Hold on My Heart (7 page)

“H
istoric bricks are a lot softer, so you have to be careful about what mortar you choose.”

Tom Murphy was presenting pre-twentieth-century brickmaking 101 to her father at the ice-cream parlor while Libby sat a few feet away on an overturned bucket and scraped at window grout with a screwdriver and a razor blade. Nothing about this project was glamorous. All those spunky remodeling shows on television apparently edited out all the tedious parts. But Libby didn’t mind. This task was exactly what her brain could handle today.

It had been a week since her conversation with Seth. At first she’d been weepy, moping around, feeling tragic and raw, until even Nana started being nice to her.

Then a couple of nights ago Marti had taken Libby out and gotten her sloppy drunk. She’d made her talk about all of Seth’s annoying habits. It turned out he had a multitude. He left his dirty clothes on the bathroom floor. His knife always screeched across the plate when he cut something. He never gave her cards on Valentine’s Day. Or her birthday. He wasn’t particularly intuitive in bed. Oh, and he moved to San Diego with zero warning. There was
that
, too. Turns out Seth was a lousy boyfriend. What Libby had thought was love might have just been a comfortable habit.

Libby had woken up the morning after Marti’s intervention feeling like warmed-over hippo shit, but as her hangover faded, so did her heartache
over Seth. She’d been making the break from him for weeks and weeks without realizing it. Now it was just official.

“What does the mortar have to do with it?” Libby’s father asked.

She looked over at the two of them, her dad in khaki pants and polo shirt, as casual as he ever got, and Tom in well-worn jeans and a navy T-shirt with M
ONROE
M
AVERICKS
printed on it. It was an old shirt, faded, with a tiny hole near the neck, and she wondered if he’d gone there for high school.

“The firing process used to be very unpredictable, so there is no continuity to the strength of the bricks, and if you use mortar that’s too strong, you run the risk of the bricks crumbling around it. It’s just something to be aware of. Are you sure you don’t want me to go to the hardware store instead?”

“No, no. I can do this. I have the list you gave me. You stay here and make sure Libby doesn’t break another windowpane.” Her dad folded up a piece of paper and stuffed it into his pocket.

Tom glanced over and caught Libby’s eye.

“Thanks for your confidence in me, Dad. By the way, who was it that broke the front railing? Oh, yeah. I think that was you.”

Her dad nodded and shrugged. “Yep, that was me. Good thing you’re here, Tom. If left to our own devices, Liberty and I might do more destruction than reconstruction of this fine building.”

Tom just smiled and adjusted his red baseball hat.

After her dad left, it was just Libby and the enigmatic Mr. Murphy, working silently. He seemed to be a man with only two settings: Work and Off.

Asked about construction or restoration, he could answer with wikipedic knowledge, but when it came to the niceties of polite conversation, Tom was cagier. Personal questions left him flushed and monosyllabic, like maybe he had some secrets behind those black-coffee eyes.

There was one thing she had figured out about him, though. Marti was right. Tom Murphy smoldered. Maybe it was the leather tool belt strapped around those hips, or the work-rough hands that seemed capable of so many tasks. Or it could be the muscles flexing under a sweat-dampened T-shirt. Whatever it was, there was
something
… and she liked it.

She plucked at the front of her pink T-shirt, trying to move a little air against her skin. Her hair was twisted in a sloppy knot on the top of her
head, and her back ached. Six days of painstaking labor at this ice-cream parlor was about six too many, but at least now she was wearing sturdy hiking boots. She’d nearly put a nail through her foot two days ago while wearing tennis shoes. Tom had been right about her needing thicker soles.

Libby moved off the bucket to sit on the ground and leaned back against the wall, stretching out her legs in front of her. She studied Tom discreetly. He was to the left of her, on his knees using a chisel and hammer to dislodge old baseboard trim from the wall.

She leaned over and pulled a cold bottle of water from a nearby cooler. It was hot for September, and this work made her thirsty. She held the bottle against her neck for a minute before unscrewing the top and gulping half the contents down.

Tom paused in his motions and watched her drink.

“Do you want some water?” She wiped her thumb across her lip, catching a leftover drip.

He blinked at her once, twice, and shook his head as if remembering where he was. “No, I’m good. Thanks.” He looked back to the wall and hit the chisel with extra force. The
clang
echoed through the nearly empty room.

Libby pressed her lips together to capture her smile before it reached her lips. Tom Murphy had just checked her out. And she liked it. Take
that,
Seth.

“So, how long have you been a builder, Tom?” Judging from the size of his arms, he’d been at it for a while.

“A while,” he answered, as if reading her mind.

She hoped he couldn’t read the rest of it, because she was imagining those arms just then wrapped around her waist. She was being silly, of course. Tom was not remotely her type, all down-homey and baseball-hat-wearing. She liked her men metro and stylish. The kind of men she met in Chicago who wore expensive suits and used product in their hair. Right now she couldn’t even see Tom’s hair, except for the bits that stuck out from under his hat, which he was currently wearing backward. That was a look she had never appreciated—until now.

“Did you grow up in Monroe?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“Where did you grow up?”

“Concord.”

Concord was a small, one-traffic-light town just east of Monroe. Libby drove through it every time she made the hour-long trek between Chicago and her parents’ house.

“Was it a nice place to live?” She took another sip of water.

“Nice enough.” He readjusted the chisel and hit it again, not looking her way.

“Do you still have family there?”

“Nope.”

This was starting to feel like a game. She could tell she was annoying him, but there was a certain thrill in watching his shoulders rise and fall, as if giving her an answer made him sigh with resignation.

“Do you have family anywhere?”

He stopped and stared at her now. “Don’t you have something else you could be doing?”

She smiled. “Nope. I’m on a break.”

A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth, and his voice held no heat. “Well, I’m
not
on a break, and all this chatter is a little distracting.”

She smiled bigger, deciding to tease him just to see how that might go. “I’m sorry. I assumed you could talk and hammer at the same time.”

His eyebrows rose a fraction. “Your father pays me by the hour, you know. Every time you slow me down it costs him money.”

She thought of her sacrificed wedding fund. “Technically it’s my money he’s spending.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Anyway, do you have family around here?”

Tom sat back on his heels and regarded her until she felt a flush creep up from the center of her body. “How about I ask you a question?” he said.

“Okay. Go ahead.” This should be interesting. What could the steady, silent Mr. Murphy want to know about her?

“Why is your name Liberty Belle?”

Oh, that. She took a slow, deliberate sip of water before answering. “My father is a history fanatic, and at the time, my mother was a good sport. But don’t ever call me Liberty Belle and expect to walk away unscathed.”

He stared at her for a heartbeat, his eyes dark. “It’s got a nice ring to it,” he finally said with a smile, and then he turned back toward the wall and poised the chisel over the trim.

Libby crossed one ankle over the other and chuckled in response. “Oh, you’re very clever. I’ve never heard that one before. I suppose your name is something very dull and typical, like Thomas James or Thomas Michael.”

He flicked her with a glance. “Nope.”

She took another sip of water. “Phillip?”

He jostled the chisel. “Not even close.”

“Matthew? Mark? Luke? John? Paul?” She paused. “Ringo?”

“It’s a secret,” he said.

Libby pulled her legs in then, crossing them and leaning on her thighs with both elbows. “Oh, I love secrets.” She also loved that they were very nearly having a conversation. Granted she was doing all the labor, but he hadn’t left the room yet, and that was progress. It was the first time they’d exchanged information that didn’t have to do with wiring or building codes.

But Tom shook his head. “Done talking. Working now.”

“I’ll make up something awful if you don’t tell me what it is,” she threatened.

He looked over his shoulder. His gaze roved over her in a less subtle way than it had before. “You couldn’t make up anything worse than what it is.”

Her heart thumped a little at the light in his eyes. “I’m very clever.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“Then you’d better tell me.”

He sighed, a big, exasperated sound, and turned around. He leaned one shoulder against the wall and crossed his arms, holding the chisel in one hand and a hammer in the other. “Murlan.”

A huff of laughter escaped before she could stop it, not that she would have tried. After all, the man had seen her bare-assed naked in the dirt. The scale of humiliation was still decidedly tipped in his favor. “Merlin? Like… the magician?”

He shook his head. “No, Murlan, as in M-U-R-L-A-N. It was my grandfather’s name.”

She nodded, and felt her smile widen. “You’re right. That’s pretty bad. But mine’s still worse.” She picked up the plastic bottle and tipped her head back, drinking the last of the water.

He watched her, and then abruptly turned back to the wall. He jammed the chisel in behind the wood and clanged the hammer so hard
against it, the dry wood gave a loud crack and splintered into a dozen pieces. Tom jumped back and cursed, pulling his hand away and making a fist. He landed on his butt on the floor with a
thud
.

“Are you okay?” Libby leaned forward.

He opened his fist and looked at his hand. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just got a splinter.”

“Let me see.” She got up and moved closer.

He held his hand behind his back. “It’s fine.”

“Then let me see it. I used to work in a vet’s office. I’m practically a nurse.”

He smirked with humor, and after a moment’s hesitation, presented her with his open hand. A thick splinter protruded from the side of his index finger.

“Oh, ouch. Do you want me to get the first-aid kit?”

He chuckled. “It’s fine.” He squeezed the pad of his finger, pulled out the splinter, and popped the injured fingertip into his mouth.

Libby watched with morbid fascination. “Wow. That is probably the most unsanitary thing I’ve ever seen. And I worked in a vet’s office, remember?”

He pulled out his finger. “But efficient and fast. That’s my motto. Get in, get done, get out.”

His lips pressed together as soon as the words were out. The sexual innuendo could not be missed, nor could the instant infusion of color into his cheeks.

“Well,” she said, very much enjoying his embarrassment. “Efficiency is what counts. As long as you get the
entire
job done.”

He stared at her, blinking slowly, while she grinned back.

At last, with a tiny tilt to his head, he said, “I always get the
entire
job done, Miss Hamilton.”

She felt her own cheeks flush at the thought. “I’m very glad to hear that, Mr. Murphy. Now I think I’ll get you a bandage before you bleed all over my father’s ice-cream shop.” Libby turned away and felt an inexplicable sense of triumph.

I always get the
entire
job done, Miss Hamilton?
What had possessed him to say that? It was practically a flirtation, and he had tried very hard over
this past week to establish himself as disinterested in anything of that sort. He’d heard Libby and her sister talking about some commitment-phobic boyfriend out in San Diego, and Tom was not about to be her rebound experiment. It didn’t matter how long those legs of hers were. Or that her smile left him weak in the knees. He wasn’t interested. His only priority in this building was to do his job and turn this place into an ice-cream parlor for Peter Hamilton. Outside of that, his only priority was convincing Rachel to come and live with him.

But Libby Hamilton was a persistent flirt, batting lashes so long he swore they created a breeze. And then there were her tiny little T-shirts with the goofy pictures on the front, like a penguin wearing a red sombrero, or a honey badger. He’d been way off base thinking she was the serious sort. She might be practical, but she was definitely not serious. She was funny and bright and far too pretty. Everything about her knocked him off-kilter, from the purple socks peeking out of her boots to the way she couldn’t seem to keep all of her hair inside her ponytail holder. Streamers of it were constantly swirling around her face, like she was in a shampoo commercial. That shouldn’t annoy him, but it did.