Free Gypsy Magic (The Little Matchmakers) by Judy Griffith Gill

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?