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A long stretch of denim-covered thigh came so close into view her eyes crossed. She shut them against the splendid sight of muscles tightly wrapped in faded blue. Murphy was in great shape. Terrific shape. The quickly glimpsed shape of him burned against her closed eyelids. Her face burned. She’d swear even her kneecaps burned.
“Here.” Two clicks and he’d closed the suitcases, nudged them neatly against the wall with a dusty work boot. “Easy does it.”
“Right.” She stood and puffed strands of hair out of her eyes. Standing in one place, she jittered. She needed action, movement. She needed escape from the crazy turmoil of her feelings around him.
That was when Murphy’s eyes, dark with pity, met hers and the evening fell apart.
He’d taken her hands in his, and she’d wanted to give up the effort, lean against him and bawl.
Later, oh, much, much later, she would remind herself that she hadn’t thrown herself into his arms. She’d kept her chin up even when his glance dropped from her face to her hands. She could take pride in that, and if a woman sometimes had to take pride where she could, well, sister Suzie, that was life, as her mama used to say.
Pride kept her chattering, filling the silence. A wall of noise to keep the pity from his eyes. A wall to protect herself from the unexpected urge to cry.
No matter what, she wouldn’t cry. Not in front of Murphy. Never, never, in front of him. That was pride, too. Earlier in the day, she’d thought she couldn’t afford pride, but now she discovered she had nothing else. In Murphy’s kitchen with his guarded gaze following her, his gray eyes taking in way too much, she clung to pride.
He showered, returned to the kitchen and leaned against the wall, watching her, not saying a word. She chattered, she cooked, she bounced from counter to table and back again throughout a meal that seemed unending. And then, blessed relief, blessed escape, she bolted with Bird from that beautiful kitchen to the refuge of the bathroom and the comforting familiarity of bathing Bird.
Murphy listened to the sounds of Phoebe and her daughter giggling in his bathroom upstairs. Funny how this house, even as well insulated as it was, carried sound. He could almost turn the female hum into words if he listened attentively.
He didn’t. He let his mind drift over the impressions of the afternoon and evening, trying to figure out the puzzle that was Phoebe. She was the same. She was different.
He recalled asking her, joking, but serious, too, what she was up to. In response, she’d tossed her head and hadn’t answered him, but her pupils had expanded with panic for a second, or at least that was what it looked like to him, and then she’d smiled, brushed her hair back and turned away, his knuckle sliding against her skin.
But he’d felt the tension in her skin before she moved, that little ripple of muscles tightening, of the brain signaling alarm.
For a second he’d wondered about that tiny reaction. Been curious about that hitch in her breath and her deer-in-the-headlights expression. For just that second, he’d fought the urge to trace that smooth skin to the dip of her belly button. If he’d been a different kind of man, if he and Phoebe didn’t have the history between them that they did, he would have cornered her then and there, pried the truth out of her.
But he’d never been a man who rushed anything, especially not a woman.
So, instead, he’d let an easy smile crease his face, he’d crossed his arms, and leaned against the table. Phoebe had flittered and fluttered from one end of the kitchen to the other, murmuring nonstop nonsense that went in one ear and out the other as he pondered her feverish activity and tried to see beneath all the flash and distraction she threw his way. Yawning, Bird floated in her wake, a small, sputtering tugboat.
Knowing Phoebe would continue in perpetual maotion until she dropped in a heap, he’d finally peeled himself away from the table and moseyed over to her. He’d taken both her hands in his, stopping her agitated motions. The tension in her body radiated to him as her fingers trembled in his.
“Stop it, Phoebe. You haven’t made a lick of sense for the last five minutes. I know you want something. Whatever it is can wait. I’m plumb tuckered out, and I’ve been working since before sun-up. Here’s how we’re going to play. First, we’re all going to have a bite to eat. Maybe you want to give your daughter a bath and settle her down for the night. Then we’ll see what’s what.”
“Right.” She’d jerked her hands from his, spun away from him and stuffed her hands deep into her shorts pockets.
Too late. He’d seen the bitten-to-the-quick nails earlier. His gaze lingered on the hidden shape of her balled fists and he frowned. “Thought you quit chewing your fingernails when you were thirteen and started wearing Kiss Me Crazy Red nail polish?”
She’d flushed, stuttered into speech. “Bird and I’ll figure out something to cook while you clean up from work. We’ll eat. Bird will take a bath. That’s what you said? Did I get it right?”
“Yep.” He’d scratched his chin and tried to forget the ragged fingernails, their vulnerability striking at something inside him that he’d rather ignore. “See what you can find in the fridge. A sandwich. Anything will do. Like I said, I don’t need much.”
“Right,” she’d muttered, letting her annoyance show.
He’d have to be dumb as a box of rocks to miss her annoyance. Nobody’d ever accused him of that.
He was secretly relieved, because an annoyed Phoebe was a million times better than a desperate, panicked one. “Oh, excellent, Phoebe. You’ve become a woman of few words. No long arguments. The world must be coming to an end.” He lifted one eyebrow and sauntered out He’d known without looking back that she’d watched him until he was out of sight. She always had.
Back then, when he was a teenager, truth to tell, he’d liked knowing she watched him. Liked seeing that shy pink rip over her face when he caught her looking.
Knowing her eyes were on him, he’d felt his pulse thump with an extra beat and been annoyed with himself. Thinking about that unwanted pulse thump, he’d stayed under the drumming lash of the shower until the water ran cold.
They’d eaten scrambled eggs with green peppers and onions and bacon, Phoebe chewing and swallowing with exaggerated pleasure, her hands in dizzying motion.
And then, balancing plates along her arm, she’d cleared the table and disappeared to bathe Bird while he cleaned up the kitchen. Phoebe had managed to use three of his new pans for her eggs. One for bacon, one for eggs, and one to sauté peppers and onions.
He would have used one pan. But that was Phoebe, turning everything topsy-turvy in a flurry of energy. He had to admit her cooking was better than his. Reflecting on this familiar but unknown Phoebe, he scrubbed and polished his pans, hung them back up on the rack, all facing in the same direction, and waited for her to finish putting Bird to bed.
He’d made a pallet of blankets and pillows for them in one of the empty bedrooms after opening the windows and turning on the ceiling fans. The stale, warm air of the closed rooms had moved sluggishly with the circling blades. He hoped the room would cool down as the night wore on.
For himself, he’d been in no hurry to install air-conditioning. He liked the rich earthiness of Florida’s heat and humidity, but he wondered how Phoebe and Bird would manage with nothing more than the lazy pass of ceiling fans to cool them.
Outside the screened windows of the kitchen, he sensed the stirring of a breeze, heavy with heat, heard the tree frogs chirping in a mad chorus of another kind of heat. Outside in the darkness the air was pungent with the smell of summer and desire.
Inside, though, the air was honeyed with Phoebe.
He’d forgotten how pervasive the scents and sounds of a woman were. And Phoebe? Ah, Phoebe left a trail of sweet-smelling fragrance in his shower, down his halls, a hint of apples and oranges that had him breathing deeply in the solitude of his kitchen, and the sudden hunger gripping him owed nothing at all to the shining pots and pans around him.
The murmuring of their voices, the giggles, all the disruptive, intrusive sounds flowed over him, swamped him with sensations. Crowded him. Made him want to hightail it out of his own house. Nothing new there. Phoebe had always crowded him.
“Hell,” he muttered, looking out the curtainless windows to the dark surrounding his house, a darkness that pressed in on him like the presence of Phoebe and her Bird.
Near the hall, a scarf, light and sheer, moved with some vagrant drift of air against his polished kitchen floor. The shimmering shape, all gold and red, seemed alive. As he stooped and picked up the scarf, the slippery material slid over the back of his hand. Lifting it to his nose, he breathed in the fragrance of Phoebe. More than bottled perfume, it was the scent of her, the very essence of her it seemed. The fabric caught against his end-of-the-day stubble, and he spread the scarf across the stool. That flimsy red thing she’d stuffed under Bird’s clothes in the suitcase was enough to leave a man sleepless for a month. In an instant, before he could stop the thought, he’d pictured her in that tiny piece of fabric, her legs gleaming against the brilliant red, her hips curving under that blaze of shimmery material.
Feminine stuff, all these scents and sounds. Seductive, the silky, slippery textures of Phoebe’s life.
He felt those invisible threads pulling tight around his chest, making his breathing shallow.
He didn’t want those pictures of Phoebe in his head, in his dreams.
But something had driven her to his house.
He didn’t want her here.
Not in his house, and for damned sure not in his well-ordered life. That was the bottom line. His life was finally under control, everything the way he liked it, thank you, ma’am. Bills paid. Business clicking along. Shoot, he didn’t want to think about air-conditioning and whether or not he had acceptable food in his fridge. He didn’t want to think about Phoebe’s daughter’s big eyes staring at him with awe.
He raked his hands through his hair, flicking the ends out of his eyes. Passing the stool where he’d placed her scarf, he let his fingers trail once more down that soft material. He didn’t want all this. Silky scarves. Noise. Faintly perfumed air.
And Phoebe.
Lord knew he didn’t want Phoebe Chapman—No. McAllister. He didn’t want Phoebe by any name in his house, in his life.
But there was that little girl. Frances Bird.
He flattened his hand against the windowpane above the screen and the dark beyond it. Even to get rid of Phoebe, could he ignore that skinny kid with the big eyes that reminded him of Phoebe at that age? That kid who twinkled and dimpled and sparkled up at him like he was something special?
Him? Plain old Murphy Jones? He rubbed his palm flat against the glass. Yeah, that was something, the way that bitty girl had smiled at him. Could he really turn his back on her for no other reason than the fact that he and Phoebe were about as compatible as oil paint slopped over latex?
In the window, Phoebe’s ghostly reflection watched him, blurred with her movement as she vanished.
He let his hand drop to his side and turned to face his empty kitchen. At the front of the house, the screen door slapped shut, a soft, summer sound. He followed her out to the porch.
“Cooler out here,” she said, sinking onto the swing.
“Your daughter all right upstairs?” He turned off the porch light, plunging them into darkness for a moment until their eyes adjusted to the night. “If she’s miserable with the heat, let me know, okay?”
“Bird’s fine. She fell asleep the minute her head hit the pillow. She’s had a full day. She won’t move until morning.” She paused. Like pale birds, her hands beat against the darkness, disappeared behind her. “We’re not hothouse flowers, Murphy. We can stand the heat In or out of the kitchen,” she added wryly. “I’m sorry. I made a mess of your kitchen, didn’t I? You should have let me clean it up.”
“You were busy.”
In the dim light, he thought she seemed like a spirit that would vanish if he blinked. Or breathed.
Like pumping bellows, his lungs shuddered, whooshed.
Her bare foot rested on the swing seat, her chin on one bent knee. Barely moving the swing, she glided it to and fro with her other foot. In a cloud of curls her hair swooped forward, concealing her face, and with each slow movement of the swing, that apple scent carried to him. Her shampoo. She’d changed into clean shorts and a top the color of a house he’d painted last fall.
Ecru. Yeah, that was the color. No wonder she’d seemed ghostly, insubstantial in the windowpane. All that creamy white, like those pale night-blooming flowers with the scent that pervaded the summer nights and dreams of his youth. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d smelled those flowers, but thinking about them now, he thought he caught a hint of their languorous scent in the air.
He folded himself into the wicker chair opposite her and waited, letting the night sounds and scents fill the space between them. For the first time since he’d driven up his driveway and seen her, laughing and drenched, joking—the butterfly girl he remembered—she was quiet. Diminished.
He didn’t mind the silence. Silence was restful, easy. For long moments Phoebe nudged the swing in a hypnotic rhythm that came damned closed to lulling him asleep.
Would have, too, except that the flash of her leg in the night shadows would have kept a dying man awake.
And he was very much alive.
The firm curve of her calf flickering in the dim light with her movement entranced him. As did the push of her pale toes against the dark wood. Hypnotized, he couldn’t look away from the shiny gleam of the colorless polish on her toenails as she flexed her foot.
“We used to sit out on the porch on summer nights. Remember?” She slowed the swing, shifted.
Her shape shimmered in the moonlight, and he wanted to reach out, grasp it. Hold it still. He tucked his hands flat under his armpits. “Yeah. I remember.”
“Why did we stop?” Her voice was wistful and the hairs along his arms lifted, shivered.
“Like you said earlier, we grew up. We changed.”
“You wanted to park on the fingers in the bay and neck like crazy with all those girls who tied up the phone line every night.” The swing moved faster, stirring a swoosh of air around his ankles.
“Not all of them.” Remembering some of those nights, Murphy felt a smile edging his lips.
“Oh?” The swing banged against the wall with her hard push against the floor. “I didn’t realize you’d missed any.”
“Keeping tabs on me?” Irrationally, the idea intrigued him.
“Not me. But I heard talk,” she said virtuously. She curled both legs up onto the swing, let its motion carry her.
“No good comes of listening to gossip, you know.”
She blew a raspberry. “You’re the last person to try and play the saint, Murphy. That self-righteous air doesn’t work for you.”
“Ah, well.”
Bent, her legs created mysterious shadows that dried his mouth. He shifted uncomfortably. “And you left for college. Didn’t seem like anybody had time to drink lemonade and swing on the porch after that.”
“You left first.” She leaned forward, her hair catching the moonlight and trapping it. “You joined the army.”
“College would have been wasted on me.”
“Oh, Murphy, you could have gotten a football scholarship if you’d wanted. If you’d studied. Mama and Pops would have helped you in a second. You know they would have.”
“I wasn’t a student Don’t have the temperament for it. Sitting in class all day made me crazy. Anyway, it was time I left. Your folks were wonderful to me, but I needed to make my own way.”
“Nobody wanted you to go, Murphy. You had other choices.” Soft as a feather, her voice floated in the darkness to him. Across from him, her face was a shimmer of pale.
“Maybe.”
He’d had to leave. He’d seen one too many moonyeyed boys hunkered down on the porch floor next to Phoebe while she laughed and giggled with them. Next to those lighthearted boys, he’d felt like an old man, their easy assumption of privilege foreign to him.
They had the right to come courting at Phoebe Chapman’s door, and if the sight of them triggered a slow, treacherous burn, well, hey, tough for him. The Chapmans had given him everything good he had in life. He had no right to want more, to lie awake waiting for some hormonally overloaded Manatee Creek boy to bring Phoebe home from a date in his daddy’s expensive automobile.
There would be the roar of a car up the driveway, the idle rumble of the engine, and then the motor would be turned off.
Silence.
And long, quiet moments while he waited for the slam of the car door, the bang of the screen door, her quick steps running past his bedroom door.
Of course he’d had to leave.
Years later in the army he finally understood that the scorn existed only in his mind. Those golden boys of Phoebe’s youth had been only kids, some of them struggling like him. He was the one who’d kept his distance. Erecting a wall of toughness, he’d made sure no one got a chance to look down on him. That sense of being an outsider? It had all been inside him, not them.
He hadn’t liked learning that truth about himself. Not at all.
“Why haven’t you gotten married, Murphy? To one of those shiny-haired girls with the sexy voices? I kept waiting for Mama to send me a note that you’d finally done the deed.” Her restless motion sent the swing careening to the side. “But you haven’t.” Soft, soft like her silky scarf, her voice brushed the air, trailed along his skin.
“I’m not a marrying kind of man, Phoebe,” he said heavily, not liking the direction of the conversation.
“Not a college guy, not a marrying man. What are you then, Murphy?”
“A man who’s comfortable with his life. Who likes what he does.”
“You don’t want someone in your life waiting for you to come home? The aroma of a good dinner cooking? Someone to share your thoughts with? You don’t want any of that? You have everything you need?” There was distance in her voice, distance in the way she pulled back into the arms of the swing, and the poignancy in her tone. “But isn’t there anything else you want?”
“Besides my pickup and my house? Reckon I could use a good huntin’ dawg, sweetpea,” he drawled, “but I don’t hunt.” He wanted her clever brain turning in a different direction, away from him and his choices. “Been thinking I might get a dog, though. Dogs are easy.”
“Dogs need walking. They’re pack animals. They like company. They’re not easy.” Again that annoyance rippled in her words. “And they sniff you.”
He laughed. “A cat then. Shoot, sweetpea, I’ve known a cat or two that almost talked.” He meant it as a joke, but the thought had been nudging him ever since he’d bought the house. He’d been thinking for a while it would be nice to have some warm, living creature waiting to greet him at the door, but a creature that didn’t disrupt his life, didn’t expect anything of him. “Maybe I’ll get a cat, one of those big, old Maine coon cats. A guy kind of cat. Uncomplicated.”
