It wasn’t worth the effort to be annoyed that he’d seen she was about to do so. Instead she turned away to pack up her equipment. “I’m not faint of heart. And I’ve liked kissing men before.”

“Sure and you have, Shannon Bodine, but you’ve never kissed the likes of me.”

He went off whistling. She made sure he was out of earshot before she let the laughter loose.

It shouldn’t have felt odd to go on a date—not when a woman had recently turned twenty-eight and had experienced her share of firsts and lasts in the game of singles.

Maybe it had been the way Brianna had fussed—bustling around like a nervous mother on prom night. Shannon could only smile to think on it. Brianna had offered to press a dress, or lend her one, and had twice come up to the loft room with suggestions on accessories and shoes.

Shannon supposed she’d been a great disappointment to Brianna when she’d appeared downstairs in casual slacks and a plain silk shirt.

That hadn’t stopped Brianna from telling her she looked lovely, to have a wonderful time, and not to worry about when she got in. If Gray hadn’t come along and dragged his wife out of the hall, she might never have gotten away.

It was, Shannon supposed, sisterlike behavior, and didn’t make her as uncomfortable as she’d expected.

She was grateful both Brianna and Gray had insisted she take the car. It wasn’t a long trip to Murphy’s, but the road would be dark after sunset, and it looked like rain.

Only minutes after pulling out of the driveway, she was pulling in to a longer one that squeezed between hedges of fuchsia that had already begun to bloom in bloodred hearts.

She’d seen the farmhouse from her window, but it was larger, and undoubtedly more impressive up close. Three stories of stone and wood that looked as old as the land itself, and equally well tended, rose up behind the hedge and before a tidy plot of mixed flowers.

There were flat arches of dressed stone above the tidy square windows of the first floor. She caught a glimpse of a side porch and imagined there were doors leading to it from the inside.

Two of the chimneys were smoking, puffing their clouds lazily into the still blue sky. A pickup truck was in the drive ahead of her, splashed with mud. Beside that was an aged compact raised onto blocks.

She couldn’t claim to know much about cars, but it certainly had seen better days.

But the shutters and the front porch of the house were freshly painted in a mellow blue that blended softly with the gray stone. There was no clutter on the porch, only a pair of rockers that seemed to invite company. The invitation was completed by the door that was already open.

Still, she knocked on the jamb and called out. “Murphy.”

“Come in and welcome.” His voice seemed to come from up the stairs that shot off from the main hallway. “I’ll be a minute. I’m washing up.”

She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. To satisfy her curiosity, she walked a little farther down the hall and peeked into the first room, where again, a batten door was open in welcome.

A parlor, of course, she noted. Every bit as tidy as Brianna’s, if lacking some of her feminine touches.

Old, sturdy furniture was set on a wide planked floor that gleamed. A turf fire simmered in a stone hearth, bringing its ancient and appealing scent into the room. There were candlesticks flanking the thick wood mantel, bold, sinuous twists of emerald. Certain they were Maggie’s work, she went in for a closer look.

They looked too fluid, too molten to be solid. Yet the glass was cool against her fingers. There was a subtle, fascinating hint of ruby beneath, as though there were heat trapped inside waiting to flame out.

“You’d think you could poke your fingers straight into the heart of it,” Murphy commented from the doorway.

Shannon nodded, tracing the coils again before she turned. “She’s brilliant. Though I’d prefer you not tell her I said so.” Her brow lifted when she studied him. He didn’t look so very different from the man who walked his fields or played his music in pubs. He was without his cap, and his hair was thick, curled, and a bit damp from his washing. His sweater was a soft gray, his slacks shades darker.

She found it odd that she could picture him as easily on the cover of GQ as on Agricultural Monthly.

“You wash up well.”

He grinned self-consciously. “You look at things, people, more as an artist does once you’re used to them. I didn’t mean to keep you.”

“It’s no problem. I like seeing where you live.” Her gaze glanced off him and focused on a wall of books. “That’s quite a library.”

“Oh, that’s just some of them.”

He stayed where he was when she crossed over. Joyce, Yeats, Shaw. Those were to be expected. O’Neill, Swift, and Grayson Thane, of course. But there was a treasure trove of others. Poe, Steinbeck, Dickens, Byron. The poetry of Keats and Dickinson and Browning. Battered volumes of Shakespeare and equally well-thumbed tales by King and MacAffrey and McMurtrey.

“An eclectic collection,” she mused. “And there’s more?”

“I keep them here and there around the house, so if you’re in the mood, you don’t have to go far. A book’s a pleasant thing to have nearby.”

“My father wasn’t much on reading, unless it had to do with business. But my mother and I love—loved to. In the end, she was so ill, I read to her.”

“You were a comfort to her. And a joy.”

“I don’t know.” She shook herself and tried a bright smile. “So, am I getting a tour?”

“A child knows when she’s loved,” Murphy said quietly, then took her hand. “And yes, you’ll have a tour. We’ll go outside first, before it rains.”

But she made him stop a half a dozen times before they’d traveled from the front of the house to the back. He explained the raftered ceiling, and the little room off the right where his mother still liked to sew when she came to visit.

The kitchen was as big as a barn, and as scrupulously clean as any she’d ever seen. Still, it surprised her to see colored jars of herbs and spices ranged on the counter, and the gleam of copper-bottomed pots hanging over it.

“Whatever you’ve got in the oven smells wonderful.”

“ ’Tis chicken, and needs some time yet. Here, try these.”

He brought a pair of Wellingtons out of an adjoining room and had Shannon frowning. “We’re not going to go tromping around in . . .”