Heartwishes (Edilean 5)

“I don’t mind at all,” Colin said. “I hope you and Tris will be very happy.”

“Good! Because it looks like you and Jean are a perfect match after all.”

“Maybe we are,” Colin said.

Gemma couldn’t take any more. She got into her car, slammed the door, and drove off in a flurry of gravel.

Just as angry, Colin drove to his office. He was determined to go back to work. The sooner he got the crimes figured out and arrests made, the faster he could get back with Gemma. If she wanted to, that is.

An hour later, he hadn’t done anything. He kept going over their argument and trying to understand it.

After a fight with Jean, Colin had always felt better. They said horrible things, accusing each other of infidelity, laziness, stupidity, whatever they could come up with. They covered every subject, from her leaving the kitchen a mess to Colin’s constant moroseness, to Jean’s inability to see anything except her own wants and needs.

After hours of spewing venom, they would run out of energy—and out of bad things to blame on the other. They’d take a breath, look at each other, and one of them would say something trivial. Colin would say something like, “You hog the bathroom.”

Jean would retaliate with, “And you’d rather watch sports on TV than go dancing.”

“And you’d rather—” Colin would begin, but he’d not finish because in the next minute they’d be in each other’s arms. The sex that followed would be as heated as their argument had been.

But Gemma was different. He’d asked her to meet him at Merlin’s Farm because he didn’t want to start their phony—and temporary—breakup in either of their houses, places where they’d made love. He knew that he’d missed her so much over the last days that all he’d want to do was climb into bed and hold her. He thought that the neutral ground of the summerhouse would be better.

It had never occurred to him that there’d be a fight. He would have said that he and Gemma had nothing to argue about. From the beginning they’d been a perfect match, easy and comfortable with each other.

While it was true that she’d been angry at him for forgetting their time in bed together, they’d solved that, hadn’t they? And he’d made it up to her.

He thought he’d ignored the fact that over the last few weeks people in Edilean had delighted in telling him that Gemma had been seen with Dr. Tris again and again. None of his real friends, the people Colin had grown up with, had said anything, but the newcomers had told him. Everywhere he went, someone told him of Gemma and Tris.

“Their heads were together over chocolate,” one man said. “

Now there’s a man who knows how to win a girl’s heart.”

At the grocery, Colin was meant to overhear a nurse say that Tris was staying at home that night alone—with Gemma. “I’m not sure,” the nurse said loudly, “but I think it’s the beginning of a real love affair.”

“Nobody deserves it more than Dr. Tris,” the other woman answered even louder. “It’s about time he settled down and had a family.”

Colin almost stepped in and told them that she belonged to him, not Tris, but his lifelong habit of keeping his personal life to himself overruled him.

It was Mr. Lang who told him that Tris drove Gemma home after what Lang called a “date.”

“It wasn’t a date,” Colin snapped at the old man. “And what were you doing out there anyway?”

Mr. Lang shrugged and looked around Colin’s office. He gave out less information about himself than any Frazier did. He looked back at Colin. “If you like her, you better work to keep her.”

“Let’s leave my life out of this. You see or hear anything about the robberies?”

“No,” Mr. Lang said, and Colin knew the old man was not going to say anything more.

Colin had hated the idea of telling Gemma that they shouldn’t see each other for a while, but his only concern was for her safety. And he wasn’t going to tell her that her suspicions about Jean were at the center of his thoughts. He could easily believe that Jean would come up with some scheme for revenge. He’d seen her do some nasty things to people in her office when they did something like try to steal a case from her. And she’d been very angry that day in his apartment when he finalized their breakup.

But Jean aside, Colin didn’t understand why Gemma didn’t see that he was thinking only of her. From the way she’d talked, you’d think she thought Colin wanted to spend time with Jean. It was almost as though Gemma thought Colin was glad this was happening so he could get back with Jean.

And then there was all that had come up about his friend Tris. If anyone had asked, Colin would have said that he wasn’t in the least bit jealous, so he was shocked by what had come out of his mouth. It was as though every word anyone had said about Gemma and Tris was screaming in his head.

Colin was sure it was all untrue. Wasn’t it? In the next second, he had his cell phone out and was calling Tris.

“Is there anything between you and Gemma?” Colin blurted out as soon as Tris answered. Even to himself he sounded belligerent and ready to start a fight.

“What’s this about?” Tris asked.