Lindsay Longford - Baby, You're Mine

“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 her banana-coated hands together. Bits of pulp spurted onto the floor. “But I will not ever, ever, make you mad at me and I will stay out of your way while we are living with you and not be a bother at all and I will clear the table and pick up after myself. Okey doke?” She slapped her hands together for emphasis.

Banana shot onto his chin, dripped to his clean floor.

“Frances Bird. Get a paper towel.” Phoebe’s voice was stiff, but he heard the anxiety in it.

“See? I told you how it is. Now Mama’s mad at me.” Bird wrinkled her nose and sighed heavily.

He thought he heard Phoebe sigh too as he said, “Don’t bother, I’m fine. I’ll clean up later. After your mama and I have our conversation.”

“Right.” The quick look Phoebe threw her daughter carried a message he couldn’t quite decipher. Warning, sure. But something else there, too. The little girl settled back onto the stool, her brown eyes as big as paint-can lids. Phoebe shifted her feet, plucked at the drying fabric of her shorts where it stuck to her thighs. But she didn’t say anything more even as her daughter wiggled on the stool.

Wiping his chin thoughtfully with the tail of his shirt, he examined Phoebe, seeing now the disturbing details he’d missed earlier.

Like the purple circles under her eyes, the tiny lines at their corners. Like the strain in her posture. Familiar but different, this Phoebe. He didn’t quite know what to make of her, but he reckoned sooner or later she’d let him know what she wanted.

And sure as God made little green apples, Phoebe wanted something from him.

Her face was tense and her full bottom lip thinned with exasperation, but her eyes softened as she looked at her daughter. “Ah, Bird, sugar. I told you Murphy and I have to talk. We’ve landed on his doorstep without warning, I haven’t had a chance to explain and—”

“And we’re going to stay with him.” The stool went in one direction, Bird in another, as she clambered down. “You said Murphy won’t mind.”

Phoebe was going to have her hands full in a few years with that little dickens. Maybe he’d let the heart-to-heart with Phoebe wait a bit. Murphy let his shirttail fall. No rush to find out exactly what she had in mind. Yeah, she and her daughter were turning his evening upside down, but Bird tickled his funny bone, he was hungry, and he was mighty curious to see how Phoebe was going to try and soften him up. No reason he couldn’t let her play out her hand.

Taking his time, he smoothed his shirt down, and gave her a big grin.

Phoebe squinted at him.

“Taken to wearing glasses since I last saw you?”

She scowled, brown eyes darkening. “No, but I’m wondering why you’re smiling like the devil’s own son. You make me nervous when you smile like that, Murphy.”

“Do I, Phoebe? How...fascinatin’. Never known you to be the nervous type before.” He took a step toward her and noticed with interest that she didn’t move an inch, but her scowl sharpened as he tugged at the edge of her almost-dry shirt, let the back of his knuckle graze lightly against the heat of her belly.

She angled her chin at him, letting him know he was mighty close to some invisible line and daring him to step across it. “Stop this, Murphy. You’re irritating me. I told you not to.”

He let his knuckle slide once more against that velvet skin. “Did you now?”

“Back away, Murphy.” Brown eyes flared dark with temper and something else that made him lean into her, just that tiny bit closer, just to see what burned in those depths.

Phoebe had no idea how irritating he could be if he put his mind to it, and he was of a mind to irritate her, see what was behind her so-called spontaneous visit. Keeping his finger lightly wrapped in the brilliant cotton of her T-shirt, he asked, “So, you and Bird want to stay naturally air-conditioned or take a shower and change? Maybe stay for supper?”

“What are you up to, Murphy?”

He gave a tiny yank to the fabric. “Question is, sweetpea, what are you up to?”

This time he was positive he heard Phoebe sigh.

Chapter Two

The tickle of Murphy’s knuckles against her bare skin sent shivers down to Phoebe’s toes, and she inhaled with shock. She couldn’t help it, didn’t like it, didn’t want to reveal how much the mere touch of him affected her, but the brush of his hand on her skin was so unbearably welcome, so terrifyingly right, that she knew she’d made an enormous mistake in thinking she could live in Murphy’s house. Even for a week.