Heartwishes Page 2

  With love, Tamsen.

  “Wow,” Gemma said aloud. She’d already stumbled on a mystery and a romance. She glanced at her watch, told herself she had plenty of time before lunch, then stretched out on her stomach and began to read in earnest.

  2

  COLIN FRAZIER WAS frowning. He had at least fifty things he needed to do today, but here he was, driving out to the guesthouse to pick up one of his mother’s students. The other two were already in the main house, chatting so amiably to his mother that they sounded like long-lost relatives. The young woman, Isla, kept saying that everything was “exquisite,” while the man had tried to buddy up to Colin’s brother Lanny by talking about cars. Since Lanny had rebuilt his first transmission when he was eight, it was evident that the job seeker, Kirk, knew nothing about anything with wheels.

  As for Colin’s youngest brother Shamus, he stood to one side and moved a coin around on his fingers. Their parents had forbidden Shamus, who was the artist in the family, to draw anything for fear that he’d come up with some outrageous caricature of the visiting students and embarrass his parents—or actually, just their mother. Their father tended to laugh at whatever Shamus drew.

  Everything had started about three years ago when Mrs. Frazier found out that the last earl of Rypton, her husband’s very distant relative, had died without issue, so the title was being retired. What she wondered was if the title could be revived, which would mean that her husband could possibly be the earl and she the countess.

  On the night she’d posed this question, the family was at home in the living room, and her three youngest sons had gone into riots of laughter. Shamus, still in high school, grabbed his sketchbook and made an unflattering caricature of their mother wearing a crown.

  As they say, she was not amused.

  Alea Frazier put her chin up and left the room.

  “Now you’ve done it,” her husband said. “I’ll be in the doghouse for weeks. Lanny! Wipe that smirk off your face and start planning your apology.” He glared at his youngest. “And you, young man, with your drawing . . .” He trailed off, as though the punishment he had in mind was too dire to speak of.

  With a great sigh, Mr. Frazier heaved himself up out of his favorite chair to go in search of his wife. He paused in the doorway. “This is something that means a lot to your mother, so I want no more making fun of her. If she wants to be a lady, then she can damned well be one. Got it?”

  After he left, it was a full two minutes before the three youngest boys were laughing again.

  Lanny, the third eldest, turned to Colin, the oldest, because his big brother wasn’t laughing. “Come on, lighten up. Don’t you think this is hilarious?”

  Colin raised an eyebrow. “What I want to know is what our dear mother plans to do in her quest to find out if Dad can be an earl.”

  Peregrine, Pere for short and the second eldest, said, “Think she’ll make Dad buy her a castle?”

  “With a moat?” Lanny asked.

  Pere acted like he had a sword in his hand and attacked Lanny. “Will we brothers become sworn enemies and fight each other to become the next earl?”

  Shamus was sketching his brothers’ mock sword fight and didn’t look up as he said, “Colin will get the title next. You two will have to kill him to get it.”

  At that, Pere and Lanny, their arms extended as they held imaginary swords, turned toward their brother, who was sitting at the end of the long couch. “That’ll be easy,” Lanny said and made a lunge.

  In the next second, Colin was up. He grabbed Lanny about the waist and lifted him onto his shoulders.

  At that moment Mr. Frazier reentered the room. “If you boys break anything, it’ll come out of your allowance.”

  With a snort of laughter, Colin put his brother down. Their father had made them sound like children, but Colin had just turned twenty-seven, while Lanny and Pere were twenty-five and twenty-six.

  “How’s Mom?” Colin asked.

  “All right.” Mr. Frazier gave his eldest son a look that said this was only the beginning. When Mrs. Frazier took on a project, she became a force of nature, like a tornado that plowed across the earth, sucking up everything in its wake. And it looked like this earl of Rypton thing was going to be her next undertaking.

  That was three years ago, but recently the old house in England that had belonged to the earls was put up for sale, and it took all Mr. Frazier’s ability to talk his wife out of buying it. The compromise had been for her to purchase every scrap of paper—“our history” as she called it—that had been squirreled away in the house and have it shipped home to Virginia.

  When she’d returned from her solitary trip to the auction—and before the bills arrived—the family thought she’d probably bought half a dozen or so boxes full of old papers. Instead, six FedEx trucks had arrived bearing professionally crated trunks, baskets, boxes, and even suitcases packed full of crumbling old documents.

  Mr. Frazier wasn’t happy when he’d had to move two vintage cars out of the guesthouse garage so it could be filled with what she’d bought. “Alea,” Mr. Frazier had said with extreme patience as he looked at the collection, “who’s going to go through all this . . . this . . . ?”

  “Don’t worry, dearest, I’ve taken care of that. I called Freddy, and he and I had a good long talk about how to go about this. He came up with a truly brilliant plan.”

  “Freddy?” Mr. Frazier asked, his jaw rigid. Frederick J. Townsend was the president of his wife’s university alma mater—and her old boyfriend. The man she’d almost married. “And how is ol’ Freddy?” Mr. Frazier asked, his teeth clenched.

  “Excellent, as always. He’s going to send me the résumés of some young people who are qualified for the job, probably Ph.D. students. I’ll choose four or five of them to come here to be interviewed. Or do you think that’s too many? Maybe I should cut it down to three. Yes, that’s a good idea. Freddy promised that he’d send the very best the university has to offer. What do you think, dear?”

  Mr. Frazier narrowed his eyes at his wife. He knew when he was being bamboozled. She was leaving out a great deal, such as the salary she’d probably already offered, and how long this person was going to be in their employ. And since she’d insisted on putting her hoard in the guesthouse garage, he had a suspicion about where this student was to live. “I think,” he said slowly, “that you and I are going to sit down and you’re going to tell me exactly what you’re up to.”

  “Of course, dear,” she said, smiling. “I’d love to tell you everything.”

  It was at dinner that night that the family was told of the plan to hire someone who would live in one of the guesthouses and spend two or more years reading and cataloging the material from England.

  “Two years?” Pere asked in shock.

  Lanny said, “Just make sure she’s female. And pretty.”

  “I think the three girlfriends you have now are quite enough,” Mr. Frazier said, but Lanny just grinned.

  Mrs. Frazier turned to her eldest son. “Colin, what do you think?”

  The family knew that Colin kept his opinions to himself. His mother often said that her eldest son had been born independent, that he went where he wanted to when he wanted to. His father said that Colin had been given the short end of the stick. By the time he was three, he’d had two younger brothers who flamboyantly craved attention. With his father working seventy hours a week and his mother dealing with two demanding children, Colin had learned to take care of himself—and to not bother anyone with his needs and wants.

  “I think,” Colin said slowly, “that the whole project will be good for you.” Shamus, the last of his mother’s five children, would leave for college next year, and their mother was going to be lonely. Only Colin lived in Edilean—and he spent so much time in town that he might as well be in another state. Someone living in the guesthouse and spewing out stories about the family’s past would probably entertain his mother. Maybe there’d be moments when she’d forget ho
w her children were scattered around the country.

  But now, months later, Colin wished he’d been more involved in the whole process of letting someone stay on the family property for such a long time. He’d met two of the applicants for the job and didn’t like either of them. The young man and woman were both tall and greyhound thin, their clothes sleek and expensive. The woman looked at Lanny with eyes that seemed to flash with a neon sign of a wedding cake, and Colin had seen the man pick up a plate and look at the manufacturer’s name. So far, neither of them had so much as glanced at a book, and they’d certainly shown no interest in the dirty boxes in the guesthouse.

  Colin could almost see the future. The hired one would freely wander about the place and come up with excuses of why he/she should join the family. And his mother’s generous nature would allow it. He had visions of the man moving in with them and being there twenty years from now. His mother would say, “But my children left me, so why shouldn’t I have Kirk to keep me company?”

  All in all, Colin was beginning to see the whole project as a disaster.

  As for the last job applicant, she hadn’t even shown up for lunch. Lanny, extremely pleased with the first young woman, had volunteered to go look for her. To him, the more women around him, the better.

  When asked about the third candidate, Mrs. Frazier had said, “Leave her where she is,” in a way that made Colin groan. It looked as though his mother had already made up her mind about who she was going to hire and she didn’t need to know anything more about the third one. But Colin’s hope was that the other student was interested in something besides the family possessions.

  “Mother,” Colin said as they were going in to lunch, “I think the other woman should be here too and that you should talk to her.”

  “I’ve already found out everything I need to know about her. Let’s just have a pleasant lunch, shall we? Kirk and Isla are such fun, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah, hilarious,” Colin said as his mother swept past him. He caught up with her. “I just think—”

  His mother turned on him. “If you’re so interested in the other girl, then you can go get her. I left her in the guesthouse, and I assume she’s still there.” Mrs. Frazier went into the dining room.

  Colin started after her but paused in the doorway. The dining room had been set with the best china, and their housekeeper, Rachel, was wearing a white uniform. She looked up, met Colin’s eyes, and gave a shrug that said the getup was his mother’s doing.

  Colin’s parents took their places at the ends of the table, and Mr. Frazier looked as though he’d rather be anywhere else in the world than there. Lanny was next to the lovely Miss Isla, with the handsome Kirk on his other side.

  Across the table were three settings, one occupied by Shamus, the other two for Colin and the third candidate.

  Mrs. Frazier motioned for her eldest son to take his seat.

  Colin took a step forward, but he couldn’t make himself sit down. “I . . . ,” he said. “I’ll . . .” He pointed over his shoulder, vaguely in the direction of the guesthouse, then escaped. He jumped in a utility truck and sped off.

  By the time Colin reached the guesthouse, his frown was so deep his dark brows were nearly touching in the middle. He parked the little truck on the grass and walked the last steps to the guesthouse. Based on what he’d seen of the others, he thought it would be better to check on what the third student was up to. All least her car wasn’t parked nearby and she wasn’t filling the trunk with whatever she could carry. What had possessed his mother to leave a stranger alone in the little house? It was full of valuable antiques—all of which had come from England and arrived in a moving van weeks after the documents came.

  Colin had his hand on the door handle of the library, ready to burst in, when he saw her. She was sitting on the old carpet, her back against the cabinets that had been installed only last week. Around her were six boxes of the documents his mother had bought.

  Her face was turned away, but he could see that under her loose clothing she was small and trim, with shoulder-length dark blonde hair. There was a pen clipped to her sleeve, one in her hand, and three pens of different colors on the floor. By her knee was a thick notebook open to a page filled with writing.

  As he watched, she bent forward, put what looked to be an old letter on the floor, and began to write in her notebook. When she made a note in the margin, she used a different color.

  When she glanced up, he thought she’d seen him through the glass, but her eyes held a glazed look, and he realized she was seeing only what was inside her mind.

  Her movement let him get a clearer view of her face. She was pretty, not beautiful like his friend Jean, or ethereal like his cousin Sara, but nice-looking. He thought that this young woman looked like . . . like she belonged in a library. She was the girl who went to church on Sunday and made pot roast on Friday.

  What struck Colin most was that he had never in his life seen anyone look so . . . well, happy. If he’d ever before seen anyone doing exactly what he should, when he should, she was it. If Shamus were to draw her portrait, he’d label it Contentment.

  Colin’s frown went away. Now this is what he’d envisioned when his mother had first talked of hiring someone to research the family history.

  Smiling, he turned the handle and opened the door. Now, if he just didn’t scare her when she saw him . . .

  The sound of the door opening startled Gemma out of her trance, and she looked up to see a very large man standing in the doorway. He was quite handsome, with his thick, dark eyebrows and his square jaw.

  He had on a shirt that verged on being too tight; it clung to his muscles—and Gemma thought she probably knew every exercise he did. She’d had four years of working with athletes, so she knew what it took to get a body into the shape his was in.

  He wore the same look she’d seen on the faces of “her” athletes. When first meeting someone they held back until they saw how their enormous size might affect that person. It was her guess that this man, with his thick brows and his big body, often intimidated people.

  But not Gemma. The truth was that because of “her boys” he was familiar-looking to her, someone she was comfortable being near—which was a contrast to her encounter with Mrs. Frazier with her diamond earrings.

  As Gemma stood up, she gave him a smile that came from her heart. “Hello. Did you come to get me for lunch?” She glanced at her watch. It was one-thirty. “Oh dear. I missed it, didn’t I?”

  “Completely,” Colin said as he closed the door behind him. He nodded toward the open boxes on the floor. “Find anything interesting?”

  “Love, tragedy, and something that people believed was magic,” she said.

  He sat down in the big chair by the door. “You found all that in such a short time?”

  Turning her back to him, she held out her arms to the bookcases. When she did, her trousers tightened a bit, and Colin had a better look at her shape. She didn’t get legs like that from sitting around all day.

  “I’m not sure yet,” she said, “but I think there might be real treasure buried in here.” She looked back at him. “Are you one of Mrs. Frazier’s sons?”

  “I’m the oldest. Colin.” He watched as she began to straighten the papers on the floor and put them back on the shelves. There was something quiet about her that he liked.

  “I’m Gemma, and I guess I blew it with your mother, didn’t I?” she asked softly as she slipped an old hatbox onto a shelf. “Missing lunch was very rude of me. Isla and Kirk would never—”

  “They’re too busy counting the silver to notice who’s there or not,” Colin said.

  Turning, she looked at him in surprise.

  “At least the boy is doing calculations,” Colin said. “That girl is ready to tell my brother what size engagement ring she wants.”

  “You’re rather perceptive, aren’t you?”

  “Nope. I’m just another big, dumb former football player.”

  She c
ould see that behind his levity, he seemed to be asking her a question. “Big?” she said. “Are you kidding? I’m the official tutor for the football team, and two of my students make double-door refrigerators look svelte.”

  Colin grinned. “They should meet my little brother. He’s still growing, and we’re afraid he’s going to resemble a Hummer.”

  “Will your family have to get him tags and a license?”

  “No, but he does sometimes wear taillights.”

  They laughed together.

  Colin was about to speak when his cell phone rang. He dug into his trousers pocket, pulled it out, glanced at the ID, then answered it. “You haven’t finished lunch already, have you?” He paused. “Oh. Sure. Here? Now? No, uh, actually, I . . . I’m on my way into town and I’ll eat there.” He glanced at Gemma as he listened. “Sorry, Mom, I’ll see you at dinner.”

  He clicked off his phone. “The whole lot of them are on their way here. I’m leaving. You want to go with me and get some lunch?”

  “I’d love to, but I’m afraid I’ve already offended your mother, so I think I’ll stay. Thanks for the offer, though.” Gemma looked around the room to make sure she’d put everything back just as she’d found it. Turning, she looked at Colin, who was still sitting in the chair. “You’d better make your escape. I can hear them now.”