Gypsy Magic (The Little Matchmakers) (5 page)

Gypsy felt something horrible rising up inside her along with a memory she had wanted to suppress, and forced yourself to speak. “The helicopter… helicopter… isn’t there,” she gulped, choking on nausea.

“Not there? You mean they were certain enough to just abandon you? Well my girl, you are being paid a pretty penny—of my money, I might add—for your troubles, so you’ll have to fend for yourself. When did he say he’d be back to witness my capitulation? How long does he intend to give you for the great seduction scene? I hope for your sake it’s not too long because you’re going to get pretty damn sick of living on roots and berries and seaweed. And if you think you’ll be able to con my son into sneaking food out for you, think again. If you didn’t know what you were getting into, that’s not my fault but your own for being greedy enough to do anything for money.” He picked up the mink cape from the foot of the bunk and flung across her lap. “Now get—”

Gypsy shut him up most effectively by screaming, “It’s never coming back!
The helicopter is never coming back!
It broke in half and sunk and it’s never coming back!” She sat shaking, eyes tightly closed, tears streaming and wailed, “It was coming in to take pictures when the photographer signaled me. I pulled the cape up and then it just broke in two and fell into the water and when I woke up your little boy was talking and pulling my toes and everyone will think I’m dead, too!”

She jumped up suddenly and made a grab for the basin which the man had set on the dirty floor.

When she was finished retching, nothing but dry heaves, Lance took it from her and set it outside, doubt beginning to take root in his mind. With a speculative look on his face he watched her as she lay back, exhausted, on the bunk, still weeping convulsively, one elbow bent across her eyes. Kevin, too, watched. But it was his father’s face to which his gaze clung, his eyes accusing.

“Why was there a photographer?” Lance asked at length, taking her wrist in his hand and pulling her arm down from her face.

Without opening her eyes or turning her head, Gypsy said thickly, “To take pictures of the mink coats and the cape. They’ll think they lost all the mink, too, and not just us.”

“Who will? Why mink?”

“The agency. They wanted the mink photographed over a bikini and because there aren’t many vacant beaches in August we came all the way up here and…” She broke off and rolled to a sitting position, looking at him beseechingly. “Oh please! I don’t know what to do! I have to get home! Tony, my fiancé, will be going frantic! He’s Anthony Pierce. He used to be in the Legislature.”

“Pierce?” he said. “You’re engaged to that—” Lance broke off. He’d almost said sleaze-bag, but his opinion of the politician had no bearing on this subject.

“You know his name, and mine. You must have seen our pictures in the papers. Why would he send his fiancée here to bother you? I don’t even know who you are.”

“I’m Lance Saunders.” The doubt in his mind grew stronger, but still… It was an awful lot of coincidence that an accidental arrival should be in the person of a woman who looked like this one did. “What’s your name?” The question was not one of social observance.

“But you know…” She gave her head a quick shake then winced in obvious pain. “Gypsy Gaynor. I’m sorry I’ve intruded,” she said with dignity that should have been laughable, considering her tear-streaked face, the bandage on her cheek and her black eye.

“Stage name, huh? Well, I must say you—or whoever gave you that name—chose well. You look the part of the quintessential gypsy.”

“My mother and father gave me that name the day I was born,” she said, still in that dignified manner that spoke of social graces ingrained since childhood. “I can see you value your privacy. Just tell me how to leave, and I will.” She got slowly to her feet and swayed dangerously. He pushed her back down.

As he saw her turn ashen he shoved hard and forced her face between her knees. “Keep your head down,” he ordered when she struggled, but the moment her muscles regained enough strength to push back against his hand, he let her up. “I heard the first chopper up at the other end of the island day before yesterday. Then another, yesterday. When did they drop you off?”

“Monday.”

He glanced at his watch. “This is Wednesday. Where did you spend Monday and Tuesday nights?”

“I… I don’t know. But was Monday when I came here.”

“Then,” he said briskly, “unless you brought a picnic basket along with your mink and bikini, I think you need some food.”

Gypsy swallowed hard, propping herself in the corner of the bunk, shivering. She pulled the cape up and tugged it around her knowing she looked anything but seductive. “No. I couldn’t eat.” The thought of food made her gag and the basin was outside.

Lance ignored her refusal and busied himself at the stove. The scent of wood smoke filled the cabin and shortly thereafter the aroma of coffee.

The mug, when he brought it, felt warm in her hands, soothing. Gypsy noticed again the child who hovered silently in the corner, watching her with big, poignantly familiar eyes. “Kevin.” She smiled. “You’re a hero. You saved my life.” Her smile drew him to her although he cast an uneasy glance at his father who was busy at the stove. When he saw his father look in his direction, he melted back into the shadows.

“Drink that coffee.” Lance Saunders stalked from the stove to where she sat, still holding the mug. The man must have great peripheral vision. “There’s sugar in it to combat shock, though I think brandy would be better.”

She shuddered. “I see,” he said, his tone still sardonic. “Count yourself lucky, then. I don’t have any.” He stood over her this time until she took two healthy swallows of the coffee, before striding back to the stove. The scent and sound of bacon sizzling in a pan told her she was hungry, after all. But bacon? She couldn’t eat bacon! Long years of habit dictated she carefully watch her diet.

She sipped more slowly, and for the first time she was able to take stock of him.

Shaggy hair, stubbled jaw, at least twenty-four hours’ worth, she estimated. His eyes, she recalled, when he was berating her, had glittered greenish gray, set in dark, hollowed sockets in a weary face. He was tall—several inches over her own five-ten, and seemed muscular. His jeans were almost, but not quite as dirty as those his son wore, and he had not buttoned his blue denim work shirt. His feet slapped around the cabin in black flip-flops, though she thought he’d been wearing hiking boots before.

As if sensing her scrutiny he turned slowly and returned her regard with an ironic expression before saying, “Well? Do I pass muster?”

Confused, Gypsy, who was seldom confused by a man, dropped her eyes and drained her coffee mug. That having made her feel a lot better, she accepted a refill and continued sipping until the mug was empty again. By that time Lance was back with a plate of bacon and eggs.

“Eat that, then we’ll talk,” he ordered and she knew it was an order, but because the aroma was so wonderful, Gypsy, who didn’t care to take orders from anyone outside the line of business, ate.

“Forgive me for not having nice fresh bread to toast for you,” he drawled sarcastically. “Had I known you were coming I’d have…”

“Baked a cake,” Gypsy supplied, remembering a song her grandmother used to sing. And, remarkably, Grandma had always, even if she hadn’t known Gypsy was coming, baked a cake. Or so it had seemed. Her mother disapproved, but Gypsy’s grandma always said a slice or two of cake wouldn’t make the child fat. Grandma always won.

The man shot her a poisonous glare. “Yeah. What the hell was that all about? When you arrived here with Kevin, I mean. You said you’d come to bake a cake.”

“I did?” What a ludicrous notion. She didn’t even know how to bake a cake, though she supposed, if pressed, she could follow the directions on a box of mix, but why she’d have said such a thing was beyond her. Actually, everything since she’d woken up to find Kevin pulling on her toes was beyond her.

She set her empty plate aside. “Look, I feel much better now, so if I could, I need to go.”

“I’ll take you,” offered a little voice and she looked down to see Kevin, who had crept close to her elbow. He took her hand and she stood, surprised at her own weakness and dizziness, and carefully picked up her plate from the bunk and started toward the table with it.

“Kevin! That’s not what the lady meant,” Lance said, looking embarrassed. The little hand went limp in hers as the child slunk… Yes, she thought, that’s the only word for it, he slunk back to his corner.

“That’s exactly what I meant!” she snapped at the man. “Kevin, will you please?” She extended her hand to the shadowy little figure and he crept out to stand beside her, his eyes downcast while Gypsy raised her gaze to that of her reluctant host, daring him to contradict her.

Lance shrugged and turned away. He snatched her plate as she passed and forced himself not to watch the bikini clad figure—except from the corner of his eye—as she sauntered out through the door into the dappled sunlight and around the corner with his son.

When she and Kevin returned, Lance was nowhere to be seen, though there was a sandwich and a cookie on a plate and a glass of orange juice beside it. Kevin hitched himself up onto a chair and ate his lunch. Gypsy sat down again on the bunk, not knowing what else to do. She wondered if Lance Saunders always left his son to his own devices, even at mealtimes. When he’d finished, Kevin came to her and looked at her.

“Can we build the dam, now, Mother?”

“Uh, no. Kevin, I don’t feel really great. Could I just rest here for a while?”

“Yes, Mother. Can I sit with you?”

She pulled the child up beside her, keeping his warm little body close, taking comfort in his presence while the realization flooded over her that she was truly, miraculously lucky to be alive. There was no good reason for her to have been spared. The accident could just as well have happened while she was in the helicopter. She could’ve died with the others, the pilot whom she had known for only a few brief hours, to whom she had spoken less than a dozen words, and the photographer, Ethan, with whom she had worked a few times. Saunders had said he’d heard helicopters two days running. Monday, when they’d come in for the photo shoot, but that copter had crashed. She remembered the blaze of the setting sun on the water, then the added flames when the plane had exploded. The next day—well, that would have been Search and Rescue. They had searched. There had been no one to rescue. Except her. And they hadn’t seen her. Why? She’d been lying on display up on that large shelf of rock, well above high-tide mark. They should have seen her.

But then… when she woke up with Kevin touching her, talking to her, she had been nowhere near a big rock. She’d been among trees. She didn’t recall having left the rock, but she must have and, searching from the air, no one would have seen her under the trees. Vague memories returned, stars in the night, warm sun in the day, concern she might be getting an unsightly sunburn that would ruin her skin, then stars again, a glimmer of moonlight and then… Then Kevin.

As far as those at home knew, she, along with the others, was dead. And that man, Saunders, had disappeared. He hadn’t even told her when he was going to take her off this island.

All at once, great, tearing sobs overwhelmed her. They made her chest ache and her head spin and along with that an uncontrollable trembling began.

“Please, Mother, don’t cry,” the little boy said. “I’ll look after you.” He covered her clumsily with the mink cape, but its slippery satin lining slid off her quaking frame. He pulled it around her again, then wrapped his arms around it and her. She clung to him as to a lifeline, feeling his frail shoulders shake as he, too, wept.

“Hush, hush,” he comforted. “Don’t cry, Mother. Don’t cry.” He repeated the words over and over again, his stick-thin little arms tightly around her while her tears trickled into his hair, ran down his face, commingled with his own. “Don’t cry,” he sobbed, then jerked back and jumped from the bunk when the sound of heavy footsteps thumped on the porch of the cabin.

“Well… What? Hey, what’s going on?” Hard hands clamped into Gypsy’s shoulders. She felt herself lifted, shaken and pulled to her feet.

“Don’t you hurt her!” Kevin’s shrill voice cried. He tried to thrust himself between her and the man who held her up. “Leave her alone!”

Lance glanced in amazement at his son. “I’m not hurting her.” He turned the woman away from Kevin. “What is it?” he asked, not shaking her again, but pulling her hands from her face. The mindless sobbing went on and on and when he dropped her hands, they fell to her sides. She made no attempt to cover her face again.

“Oh brother! Delayed shock?” He flipped Gypsy onto a vacant bunk, covered her first with the fur side of the cape, then with his heavy sleeping bag. He tucked it in all tightly around her and said, “Go ahead, howl it all out. I guess you need it.” He noticed the child again and spoke roughly. “Outside and play. The lady’s sick and needs to be alone. Now scram. I’ll call you when I want you to come back.”

And Kevin went outside, more alone than before, wondering why Daddy called his mother ‘the lady’. Didn’t he know? If not, he, Kevin wasn’t going to tell him. If he knew who she was, he might make her go away.

~ * ~

When Gypsy woke up a strange glow surrounded her, dim and golden, while a hissing noise filled the silence. The sound of pages being turned drew her attention and she sat up, swinging her feet to the floor. Her knees bumped into something and it took her a moment to realize she was surrounded by canvas. That accounted for the glow, and slowly she became aware that she had been taken out of her bikini and dressed in a long tailed shirt.

Pushing the canvas aside, she stepped away from the bunk. Lance Saunders sat half turned from her, one ankle crossed over his leg, a book perched on his bent knee, a gently hissing Coleman lantern hanging from a nail in a beam over his head. He looked weary… And sad.

Gypsy must’ve made some sound, for the man started, lifted his head and said, “Oh you’re awake. Come. Sit down. I saved some stew for you. It’s not good… Out of a can. But it’s filling.” As he made his staccato speech he was drawing her to the sturdy wooden table, pushing her into a chair, spooning warm stew from a pot on the back of the stove into a bowl and placing it before her. “Eat that,” he said, and in spite of herself, Gypsy giggled.