LITMIR.BIZ

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him a sweet smile as she scanned the room filled with cardboard boxes. Maybe she couldn’t afford pride, but by heaven, she didn’t have to let him know exactly how much the beggar maid she was. She trailed a finger along a dusty stack of boxes labeled CDs. “Love what you’ve done with your place. I guess the minimalist approach has a certain...charm to it, Murphy, but you’ve been here two years.”

      He was so close behind her that his boots bumped against her heels, and she could swear his breath fluttered the hair at her neck. “Kept track, did you?”

      “Same address on your Christmas cards the last couple of years.” Hiding her dismay, she wandered through a maze of boxes toward the kitchen that she’d seen earlier through the windows. “No furniture?”

      “Got a bed.” His teeth flashed in a lazy smile. “Maybe I can’t afford anything else.”

      That smile had drawn the girls of their youth to him effortlessly. Murphy’d never had to work at collecting a string of shiny-haired, long-legged girls to him. Like bees swarming to the scent of flower honey, they merely appeared on the porch, beside his car, everywhere.

      “No sofa. No TV. No chairs.” Bewildered, she shook her head.

      “Maybe I don’t need much more. I’m a simple man, simple tastes.” His smile widened until it lit up the gray depths of his eyes, sunlight flashing on bayou water, turning her knees to mush.

      With an effort, she herded her thoughts together and forcibly drove memories back into the past where they belonged.

      “Don’t be irritating,” she said. “Anyway, I can’t believe you’re too broke for furniture.” Bending her head back, she examined the high ceilings, the crown moldings, and the heart of pine floors. Why on earth had he allowed this beautiful house to stay in such disarray for so long? “Murphy,” she said as patiently as if she were talking to Frances Bird in a snit, “I know how much these old houses cost. And this one’s in terrific condition.”

      “Did the work myself.”

      “Of course you did. But you’re living like a man who’s ready to pack up and hit the highway at a second’s notice. You haven’t even unpacked, have you?” Not bothering to wait for his answer, she sashayed through the wide arched doors into the kitchen and stopped so suddenly that he bumped slam up against her backside. “Oh, Murphy, this is beautiful,” she whispered as she saw the light-oak pot rack suspended from the vaulted ceiling. Hanging above a work counter, the copper-bottomed pans blazed with light. “It’s like the one—”

      “In your folks’ home.” He stepped back, taking with him the comfort of his body against hers, leaving her desolate in a way she couldn’t explain. But the kitchen, and Murphy next to her—the rightness of that moment overwhelmed her.

      “Your home, too.” She wouldn’t cry. But the pots shone so brightly and familiarly, and she hadn’t felt at home anywhere for so long. “Always your home, Murphy.”

      “Your parents were good people.” He turned away from her and went to the industrial-sized refrigerator. “They gave me a...” he paused, his obvious discomfort painful to her.

      “They gave you a home, Murphy. They loved you.” She couldn’t keep talking about her parents, about the past. Tears would make it impossible for her to do what she had to. “Mama and Pops loved you. You know that.”

      “Here, kid.” He handed Frances Bird a black-skinned banana from the freezer.

      “Cold.” She poked it dubiously and frowned. “Why do you put your bananas in your freezer?”

      Murphy scratched his chin, ran a finger under the edge of his bandanna. “Because they were going bad?”

      “Okay.” Frances Bird smushed the pulp out and into her mouth with a finger. “I like this.” She beamed a wide, smeary smile. Dragging a stool up to the table in the middle of the room, she said, “And you can call me Bird.”

      “All right,” Murphy said slowly, his voice whiskey-warm and smooth.

      With Murphy’s attention on Bird, Phoebe brushed the tears away from her eyes. Her gaze lingered on the table where Bird sat contentedly mashing frozen banana between her fingers.

      Then, like an arrow piercing her, leaving her heart aching, Phoebe realized why the kitchen felt so familiar. “You have the old table from home. From the kitchen,” she murmured, her palm sliding across the smooth-grained walnut surface. She touched the vertical dent where she’d slammed down the turkey roaster in an argument with Murphy one Thanksgiving. If you could call it an argument when the other person stayed as calm and controlled as Murphy always did. She traced the dent again. “You kept it.”

      “Pretty,” Frances Bird crooned, running her hand from one end of the table to the other, banana pulp streaking behind her small hand. “Pretty, pretty.”

      Murphy’s palm lay on the table across from Phoebe’s, his fingertips stroking the wood as if he were unaware of his lingering touch against the grain.

      “I needed a table. Your folks gave this one to me when they bought the new one. The chairs weren’t salvageable.”

      “Oh.” She looked at the two painted ladder-back chairs lined up against the wall.

      “I’m surprised you recognized the table. I refinished it.”

      She swallowed. “I recognized it.” Oh, she couldn’t, wouldn’t, cry. Pain and yearning clamping around her heart, she swallowed again, looking blindly around the room that was like home.

      Murphy didn’t want to see the glitter in Phoebe’s eyes. She had no right to go all teary-eyed on him over this damned table. It couldn’t mean anything to her.

      She’d shaken the dust from home and town from her heels, diploma in hand, and, as far as he knew, never looked back. It had taken him hours to scrape off the crackled varnish and sand the table, to find the truth of the walnut. Every dusty, sweaty moment of sanding and stripping and scraping had been a pleasure. Compared to that, Phoebe’s tears didn’t mean diddly. That was a truth he needed to remember, too. He shrugged. “Just a piece of wood, that’s all,” he said, but his palm hesitated on the waxed surface.

      “No.” Her voice was low and husky with those tears. Mirroring his own motion, her hand moved slowly against the shining surface. “Not just a piece of wood. Memories.” Her eyelashes fluttered, lifted, and for a moment he saw the tear-sparkle of her eyes.

      “Piece of furniture. Needed repairing. That’s all.”

      She turned toward him, almost as if she wanted to say something else, and her cheek caught the last ray of light from outside. He couldn’t look away from the play of light against her skin.

      Her face was as smooth, as glossy as the table’s finish, as tempting to his touch. He’d learned the truth of that old wood, and he’d learned the truth of Phoebe. Like a butterfly, bright, fragile, she drifted here, there. Everywhere. As useless to expect that butterfly to last through the winter as to expect Phoebe Chapman McAllister to stay in Manatee Creek, to put down roots.

      He lifted his hand carefully, his fingertips tingling as if he’d run them down a bare wire. Odd thoughts, this notion of Phoebe settling down, putting down roots. Tucking his palms under his armpits, he glanced at her with a scowl.

      Her damp shirt clung to her like primer on drywall, every curve and bump outlined by the tangerine-colored, see-through cotton. He cleared his throat. He didn’t need to be thinking about Phoebe’s bumps and curves and how she looked like a juicy orange, all damp and glistening, waiting to be peeled. He tugged the bandanna from his head, wiped his hands and jammed the scarf into his pocket. “You and Frances Bird are wet. Y‘all want to get into some dry clothes?”

      “I’m Bird. I told you already. Not Frances Bird.” Sitting on the stool she’d hauled to the table, Phoebe’s daughter beamed up at him. “Unless you’re real, real mad at me. Then everybody calls me Frances Bird.” She patty-caked

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