Read Online Summer of Two Wishes by Julia London - Free Book Online

still loved him, had never stopped loving him.
    Finn put his back to the crowd and wearily ran a hand over his hair. It was lighter now, a sandy brown with streaks of blond. He was leaner, and harder, too. The shadow of a beard covered his chin and jaw. Tiny lines fanned out from the corners of his copper-brown eyes that hadn’t been there before, and Macy realized he’d aged more than the three years he’d been held captive.
    Three years . Three years and nine months since he’d left Texas, to be exact. Macy had heard the tale of his capture, his captivity and his daring escape along with everyone else. Yet she wanted to hear more, to hear all of it, to know exactly what he’d endured in those three years and nine months. But remarkably, those questions seemed small when compared to the big question that sat like an elephant between them: Where did they go from here?
    Finn touched her hand. “You okay?”
    That was so like Finn to worry about her when he was the one who was being dragged through the wringer. She smiled. “I feel like I’ve won the lottery. How about you?”
    “I’m glad it’s almost over.” He glanced back at the people gathered in the room, then looked at her again. His gaze moved over her face and flicked to her chest. There was a distant sort of hunger in his eyes, and it stirred a familiar fever in her. “I want to thank you. You’ve been great the last couple of days,” he said. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”
    “Liar,” she said, smiling sheepishly. “I’ve barely strung a coherent sentence together. You are the one who’s been great.” He’d been charming when he needed to be and at ease throughout, squeezing her hand when he felt the small tremors in her and pulling her up when she wanted to sink. On those occasions when he was interviewed alone, she marveled at how strong and how relaxed he looked, whereas she’d found the attention excruciatingly painful.
    “I’m serious,” he said, and casually freed a strand of her hair from her collar. “It’s not so tough for me. All I had to do was say it was great to be home. They were putting the hard questions to you.”
    “Impossible questions,” she muttered, and averted her gaze a moment, her mind full of complicated thoughts. “It was hard to find the right words to respond with. It’s even harder finding the right words to say all I want to say to you.”
    Finn’s jaw flinched. “You seemed to find the right words.”
    “No, I mean…I didn’t tell you how sorry I am for everything, for what you’ve been through, for what you came home to. And how indescribably happy I am that this is real, that you are really here. Who would have dreamed this could happen?”
    “I did. I dreamed something like this could happen every day.”
    He said it in a way that suggested he thought she should have, too, and guilt stabbed Macy—she hadn’t dreamed hard enough or long enough. “I wish I could have dreamed it,” she said softly, “but I never could seem to stop having nightmares about how you must have suffered when you died.”
    Pain skimmed his features, but Finn’s expression quickly shuttered again. Macy suddenly realized that was what she had been seeing these last two days—he’d been hiding behind a mask.
    “I wanted to let you know that I am going to stay at Mom and Dad’s for a few days,” he said. “Brodie says there’s not much at the ranch to go back to. He says the house is empty and the cattle and horses are gone. Dogs, too.”
    His voice was cool, and Macy couldn’t blame him. It was just something else he’d thought he’d be coming home to. The horses had not only been his business, they’d been part of his family. He loved them; he had a gift for connecting with animals, especially horses.
    When Macy had first met Finn, he’d lived alone with the stray dogs he took in on the three hundred acres of the Two Wishes Ranch. He and a grizzled Mexican named José Banda trained cutting