“There’s one loaf left.” Kevin skipped along, darting from sun to shade. Striped, now a tiger. Spotted, now a leopard. Changing with the changing light from dark urchin to golden boy with sunlit blue eyes and warm glowing tan.
“That’s funny,” he said thoughtfully, standing still for a moment, waiting for her. “The bread’s hard on the outside and soft in the middle and the rocks are the other way around. What other things are like that?”
“You think of some,” she challenged.
“These!” he cried, triumphant. “Do you want some, Mother?” He reached high overhead for a pair of wild cherries hanging red and tempting on a bush.
“I do not,” she retorted.
He’d tricked her into tasting them. Once. Then he’d laughed in delight as she pulled faces and spat them out. “Peaches are, too, and plums and avocados.”
“Good,” she said approvingly, feeling a rush of pride in him. Oh, what joy parents must feel when they see their children beginning to have independent thoughts. “Now tell me some that are the other way around.” An impish grin crossed his face and she caught him mock angrily. “And if you mention my bread again, I’ll throttle you.”
He laughed, running away, calling back over his shoulder, “Walnuts! Hazelnuts and the other kind of nuts and chocolate Easter eggs. Real eggs are kind of hard on the outside, too. I mean you have to whap them hard on the edge of the pan to break them. But if you drop them they break and smash up real good. I broke one and she was really mad.”
“Who was?”
His reply, “Auntie Lorraine,” came as no surprise. “She smacked me. Hard.” He covered his left ear as if remembering. “It hurt and made funny noises in my head. Then she hit me on the other side of my head.”
“Oh, but surely if it was an accident…” Gypsy protested.
“Nope,” he replied cheerfully. “It wasn’t. We threw it.”
“What in the world for?”
“To see if it would break. It did. Me and Mickey did it.”
“Then I don’t blame her for being really mad. I would have been too.” But I sure would not have boxed your ears.
“Oh, sure, but mothers are supposed to get mad. Mickey’s does, but then she cuddles him and tells him she loves him. Auntie Lorraine doesn’t do that. She just gets mad and hits me and then doesn’t tell me she loves me. I guess that’s cause she’s not a mom.”
Gypsy thought maybe it was because Auntie Lorraine didn’t love Kevin, though how anyone could not escaped her. The end of his speech brought them to the door so Gypsy was saved having to find a reply.
She hung the still slightly damp jeans on chair backs near the stove where its heat, once she had it going again to make coffee, would help them dry, then set to making lunch for herself and Kevin.
As she sawed into the bread… bread with an admittedly hard crust, she thought with a wry grin, and spread it with the salmon salad she had just mixed up, she wondered about Auntie Lorraine.
She, unlike the bread, unlike the walnuts and eggs, did not seem to have a soft inside. Nor, Gypsy decided, did Kevin’s father. Were they brother and sister? It seemed likely, and if so, what kind of childhood, parents, and upbringing had they had, depriving them of the ability to love, assuming that was the case? But surely, Lance at least, must have some capabilities of loving buried inside. He had been married, produced a child, and while it was true that love was not necessary for the simple biological act, it was supposed to be of benefit, wasn’t it?
She wondered what it would be like to make love with a man like him… His broad shoulders, long legs, taut muscles were, she had to admit, attractive,
She wondered what it would be like to make love with a man like him… She did like the breadth of his tanned shoulders, the pleasure and softness she’d seen on his face when he didn’t know she watched him with his sketches at night, as if he was reliving the joy he took in creating the images of the wildlife. His mouth had a tender curve despite its normally hard cast, and his full lower lip just barely missed being sensuous. She thought, if it was kissed, and moist, and happy, it would definitely qualify for the term sensuous. An unaccustomed shiver coursed through her along with the thought.
His footsteps in the cabin spun her guiltily to her chores while a hot flush rushed up her throat and face. He was looking at her. Gypsy dropped her head, swinging her hair down.
“Hi,” she said, and then wished desperately that she hadn’t sounded so breathless. It was impossible to meet his gaze. Heavens! She was acting like a fifteen-year-old with a crush on an older boy—one who couldn’t see her for his absorption with—other things. Right. Birds and squirrels and leaves and curving beaches where seagulls swooped, lacy ferns and strong tree-trunks. Those were what turned him on.
She hoped he’d never suspect she’d snooped through his stacks of drawings when he was out of the cabin. His works in pastels delighted her, showed her an entirely other facet of his personality—one he successfully kept hidden in everyday life.
“Hi, yourself,” he responded, surprising her. “Are… Are you making enough for me, too?” He sounded diffident. His gaze, which she was monitoring from behind her curtain of hair, made her flush deepen, her heart thump absurdly hard and fast. She licked her lips as he washed his hands at the sink, lathering soap up his strong, brown forearms, then rinsing each one under the stream from the pump.
“I will,” she said reaching for the loaf and the knife.
He walked up behind her, drying his hands as she fought to saw the dull knife through the hard bread crust. “Let me.” Gently, he took the knife from her hand, lifted the loaf from her grasp and, amazed at the difference in his tone of voice, she flicked another quick look at him.
He stood half turned from her, bent over the table, trying to cut through the crust of her bread. Laughing, she said, “Sorry about that. I’m not sure what I did wrong, but I sure did something.”
He glanced up and for a heart-beat, their gazes locked, then he looked away. “It beats hardtack.” All the warmth was gone. There were just the flat, uncaring tones of a man stating the obvious, no impression that he was even grateful to her for trying, no suggestion that he realized she felt badly about the way her effort had turned out.
Gypsy took her sandwich and a glass of the cold water from the pump outside to sit on the grass and enjoy the sun while it lasted. It, like Lance Saunders, was unpredictable in these latitudes. Oh, what was the matter with her, anyway? Why did she care whether or not he was nice to her? He was nothing. Nothing at all. Just a person whom she was fortunate enough to have run across in what, without him, would have been a life or death situation for her. So why should it matter that for one brief instant he had seemed not to resent her presence quite so much as before? It had obviously been only a weak moment on his part, and he had gone right back to his normal ways.
It was all too much for her. Sandwich finished, Gypsy lay back against the warm grass, stacked hands under her head and watched the black and red pattern of sun and shade flickering across her closed eyelids. She could see again those long, lean brown hands taking the loaf and knife from her, see the bent head, the quarter profile of the hard, unsmiling face, the ripple of muscle in a bare, bronze shoulder. Her breath caught in her throat and she forced the image out, concentrating instead, on Tony…
His future was important—their future together. It was true she’d often thought he wouldn’t have wanted her if she’d been a teacher or a doctor or secretary, if her looks hadn’t been able to give him much-needed publicity, but those had been only passing thoughts. Of course he loved her. As she loved him.
Then why was she lying here ruminating over a man with whom she had never laughed as she had with Tony, with whom she had never shared anything but a few meals and some stilted conversation? What was he to her? Nothing.
Tony! She must concentrate harder. Bring his laughing face back into focus. But would he be laughing now? Or would he be…
She tried to picture
Tony, grieving. The mental image for which she strived was not forthcoming. Suddenly, she knew the reason why. She had never seen Tony more than mildly unhappy. Oh, she had seen him disgusted or annoyed about the way a case was going in court, had seen him sulk when he golfed poorly. He had been furious when he lost his seat in the house, blaming “voter stupidity” but never had she seen him really touched by sadness.
He’d never shown any indication that he was even capable of feeling grief. His mother had died a year ago, but he’d more or less shrugged it off, saying, “It was her time,” thought she’d only been sixty-eight He’d shown little patience for his father, who’d suffered a serious emotional decline at that time, leaving it to Gypsy to try to comfort the seventy-year-old man who’d lost his life’s mate.
Funny I never noticed that before, she thought. I’ve been comparing Lance with Tony this past week and have arbitrarily dubbed him cold and hard while giving Tony credit for being warm and human. But is he? Is he warm inside or is it just a veneer like the moss on the rocks, a cushioning of civilization which, if stripped away, would leave a hard, cold stone with jagged edges?
And Lance… Have I been misjudging him? Is he hard and cold only on the surface, with a softer inner core, or is he what he seems at first glance, nothing more than stone whose outer coating of soft moss has already been stripped away by circumstances of which I know nothing? From two gentle words with the world warmth in them, from sensitive pastel renditions of shy forest creatures, can I possibly judge a man who has been nothing but rude and resentful toward me? And why do I even want to judge? Why should it matter? Why does it matter?
The answer was obvious. It should not matter. It does not matter. And yet it seemed to, even while it shouldn’t.
Her breath caught in her throat and she forced the memory of his soft, unexpected words away again, concentrating instead, on Tony. Unfortunately, a mental image of Lance Saunders persisted in overlaying the one of Tony, who wasn’t as tall—her height, actually, which was why he preferred her to wear flat shoes when they were out in public together. Her fiancé’s shoulders were much narrower. He wasn’t muscular at all. In fact, she’d overheard people—the opposition, naturally, and certain newsmen—refer to him as “effete” which was completely untrue and unfair. Tony was… well, Tony. Maybe he wasn’t a he-man, but he was a good, kind, honest man and she greatly respected him, agreed with many of his views. He’d chosen her and she’d accept his proposal, something she’d best try harder to remember.
Slowly, she propped herself on her elbows and twirled the big diamond solitaire on her finger. Idly, she pulled it off, twisting and turning it this way and that to catch the light.
“What are you doing? Trying to signal a passing plane to come and rescue you?” Lance asked, startling her. She hadn’t been aware of his presence behind her. He moved like a wraith when he wanted to. She tilted her head back to look at him, rolled to one side, painfully conscious she wore nothing but her bikini bottom and a shirt, tied at the waist, exposing an awful lot of skin.
“I haven’t seen too many of those,” she said. “It almost seems as if we’re a thousand miles away from civilization.”
“Yes. Well, you better put that rock back on before you lose it.”
Instead of taking his suggestion, she sat erect, lifted her hair and unfastened the silver chain that bore her diamond pendant. Tony had chosen her ring to match the pendant she had bought for herself when she turned nineteen and had taken control of her own finances. Her advisor had told her at that time, “Gems are always a good investment.” It was not the last such investment she’d made. The rest, though, remained safe in a bank vault. She wore the pendant because she loved it.
She slipped the ring onto the chain and closed the clasp, still holding both pieces on the palm of her hand. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go put these away for safekeeping. They aren’t really appropriate attire for a construction laborer.”
His mouth tilted up at one corner. Did his eyes actually show a hint of a smile? Inside her, something flipped. “Construction laborer?”
“Kevin and I are going to build a dam.” She risked a smile and arched her left eyebrow. “Want to come and help?”
He rested enigmatic eyes on her for a long moment then said, quite inexplicably, “Don’t go trying to play me with your gypsy magic. Save that for my son.”
As he strode away, sketch-box in hand, she recalled he’d used that same phrase the first day they’d met. His use of it had led her, early on, to assume he’d recognized her, especially when he’d clearly known exactly who Tony was. So why, then, had he had to ask her name?
She sighed. So little Lance Saunders said or did made sense to her.
Chapter Three
As Gypsy emerged from the cabin after hanging her jewelry on a nail near her bunk she saw Kevin approaching from the direction of the creek. She called out to him, asking where he’d been.
“Talking to Jake and John,” he replied.
“Jake and John?”
“The fish.”
“And what did they have to say?” She grinned. “Are they happy?”
“No.” Kevin shook his head negatively, sadly. “We still haven’t made the pool big enough for them.”
Surprising, the depth of tenacity in this small person. “Okay, love. Today’s the day. Let’s go build a dam. I told your dad that’s what we’d be doing, so we better make good on the promise.”
“You mean right now?” A happy smile sparkled in Kevin’s eyes, lightened his thin little face and a feeling of pleasure flooded her that she had agreed to help him gain his heart’s desire. A pool for a pair of small fish. Would that everyone could be so easily pleased she thought as she scrambled along the trail with him. When this little boy smiled at her like that, her own long-gone Kevin was back.
“Right now,” she said, swinging his hand as he skipped along beside her when they reached the widened trail by the creek. “Look out fish, here comes the construction crew.”
Kevin had been absolutely correct, she reflected some two hours later, as knee-deep in the cold, muddy water, she rolled one more heavy boulder into place. Those rocks are darn big. Far too much for a small child to handle on his own. Almost too much for her. But she persevered glad she hadn’t given up her daily exercise routine, until at length the water flowed smoothly over the topmost rocks of the dam, chuckling and gurgling as it spilled down into the creek bed below. The stream, behind the row of rocks, had widened, climbing higher up the banks, the way it must during spring freshets giving Kevin’s precious fish greater area in which to grow.
Gypsy gazed at her begrimed body, then at the rapidly clearing water with longing eyes. ““I should have brought some soap and shampoo,” she said. “What an idyllic place for a bath.”
“A bath!” Kevin squealed, leaping out as if she had said “sharks!” instead. “Who’s going to have a bath?”
“We are!” Gypsy laughed at his horrorstricken expression. “You need one too, my friend, just as much as I do. And your hair looks as though it hasn’t been washed in a month.” He tried to escape, but her long legs, striding, caught up to his scampering form in a flash and she grabbed him, scooped him up and tossed him over her shoulder as she strode purposefully back to the cabin.
She dumped him on the floor and he stared resentfully at her. “We can’t! The soap will kill the fish!” With his lower lip jutting, his eyes darkened with worry, he looked so adorable Gypsy just had to hug him.
“No, it won’t,” she said, when the hug and tickles made the pout disappear. “It’ll glide right out over the dam, and float far, far away into the ocean where it will get so mixed in the water that it won’t matter one little bit.”
She sang nonsense songs to him while she scrubbed his thick hair. He spluttered and complained when she dunked him to rinse the suds off, but stood gawking with rapt attention as he watched the thick pads of foam float and bob over the top of the dam and disappear, dwindling slowly as the
y spun oceanward.
“See?” Gypsy said. “There they go, and the fish are still doing fine. Now take this cloth and see if you can get some of that ground in dirt out of your knees.”
Great piles of leather built up around her as Gypsy shampooed her own long, thick hair and rinsed it clean, floating easily on her back in the water, enjoying being submerged. This certainly beat bathing at the kitchen sink. She took the cloth from Kevin and briskly rubbed his back, both of them singing lustily as they enjoyed the feel of the clear water around them.
“Now let me do yours!” Kevin took the cloth and scrubbed industriously at Gypsy’s shoulders and she laughed as he tickled her neck.
“Stop tickling! Stop!” But Kevin, pleased to be getting a rise out of her, would not and, still laughing, she spun and shoved him under the water. He came up spluttering and splashed her, and she scooped up handfuls of water, raining them down on his head and shoulders. He lay on his back, trying to float as she had, and immediate sank. She flipped him over onto his tummy and held one hand under him, telling him to kick his legs and dig at the water with his hands. She soon had him dogpaddling the width of the pool.
“I can swim!” he shouted, and paddled back, then kicked and splashed and laughed with glee.
The game grew wilder, the shouts of laughter ringing through the still of the forest and the splashes chased the forgotten fish into the shade along the banks, where they hid under an overhanging shrub, similar to the one beside which sat a sad eyed man who heard the fun and sighed deeply.
You were, Lance reminded himself, invited to participate. You could, his thoughts went on, have accepted. So, why didn’t you? Why don’t you?
The laughter and shrieks ceased abruptly. Surely they couldn’t be in trouble? The creek was too shallow for anything resembling a disaster, but…Construction labor? Dam-building? Rolling rocks? How deep a pool could one small child and one slender, fragile-appearing woman make? A sudden sense of panic filled him. He rose and followed the stream until he came upon a pool, one which had never been there before. He saw a dam built of rocks and tree branches, with gravel and mud filling small fissures in it, and a few, faint traces of lather slipping away over the top. But by the time he arrived, the two merry-makers had disappeared.
Gypsy Magic (The Little Matchmakers) Page 6