Baby, You're Mine. Lindsay Longford
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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