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in her mother’s painting room popped into her mind, and her hand slipped.
    “Dammit,” Phil cursed. She released the trigger on the blowtorch and surveyed the damage her slip had caused to the metal. Nothing too noticeable, thank goodness.
    “Phylicia?”
    Phil nearly fell off the stool at the unexpected summons. She whipped around, the blowtorch still in her hand.
    Jamal took two giant steps back, his hands raised in surrender. “Careful with that.”
    Phil lifted the safety shield from her face but didn’t put down the blowtorch. “How did you get in here?”
    “The door wasn’t locked.”
    Of course it wasn’t. She lived in Gauthier. She never locked the door to her shop while she was working. She’d have to rethink that. This was the second time he had crept up on her.
    “What do you want?” she asked.
    “I want to know what happened back at the house,” he said. “Why did you run off?”
    Phil’s entire being sagged in defeat. It was no use withholding the truth from him. He would eventually find out. With the way gossip traveled in this small town, she was surprised no one had revealed Belle Maison’s previous owner to him already.
    “It’s my house,” Phil said. His confused expression would have been comical if there was anything even remotely funny about any of this. “The Victorian that you have all these fancy plans for? It’s my family’s home. It’s where I grew up.”
    “But the bank said they owned—”
    “Yes, the bank owned it,” she cut him off. “It’s a very long story that I’m not about to get into, especially with you.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean? Especially with me? When did I become the bad guy, Phylicia?”
    “When you bought my family’s home and decided to make it into a bed-and-breakfast.” Phil raised her palm, stanching his protest. “This isn’t your fault, and I know you don’t deserve any of the disgust I feel toward you.”
    He flinched at her harsh word choice, and Phil felt even worse.
    “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for,” she said. Phil shook her head. “I just can’t do this, Jamal. What you’re doing? Opening this B&B? It’s a great thing for Gauthier. It’s going to be a huge draw for tourists, and I know the businesses on Main Street are going to benefit from it. But that’s my house,” she said, pointing east toward Belle Maison. “It’s hard to see it being destroyed.”
    “I’m not going to destroy the house. How many times do I have to say that?”
    “When it comes to this sort of thing, it seems we have different definitions of what it means to destroy. And you are planning to destroy a part of the house.”
    “Just that one room,” he said.
    “It’s the most important room in the house!” Phil yelled.
    She covered her face with her hands and pulled in a deep breath. As the tears collected in her throat, Phil mentally cursed each and every one of them. But it was too hard to maintain a stoic facade. She was never one for wearing her heart on her sleeve, but when it came to her mother, she couldn’t hold back.
    Phil bit her lower lip to help curb the wavering. She wiped at the tears that traveled down her cheeks.
    “Twenty years ago, my father built that room for my mother. It’s where she painted. She needed a place with plenty of natural sunlight, and there wasn’t a room on the east side of the house that was suitable. She would spend hours in that room. Her painting meant everything to her.”
    Phil sucked in a deep breath. “I’ve lost so much of her already. Hearing that you planned to tear down her room... It was just too much.”
    She couldn’t interpret the expression on Jamal’s face. He just stood there, staring at her, and her discomfort grew with every nanosecond that passed.
    “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I had no idea. About any of it. The bank never told me anything about the previous owner. Shit, Corey didn’t even say anything.”
    “I was surprised neither Corey nor Mya told