“Ready or not, here I comes!” Letter to Reader Title Page Dedication About the Author Letter to Reader Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Epilogue Copyright

“Ready or not, here I comes!”

Bird swooshed down the banister into Murphy’s waiting arms. She hugged him and gave his cheek a damp kiss.

As his eyes met Phoebe’s, Murphy felt a tightness in his chest. He’d seen her protectiveness with her child. But Phoebe trusted him with her daughter.

He didn’t know why that mattered—but it did.

Bird gazed up at him adoringly. “I don’t got a daddy, but you can be my Murphy.”

He grasped her hand, and a curious tickling in his throat made him cough. “I’d be honored to be your...Murphy.”

“Well, of course. Because everybody’s got to have somebody. Now you belong to me.” She closed her fist around his thumb. “Okay?”

“Okay,” he said. The feel of her small hand clinging to his turned his heart over. And nothing could describe the rush of emotions swirling through him as Phoebe’s daughter looked at him steadily with her trusting, innocent eyes....

Dear Reader.

Silhouette Romance blends classic themes and the challenges of romance in today’s world into a reassuring, fulfilling novel. And this month’s offering undeniably deliver on that promise!

In Baby, You’re Mine, part of BUNDLES OF JOY, RITA Award-winning author Lindsay Longford tells of a pregnant, penniless widow who finds sanctuary with a sought-after bachelor who’d never thought himself the marrying kind...until now. Duty and passion collide in Sally Carleen’s The Prince’s Heir, when the prince dispatched to claim his nephew falls for the heir’s beautiful, adoptive mother. When a single mom desperate to keep her daughter weds an ornery rancher intent on saving his spread, she discovers that McKenna’s Bartered Bride is what she wants to be...forever. Don’t miss this next delightful installment of Sandra Steffen’s BACHELOR GULCH series.

Donna Clayton delivers an emotional story about the bond of sisterhood...and how a career-driven woman learns a valuable lesson about love from the man who’s Her Dream Come True. Carla Cassidy’s MUSTANG, MONTANA, Intimate Moments series crosses into Romance with a classic boss/secretary story that starts with the proposition Wife for a Week, but ends...well, you’ll have to read it to find out! And in Pamela Ingrahm’s debut Romance novel, a millionaire CEO realizes that his temporary assistant—and her adorable toddler—have him yearning to leave his Bachelor Boss days behind.

Enjoy this month’s tides—and keep coming back to Romance, a series guaranteed to touch every woman’s heart.

Mary-Theresa Hussey

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325. Buffalo, NY 14269

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Baby, You’re Mine
Lindsay Longford

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my sisters-in-law Barbara Cross, Marty Cross,

Bonnie Kasowski and Lois Vangundy

LINDSAY LONGFORD,

like most writers, is a reader. She even reads toothpaste labels in desperation! A former high school English teacher with an M.A. in literature, she began writing romances because she wanted to create stories that touched readers’ emotions by transporting them to a world where good things happened to good people and happily-ever-after is possible with a little work.

Her first book, Jake’s Child, was nominated for Best New Series Author, Best Silhouette Romance, and received a Special Achievement Award for Best First Series Book from Romantic Times Magazine. It was also a finalist for the Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award for Best First Book. Her Silhouette Romance novel Annie and the Wise Men won the RITA for Best Traditional Romance of 1993.

Dear Reader,

Bundles. That’s what babies are. Each one is a wrapped-up surprise package, a bundle of hopes and tenors.

Our failures cease to exist in their love. They love us unconditionally, and we see ourselves through their eyes. We become that all-powerful. good person who knows everything, who can solve any crisis, who fills our child’s heart with joy. Their love makes us do anything, brave everything, to keep them safe. For those few moments in time we are perfect for at least one person in this world. Well, at least until they turn into those equally fascinating creatures known as teenagers!

For our children we reach out to the world and look at it differently. For me, my son became a small vessel I could fill with all the fairy tales and myths I’d loved. He gave me a chance to again read books that I’d grown too old for. And, night after night, I told him stories, always with a brown-eyed boy as the hero. Sometimes he would tap me on the shoulder as I drifted asleep and beg. “Don’t stop. Keep telling the story.” And, captive to his delight, I would continue.

Children teach us to view the people in our lives in a new way. My love for my husband deepened after I saw how our infant son reached in and with one powerful, baby grip grabbed and held on to my husband’s heart for the rest of his life, enriching it and giving it meaning, changing him.

Reminding us of life’s fragility, our babies teach us to fill each moment with love, to make every moment count. They are a gift, these babies, our bundles of incredible joy.

With affection and joy,

Chapter One

Fanning herself with the folded Manatee Creek News she’d found on the stoop, Phoebe huddled in the porch swing, suitcases piled beside the front door.

Sooner or later Murphy would come home. He had to.

Because she’d just bet her last dime that he would be here. No, not her actual last dime. After buying the plane tickets and paying the taxi from the airport, she had fifty dollars left. Heck, by some folks’ standards, she reckoned she should count herself a wealthy woman.

The swing creaked, rusty chain rubbing against wicker and metal, the sound loud in the hot afternoon silence.

Her daughter’s sticky body was plastered tight against Phoebe as the little girl kicked the swing back and forth with both sneakered feet. Her small, pointed face was peony-pink from the heat.

“Nice breeze.” Lightly tapping the end of Frances Bird’s button nose, Phoebe lifted a hank of sweat-damp hair away from her own neck. “Thanks, baby. Every little breath of air helps.”

In the heat and humidity, Phoebe’s fine, curly hair stuck to her cheek, frizzed. Her lipstick had worn off hours earlier, and the makeup she’d applied so carefully in the fresh morning air of Wisconsin had long ago melted off her face. If she could muster the energy, she supposed she ought to slather on a bright red lipstick, show Murphy a happy face. And she would, too, once she found an ounce of get-up-and-go. Giving credit where credit was due, though, she had gotten up and gone. But now she was here.

And here she’d stay.

Until she talked with Murphy.

The swing wobbled, tilted, as Frances Bird shifted. “I’m thirsty, Mama. I want a cool drink, and I need it now.”

“Patience, Bind.” She tugged her not-quite-a-baby to her. The warm, little-girl scent rose to Phoebe, and she rested her cheek against her daughter’s sweaty forehead and inhaled.

Terrifying, the weight of all this love.

With a wiggle, Frances Bird braced her heels against the wooden porch boards and shoved, sending the swing careening to one side. “Don’t have any patience left. I am parched,” she said, all reasonableness as she stuck her face close to Phoebe’s. “And I would very much like a soda pop. With ice.”

At the moment, Phoebe would have settled for ice. A bucket full. She’d dump ice down the neck of her T-shht, slick the coolness over her neck.

“Maybe there’s a water spigot on the side of the house.” Standing up, Phoebe took Bird’s hand. “That’s the best I can do right now, dumpling.”

“If it has to be, it has to be,” Frances Bird said on a long sigh, straight-as-a-stick brown hair flopping into her eyes.

Watching her daughter’s woebegone expression, Phoebe decided the McAllister women were into sighing altogether too much. Sighing could become a real unattractive habit if she didn’t watch herself. She allowed her voice to take on an edge of tartness. “Come on, Frances Bird. Don’t mope. It’ll be an adventure.”

“Won’t be.” Frances Bird stood and clumped down the stoop with Phoebe, sneakers smacking each step.

They found the spigot at the back of Murphy’s house. “What a mess.” Frowning, Phoebe yanked at the weeds and woody vines screening the lumpy hose lying on the sandy ground. She wrapped the hem of her T-shirt around the hot metal faucet and twisted. Sun-heated, the hose bucked and heaved in her hands, spewing brown water into her eyes and down her arms. “Whoa!”

“Yuck.” Frances Bird leaped backward and wrinkled her nose at the murky brown water splashing onto her legs. “Hot!”

“Water’s water, sugar-dumpling. Let it run. It’ll cool in a second. And when it does,” Phoebe smiled teasingly and waggled the hose at her, “you’re going to be all wet, my darling girl”

“No!” Frances Bird darted behind Phoebe. “You. Not me.” She wrestled for the hose, and Phoebe let the soft plastic uncoil into Frances Bird’s hands. Soaking them, water sprayed and splashed in spar ling drops that clung to Frances Bird’s hair like a rainbow halo.

“It’s as cool as it’s going to be.” Phoebe held the hose steady while her daughter drank. “Well, dumpling, good thing you’re not all dressed up. You have as much water outside you as in.”

Frances Bird shook her head. Water arched, then silvered down to the ground. Looking up, she smiled. “Yes. Water,” she said blissfully and jumped feet first into the mud, happy for the first time that day.

Phoebe let her play. There was no rush. They weren’t going anywhere.

Squashing down her anxiety, she chased Frances Bird. Bird chased her back until they were both breathless, their bare feet covered in pale mud. “Enough, enough,” Phoebe finally panted as she shook sopping strands of hair out of her eyes.

With one final spray of the hose for each of them, she turned off the spigot, leaving the hose neatly coiled underneath. When they returned to the front of the house and its empty driveway, anxiety twisted the knots in her stomach tighter.

Still no Murphy. What would they do if he didn’t come home until after midnight? What if he’d gone out of town? She should have called, she knew she should have. Oh, what a fool she’d been not to call.

But she hadn’t. Couldn’t.

Every woman had her limits. She’d hit hers.

Hiding her apprehension, she plopped down on the step beside Frances Bird, gasping, but finally, blessedly cool.

The sun was edging the tip of the thick, moss-draped branches of the live oaks at the front of Murphy’s house when she heard the rumble of an engine.

She didn’t have time to catch her breath. He was just there, climbing slowly out of his cobalt-blue pickup, ambling right up to the foot of the stairs, his big, dark shadow falling over her. Murphy never moved fast. Like glaciers, he took his own sweet time.

“Hey, Murphy,” she said and stayed seated. Lord knew her knees would buckle if she stood up. Water still dripped from the ends of her hair, down the back of her T-shirt. “Long time, and all that.” She couldn’t seem to get a good breath. She rested one palm lightly on Frances Bird’s head. With her other, she gestured to the stash of cans and sawhorses in the back of his truck. “Busy?”

Strings hung from the armholes of his sleeveless, washed-to-cobwebs shirt By the grace of God and a miracle of thread, one button clung to the placket of his shirt. Sweat-plastered to his ribs, the shirt hung open, revealing a narrow streak of hair bleached to sunshine gold. Glowing in the bright light, that tapered line drew her gaze unwillingly down the taut muscles of his chest to the waistband of paint-kaleidoscoped jeans, jeans so worn on the seat that it was a wonder his ever-loving Jockey shorts weren’t on display. Or maybe Murphy wore boxers these days. Maybe Murphy Jones had turned trendy and wore designer thongs. Like lottery balls popping into the air, wild, unpredictable, her thoughts slammed into each other.

He rested one plaster-dotted work shoe on the step below her and leaned forward. “Well, bless my soul. Look what the cat dragged in. And on a scorching June day. What brought you to this neck of the woods, Phoebe?” He nudged her bare knee with a long, callused finger, blinked, stepped back and crossed his arms.

“Hospitable as ever, I see.” Laying her arm across Bird’s shoulders, Phoebe smiled brightly up at him and wished desperately she’d found time for that red lipstick and that her feet weren’t caked with dried mud. Fetching dimples would be a plus, too. “No how-do-you-do? No how’s life been treating you in the last, oh, how many years has it been? Eight?”

He paused as if he were counting them up. “Yep. Eight sounds about right.” The tip of his work boot nudged her bare toe. “Come for a visit, did you?”

From beneath the red and blue bandanna he’d tied over the top of his head and knotted at the back, damp, dark brown hair curled down his neck. A shine of sweat darkened his hair and skin, slipped down his temples to his jaw.

His glance slid to her daughter. The tiny bead of sweat vanished into the rumpled collar of his shirt. “Hey, kid,” he said, nodding.

Frances Bird beamed at him, tilted her head and batted her eyelashes. Her rosebud mouth curled with happiness. “Hey, Mr. Man.”

Phoebe almost sighed again, and stopped herself before she became a wind machine. Frances Bird had been born flirting. The result of an absentee father? Phoebe’s own failure? Or simply southern genes asserting themselves in spite of an aggressively midwest upbringing? Phoebe tried not to overanalyze her daughter’s lightning-bug sparkle around males. Tapping her daughter’s shoulder, she said, “Frances Bird, meet my—what are you and I to each other, Murphy?” She lifted her chin, giving him a little attitude, but she couldn’t manage the smile this time. “Not brother and sister.”

“Not by a damn slight” Murphy held her gaze.

“Family, anyway,” she said through a tight throat. “Family. That counts for something, even after eight years. Right?”

He didn’t say a word.

“Hey,” four-year-old Frances Bird said, her flushed cheeks dimpling with delight. “Me and my mom are going to live with you.”

“Oh?” Murphy didn’t move an inch. The pleasantly interested question would have fooled anyone who hadn’t grown up with him.

But his poker-faced acknowledgment didn’t fool Phoebe for an instant. She heard the dismay behind his affable drawl, and her anxiety increased, threatened to blaze out of control.

Avoiding his coolly distant perusal, she slicked Frances Bird’s wet bangs off her face. “Well, sugar, that hasn’t been decided.” The worst he could do would be to send them packing. And if he did? She’d handle that, too. She had no choice. “We’re here for an afternoon’s visit. To catch up on old times. That’s all. Don’t panic, Murphy.”

Bird’s mouth puckered up with stubbornness. “You said—”

“I know what I said, Frances Bird.” This time Phoebe couldn’t stop the sigh that came rolling up from her toes.

“And what did you say, Phoebe?” A breeze lifted the corner of Murphy’s shirt, brushed it back from his chest, died away in the stillness. “About coming to live with me?”

Frances Bird patted Phoebe’s knees comfortingly. “Tell him, Mama, what you decided.”

When Phoebe didn’t speak, Frances Bird leaned forward confidingly and rested her elbows on her skinny knees as she looked up through her eyelashes at Murphy. “We are bums on the street. So we’re going to live with you now ’cause we got no place else to go. And Mama said, home by damn—”

“Don’t swear, Frances Bird.”

“—is where when you go, they got to take you in. And that’s that, she said.”

“Yeah?”

With her hair swinging about her face, Bird nodded vigorously. Water dotted the faded blue of Murphy’s jeans. “And, Mama,” she said earnestly, “you say the damn word all the time.”

Stifling the groan that battled with yet another sigh, Phoebe lifted Frances Bird onto her lap. “Shh, baby. The grownups have to talk now.”

“That’s for damn sure.” He reached up and tugged at his bandanna, shadowing his eyes.

At Murphy’s use of the forbidden word, Frances Bird poked Phoebe’s face and rolled her eyes.

He studied them for a moment, a long moment that had Phoebe’s bare toes curling and heat flooding through her again before he said softly, “Bums on the street, huh?”

“Not quite.” Phoebe shaded her own eyes as Frances Bird leaped into explanation.

“Oh, yes. But we didn’t sleep in boxes. We stayed at a motel one night. With tiny pink soaps. Soooo pretty. I kept one.” Frances Bird batted her eyelashes again, smiled, and kept talking like the River Jordan, rolling right on down to eternity.

Phoebe yearned to sink through boards of the porch into a quiet, cool oblivion where Murphy Jones’s too-observant gray eyes couldn’t note her every twitch and flinch. Although easygoing, Murphy had never been a fool. Not likely he’d become one since she’d last had a conversation with him. This homecoming, if that’s what it was, was not going well.

“We got fired. and we got debts, and—”

“Enough, Frances Bird.” The hint of steel in Phoebe’s voice finally silenced her chatty daughter. Lifting her chin, Phoebe held his gaze. “Well, Murphy, are you going to keep us standing outside for the rest of the night?”

He rubbed his chin with his knuckles thoughtfully. “Seems to me, Phoebe, you’re sittin’, not standin’.” His drawl curled into the deepening blue twilight of the heat.

“Murphy’s right, Mama.” Frances Bird tugged the hem of Phoebe’s shorts. “We’re sitting.”

She stood up. “Fine. Now I’m standing. Everybody happy?” Turning her back, she marched up the stairs to the swing, anger crackling down her spine with every mud-caked step. This was worse than she’d anticipated.

More humiliating.

She was tired, worried sick, and Murphy was only going to torment her, tease her, and drive her crazy the way he had when they were young. She’d never understood her reaction to him, or his to her, but she was in no mood today to sit or stand for it. Sherman had marched on Atlanta and burned it to the ground and maybe she was burning her bridges with a vengeance, but at the moment she couldn’t care less if she left nothing but ashes in her wake.

And knowing his cool gray eyes were watching her every movement perversely fueled her temper.

She grabbed one of the battered suitcases and swung to face her daughter. “Bird, we’re on our way. Say nice to have met you to Murphy.” Wishing she’d pasted on that red lipstick after all, she stomped off the porch.

“Mama!” The frantic tug at Phoebe’s shorts didn’t stop her march down the steps. But Bird’s anxious whisper, a whisper that was loud enough to hear from five feet away, halted Phoebe with one foot dangling in mid-air. “We got no place to go. You said.”

“Come on into the house.” Murphy’s sigh echoed her earlier ones. Like chickenpox, sighing was apparently contagious. “Looks like that talk you mentioned can’t wait.” Metal jangled on the ring at his belt loop as he unclipped a key. The look he cast Frances Bird was shrewd. “Anyway, the kid must be hungry.”

“Very hungry.” With a lightning-fast mood change, Frances Bird smiled winsomely at him. “You got Jell-O? I like Jell-O. Red. With peaches.”

“No red Jell-O.” Murphy unlocked the door and flung it open. “Bananas okay?”

“I can make do.” Bird dipped under his outstretched arm and into the dim interior of the house. “Mama says it’s a skill us McAllisters got.”

In the spirit of making do, Phoebe planted both feet firmly on the bottom step and reminded herself that she couldn’t afford pride. Not today. Not tonight. Anger drained away, making room for the poisonous dread she’d been living with for weeks now. She met Murphy’s guarded eyes and took a breath.

His wide hand rested on the door as he waited for Phoebe to follow her daughter. “Come into my parlor,” he said, and the ironic edge to his low, slow words did nothing to settle the ping-pong bounce of her stomach.

“I know how that story ends,” she muttered, dipping, like Phoebe, beneath his arm.

“Of course you do. You’re a smart woman. And an educated one.” The polite bend of his head toward her was even more unsettling as he shut the door quietly behind her. “But you came in anyway, didn’t you, Miss Phoebe Fly?”

“Ms. Fly, please.” She sent 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 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.

She couldn’t.

And then she shook her head, clearing the haze from her eyes, and looked, really looked at him.

With each tug of his finger in her shirt, her skin prickled and jumped, but she realized that his teasing smile was that of the boy she’d grown up with, not that of a man intent on flirting. Not the smile of a man with seduction on his mind.

Embarrassed to the roots of her hair at her foolishness—this was Murphy, for Pete’s sake—she smiled brightly, flipped her hair out of her eyes and told herself that she would manage somehow.

And she would keep a prudent, wary distance from Murphy Jones and his slow, easy grin that still turned her bones to pudding and her brain to mush. Heck, she could do that. She’d done it before. Now? It would be a snap, once she had a good night’s sleep. Heck, she had experience, age and desperation on her side.

She would control her own silly reaction to him.

And she could manage Murphy.

Of course she could, she thought dubiously as she saw the tiny movement at the corner of his mouth as she flipped her hair carelessly, her very carelessness a masterpiece of acting.

“Me? Up to something?” She whirled past him, plopped on a suitcase.

“Yeah, that’s the question.” His mouth twitched.

“Why, what a suspicious mind you have, Murphy.” She tossed him a grin, crossed her legs, and swung one leg up and down to the staccato rhythm pumping through her blood. “What with all your questions, a person might suspect you weren’t thrilled to have her drop in for company.” She slowed the gallop of her leg as his gaze followed its length, lingered along the top of her thigh, and moved on up to her face. It took all her effort not to yank at her suddenly too-short shorts.

“Don’t forget. I know you, Phoebe,” he said lightly. “And you’re hopping around like a kid crossing hot sand.”

“Don’t you forget you haven’t seen me in eight years. Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.” She stood up so abruptly that the suitcase wobbled, thumped flat on the floor. Her heart was beating like a snare drum, and she was afraid she’d say the wrong thing and there wouldn’t be a chance to salvage what she could from this situation that bordered on the disastrous. “People change, Murphy.”

“Do they, sweetpea?” His face was shadowed by one of the pans hanging from the ceiling.

“Of course. It’s called growing up. Maturing,” she said, making her tone as light as soap bubbles. “We all go through it. Even me.” She whirled away toward the door to the hall. “Anyway, I’ll take you up on your offer of food and a change of clothes. Bird and I are bone-tired. A shower will be nice.” Even knowing she was babbling, she couldn’t stop the avalanche of words. “You have hot water, right? Hey, even a cold shower would be a treat after this heat. Golly gee, I don’t know when I’ve felt this grubby and sticky, and I know you’re ready for a shower after working in the sun all day, and Bird—”

“Phoebe. I have hot water.”

Murphy’s amused burr of a voice slid down her spine, silenced her. Oh, Lord, she was making such a fool of herself. She inhaled and scooted a suitcase toward Bird. “Open up, baby, and pick out your sleeping duds.” Flipping open her own suitcase, trying her best to ignore Murphy’s attentive gaze that was destroying her confidence with every tick of the clock, Phoebe crouched down and rummaged through carefully packed shorts and underwear. She finally grabbed blindly at the next piece of clothing that met her frantic fingers, something red and, she discovered too late, skimpy. With her best teddy clutched in her shaking fingers, she tried to shut her suitcase.

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.”

“That’s the kind of life that appeals to you now? Easy? Uncomplicated?”

“Yes, Phoebe, it is.” Leaning forward, he tapped her knee. “I like my life the way it is. I don’t have to explain anything, don’t have to apologize if I leave the toilet lid up, don’t have to feel guilty if I stop off for a beer with the guys after work.” He tamped down the slight melancholy that rose as he thought of all the nights he’d driven down the driveway to his dark house. “I can pick up and leave whenever I want to. I’m footloose and fancy free.”

“Are you, Murphy?” Her solemn face was inches away from his, and her breath smelled of peppermint toothpaste, clean and tempting. “Really free?”

He leaned back. “Absolutely.”

“And that’s what you want? Absolute freedom?”

“That’s it, sweetpea.”

“Then why did you buy this house? Why have you put all that sweat and labor into making it beautiful? Because it is. It’s a dream house.” She rose to her feet and he did the same. “And that kitchen? Oh, your kitchen, Murphy.” She clasped her hands in front of her, and her wrists brushed against his forearms. “That’s not the kitchen of a man who’s footloose and fancy free.”

“That’s the way it is, Phoebe.” He couldn’t bear the way her face softened, turned dreamy. Couldn’t bear the drift of peppermint against his mouth. “But you’ve been asking all the questions.” He grasped her hands with his. “So, enough about me. Like I asked you earlier, what are you up to?”

“Bird was right. We need a place to stay.” Her hands jerked against his, but he held on. “For a week. Maybe two. Until I find a job.”

“Why me?” The air closed in on him. “Why back in Manatee Creek, Phoebe? Because there’s nothing here for you.”

“Because I don’t have anywhere else to go.” Like a guitar string, she vibrated from head to toe, all that energy and emotion flooding him. And then she jerked her hands away from his. Her eyes fierce and mouth tight, her gaze scalded him. “Because I’m pregnant, that’s why.”

Chapter Three

Hands jammed into her pockets, Phoebe waited.

For judgment. For the thinning of Murphy’s mouth that would reveal his distaste, waited for the words that would send her into the night with Bird and no hope.

She made her hands stay perfectly still. No matter what he said, she’d make a joke, she’d laugh off her announcement as teasing, she wouldn’t let him see the terror swamping her. She’d lie, deny. “Gotcha,” she’d tell him.

And then she’d run from Murphy’s house as if the hounds of hell were growling at her heels.

She’d sleep in the bus station. She’d camp out in a church overnight. Surely churches in Manatee Creek hadn’t started locking their doors at night? As much as it would kill her, she’d throw herself on the mercy of whoever found her in that church, a welcoming sanctuary she could almost see in her mind’s eye.

No one would throw a pregnant woman and her four-year-old child out of a church, for heaven’s sake.

Would they?

Well, there was that famous old story of the virgin and her child who couldn’t find room anywhere except in a stable.

Jitters scurried like mice up and down her spine.

“Pregnant, Phoebe?” Murphy sat down in the chair, angled one leg over the other, and leaned back into the shadows. “Well, there’s a surprise.” His voice was as smooth and hard as polished silver. “I thought you and Tony were divorced. Who’s the father? Not that it’s any of my business, sweetpea.”

“No. It isn’t.” Oh, she wanted the smart-aleck words back, yearned for the discipline to curb her unruly tongue. She didn’t need to antagonize Murphy, not tonight, not with everything at stake. “Tony and I separated when Bird was two. I filed for divorce after two more years.”

“A long separation.”

“Yes.” Her fingers curled tighter. She hadn’t wanted the divorce. Divorce meant she’d failed, failure on such a sweeping scale that staying married and living apart was easier. “I...wasn’t in any hurry.”

“No?” That silvery voice and the rustle in the shadows were the only signs that Murphy was on the porch. “You must have wanted to get on with your life. Isn’t that what all the magazines advise? Move on? Find closure? Where was your closure, sweetpea? Damn, I think you’d have wanted closure.” His eyes glittered with anger. An anger that puzzled her.

“I don’t know. I was busy. Time passed.”

“Did it now?” Another rustle of denim and cotton. “Well, Phoebe, time has a way of doing that.”

“As I said, I had things to do.”

“Kept a tight schedule, did you?”

“I went back to college. Finished up the last three courses I needed for my degree and teacher certification.”

“You were a busy little bee. Heck, finalizing a divorce must have been nothing more than some item on your to-do list. I can see how it happened.” His voice was so understanding and compassionate that most folks would have missed the sarcasm icing it. The chair squeaked as he settled more deeply into it.

“The divorce wasn’t high on my...to-do list, Murphy. It wasn’t important.”

But it had been. Everybody had told her she shouldn’t marry Tony, but she had. Afterwards, when everything went wrong, she hadn’t wanted to admit her mistake even to herself. And she sure didn’t want to admit to anyone else that she should never have married him, that their relationship had been doomed from the beginning.

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