Page 19 of Three Little Wishes

“All I needed to hear was ‘I’ll convince Noah’ to know what my answer will be, and I’ll repeat, the answer is no. Absolutely not.”

Willow gasped and shot to her feet. “You can’t say no!”

“I just did.”

Willow closed the short distance between them and leaned into him. “Well, you can’t. I’m not one of your employees who you can simply boss around or ignore.”

Noah crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. “Does your paycheck come from Bennett Broadcasting Group?”

“Fine. Maybe I am, but this has nothing to do with that. It has to do with your sister.”

“Yes,mysister.” He raised his gaze to Riley. “The study, now,” he said before returning his gaze to Willow. “My housekeeper has no doubt prepared a meal for me. Feel free toeat it. The kitchen is that way.” He lifted a hand, pointing in the direction of the kitchen.

“Riley, stay right where you are,” Willow ordered without looking at her. Then she rose up on her toes and got way into the space of Riley’s now seriously ticked-off brother. “You will lecture her over my dead body.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Noah said, his voice low and flat.

“You have no idea, absolutely no idea, what she’s suffered. And do you know why that is, Noah? Because you don’t call her every day, you don’t even call her once a week or once a month!” And then Willow told him everything Riley had told her. Riley didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but she was leaning toward laughing at the dazed expression on her brother’s face as he watched Willow, who was kind of dramatic, and the way she talked about Billy was all kinds of funny.

But when Willow stopped talking and let out a shuddered sob, Noah’s face softened, and he lifted a hand to the back of Willow’s head and brought it gently to his chest, gathering her into his arms.

Then he looked at Riley with the same soft expression on his face and held out his arm. “Come here, Tink. You can stay at the beach house,” he said, and Riley started crying. Not because he’d made her wish come true but because he’d used her nickname. The one her mom had called her.

Chapter Seven

Cami woke up in the hospital bed for the second day in a row. The previous day was a blur. She’d slept through most of it but there were a couple of things that stood out. She lifted the sheet. She hadn’t been dreaming. She had boobs. Big boobs! She remembered thinking they didn’t feel like normal boobs. She’d touched them to make sure. She thought about touching them again, just to make sure they were still there and it wasn’t just that the sheet had bunched up.

She peeked over the sheet to make sure she was alone, groaning when she spotted the dark-haired woman sitting in the chair across from her hospital bed. She was on her… Cami searched her brain for what she’d called it. Then it came to her, an iPad. Whatever the heck an iPad was. All Cami knew was that it was in Gail’s hands. All. The. Time.

That was the woman’s name, and she’d been there since Cami had first woken up in the hospital. She’d told Cami she was her PA. Cami hadn’t known what a PA was, but she’d figured out later it must be a short form forpain in the ass. She felt sort of bad for thinking about Gail as a pain in the ass. She was mostly nice, and she seemed upset Cami didn’t have afreaking clue who she was, but she wouldn’t let Cami call her family. Who did that? A PA, that was who.

Cami’s mother and sisters would be worried sick about her. Angry too. At least her mother would be when she got a load of the cast on Cami’s right arm. Cami wouldn’t be waiting tables for a while. Her sisters would have her back, though. They always did. They were the best. She loved her sisters more than anything. She loved her mother too, but she could be a PA. Even more of a PA than Gail.

Cami’s mother was strict, way stricter with her than she’d been with her sisters. Her sisters said it was because Cami pushed their mother’s buttons and no one knew what she’d get up to next. According to them, she’d been precocious as a child and was wild as a teenager. Cami conceded that she’d been a little out of control in her early teens but that had changed when she started dating Flynn.

She glanced at her cast, imagining her mother’s reaction when she found out what had happened. Cami never should’ve taken a running leap off the dunes on a dare, especially in the dark. She wouldn’t have if she hadn’t been drinking with her friends. If her mother found out she’d been drinking, she’d probably ground her for the rest of her life.

It was Flynn’s fault. Not the drinking too much or the jumping off the dunes in the dark, but why she’d been in the mood to drink. He’d been her boyfriend for two years, and now she didn’t know what he was to her. Things hadn’t been the same between them since he’d gone away to college, and the other night, she’d made them worse. He’d been mad at her for flirting and drinking, but what had he expected? She’d missed him like crazy when he was away, and she’d thought she’d have him home for the whole summer.

But on their way to the party at the dunes, he’d told her he’d decided to take a summer class and was going back in two days. So of course she’d acted out and flirted. Who wouldn’t when her boyfriend decided he’d rather take a course at his fancy new school with his fancy new friends than spend the summer with her?

He’d be gone by now. He might not even know she’d been hurt. He’d left the party early. It was the guy she’d been flirting with who had taken care of her while they waited for the ambulance.

A dull ache spread behind her eyes as she tried to remember his name. He was hot, as hot as Flynn, but his good looks were more in your face. He knew it too. He was cocky and a little wild. She rubbed her fingers between her eyes as she searched her brain for his name. The dull ache morphed into a sharp, blinding pain, and she whimpered.

“Cami, are you all right?”

As the pain subsided, Cami opened her eyes to see Gail looking concerned and rising from the chair. “I’m okay. I just want to go home.”

“The doctor will be in shortly. If he okays your release, you can go home today,” Gail said, walking toward the bed. The door to Cami’s hospital room opened before Gail reached her, and she turned.

A woman walked in. She hesitated and then gave Cami and Gail a nervous smile while leaning back and motioning for someone they couldn’t see beyond the door. Cami didn’t recognize the woman but she looked a little like Cami herself, only a lot older. She wondered if they were related somehow, and the thought made her chest tighten. Was her mother so mad at her that she’d sent a relative Cami didn’t know to come get her?

Cami wouldn’t be surprised if she had. A few months earlier, her mother had disowned Cami’s oldest sister just because she’d gotten married. It had been awful, and Flynn being away at school had made it worse. The backs of Cami’s eyes began stinging. She hated that her mother and sister weren’t talking. She hated that her sister had moved away, just like Flynn. Nothing was the same anymore. She wanted Flynn back, and she wanted her family back the way it used to be.

As Cami was thinking this, struggling not to cry, a man walked up behind the woman. Cami’s mouth dropped open. What the heck were they giving her for pain medication? The man looked like the guy she’d been flirting with at the dunes, only he was way older, and his hair was dark, not fair.

The ache behind Cami’s eyes came back, and she rubbed her fingers up and down the bridge of her nose in an attempt to take the pain away.

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