Gypsy Magic (The Little Matchmakers) (9 page)

Kevin’s laughter died the instant he saw his father and he hung slightly behind Gypsy, head drooping, feet dragging.

Why? Gypsy thought. What is the matter between these two? If a child acted like this with me, I’d soon find out why. Is Lance so insensitive he simply doesn’t see that his son is terrified of him? It’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that he is, and what kind of father does that make Lance if he doesn’t care?

Upon seeing them, Lance turned and went into the cabin, leaving the door hanging open. As Kevin crept in behind Gypsy, Lance, without looking up from the stove where he was stirring something that smelled good, said, “Shut the door before the bugs come in.”

No word of greeting, no asking his son what kind of day he’d had, no smile, no… Anything. Nothing to show that he was pleased to see Kevin, or, for that matter, her. But nevertheless, he had looked concerned before he had noticed them approaching. So why? What? Gypsy deposited the glass ball in the center of the table and pumped water over Kevin’s hands, handing him a bar of soap and said, “Scrub, love, then we’ll show Daddy our treasures.”

Kevin shot her a startled glance from the corner of his eye, but said nothing. When she, too, had washed the sand off her hands and arms, Gypsy picked up the green glass ball and handed it to Lance, who took it reluctantly, his eyes questioning.

“See what Kevin found for me. Isn’t it lovely?” she asked, watching him closely as he took it from her hands and held it, turning it slowly as it caught the last faint rays of sun shining through the trees. Lance nodded once and set the ball on the windowsill above the sink.

Suppressing a sigh and gritting her teeth, Gypsy picked up the oval piece of driftwood that teredos had drilled into, giving it the appearance of a skull with eye, nose and mouth-holes, and gave it to Kevin.

To her surprise and mortification, Lance did not get a chance to refuse. Kevin, dismayingly, was the one. “No,” he said, taking the skull and throwing it out the door into the yard. “Daddy doesn’t like junk.”

Gypsy stood with her fist clenched by her sides, willing Lance to say something, to do something, to deny Kevin’s words, either by asking to have the piece of wood, or to go out himself and retrieve it. But he did neither, just shrugged and turned back to the stove.

“I… I’m sorry we’re late,” Gypsy said to his broad back. “I’d intended to be here in time to make something for supper”

“It doesn’t matter.” Lance’s cool reply chilled her. “I told you before was no need for you to do the cooking.”

A far cry from
Is there enough for me, too?
“I know that!” she snapped, exasperated beyond measure. “But I also told you I wanted to contribute. Where I come from, if an apology is offered, is normally accepted graciously or refused outright, not brushed off.”

Lance turned slowly and surveyed her, his eyes half mocking, increasing the rage burning in her breast… Futile rage. “Accepted,” he said laconically, and reached over her shoulder for a stack of plates. He set them on the table then ladled spaghetti onto them before he added meatballs in sauce. The latter, of course, from a can.

Clenching her teeth, Gypsy split some cold biscuits left over from the batch she had made for breakfast and put butter on them before she sat across from her host to eat their normal, mostly silent meal. Kevin picked at his food, then, when his father looked at him, he took three large mouthfuls and chewed industriously for a long time before he swallowed.

So. Food was a bone of contention between them, too.

Later, alone in the cabin with Kevin, while she tucked him into his sleeping bag, she said, “Why wouldn’t you give the skull to your dad?”

“He wouldn’t have liked it,” Kevin replied, cocking his head to one side, as if to say,
I already told you that, so why ask again?

“How do you know? she persisted. “You didn’t give him a chance to say anything.”

“I just know. He doesn’t like kid things.”

“My daddy always did,” Gypsy said. Kevin’s face expressed surprise.

She read the question in his eyes before he spoke. “You have a daddy?”

“Not anymore. He… he died when I was twelve. In a car crash.”
Along with a four-year-old boy who looked exactly like you do.

To distract herself from those thoughts, she asked, “What have you ever given him that he didn’t like? For that matter what have you ever given him?”

But though he seemed to think hard, Kevin was unable to come up with an answer. Gypsy stared severely at him, waiting. A plot was hatching in her nimble brain, and if she could, she was going to put her in forced imprisonment on this little island to good use.

At length Kevin muttered. “I guess I never gave him nothing.” Then, as if to justify his lapse, he added, “But I wanted to. I wanted to give him a special picture I made in school but Auntie Lorraine said he wouldn’t want it hanging in his room because it he didn’t like junk so I was going to put it in my room. But,” and he looked sad at the memory, “when I wanted to get some thumbtacks out of his desk he wouldn’t let me have them ’cause tacks are too sharp, and then my rocket ships got all bent and Auntie Lorraine put them in the garbage.”

Gently, Gypsy asked, “The picture you wanted to give him was of rocket ships?” When she received a solemn nod in reply, she went on, “Tell me about them.”

“Well… There was three of them. One was real big ’cause it was closest and I painted it green all by myself and the other two were littler and one was a bit crooked, but it was a good picture. Really it was and the teacher said I should give it to my daddy. I never brought my other ones home ’cause Auntie Lorraine always just looked at them then put them in the garbage, so I stopped, but Mrs. Ford said my daddy should see that one because he’s a artist.”

Something in what Kevin had said niggled at the back of Gypsy’s mind, bothering her, but she couldn’t put a finger on it. “Kevin, promise me something… The next time you draw a really good picture, and Mrs. Ford tells you to take it home to your dad, I want you to do it. Even if Auntie Lorraine thinks he may not like it, I bet he will.”
Do I really dare to interfere? What if Lance doesn’t like what Lorraine classes as junk? Am I just making future heartache for Kevin?

But something was working around in her mind. Some little voice was asking questions, asking why all the statements Kevin had made about the negative side of his life, did Auntie Lorraine figure so largely? Could it be that the animosity between father and son was not a natural state of affairs, a personality conflict, but something built and nurtured by someone else, someone who had some sort of an ax to grind? Someone who didn’t want them to be close, to become a unit? Lorraine? She seemed to be the logical choice, but why? She must be Lance’s sister, or the sister of his wife, whoever and wherever
she
might be, so what good reason could she have?

Damn!
she thought impatiently after kissing Kevin good night and going to sit at the table, it can’t be that. Yet so many things the child had said over the past week added up only if looked at from that angle. Oh well. She had gotten nowhere with Kevin. Perhaps the change would have to be effected in Lance’s attitude.

But did she dare?

~ * ~

“Lance?” He looked up from his book, barely concealed impatience on his face. “Would…” Gypsy swallowed convulsively. “Would you like a game of cards?”

“No.”

“Oh,” she said lamely, grimacing. “I thought you might.” Not willing to give up too easily, she pressed on. “Should I make some coffee?”

He nodded.

She had hoped for a break, but when she put his cup beside her own on the table along with a plate of cookies from a bag with a familiar label, he took his coffee mug and a couple of cookies and went back to his book.

Gypsy gritted her teeth. “That day when I arrived,” she said, and watched as he slowly lowered his book to the table, one finger holding his place, indicating that he had very firm intentions of going back to it as soon as she had finished chattering.

“That day,” she repeated, “you seemed to think I’d been sent by someone. Who would do that? Why?”

“Since you weren’t, it can hardly matter, can it?” Lance’s reasonable, patient reply choked Gypsy with fury.

“It matters to me!”

“Why?” God! Did a man ever have less expressive eyes?

There was, of course, no answer. It did not matter to her that he thought she’d been sent, and she truly did not care why! All she wanted was a conversational opening. Damn the man! “Just interested,” she offered. “It’s not every day I’m accused of being a Trojan Horse, and then not told why.”

Lance nodded sagely and slowly, looking infinitely sympathetic with her plight. He sipped from his mug. He took two bites of a cookie, another sip.
He’s going to pick up his book again! What am I going to do to make the man talk to me?
Gypsy’s frantic thoughts must’ve showed in her eyes. Lance’s small but frustrating, half-mocking little smile gave her the uncomfortable feeling that he knew exactly what she was up to.

“I fully believe you were not, are not, and never have been a Trojan… Horse,” he said levelly, his eyes flicking over her totally unhorse like figure as his voice hesitated over the word before he picked up his thick, hardcover novel and opened it once more.

So here she sat, elbows on table, hands cupping chin, swath of hair falling down to obscure her angry face from the eyes of the man should he ever decide to look her way. Not damn likely! she thought savagely, flicking over another page of the six-year-old Readers Digest magazine she’d found in a cupboard.

There he sits, contented… No,
complacent.
While his relationship with his small, lonely son deteriorates daily and he couldn’t care less. There is no way to get through him short of using a sledgehammer. Seething, Gypsy closed the magazine, slapped it sharply on the table, jumped to her feet, flung back her hair and mentally pushed up her sleeves as she marched to plop herself onto the chair so close to Lance Saunders her knees brushed his thigh.

“Tell me,” she demanded, leaning forward, “just why Kevin was so sure you wouldn’t want that chunk of driftwood he found?”

Again, the ultra-patient lowering of the book, the finger holding his place and the raising of bored eyes to her flushed face and snapping eyes. “How should I know?” He sounded weary beyond description.

“You are his father! You should know. If I had a child who was so patently afraid of me I would soon find out why. Are you totally insensitive, or do you just like it that way?”

“Is that really your concern?” he drawled, his dark eyes hooded, forbidding.

“No,” she was forced to admit, and tried to go on. “But…”

“Then why should you worry about it?” At least he was responding! There was some, not much, but some, animation in his voice.

“Because I care. I’ve come to care for Kevin… a great deal, and I don’t like to see him so… so… cowed when you’re around. He’s a totally different child when it’s just the two of us.”

Lance bitterly recalled the shrieks and shouts of laughter he had heard earlier in the day. “In a week… Just one short week,” he taunted her, knowing he was risking a lot by doing so. Those blue eyes of hers would flash. Those perfect, high cheekbones would flush. Her smooth shoulders would go back and her breasts rise with the motion and he would want to— No, damn it, he would not go there!

“In one short week,” he repeated, “you’ve come to ‘care’ for him? I find that hard to believe. Love is something that grows. It doesn’t spring forth in full blossom in the week. No, I don’t think you care for Kevin at all. You’re bored and lonely and he’s someone to talk to, to go for walks with, to play with, and when you’re back in your own world, perfumed and powdered and living in your satin-covered nest, you won’t want have anything to do with the grubby little boy. I’ve seen it happen before, you know, but most of the time your kind falls for a chubby, cherubic baby and the minute that adorable infant becomes a demanding child, you want out. I’m surprised you’ve lasted a week in his company and I’m even more surprised that he likes you. Most children can see through a phony.”

“Then perhaps I’m not one,” Gypsy snapped. “But you still haven’t answered my question. Why is he so afraid of you?”

“I haven’t answered that question, have I?” he agreed almost pleasantly. “And since I don’t really know, I can’t. This month on the island…
alone
,” he emphasized, “with my son was supposed to help me find out. So, as you see, I’m not quite as insensitive as you would like to believe. I do care that he cowers when I’m around and I would like to get to the bottom of it.”

“You’re going about it in a funny way,” she observed. “How do you expect to get to know him if you won’t spend any time with him?”

“I had every intention of spending time with him, but he made it quite clear that he didn’t enjoy my company even before you came. When I took him with me on sketching trips, he found it boring, couldn’t sit still, kept scaring the subjects away.” Lance sounded indignant, which was an improvement over disinterested, Gypsy judged. “Lorraine told me it wouldn’t work. I should have listened to her.”

Softly, so softly he found himself leaning forward to hear better, Gypsy asked in an innocent tone, “Oh, was she not in favor of this vacation for you and Kevin?” She sounded quietly sympathetic, but with which one of them, he could not be sure.

“No… She thought it would be better for me to come here alone and leave him home with her.”

“Then why did you bring him here?”

“A friend of mine suggested it,” he found himself telling her. “He’s a children’s doctor and… Oh, I don’t know why I listened to him. He was quite obviously wrong. It isn’t going to work.”

“How can you expect a four-year-old child to sit still for hours on in without moving?” she shot back, sensing him slipping away from her.

“He’s not four. He’s six.

“I… yes. Of course. I know that. Slip of the tongue. But even at the advanced age of six, his attention span is limited.”

“If he were interested in what I’m doing, there should be no trouble.”