Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(27)

Romy made a noise in the back of her throat, and both looked up at her. “Just popped in to finish up the dishes. Hope I’m not disturbing ye two.”

“Two’s company, Romy,” Duke said. “Three’s – ”

“ – the Musketeers,” she dimpled. “Or the Three Blind Mice or the Three Wise Men.”

Discounting the muscle that briefly flickered in his clamped jaw, he appeared to ignore her, but Sally’s deeply sculpted lips fought back a grin. So, the young woman did possess a sense of humor.

He crowned his checker. “I’ve got you on the run now,” he told Sally.

“Err, Duke,” Romy said, “she has ye on the run.”

“What?” He transferred his scowl from her back to the board, of which he was clearly in control, then, questioningly to her again.

“Tis not the checker game I’m talking about.”

His eyes squinted, as if he had her in his gun sights. “Don’t start in with that gypsy fortune-telling shit, Romy.”

“You tell fortunes?” Sally asked, shifting in her chair to fully face Romy. The horsewoman’s expression changed from cool reservation to eager reception.

Scowling, he pushed back his chair and came to his feet.

“Aye, that I do,” she said ignoring his ominous expression. “Got me cards right here, atop the refrigerator.” She tiptoed to feel around atop it. “Or mayhap they be in me purse.”

“Sally is not interested.”

“Yes, I am,” the young woman countered

With devilish pleasure, Romy watched him take her hand and firmly draw her away from the table. “Then you can call and discuss it over the telephone, sweetheart,” he said, propelling Sally into the parlor, where he collected her jacket.

“I canna read cards over a telephone,” Romy called out, goading him.

“See,” Romy heard Sally say, “you heard her, Duke McClellan. The two of us need to be – ”

The front door shut on the rest of her protest. Out on the screened-in porch, was he holding Sally, kissing her strident voice into silence?

Romy’s mind darted back to that morning earlier in the week, when she had groggily stumbled in on an irate Duke, shaving in the bathroom – and espied the hairy armpit he had presented her with, as well as, the vaulting of his ribs above his towel and, below it, his long muscled thighs textured with dark hair.

She probably knew her horses as well as Sally, and men even better. She could read them like she could read the lines in her palm. But Duke . . . cynical, virile, a man of few words . . . well, that much was apparent to anyone. Yet she also sensed beneath that surface coursed a current that could sweep away the faint of heart.

She was drying the dishes, when he stalked back into the kitchen. He jammed his thumbs into his Levi’s pockets. “I think we have a language barrier problem here. Do you understand the difference between cook and cards? I agreed to take you on to cook, not to read cards.”

The contention in the kitchen was hot enough to melt a birthday candle. Not that her twenty-first birthday was of any import. Well, the SS had been interested in her birthday – or, more to the point, the fact it was shared by a twin, her brother. How was Luca celebrating tonight . . . if he was even alive?

Drying her hands on the damp dish towel slung over her shoulder, she held her ground. “She’ll try to ride ye, Duke. Ye may want to see what the cards have to say. She may not be for the likes of yuirself.”

“And you are?”

Head tilted, she considered this. “Well, as a matter of fact, aye, that may be. Not that I want to be a candidate, mind ye now.”

He stared down at her incredulously. That look hurt but not as much as his next words. “I may be a lot of dastardly things, but one thing I am not is desperate. At least, not that desperate.”

She bridled. “Well, I am desperate. Teach me to read those books ye read at night in yuir office – and how to fashion me letters better, and I’ll tend the kitchen garden for ye. Overgrown with weeds, it is.”

His slow smile told her he knew he had the upper hand. “Pitch in doing the weekly laundry, and you have yourself a deal, Sunshine. Not that you could learn very much in the two months or so you have left till Christmas rolls around.”

§ § §

Flashbacks, nightmares, yanked Romy from her sleep. Unbelievably in October, even though the Hill Country’s sparkling nights were cooler, her pillow, Duke’s pillow, was overly warm for her liking.

Aye, its pillowcase smelled of soap, sunlight, and the clothes line’s fresh air, yet it still retained the redolence of his particular scent. Male. Invigorating. Arousing. Evocative of feelings she might have encountered in the mist of time long past.

She flipped the pillow over to its cooler side and flipped her body onto her back. To no avail. She guessed it had to be close to three in the morning.

Sleepy she was not. Tired, yes. Exhausted by the long, physically demanding days, starting at sunup, something to which her unconventional life had been unaccustomed. Gypsies did not like to be bound by the set hours or rules of a master and for that reason preferred the roving life.

She shoved aside the confining covers and slid her feet into the huaraches. Among the donated apparel was a tatty nightdress, but she much preferred sleeping in Duke’s soft muslin shirt she had purloined from his closet.