beating cancer, she gave us this necklace, but made us promise not to let you have it until you were mature enough to handle the powerful magic.”
“What magic?” Cammie Jo didn’t understand.
“Open the box,” Hildegard urged. “There’s a letter from your mother.”
Her fingers trembled as she flipped open the lid and stared down at the whalebone necklace resting there. Attached to the bone beads was a hideous totem carving.
“Uh, gee,” Cammie Jo said, overcome with an urge to wash her hands. “It’s…”
“Vulgar. We know. But the totem’s crudeness is beside the point.” Aunt Kiki placed a hand on her shoulder. “Read the letter.”
Cammie Jo unfolded the yellowed notepaper. Her mother’s delicate script jumped out at her.
My dearest darling daughter,
By the time you read my letter many years will have passed since I held you in my arms.
I am passing on to you the only thing of value I have to bestow. The treasured wish totem has magical properties beyond the reasoning mind, but the power is very real. I instructed your aunts not to give you the necklace until you were old enough to know your heart’s desire. Whatever you wish for will come true. But there are conditions. You only get one wish for a lifetime, you must keep the necklace on your person and you must not tell anyone about the secret.
The doctors told your father and I that we could never have children. I wished on the totem for a beautiful, healthy baby, and look what I got!
Think about your wish long and hard, then ask for it. Believe, my darling and the world is yours!
Love forever,
Your Mother.
Blinking back tears, Cammie Jo reread the letter three times. “Omigosh.” She turned the necklace over in her hand. “Omigosh.”
Her mother had worn this odd jewelry, had believed in its peculiar magic. Well, if the necklace worked for Mama, maybe it would work for her. Cammie Jo steeled herself, then slipped the ugly thing over her head.
The totem rested between her breasts and a strange warmness, as if it had been lying in the sun instead of stored in a lockbox for fifteen years, heated her skin through the material of her blouse.
“Should I make my wish now?”
“No!” her aunts exclaimed.
“You must wait,” Hildegard cautioned, “until you know for sure what you want most. Once the wish has been made there’s no going back.”
“Remember, you can’t tell anyone else about the totem or it will defuse the magic.” Aunt Coco shook a finger.
“And don’t forget,” Aunt Kiki admonished. “Be careful what you wish for, because you will get it.”
1
“FIRST TIME IN ALASKA?” Mack McCaulley asked to make conversation.
It was three twenty-seven on a gorgeous Tuesday afternoon in late June, and they had been in the air for fifteen minutes. His passenger had yet to utter a single word. He was beginning to wonder if she was mute.
The petite young woman wedged beside him in his Beaver floatplane, dubbed Edna Marie after his beloved grandmother, bobbed her head.
An overabundance of clothing—upturned coat collar, turtleneck sweater, wool knit toque—almost swallowed up her round little face. And what the clothing didn’t obscure of her features, the thick glasses did.
When he had picked her up at the Anchorage airport, she’d reminded him of a nearsighted marshmallow, so swaddled was she in goose down. She had dressed for a winter in Antarctica, not a balmy sixty-degree day in Bear Creek.
No telling what kind of figure she possessed beneath the many layers. Not that he was interested.
Actually, she seemed more Caleb’s type. Quiet, studious, introverted. Mack could tell with one glance she was much too timid to make a good Alaskan wife. At least for him. He considered fortitude the number one quality he required in a mate, and this woman was about as brave as bumbling deputy, Barney Fife, from the old Andy Griffith Show.
She had inched into the plane, clutching at whatever handhold she could find as if she believed the metal might collapse beneath her insignificant weight. And when he’d placed a hand on her shoulder to help steady her, she’d gasped out loud at the casual contact.
What? Had she thought he would ravish her on the spot? Maybe he should tell her he always toasted his marshmallows before eating them.
In the ensuing moments since takeoff she had been staring at the floorboard, her hands clenched in white-knuckled terror.
“Uh-huh,” she spoke so quietly, Mack had to tilt his head and lean in her direction to hear. She had taken so long to respond he’d almost forgotten the question.
Thank heavens not all the women who’d shown up in Bear Creek following their advertisement in Metropolitan magazine were this uncommunicative. Mack smiled at the thought of his last fare. A foxy redhead with a killer figure who’d pressed her cell phone number into his hand and whispered, “Call me.”
Now, she’d seemed very adventuresome. Mack exhaled audibly. Yep, he and his three friends were in for a hot, hot summer.
Er…better make that two friends. Quinn was already spoken for, having courted and caught Kay Freemont, the beautiful reporter Metropolitan magazine had sent to cover their story.
And this particular bachelor’s curiosity was not piqued by the geeky lass beside him. He would be more than happy to dump her at Jake’s B&B and head back to Anchorage for another bunch of bachelorettes. His next passengers were sorority sisters from the University of Las Vegas. Those women had to be livelier than this one.
And he craved liveliness in his mate. He wanted an exciting wife who would embrace Alaska with all her heart and soul. A best friend. A woman who loved long dark winters and relished active sunny summers.
To Mack, fearlessness was the ultimate aphrodisiac.
In his pocket, he kept a “wife” list—an itemization of his future spouse’s ideal qualities. The list reminded him not to get sidetracked by a pretty face or a sexy body that turned out to have a couch potato soul, as he had in the past. As the last surviving McCaulley male he was serious about getting married and having kids. And he was very specific about what he wanted.
“But my mother was born in Alaska,” Miss Marshmallow whispered after a silence so long he jumped when she spoke. “She was a bush pilot like you.”
He almost didn’t catch the last bit. “For real?”
The woman bobbed her head.
“Where’s your mother from?”
“Fairbanks.”
Well, that explained
