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.
