Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(31)

“I’m Irish, mainly,” she said, stepping forward, her chin lifted with great dignity. “The Potato Famine left me family’s education a little spotty, ye understand, and I was hoping – ”

“The Potato Famine happened nearly a century ago,” Charlotte said, replacing her glasses on the bridge of her patrician nose with a puzzled look directed at Romy.

“Aye, that it did,” she said, never skipping a beat, “but for me family tis like yesterday. So, tis hoping I am that yuir library has some easy reading books that can be borrowed.”

He stared down at her. “Your family?”

But she was already fingering the shelf of titles on the row nearest Charlotte’s desk.

“We can do that,” Charlotte assured quietly. Her fingertips clumped atop the desk blotter, she pushed upright her medium tall frame with its ample curvatures, reminding him that he had been too long without the feminine touch. “But you will need to fill out a library card, Romy.”

The girl looked over her shoulder from another shelf she was perusing. “Can we just put it on his card?” She nodded up at him.

Instantly Charlotte perceived the root of the problem. Her response was a gentle smile. “But, of course.”

Lugging the load of library books back to the pickup, he noticed Romy was unusually quiet. “So, is your mercurial mind busy matchmaking for Charlotte and me?” That boyish part of him that still believed in his mother’s fairy tales wanted to believe this wrath of a waif could indeed cast some magical spell over stark reality.

And the stark reality was Charlotte was freshly widowed. She had earned a college degree. She was a city girl now. With an eight-year-old daughter, Clara. And plenty of other dudes calling upon her.

“Let me look,” Romy said, climbing into the passenger’s side of his rusty green Ford. Almost half-heartedly it seemed to him, she opened her purse and withdrew the pack of cards. Restacking the books to form a table between them, she passed him the playing cards, saying, “Shuffle and cut into three piles.”

Thank God, the nearest pedestrians were not tall enough to peer into the parked pickup. Feeling like the village idiot, he hastily shuffled and cut the deck.

One by one, she turned over the piles, then began distributing the cards in a rainbow pattern. As if she actually believed in what she was doing.

While she studied the cards for what seemed an inordinately long time, car horns honked, kids shouted, and trolley car bells clanged. At last, she turned those green peepers up at him. “’To yuir own self remain true’”

“That’s it?”

She nodded emphatically.

“What the shit does that mean?”

She lifted bony shoulders. “Ye’re wanting a home, not a house. The proper wife for yuirself. Ye know, respectable like. And bairns. All that – tis yuirs for the choosing. But beware of what ye choose.”

Somehow, she had inveigled him into the art of her Gypsy con game. “I feel like a dupe,” he grumbled.

Her laughter was pure trouble. So was her suggestion, once they reached the gravelly road that turned off the two-lane highway into the seven-mile stretch of S&S ranchland. “Teach me to drive, Duke.”

He looked askance at her. “No.” If he wasn’t firm handed, this smidgen of society’s swindlers would take over S&S ranch life.

Her grin perched her freckles higher on her cheeks. “Think on it. The time I could save ye running yuir errands. Picking up egg mash at the feed store. Dropping off the salt licks in the pastures. Returning yuir library books.” This last with a smirk.

“And what mischief you could manufacture – like driving off with my pickup and never coming back.”

Her smile widened. “You’d want me back?”

“I want you like I want a bullet between my eyes.”

She ignored that. “What harm could come from teaching me to drive? Ye know, in case of emergency. Ye’d still be the Keeper of the Keys.”

“No. Absolutely, no.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he said patiently, as if explaining arithmetic to a child, “my answer is not only based on your incompetence at everything in general, but also on principle. Deep in the belly of my pickup resides a bond between it and me. Like the bond forged over time between man and horse. The synchronization of the clutch and the brake. The smooth shifting between the gears. The rev of the engine like a big cat purring. This is something you, a female, could never understand,” he finished and swung down from the pickup.

“Ye Devil’s dung. Do ye seriously think yuir precious Charlotte walks to work?”

He could feel her blistering gaze between his shoulder blades. But when he went to open the barbed wire gate, he heard the click of the ignition switch. He looked over his shoulder. She had slid behind the wheel.

He barely managed to leap into the cab’s passenger side as the pickup flashed past, before her hand was latching onto the stick’s knob. She shifted with a grinding that compressed every disk in his backbone.

“Shit!” he growled, reaching for the key.

The old Ford stalled out, and he sighed with relief. “I swear I’m going to whup your crazy ass when we get back to the ranch house!”

All too quickly, she pumped the pedal and clutch again, and the pickup lurched into new-found freedom. With her right hand, she fought off his attempt to turn off the engine. “Giddy up, little doggie,” she yipped.