Free River Magic by Martha Hix Page B

Phoebe admonished her sister. “You’re absurd. And I’m tired of hearing about that foolish lamp you bought from a thief who never sent those rugs to the Lady America.”
    â€œYou needn’t be mean.”
    â€œHow can you trust a man like Hasan al-Nahar to be honest about the origin of a lamp?”
    Tessa wilted onto a chair and settled her forearms on the tabletop. “It is Genie who brings magic to the lamp.”
    â€œHorse feathers. He’s empty pockets, a bottomless pit for a stomach, and a permanent fixture in the garçonnière.”
    â€œThe boys don’t need the bachelor quarters anymore. Why shouldn’t our guest use them?”
    â€œHow many years does it take for a guest to become a resident?” Her irritable voice covered concern for her beloved, gullible sister. “Everyone in town laughs at you, Tessa O’Brien. You’re a laughingstock, in company with an earring-wearing Arab with no visible—or invisible!—means of support who won’t even tell you his real name.”
    â€œEugene Jinnings is real enough for me. As for the gossips—let them gossip. Father approves.”
    â€œDon’t get me started on that.”
    Phoebe swallowed a piece of biscuit that now tasted like a big wad of flour and water. Fitz O’Brien did lavish clothing and finery on Eugene, and he gave lip service to the outlandish courtship. But his reasons had nothing to do with approval. He was glad not to listen to Tessa’s prattling, even if it meant supporting a sponge.
    Tessa poured herself a cup of coffee. “You may be satisfied to spend a lifetime with no gentleman friend to keep you company, but I wasn’t.”
    â€œDon’t bring me into it,” Phoebe replied, hurt that her sister knew not her feelings.
    Each time she, as a girl, had eyed a young man, Father or Mother had picked him apart, had warned her to take more care than Daniel had taken in choosing a mate. Theirs had been a good enough argument. Yet Phoebe pined for the man she’d never had.
    And with the space of years having opened her eyes, she now knew Fitz O’Brien had kept her a spinster so as not to lose a good bookkeeper.
    â€œYou resent Genie,” Tessa said, and peeled her banana.
    It wasn’t that Phoebe resented Eugene so much, it was that she resented his monopolizing Tessa. The sisters had been thick as thieves before Eugene Jinnings butted in.
    â€œWhat good does he do you, Tessa? You and I both know he got his pecker loped off in a seraglio.”
    The cherubic mouth dropped in an equally angelic face. A blush stained cheeks having known smoother days. “How do you know he isn’t intact?”
    The elder sister snickered, smoothing one side of her age-faded red chignon. “Tessa O’Brien, I may be pushing fifty-five, but I still make it a habit to find out what needs to be found out.”
    â€œHow do you know he isn’t intact?” Tessa repeated.
    â€œI peeked as he bathed.”
    â€œThat was wicked of you.”
    â€œGranted.”
    â€œSister,” Tessa asked, cocking her head, “what did you mean about a harem?”
    â€œWhere else would his castration have occurred?” Phoebe rejoined, not on firm ground about Arabic conventions.
    More interested in her nephew, she got back to him. “What if Connor met two women yesterday? What does that do to magic?”
    â€œHe didn’t. Genie promised he wouldn’t.”

    â€œEugene . . .”
    â€œWhat is the matter with my lady? You never call me Eugene.”
    Snuggled in the big bed that a nephew had once occupied in the bachelor quarters, Tessa O’Brien wiggled even closer to her pruned admirer, who was stroking the breasts that sagged pitifully. “Genie, my sister put the awfullest bug in my ear. What if Connor met two women yesterday?”
    Genie tweaked the stem on one fallen melon. His tongue flicking at her earlobe, he