"Okay, what'd you wish for?"

"Uh-uh," she whispered, tilting her face to his, "you're not supposed to tell. Otherwise it won't come true." Then he chuckled and touched her smile with his, and she knew it didn't matter because what she'd wished for was already hers.

"What did you wish for when you were a little girl?" Cory asked, sometime later. "Did those wishes come true, too?"

"Oh, I always wished for the same thing." Across the star-spangled waters of the lake, in the last of the twilight, she could see her mom and dad standing together on the dock, the two of them making one silhouette. Her chest quivered, and suddenly she could only whisper. "I guess it's okay to tell you, though. Because I think it's coming true…"

Holding her tightly, maybe because he felt her tremble, he bent his head and murmured gently in her ear, "Tell me."

Sammi June drew a quivering breath, and as tears slipped down her cheeks she smiled. "I wished my dad would come home."

KATHLEEN CREIGHTON

has roots deep in the California soil but has relocated to South Carolina. As a child, she enjoyed listening to old timers' tales, and her fascination with the past only deepened as she grew older. Today, she says she is interested in everything-art, music, gardening, zoology, anthropology and history-but people are at the top of her list. She also has a lifelong passion for writing, and now combines her two loves in romance novels.