Her Gypsy Prince

Carlo could only chuff at that. If only she knew.

He moved away a few feet, the expectation in her eyes digging into him. “Go home, Elizabeth, before someone on your committee catches you here.”

“But…”

“It was nice meeting you, even for just a night.” He started to walk away.

“Carlo?”

The sound of her voice wrapping around his name halted him. He imagined her gentle, cupped hands holding his essence, sheltering him like a nest cradling a wounded eagle.

When he didn’t answer, she spoke again.

“Good night.”

She sounded so forlorn. It was all he could do to stop himself from turning back around and dragging her against his body to show her how bad he really could be.

Yet, instead of looking at her again, he resumed his pace, telling himself that his memories of a woman in a flowered sundress standing in the light of a carnival tent would be enough.

One sleepless night later, he admitted to himself that it wasn’t.

Chapter Three

When Elizabeth returned to her cottage, which was in the backyard of the Dupres’s mini-mansion, she couldn’t resist standing in front of her long, time-clouded, gilded mirror.

While running her hands along the sides of her dress, she tried to move her stomach like she’d seen the belly dancers do. Waves of taut flesh, sand dunes in the wind.

She practiced for fifteen minutes then, resigned to the fact that she came off more like someone who’d eaten a bad meal than an exotic sexpot, she went to bed.

Tucked in with fantasies of Carlo Fuentes.

Carlo. Fuentes. Carlo Fuentes. Elizabeth Fue—

Oh, nice regression into fifth grade, she thought, turning over and finally getting to sleep.

The next morning she was spared having to picket. The CMB had enough members to cover rotating shifts every third day, so she spent her time preparing decorations for her classroom. School had let out only recently, but she was already excited about her next batch of children. Maybe she could even visit the fair’s craft show to secure some colorful, interesting objects for her students’ room.

Wonderful idea. Yes. More fair research!

Then she recalled how Carlo had told her to go home, as if he’d gotten tired of her infatuation already.

So much for adoration at first sight.

However, later that day, destiny intervened in the guise of a phone call.

Spencer Cahill wanted to know if she would hang out at the Dairy Dream with a “bunch of us.” Though she met her friends regularly there, this time she managed to talk him and a few others into entering the line-dancing competition that would be held this evening instead. Might as well take advantage of the fair while it was here, she said to them on the phone, thoroughly justifying the inspired idea.

She hated to take advantage of their willingness, but she had to get back there. Had to revel in these new feelings.

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