Gypsy Magic (The Little Matchmakers) (24 page)

How long had he been out there? How he gotten there? The only time she had been out was when she had taken Gumdrop for a half-hour stroll. “Honey, how did you get here?”

“On the ferry boat. We fed the seagulls—we had to give them bread crusts ’cause there were no clams, and then we got off and the teacher was telling us about the big Port at Roberts Bank and I didn’t want to listen to her so I listened to some men with a truck. One said he was going to Vancouver and I got in the back and hid so I could go too. I knew you lived in Vancouver.”

Gypsy stared at him in disbelief. “But how did you get to my house?”

He looked abashed and hung his head. “When the truck stopped and the man got out I got out, too, and we must have been in Vancouver because there was lots of lots of people and none of them was you, and I started to cry. A man with long hair and a beard said, ‘What’s the matter, kid?’ And I told him I was trying to find my mother because she lived in Vancouver. He said that lots of people did and what was your address. I told him I didn’t know. Then he said, ‘What’s her name?’ And I told him and we got on his motorbike—he let me wear a helmet—and we went to a library—there were lots and lots of books! But he used a computer and the we went to a house and the man said you didn’t live there anymore, then we went to a tall building and somebody else said you’d moved, but told us you lived here. So he brought me here and you weren’t home. We waited a while, then he took me out for a hamburger and an ice cream cone and brought me back.” Kevin giggled. “He said ‘See you later, alligator,’ then he went away.”

“My God!” Gypsy gasped and dumped him unceremoniously onto the floor. “Lance! He’ll be frantic!”

She flew to the bedroom, to the telephone by her bed, hardly aware of Kevin’s squeal of delight as he found Gumdrop, stretching, wondering what all the commotion in the middle of night was about. “Kevin! Quick! Your phone number!” As he rhymed it off she was dialing. It rang hollowly again and again, unanswered. She hung up, running her hands through her hair. Then picked it up again and dialed the police.

Gypsy explained, feeling better now that the authorities, who had been searching for Kevin, knew he was safe and promised her they would notify Lance. He had, the officer told her, come to the mainland as soon as he knew his son was reported missing, and was with the search party combing the area around the ferry terminal.

She fed Kevin and tucked him into her bed with a hug, a kiss, and impishly pleased puppy who knew full well he was not allowed on her bed. She’d just shut the door when the bell pealed insistently. She ran, flung open the front door, heart in mouth, and he was standing there, gray faced, eyes red, and she held out her arms to him. “It’s all right, love. He’s here. He’s safe,” and Lance caught her, holding her close as she drew him into her home.

She opened the bedroom door, let him look in on Kevin and the puppy sleeping curled together, closed the door and drew him to the sofa. She poured him a drink and then sat on a hassock by his knees.

He lifted the glass in two hands, trembling, and took a long pull at his drink, then grimaced. “I need your phone. I have to tell the police he has been found,” he said quickly.

“But… They know. I told them. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

“I’m here because I needed you. I thought he must’ve drowned,” said Lance, half choking on the last word. “People kept sending me to different places and finally I came to this address. You opened the door and held out your arms and you called me ‘love’.” His hand stroked her hair. “Second-best, Gypsy?” His eyes searched hers and she met his squarely.

“I can live with being second-best, Lance, easier than I can live without you.”

He looked stunned. “You? Second-best? No, not you! You are number one, first and foremost. It’s me who second-best but if that’s all I can be, that’s what I will be, if it’s with you.”

It was her turn to look stunned and he took the opportunity to pull her up beside him. “I couldn’t see it that way the day we left the island and I saw the picture of Tony’s wedding in the paper and knew that was why you were willing to marry me, but these past few months have showed me how much I need you.”

 “But… Catherine?” Her mouth trembled. “You called me ‘Catherine’ the night you took those pills.”

He closed his eyes as if in pain. “And that’s what you cried all night?” Then he was holding her, rocking her, kissing her, and when at last he held her back an inch, he said, “I thought you could cried because you were ashamed, feeling guilty about Tony.”

“And I thought you were telling me that even though you found me sexually attractive, you were still in love with Catherine and all you said to me had been meant for her sort of by proxy. I look like her, don’t I?”

He shook his head. “She looks very much like you, but her eyes are paler, her hair is thinner and she’s not quite so well shaped as you are and she would never, never have been able to spend a month in a twenty by fifteen shack, dressed in my jeans and shirts. She’d have gone crazy in two days if she had been forced to spend them with Kevin.”

“Her own child?”

He shook his head again. “Like I told you, some women fall for a cherubic little baby but when he becomes a demanding child they want out. Friends of ours had a baby. She wouldn’t or couldn’t, so we adopted. By the time he was two she was gone. But forget her. Would you have agreed to marry me if you hadn’t seen that paper with a picture of Tony’s wedding?”

“What paper? What picture? The first I knew of it was when I got back here and Halliburton told me.”

He kissed her without replying.

Later she said, “But… since he was two, she’s been gone? Lorraine’s been there for three years. What happened to that missing year?”

“My mother was with me for much of the time…” He tensed, remembering. “She was with me until one night I drove by the head office of the firm I own and saw a light where no light should have been.

“I went in and found Ralph, my brother-in-law, whom I had hired… To keep peace in the family, loading a very important consignment into the truck of a seedy character who had no business with us at all. Ralph tried to lie his way out of my charges that he was stealing, but I knew better and made him confess… Over the phone to
his
mother, the other stockholder. She had inherited it from her husband who had been my father’s partner and then mine. She admitted he was wrong, but refused to hear of my firing him, and the way his contract read, we both had to sign his release.

“I was in a blind rage when I got back to the car and drove too fast. I rolled it and killed my mother. I could’ve killed my son, too. He was in the baby seat in the back and didn’t have so much as a scratch on him. There was no one else I trusted to look after him, so I took him to the office with me, let him play in a corner while I fought to keep the company from going bankrupt from Ralph and his clever little deals, designed only to line his own pockets. Kevin heard all the battling, yelling and fighting, saw his only living grandmother become hysterical over and over again until the least little noise set him off into a howling and screaming fit.

“One day I’d had enough and quit, but it was too late… For me as well as for Kevin. I had terrible headaches. They wiped me out completely until I didn’t know what I was doing. The doctor put me in the hospital and kept me doped up for six weeks. When I asked were Kevin was, the first morning after I was admitted, they told me Marcia, his grandmother, had him. I became violent and the doctor told them to make some other arrangements if they didn’t want me to have a complete nervous breakdown.”

“But I thought you said you had.”

“The doctor was being kind, I think, downplaying my condition. But Lorraine said that’s exactly what I had. Ralph hired her to look after Kevin. She’s his cousin—Catherine’s cousin, too, of course—but at that point I didn’t care who had Kevin so long as it wasn’t Marcia. I didn’t want him ruined the way she ruined both Catherine and Ralph. After I spent two months in the hospital, the doctor told me to get right away from everything and everyone. I spent four months in the cabin on the island, pulling myself back together—well, actually, letting Jim and Mary coddle me and keep me both fed and sane. When I came home, Kevin was the way he was when you first met us and the rest you know.”

“Not all of it. Why did you think Ralph had sent me?”

“Because they want me back to run the business and undo the damage Ralph, as managing director, has done. I’m not going to and he refuses to accept that. I make enough from my artwork and investments to live on quite comfortably, and what little my shares in the company are earning is just collecting up and gathering interest. One day they’ll give up and sell their shares to me and I’ll go back to continue what my parents started, a strong, viable import-export business. I’ll hire good staff and build something my son might want to inherit someday. But like I said, right now that ship is sinking and until it founders so badly Ralph and his mother beg off, my art is my lifeboat.”

“Which Lorraine is sharing. What happens to her now?”

A strange look crossed his face and he shook his head. “That was the oddest thing. A few days after Kevin and I came back from the island, she moved her belongings into my bedroom one day, and expected me to share it with her. She said it was time.”

“Time?”

“Time for me to make a decision. Either she was all the way in, or all the way out.”

“And?”

“She’s all the way out, of course. I don’t know what came over her. She’s never shown any indications she might be thinking along those lines.”

“But as you told me yourself, you’re attractive to women,” she teased. “Did you fail to give Lorraine that lecture when you first met her?”

“I really was an insufferable jerk that day, wasn’t I?”

“Yes, indeed. And for a number of days thereafter.”

“And there you were, trapped by circumstances you couldn’t control.

“I found compensations,” she said. “I found Kevin. And then, finally, I found you.”

“I’ll try to deserve you,” he promised. “But speaking of your finding Kevin, how did he find you?”

Gypsy smiled and at last got around to explaining how Kevin had gotten to her place and found that Lance had followed much the same route, but with a police officer, not a bearded, tattooed biker.

“Will you really marry me, make a home with me and Kevin? I hope we can give him sisters and brothers someday.”

“I’ll do all of that.”

Lance kissed her nose. “And everyone will say, ‘My, doesn’t that boy look like his mother?’” He chuckled. “For a while, my love, since we’d adopted him, I wondered if… and that was why I got so upset about him calling you mother.”

“Lance!”

“I know, darling. My Gypsy give up a child? Never!”

“Never,” she echoed. “And I never give up his father, either.”

The End

Dear Reader,

I hope you’ve enjoyed
Gypsy Magic
, the second book in
The Little Matchmakers
series. If you missed the first one, no matter. They don’t need to be read in sequential order.
A Father For Philip
is available on Kindle. In it, you’ll meet Little Matchmaker Philip Jefferson, his mother, Eleanor and his “imaginary” playmate (or so his mom believes) Jeff, who is really David, her long missing husband. Seven years have passed and she could have him declared legally dead, but can’t bring herself to do it. Then, Philip brings his friend “Jeff” in to help when Eleanor gets sick and the adults share a loving reunion. All would be well, except David cannot, or will not, tell Eleanor why he stayed away so long. She loves him still, but how can she accept him back with that secret between them, even to provide the father she knows he son needs and wants as much as she needs and wants her husband?

I write an infrequent blog about life, living, and writing and gripes, at
www.judyinthejungle.wordpress.com
and would love to have you visit me there, or at my website,
www.judyggill.com
. Many of my other romances, apart from this series are available at
http://www.openroadmedia.com/authors/judy-g-gill.aspx
  I think you’ll see a theme in my work, as most of my books involve children, sometimes, but not always as matchmakers, but nearly always as important characters. This is because to me, love, marriage, and family go hand in hand, and have formed a huge part of my life for more than just a couple of decades. My husband and I raised two wonderful daughters to adulthood then turned them loose to make their own families, which they’ve done with great success, providing us with three lovely grandchildren.

Please feel free to drop me a line at
[email protected]
. I promise to answer as many questions as I can, because I know that without readers, there would never be writers. If you’re a new writer, I’m always ready to help and offer advice if asked for it.

Hugs,

Judy

Judy

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine