“Doesn’t look like we’re at the right place. Let me double-check the address.” Phoebe opened the newspaper.
A woman came around the corner of the house.
Ryan stepped out of the truck. “Excuse me, ma’am, but is this the place where the yard sale is?” he asked.
“Yes, but it has been over for an hour. We’ve put everything away.”
Phoebe joined them. “Do you still have any furniture? I’m looking for a chest of drawers for my baby’s room.”
“I’m sorry but we had very little furniture and what we did have is all gone.”
Ryan looked at Phoebe. He hated seeing that defeated look on her face. “We’ll just have to try again on another weekend.”
They were on their way back to the truck when the woman called, “Hey, I do have a chest of drawers out in the old smoke house that my husband says has to go. It was my mother’s. It’s missing a leg and a drawer, though.”
Ryan looked at Phoebe. “I could fix those things. It wouldn’t hurt to look.”
Phoebe shrugged. “I guess so.”
She didn’t sound too confident. He gave her an encouraging smile. “Come on. You might be in for a surprise.”
He certainly knew about them. Phoebe had been one of those in his life.
“It’s back this way.” The woman headed around the house. She led them to a wooden building that looked ready to fall down and opened a door.
Ryan looked into the dark space. All types of farming equipment, big and small, was crammed into it.
“You’re gonna have to move some of that stuff around if you want to get to it,” the woman said from behind him.
Glancing back over the woman’s shoulder to where Phoebe stood, he saw her look of anticipation. Not wanting to disappoint her, he didn’t have any choice but to start moving rakes, hoes, carts and even larger gardening implements. He definitely didn’t want her to do that.
Picking up things and shifting them aside to make a narrow path, he could see a chest leaning against a wall. In the dim light provided by the slits in the boards it looked the right height. His heart beat faster. It might be just what Phoebe was looking for.
He made his way to it by squeezing between a stack of boxes and a tall piece of farming equipment that he couldn’t put a name to. Pulling the chest away from the wall, he leaned it forward to look at the back.
“Doesn’t it look perfect? It’s just right.”
His head jerked toward the voice. “Phoebe! What’re you doing back here?” He shouldn’t have been surprised. She managed to dumbfound him regularly.
“I wanted to see.”
“You should have waited until I brought it out.”
“What if you had done all that work and I wasn’t interested? I didn’t have any problem getting back here, except for between the boxes and that piece of equipment. I’m certainly no larger than you.”
He eased the cabinet back against the wall. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re no little guy, with your broad shoulders and height.”
He wasn’t and he liked that she had noticed.
She circled around him, as if wanting to get a closer look at the chest. She pulled each drawer out and examined the slot where the missing drawer went. “What do you think?”
“What?” Ryan was so absorbed with watching her he’d missed her question.
“What do you think?” she asked in an impatient tone. “Can it be fixed?”
“Yes. It has sturdy construction. With a new drawer and a leg you would be in business.”
She looked at him and grinned. Had he just been punched in the stomach?
“In business?”
“What kind of business would that be?”
“The baby business,” he quipped back.
“I think I’ll like that kind of business.” Her smile was of pure happiness.
He returned it. “And I think you’ll be good at it. So do you want the chest?”
“Yes, I do.”
For a second there he wanted her to say that about him. He shook the thought away. Those were not ones he should be having. He and Phoebe were just friends. That was all they could be or should be.
“If you’ll slide your way back out, then I’ll bring this.”
“I could help—”
Ryan leaned down until his nose almost touched hers. “No. You. Will. Not.”
She giggled. “I thought that’s what you might say.” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and started for the path. “Thanks. You’ve been wonderful.”
All he could do was stand there with a silly grin on his face. What was he, ten again?
With a groan, he began manipulating the chest through the maze. With less muscle than patience, he managed to get it outside. Before he could hardly stand the cabinet against the side of the building, Phoebe began studying it with a critical eye. She pulled each of the drawers out and pushed them in again.
“What do you want for it?” Phoebe glanced at the lady.
Heck, now that he’d worked to bring it into the light of day it didn’t matter what the woman wanted. He’d pay her price just to not have to put it back.
“One hundred dollars,” the woman stated.
“It has a leg and a drawer missing. How about thirty?” Phoebe came back with.
“Make it eighty, then.”
Ryan watched, his look going from one woman to the other like at a tennis match.
“I don’t think so. There’s too much work to be done. Thanks anyway.” Phoebe started toward the truck.
Ryan stood there in disbelief. She was going to l
eave after all the looking they had done today and the trouble he’d gone to get the chest out of the cluttered building? After she’d found what she wanted?
He gave her a pointed look. She winked. He was so stunned he couldn’t say anything.
“How about we make it fifty?” the woman called after her.
Phoebe made almost a ballerina turn and had a smile on her face when she faced the woman. “Deal.” Phoebe opened up her purse and handed the woman some bills.
He had to give Phoebe credit, she was an excellent bargainer.
She looked at him and grinned in pure satisfaction. What would it be like to have her look at him that way because of something he’d done? Heaven.
Clearing his head, he asked, “Ma’am, do you mind if I pull the truck closer to load this up?”
“Sure, that’s fine.”
Twenty minutes later, Phoebe was waving bye to the woman like they were long-lost friends.
“That was some dickering you did back there.”
“Dickering?”
“Bargaining.”
“Thanks.”
“The next time I have to buy a car I’m taking you with me.”
Phoebe smiled.
“Where did you learn to do that?”
“I don’t know. I just know that it usually works. And it’s always worth a try.”
“There for a few minutes I was afraid that I was going to have to wrestle that chest back into that building.”
“I wouldn’t have let that happen. I wanted it too badly. I would have paid the hundred.”
“Well, I’m glad to know that.”
A few minutes later he pulled out onto the main highway that would take them to the larger road leading to Melbourne.
“Oh, the little penguins. I haven’t seen them since I was young,” Phoebe remarked as they passed a billboard.
“Penguins?”
“You don’t know about the penguins? At Phillip Island?”
“No.”
“They come in every night. It’s amazing to watch. They go out every morning and hunt for food and bring it back for their babies. They’re about a foot tall.”
“How far away is this?”
“On the coast. About thirty minutes from here.”
“Do you want to go?”
“They don’t come in until the sun is going down. It would be late when we got home.”