his personal life. He wasn’t married, she knew, and lived alone. But there was an air of privacy about him that didn’t invite personal questions, so she hung back from prying. Once in a while, like when he stared at the mountain range to the east, she got a sense of loneliness, even a shadow of sadness, in the man. But mostly he seemed comfortable in his solitary existence. Except he seemed to enjoy her company when they rode together, which was once or twice a week in the mornings.

For the first time in her adult life, Gerri felt comfortable with a man. Consequently, when she was with him, her behavior was relaxed, not forced. He had the gift of making her feel good about herself, accepted her for what and who she was. All her life, Gerri had tended to say whatever was on her mind; as she had a really busy mind, poor Des had received an earful of opinions on books, ideas she’d read about and been mulling over, politics, new scientific breakthroughs, an interesting new word, the little miracles of daily life. She spoke to him sometimes of her past unhappiness, of not fitting in, of being too tall, too clumsy.

She’d never gone so far as to tell him about Tommy, her one unhappy love affair, but it still amazed her how she felt free to share just about everything else with him. Occasionally, she would stop and ask if she was talking too much, and always he said not at all, that he enjoyed listening to her. Once he’d even called her “a breath of fresh air.”

Bless him, she thought now, bless Des for opening a new world to her, one where men and women could be friends. She’d always had female friendships, but his was the first with the opposite sex, and she valued this relationship.

“One of these days,” she said with a grin, “you’re not going to be able to beat me so easily.”

Again, that small hint of smile. “I believe you.”

Together they sat on their horses while the animals grazed a bit on the nearby grass, Gerri gazing at the creek’s rushing waters and the way the rising sun glinted on it. Her heart felt so full this morning—the wish had made all kinds of new things possible. Suddenly she wanted to tell Des about that wish. She had to share the miracle with someone, for heaven’s sake. It was too good to keep to herself.

“Des, do you believe in magic?”

He squinted his eyes. “Magic?”

“Yes. You know, the kind where you say an incantation and all of a sudden you get this thing you’ve always wanted? Or you go to bed one way and wake up the next morning, different?”

He gazed at her for a few moments, considering her question. Then he shrugged. “I believe in what I can see and touch, Gerri.”

“So, you’re not into, you know, a parallel universe or communing with dead souls or the power of the unknown?”