Gypsy Magic (The Little Matchmakers) (7 page)

While Gypsy’s growing affection for Kevin did not include his father, she could not, would not, reject the love the little boy gave her so freely. She did, however, try to soften the blow she knew he would feel, along with she herself, when the month was up.

“Your eye is all better now, isn’t it?” he asked, seemingly apropos of nothing as he helped her fold the articles that had dried—her night shirt and his pajamas, as well as the two sheets she used on her bunk.

Gypsy smiled and nodded, smoothing the ebony hair from his broad brow. It felt sticky. “Nearly,” she replied.

His clear blue eyes, reflecting the light of the sky above and the waves below, adored her. “You’re the prettiest mother in the world,” he said shyly, then dropped his gaze.

“Kevin… Look at me, honey.” She tilted his chin up. “This is a nice game we play, but when we go home you’ll go with your daddy back to Auntie Lorraine and I have a job to go to, a man I’m going to marry.”
Am I? Am I really?
She shoved the question to the back of her mind for later consideration and continued. “We probably won’t see each other again. I don’t even know your address.”

He rattled it off quickly and said, “You can write it down when we get back to the cabin and then you can phone me and come and see us, too.”

“I… I don’t think your daddy would like that,” she said slowly, knowing full well he wouldn’t. “Don’t forget, I’m only here by accident and he’s not too happy about it. Another thing, I think you’d better stop calling me ‘mother’ even when we’re alone together, and then when we say goodbye you’ll just be saying it to Gypsy, a stranger who came to stay for a while.”

“But…” ne began to protest, his lip jutting out. Gypsy laid a finger over his mouth, smiling, and when his stubborn looked faded, she allowed him to speak.

“Maybe Daddy wouldn’t want you to come and visit me, but you could do it when he’s away and we won’t tell him. He goes away sometimes and when he does I could phone you and you could come.”

“Kevin! That wouldn’t be right!” she admonished him severely. “But let’s just enjoy the time we do have and then we’ll both have lots of happy memories. Okay?”

“Okay, Mother.”

“Sweetie, remember, I’m not your mother.”

He nodded, staring out over the water toward a distant shore, but his mouth took on the sullen expression normally reserved for his father.

Gypsy finished folding the dry laundry and laid it back into the large, tin basin she’d found for carrying it to this spot. She toted it back and set it on the porch. Kevin tagged along, still silent then said, “Why don’t you want me to call you Mother?”

“Because I’m not.”

“But Auntie and Granny call you my mother.”

This was the first mentioned she had heard of a granny, though she knew enough about “Auntie Lorraine” to know she didn’t like the woman. “Don’t be silly. How could they? They don’t even know me.” She sat on the bottom step of the stairs leading up to the porch.

Kevin sat beside her. “Yes they do. There was pictures of you in a book and they said you were my mother. That’s why when I found you sleeping I knew you. But we can’t talk about it because we don’t want Daddy to know that Auntie Lorraine takes me to see Granny. We go there when he’s away and one time I saw the pictures.”

Explanation over, Kevin’s agile mind swerved to a different topic. “Could we build the dam in the creek today, Mother? You said when you eye was better and it didn’t hurt you to bend down we could.”

Gypsy agreed absently and followed his course along his favorite trail through the forest. This aunt of Kevin’s… It didn’t sound as though integrity might be high on her list of virtues. No wonder Kevin was so willing to be sneaky and deceitful about Gypsy coming to visit. Not only did his aunt cheat, but it sounded as if Granny were the same. Secret visits, lying to a child? Gypsy did not like that.

Why in the world would they pick up a magazine and show Kevin a picture of an unknown, to them, model, and tell him she was his mother? It simply did not make sense.

They wandered along, Gypsy deep in thought until Kevin stopped and patted a large, moss covered rock, to liken it to a pillow. “We could take it home and use it on one of the bunks,” he suggested. The three of them were one pillow short, though Gypsy insisted she didn’t need one. Nevertheless, Kevin had given her his. She couldn’t hurt his feelings by refusing it.

True enough, the thick padding of greeny gold moss did indeed make the rock appear soft—but it was an illusion. “Look,” she said, peeling some of the moss from one side. “Inside it’s hard and jagged, rough edges all over. Not very comfortable.”

Kevin rapidly lost interest. “I’m hungry.”

“Then let’s go home for lunch. There’s just enough bread left for sandwiches. I’ll have to bake some more.” Her first attempt, though all the ingredients had been available, had been only passably successful. Baking bread in a woodstove’s oven proved tricky.

“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?