The Judge and the Gypsy Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t you? How else do you find the truth?”
    “Ah, but what is truth? One person’s truth is another’s fantasy. I prefer answers from the heart, not the head.”
    “As a child you must have driven your father crazy. He probably never knew when you were telling the truth or when you were pretending.”
    “When I was a little girl, my father was a man of imagination, too, but even then there were times when he told me to be patient. That much I did learn. All things come to the one who waits.”
    Rasch smiled. He was finding it difficult to picture this beautiful, baffling woman as a child, and he knew that she’d been no more patient in childhood than she was now. If she wanted something, she’d get it. He was having a hard time deciding what she wanted from him. Maybe he ought to put pretense aside and simply ask.
    He did. “I know that you’re the woman from my balcony, the woman from the street, and I suspect that you planned this meeting as well. Didn’t you?”
    His gaze was direct, penetrating: It made her heart beat faster. “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”
    “What do you really want from me, Savannah,whose flashing black eyes telegraph such mysterious messages?”
    “I want to know you, that’s all.” She really wasn’t a woman of mystery, but she intended to make the judge believe in the fantasy.
    “Know me? I can’t think that you came to me on my balcony and again at a party because you wanted to get to know me. Why didn’t you just ring my doorbell?”
    “Would you have let me in?”
    Yes, he could have said, because I wanted, no, needed, to know that you were real—not some imagined spirit that I’d conjured up.
    What he said was “I suppose not.”
    “You’re being very honest, Crusader, and you deserve the truth from me. What do I want from you? Are you sure you want to know?”
    “I’m sure.”
    “Then the truth, Crusader”—she tilted her head and gave him a burning gaze—“comes with a price.”
    “And the price?”
    “That you take me with you.”
    “Take you with me?” He couldn’t conceal the shock in his voice. He couldn’t conceal the curious little quiver in his gut either. “Why would I want to do that?”
    “Because I’m here. Because I wish you to. Because you and I are … connected.”
    “What are you, some kind of witch?” Rasch drew back, a frown of disbelief on his face. “I warn you, Savannah, whoever you are, I don’t believe in superstition.”
    “Don’t worry, Judge Webber,” she said quietly. “I’m not a witch. You’re not a man who believes in spirits.You’re a man who believes in facts and reality. Well, I’m real. And that’s what makes you uncomfortable, isn’t it?”
    “Yes,” he agreed, “I think it does. I don’t like what I can’t explain. And for the moment I can’t explain you.”
    “That’s all right. I understand, truly I do. And I’ll try not to sound mysterious, or make you uneasy. I’ll admit that I seem to have some kind of telepathic connection with animals. They don’t talk to me. But we, I don’t know how to explain it, except to say we connect, just as you and I do.”
    “I can believe that.” Rasch drained the last of his coffee and forced himself to think of ordinary things as he swallowed the last bit of eggs. Savannah was right. Bacon and eggs were a luxury that he ought to indulge in more often. He’d forgotten how satisfying a real old-fashioned breakfast could be. He’d forgotten how nice it was to share breakfast with a woman. He knew that he was not only considering her request, but accepting it.
    He wasn’t quite sure how or why he was sitting there, calmly having breakfast with a woman who communicated with animals. In some secret part of his mind he’d known all along that this was no chance meeting, that she had some well-thought-out plan by which she arranged to meet him, and she’d captured his interest in a way he could neither justify nor explain.
    And that intrigued him. For now,