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.”
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