When You Wish (Contemporary Romance) by Lori Handeland

animals ever got a hold of him. And the wildest animals of all did not live in the forest—as was proven by the man who climbed out of the car.
    “Gracie, what are you doing rolling in the mud with this very bad man?” Olaf bellowed.
    “Uh-oh,” Grace murmured.
    Dan glanced at her with a frown. “Uh-oh? Don’t say ‘Uh-oh.’”
    Grace sat up. She didn’t think lying on the ground was the best option at this point, although a moment ago rolling in the mud had been quite appealing. “What should I say?”
    “Say I’m not a very bad man. Say this was your idea” —he stood and waved a hand at the mud puddle they’d been wrestling in— “not mine.”
    Now she was annoyed. He made it sound like she’d pulled him down and taken his virtue by force. Grace stood, too, and put her hands on her hips, as she spread her bare feet wide and dug her toes into the wet earth. “I’d be happy to do that, except this wasn’t my idea.”
    “Well, it wasn’t mine either. It was an accident.”
    “Accident? Accident?” Olaf slammed the car door. Both Grace and Dan jumped. The huge man stalked toward them. “I know what means accident. There better not ha ve been an accident with my Gracie.”
    “What does he mean by ‘my Gracie’? He’s awfully mad for a business partner.”
    Grace went from annoyed to downright furious in the space of a single sentence out of Dr. Chadwick’s mouth. She admitted to having a temper, but Dan seemed to have an uncommon ability to rile her. “Just what are you insinuating, Doctor?”
    “I just want to know why I’m about to be torn limb from limb. Is he the irate father type, or the homicidal boyfriend?”
    “Boyfriend? Are you crazy? He’s over fifty.”
    “So? Some women like that. Just tell me and I’ll step aside.”
    She wanted to slug him so bad her hands balled into fists. But she’d never been the violent type—until she met Dan.
    What did Mama always say? Hate rides the winds of love. Perhaps anger was the other side of lust. Because while she wanted very much to slug Dr. Dan, the scent of his skin, the storm-blue of his eyes, and the memory of those clever lips also made her want to kiss him all over again.
    A huge hand came down on her shoulder. “Gracie, it is time to go. No more rolling in the mud with the bad man.”
    “I am not a bad man!”
    “That is a matter of opinion.” Olaf sniffed. “My Gracie goes off, and she does not come home. Em she is worried, and when Em is worried, my heart cries. So I go to look and I find Gracie’s car, and your car, bad man, with the distributor caps missing.”
    “Distributor caps!” Grace exclaimed.
    “Ah, ha!” Dan said, and pointed his finger in the air as if he’d just discovered a new drug.
    “Perry,” Dan and Grace said at the same time.
    “Perry?” Olaf glanced at Grace. She nodded.
    Olaf’s scowl was sinister. He’d never liked Perry either. In fact, Olaf didn’t like anyone who wasn’t a Jewel or a relative thereof.
    “So you see, Olaf,” Dan said, in a perfectly reasonable, doctor-like voice, which was spoiled by the sight of him barefoot and covered in mud. “I had no nefarious designs on your Gracie.”
    “I only know what I saw. And I think to myself when I find cars and no people—where would my Gracie be? And I wonder about the bad man.”
    Dan scowled and opened his mouth to protest. Olaf ignored him. Olaf was on a roll. “Then I come here and what do I find? The bad man behaving with inappropriateness to my Gracie. Again.”
    Olaf stepped forward, and when Grace would have intervened, he silenced her with a look. Olaf had been her teacher, her mentor, her best friend, and her advisor fo r a very long time. When her father died and bad things began to happen, she had run away, but she had found Olaf. His no-nonsense way of looking at life and saying whatever he thought had soothed her broken heart and calmed her raging soul.
    Olaf loved her like the child he never spoke of, and he was not