Her Gypsy Prince

While they wrangled with each other, the picketers swarmed closer to the gates…

…until a crowd of carnies blocked the entrance, buttressing the sides of the Ferris wheel man.

Since the CMB consisted mainly of middle-aged couples, senior citizens and a few church-going under-twenties, they weren’t exactly in fighting shape. But they could sure tongue-lash with the best of them.

As the bitter comments roared around Elizabeth, she caught sight of her mother herding a frightened Abe and Abby together while trying to pull her committee back. In the meantime, the Ferris wheel man shook his head and blew out a deep breath, hands on his jeaned hips.

Then the unthinkable happened.

The committee had vowed not to step foot inside the carnival, but with the force of traded punches, Spencer and the carny stumbled over the line. Right next to the Ferris wheel man.

Everything happened so quickly, Elizabeth didn’t even have time to inhale.

After a particularly solid punch, Spencer held the weakened carny by the collar, then cocked back his fist for another go. That’s when the Ferris wheel man stepped in.

He gripped Spencer by the wrist, stopping the forward arc of his intended punch.

For a split second, no one moved. But then Spencer tugged at his hand, dropped the carny to the ground, and in a flurry of energy, jammed his fist upward, right into the Ferris wheel man’s cheek.

The powerful carny merely kept holding Spencer’s fist, looking only slightly put out by the assault. Even so, Elizabeth saw a slice of blood emerging on his darkened skin. A cut from Spencer’s high-school ring.

“Spencer!” she yelled, rushing over and yanking on his other arm to bring him back to the town side of the line.

He seemed chastised by her schoolteacher tone, by his ridiculous show of violence. When she pushed him farther into the quieted crowd of picketers, he didn’t resist. Her mother leveled a lethal stare at him, then led him away by the button-down sleeve toward the cars, with the twins following behind.

Elizabeth turned her back to all the carnies: the heavily made-up women in their exotic satin costumes, the barkers who manned their games with their white straw hats, the sweating men in grimy T-shirts.

“I can’t believe you all…us all,” she said to the CMB, voice quivering in pent-up shame. “Is this what we’ve come to?”

She whipped around, face to chest with the Ferris wheel man. Her heart caught in her throat as she tilted her gaze upward and he locked eyes with her once again.

Knees turning to liquid, she took a deep breath and gathered her courage, reached up and touched his wound with a sense of wonder. Today’s slight injury was positioned just below the longer scar.

I’m sorry, she thought. So sorry.

Once again, time slowed, floated around them, preserving the electric contact of her innocent caress.

Seconds, hours. The longing of an endless sigh.

Someone in back of her gasped, jarring her out of the moment. She’d gone too far, hadn’t she?

When Elizabeth blinked, the Ferris wheel man did, too. Then he jerked back, a delayed reaction to her unexpected gesture.

She was a townie, a picketing one. What was she doing making overtures to the so-called enemy?

As she searched for an answer, the shock faded from his expression, replaced by that carefree smile she’d first seen when he’d been balancing on the Ferris wheel.

The sexy acknowledgment that she had been staring at him, that she had been interested.

Still, he kept backing up, into the crowd of carnies, their postures wary.

“No need for lectures, Miss,” he said, voice light, as if he tolerated punches to the face every day of his life and had learned to enjoy it. He gave her an easy wink. “You just stay on your side, and we’ll stay on ours.”

He glanced pointedly at her sandaled feet, and without thinking, Elizabeth stepped back, knowing she wasn’t welcome on this patch of territory.

As soon as she got to the line, she felt a hand close over her arm, pulling her back into the committee. Returning her to where she belonged.

It was Cassie Twain. As they walked, they passed the fighting carny—Hudson. He stared at Cassie, his bloodied brow wrinkled. She ignored him and kept moving.

“Uppity, aren’t they?” she asked. “I hope this episode makes them reconsider and pack it up.”

A response stuck in Elizabeth’s throat as the CMB took up chanting again, their message louder than before. They’d been energized by the fight, hadn’t they?

One last time, Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder, finding that the Ferris wheel man was walking backward, watching her, too.

Then he was erased by a surge of his own people as they surrounded him.

The gate slammed shut, telling Elizabeth once and for all that she was locked out.

Chapter Two

That night, after the carnival shut down and the midway was left deserted, Carlo Fuentes stood to the rear of the benches surrounding a community bonfire. He was leaning against the manager’s RV office, taking part in the assembly, yet, at the same time, not really taking part in it. Waiting for the crowd to talk itself out, to come to some understanding of what was going on in Blossom County.

The rest of the carnies, some still in costume, some freshly showered for a night of revelry or relaxation, were taking turns chattering, sorting through the consequences of standing up for themselves against the Committee for Moral Behavior. Firelight danced over the red silk of the tents, the aluminum shells of their motor homes. That intoxicating “fair smell”—a mix of animals, deep-fry grease and hay—hung in the warm air.

Home, he thought. The only place I’ll ever love.

A tall, lanky man dressed in a black-and-white pinstriped suit was grandstanding at the moment, preaching to them by waving his arms and flapping his gums. Harmon Flannery, the carnival manager.

“Now, I know all about what happened at the gate today,” he said in a wheezy baritone. “And I’ve heard a few of you hotheads talking about going into town and raising a ruckus. That wouldn’t be good for business, friends. Not ’tat all.”

The group, especially the “hothead” contingent that boasted three of Carlo’s rousties, or manual laborers, groaned at Flannery. Then, quite naturally, they all turned to Carlo, waiting for him to speak up.

Resigned to the ritual, he kept his tongue, gathering his words, having known all the while that it would come to this. The crowd would wait for anything he had to say.

For some reason, these people considered him their leader. “Prince of us gypsies,” they’d joke, even though he’d never asked for the honor or the title. He was just another one of them—a nomad, a thirty-year-old professional carnival worker who had flown the coop from his indifferent, widowed father upon turning eighteen. A rousty who just wanted to make it from one town to the next without incident or injury.

Not that Blossom County was making it easy.

“You’re all watching me like I have the answers,” he said, grinning as Flannery muttered about the “thick heads around this place” and took a seat. “I don’t know much. Just about that godforsaken Swindle. Because a few of you have talked with these townies, we’ve heard about their past troubles with other carnies.”

Here, he acknowledged Cherry Cooper, aka, Lady Pandora, the circuit’s contracted fortune-teller. Even though she was leaving the troupe after their time in Blossom ended—she was engaged to marry the town’s mayor, by some odd twist of fate—she was still one of them. Decked out in her costume, an airy gypsy skirt, white peasant blouse and a scarf covering her curly brown hair, Cherry sat on the opposite side of the fire, thoughtful as can be.

And who could blame her? She was caught in the middle of this thing, and so was her fiancé. As mayor, Jason Strong was forced to walk a line between the vocal CMB and his ties to the carnival.

Hell, even now, Carlo—a real keep-to-yourself kind of guy, too—wasn’t sure exactly what had made everything go from bad to worse today. While finishing up a safety check on the Ferris wheel, he’d noted the raised voices. Then he’d found Hudson, a rousty, trading playground insults with the one-in-every-town football stud. And woven in between it all had been the woman…

The woman.

She’d caught his attention more than once outside the gates, but today had been different. There’d been something in the way they’d looked at each other, with her standing below the Ferris wheel, her beautiful face lifted toward him as a slight breeze caught the wavy golden hair tickling her back, as her white dress danced around her slender body. And when she’d crossed into the carnival itself, he’d been temporarily enraptured by the night-sparkle blue of her eyes. A gaze that contained strength, curiosity and vulnerability all at the same time.

Truthfully, Carlo wasn’t one to sample the local population. Aside from Cherry, who hadn’t meant to go and fall in love with Mayor Jason Strong, he and the rest of the carny community were too cautious, having been burned by town politics before. They’d learned the hard way to keep to themselves. When Carlo did seek out a woman’s wit and wiles, she was always a part of their group, a transient worker who wasn’t looking for permanency or promises.

But he could always fantasize about a waifish woman standing beyond the gates, couldn’t he? Wouldn’t do any harm.

Unthinkingly, he ran his fingertips along the cut on his cheek, right where she had touched him earlier. He could’ve cared less about that punk who had cuffed him with the sharpness of his ring. All Carlo could really remember was a sparking, sweet moment when the woman had stood in front of him, compassion in her eyes as she had searched his injury, her lips parted as she lifted her hand and…

The bonfire snapped, and Carlo came back to the moment. The carnies were getting restless, waiting for him to conjure up some pearl of wisdom. He’d been lost in thought for too long, his head scrambled by a townie who would be just a memory in two weeks when this show did its next “circus jump” to yet another destination.

“All I know,” he said, “is that we’d be wise to keep to ourselves, just as we always have. Move in, offer our wares, amuse the ladies with a wink or two, then move out. That’s the way it needs to go.”

Some of the carnies chuckled and nodded, but most of the young ones, who didn’t know any better, shuffled their feet and cleared their throats.

Hudson took off his hat before he spoke up. The skin around both of his eyes was black and blue from today’s scuffle. “Carlo, they took the fight to us this time. We’ve never had this kind of trouble before, but something’s telling me that maybe we need to give a little grief back to them.”

All Carlo had to do was stare at Hudson for a second too long. The smaller man nodded in understanding, then put his hat back on, silenced.

“Listen,” Carlo said, “there’s nothing in town that we don’t have here, so there’s no reason to cross over. We can slide out in a couple of weeks with our wallets bigger, our safety record intact and our reputation clean. True enough?”

A chorus of agreement was his answer and, after an awkward moment when nobody was brave enough to disagree again, the meeting ended. Harmon Flannery shook his head as he talked to himself on the way into his office. The rest of the group mingled, beginning to set up the beer, whiskey and lively music that would get them through another night.

As a makeshift band of a fiddle, acoustic guitars and an accordion tuned up, Carlo kept to his place, leaning against Flannery’s office. Hudson casually approached him, hands in his jeans pockets.

“I just thought I’d bring up a point, Carlo,” he said.

“It was a good one. But you know how things work outside.”

Everyone knew. Once upon a time, Carlo used to visit the towns. He’d been young and dumb, and one night, his loyalty to his carny community had resulted in a stint in jail for a crime he hadn’t committed. The story was near legend. It had bought him a lot of respect, a lot of gravity. Still, most times, Carlo did his best to charm his way out of having people recall it.

Hudson obviously had something else to say. Carlo waited until the young man was ready to talk. In the meantime, Cherry Cooper sidled up to them, placing a hand on Carlo’s forearm, then removing it.

No doubt she had just taken psychic measure of him. Soon he would hear some kind of prediction from her.

Finally, Hudson said, “I talked to Cherry about this already, just to see if she could give me some third-eye guidance, but…Well, you know I been through Blossom County before, Carlo, with that other carnival two years ago.”

“Yeah.”

“The thing of it is, some townies look more familiar than others. Like…” He furrowed his brow. “Heck. There was this picketer woman out there today. I still can’t place her, but…Ah, never mind. It ain’t important.”

Carlo considered his rousty, then decided to let it go. If Hudson wanted to talk more about it, he would. Carlo wouldn’t push. “Let me know if it becomes important.”

Hudson nodded. “Will do, boss. Will do.”

He left Carlo and Cherry as the band started to play. While the crowd lost themselves in the music, Cherry gestured for Carlo to follow her away from the bonfire, toward a quieter area.

“Walk me to the gates?” his friend asked.

Once there, both of them ended up leaning against the steel, gazing at the stars. In the color of night, Carlo imagined the CMB woman’s eyes. The shimmering stars became her smile.

“Reckless,” Cherry said.

He couldn’t hide his attraction to the town woman from Cherry, psychic or not. “It’s a passing thing.”

“Good. Because you know what I saw?”

“I’m sure you’re going to enlighten me.”

She smiled, ignoring him. “You need to be listening to your own advice, Mr. Don’t-Go-Into-Town.”

Carlo’s laugh had a ring of disbelief to it. “Me? In Blossom?”

“I saw you. And I sensed hard times following your visit.”

He shook his head. Visions from the past—a small-town jailhouse and a joke of a trial—assaulted him. “You know I’m not stupid enough to cross over. Never again.”

“Tell me that later in the week.”

His idiot of a heart gave a leap as he imagined golden hair and warm blue eyes.

Did this have something to do with the townie? He wasn’t going to follow some woman, even this one, anywhere outside. Not for anything.

“Don’t say I didn’t tell you so.” With that, Cherry opened the gate, then crossed over.

Carlo watched her leave, knowing she was going to visit her fiancé, Jason Strong.

Knowing that, for her, town wasn’t off-limits anymore.

The sun rose, arced its way over Blossom, then set once again, leaving a keenly frustrated Elizabeth in its wake.

All last night, all day she’d thought about him. The look. The touch.

The possibilities.

The thrill of reveling under just one more magic gaze from a man who was perilously out of her league.

She couldn’t help it. Even though Elizabeth had spent the past couple of weeks judging youth contests at the fair, she was out of excuses to be inside of the fairgrounds now. But tonight, she created a thousand more and went there again. Putting on her favorite flowered sundress, she drove to the festivities alone, hoping no one would recognize her car parked behind a massive oak in the dirt lot.

By the time she paid for a ticket and walked past the main gates, she’d convinced even herself that she was justified in being here.

I’m just going to check out the prize horses and goats, she told herself. I’ll use my observations to formulate a good lesson plan at the end of vacation when I’m back in the classroom. Horses go “neeeigh.” Goats go “eeeeeh.” Excellent first-grader stuff.

Yup, that’s all she was doing. Research. Her mother would even understand—as long as Elizabeth stayed inside the fair itself.

And didn’t go to the carnival.

Yet just before closing, she found herself in the shadows of it. She stood near the flaps of the belly dancing tent on the midway, watching scantily clad twins undulate their bellies in front of wide-eyed men.

Research, she told herself, peeking around every few seconds and hoping to catch one, yes, one more glimpse of the Ferris wheel man.

She was such a lost cause.

But all she saw were clots of teenagers eating cotton candy and heading for the Scrambler. Out-of-towners who’d traveled from the surrounding dry counties in order to enjoy the very wet Blossom County Fair’s beer garden.

This was ridiculous, sneaking around, playing out an impossible crush that barely existed. She shouldn’t be here.

Before she left, she couldn’t resist one more glance at the dancers. The sinuous music slid around her senses, and she wondered what it’d be like to move that way around a man, tempting him, inviting him to see underneath her sheer facade of schoolteacher primness.

Would the Ferris wheel man watch her as he had yesterday, with intense yearning? A hint of something more? Something Elizabeth had never experienced in her sheltered life.

When a deep, familiar voice spoke from the nearby darkness, Elizabeth almost jumped, her hand to her stuttering heart.

“Picket line’s due south of here,” he said.

The unscarred half of his face was lit by light from the tent, so Elizabeth could see he was grinning, probably amused that she was too shy to step foot into the show.

She realized she was beaming right back at him, so happy that he’d found her.

Did that mean he’d been looking?

What should she say to him? Her mind whirred with the need to invent something that wouldn’t make her sound like she’d come here just to see him.

“How’s the cut?” she blurted. “You know. The one on your face?”

You know, she mocked herself, wanting to smack her head. The one you got when Spencer clobbered you? The one next to that long scar that absolutely screams “scary but exciting”?

Graceful it was not, but the question lured him farther into the light. He stood before her, smelling of musk and something as exotic as the dancing inside that tent. Tall. Very, very tall. And…oh, really gorgeous in a rough way. His smile enchanted the tar out of her.

He lightly gestured to the cut Spencer had given him. It was barely there now. “I’m a quick healer. Did you come here just to check up on me?”

“I…”

“Because I thought your group wasn’t allowed to visit. I should think it would go against your philosophy of despising us.”

“You’d think.” Elizabeth nodded, trying to make her words as slow and careful as possible. Of course, she was running the chance that he would believe she was dim, but it was better than bursting out with her true feelings. “Or you could argue that if I don’t visit the carnival, I don’t really have an idea of what we’re protesting. Now I know what I’m up against.”

So, clearly she had a great reason for being here.

Boy, she was so bad at this strangers-in-the-night talk. She’d never been this electrified around a guy before. It was terrifying, making her think she had no say over herself, that she would start bouncing off solid objects any moment because she was so keyed up.

No wonder she’d never been with a man before. Curse of the virgin.

He still seemed highly entertained by her, his silver-blue eyes flashing with mirth.

Oh, somebody save her.

“Well,” she said, just to kill the silence between them. The carnival music seemed much too loud, provoking more anxiety. “Glad to see you’re recovering.”

He just laughed, glanced at the ground, then right back up at her from underneath his brows, acknowledging how much of a struggle she was having here.

“I don’t know your name,” he said softly.

Elizabeth willed herself to talk, but she couldn’t.

Holding out his hand, he rescued her. “Carlo Fuentes.”

She looked at it like he’d offered her a sizzling firecracker that would take her fingers right off. And, when she reached out to clasp his grip, that’s sure what it felt like.

She swallowed. “Elizabeth Dupres.”

They didn’t shake on it, merely allowed the contact to linger. His skin was calloused, foreign against the pampered softness of her own.

They held each other so long that the handshake ceased to mean anything. Or maybe it meant too much now.

Embarrassed by the intimacy of such a simple gesture, she removed her hand and crossed her arms over her chest. Such a dork.

“And what’s your boyfriend’s name?” he asked. “You know, the one who took the cheap shot at me yesterday?”

She couldn’t deny that. “Spencer Cahill. But he’s not…my boyfriend.”

“Ah.”

“He’s just got too many hormones rampaging around that superhero body of his. You were the most convenient way to spend them.”

Carlo took a step closer, and she gasped.

“Can’t blame him for wanting to protect you.”

A flurry of tambourines sounded from the belly dancing tent. The subdued lighting from inside filtered over Elizabeth’s face like a pure blush. Now that they weren’t in the middle of a skirmish, Carlo could take time to dwell on the details of her: the long brows, the thick golden lashes surrounding slightly tilted eyes, the full lower lip and a dainty cleft in her chin. She had worn her hair long, and it waved down her back, inviting him to run his hands over it.

But he didn’t dare. Even if his body was furnacing out of control, he wouldn’t touch an outsider. Getting closer wasn’t any different from stepping into town limits, and he knew what that would get him.

Still, he could tell that Elizabeth was one of those “good girls,” a bright-eyed debutante who toyed with the idea of a carny who earned his pay through sweat and “manly” work. What she didn’t realize yet was that he was only a guy who’d been glorified by cut-rate B movies and romantic fantasies spun from the minds of bored women. He encountered Elizabeths at every stop.

But he usually did a much better job of resisting them.

He’d been overseeing ride operations when he had seen her loitering near this tent. One more flirty encounter would do no harm, he’d told himself.

But that’s not what his body was telling him. Even the useless lump of coal in his chest was chiming in with warnings of heat and danger.

“You’ll be picketing again tomorrow?” he asked, needing to get to safer ground, to remove himself a little.

“I’m not out there every day.”

She frowned, but the expression was so fleeting Carlo barely caught it.

“Just out of curiosity, can I ask why you do it?”

“Why I’m picketing? Well…It’s complicated.”

“For us carnies, yeah. Your CMB does make things complicated.” He grinned again, letting her know he could care less about the group.

Another of her frowns twisted at his gut, making his stomach go slightly off balance.

A ride on a roller coaster, he thought.

“The CMB isn’t all bad,” she said, sounding so wistful that Carlo wanted to touch her, to absorb some of that purity he’d lost years ago.

She continued. “They’re genuinely concerned about the quality of life in Blossom. When crime started inching into our lives, they decided to take a stand.”

He didn’t comment on how she was using the word “they” over and over. It was more telling than any explanation.

“Do you really think carnies are at the root of all the town’s problems?” he asked. “Are we that awful?”

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, almost drawing his attention away from the slow gaze she ran down his body, from head to foot.

Whoa.

Warmth washed over him, a hunger so powerful that he almost fell to his knees in front of her.

Had she done that on purpose?

No. Based on her nonreaction, she hadn’t been aware of what he’d usually term a “get on over here, big boy” glance.