Her.
The minute he turned his head, he saw Phoebe. As always when he woke after a crash-deep, crash-dark sleep, the headache was completely gone and his senses ultrasharp. He could feel every ache, every fading stitch and bruise.
He also promptly realized that he was naked as a jaybird under the sheet—and hard as a jackhammer.
One look at her seemed to do it.
She was curled up in a white rocker. All the blinds in the room were drawn, except where she’d opened them several inches in the south window above her. Sunshine beamed down—as if just for her. Her bare legs were swung over the chair arm, and the shape of her naked calves was enough to inspire another jolt of testosterone. Her bare feet were dirty, and she was wearing what he called Saturday clothes, sweats, shorts and a big old voluminous shirt that completely concealed her body.
She held a mug of something steaming in one hand, a book in the other. He vaguely remembered her hair all pinned up and out of the way, but she’d let it loose at some point, because now those long red strands shimmied down her back like a gush of water, catching claret and cinnamon and tea and amber colors in the sunlight. The freckles on her nose were naked.
He wished she were.
He’d never met a more sensual woman. In looks, in touch, in everything. He felt both defensive and suspicious about that weird magic thing when she touched him. He just didn’t get it…how she could possibly induce so much feeling in a guy whodidn’t feel, didn’t talk, had cut himself off from life for months now—and wanted it that way.
But none of that aggravation seemed to dent his fascination for her. Fox conceded that the issue might be a lot simpler than he was making it. Probably any man’d have to be dead not to respond to a two hundred percent handful of a woman like her.
She startled, as if suddenly realizing something was different in the room. When she turned her head and saw he was awake, she immediately plunked down her mug.
“What time is it?” he asked her.
“Almost three.”
Couldn’t be. “You’renot telling me I’ve been here all day.”
“You were sleeping so soundly that I didn’t want to wake you. And there was no need. I was just puttering around here. No clients on a Saturday.”
“I’ll pay you for the time I was here.”
“Yeah, you will,” she agreed. “But if you feel up to it, I’d like to ask you some questions.” She pushed out of the rocking chair, came closer.
“What kind of questions?” he asked suspiciously.
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“A massage shouldn’t be able to dent the kind of serious headaches you’re getting, Fergus. Migraines and cluster headaches and stuff that bad…they’re medical. Physiological.”
“Yeah, so I’ve been told.” She was close enough to see the tent in the sheet, but she seemed to be looking straight in his eyes. He willed the mountain to wilt, but damned if it didn’t seem to be getting harder instead of softer.
“It just doesn’t make sense. That I’ve been able to help you with headaches as bad as you get them. Do you have any idea at all about what brings them on?”
He closed his eyes, opened them again. “The docs said, after ruling out a bunch of medical reasons, that the headaches had to be some kind of stress response.”
“Stress I can work with you on.”
“Work with me,” he echoed.
“I mentioned it earlier. I’ll work up a program, then send it over to you and your family, so you can look at it on your own time, see if you’re willing to give it a shot. The thing is, what we’re doing now is shutting the barn door after the horse is already loose. Trying to beat pain when it’s already sucked you under is like trying to reason with an enemy who’s already won. What you want, ideally, is to get power over the pain ahead of time. Before it’s gotten bad.”
“Okay. Makes sense.” He was unsure why she sounded so tentative and wary. He hadn’t been very nice to her, no. But there was something in her voice, her face, as if she were braced for him to dismiss anything she said.
Again she said carefully, “That’s all I can really do. Teach you some techniques to work with stress and pain. I can also give you some strength- and stamina-building exercises, both to help give you some ammunition against the pain and to help you sleep better.”
“That’s a joke. I don’t sleep.” He also wasn’t usually this chatty, but damn it, the more she looked at him with those big, soft, blue eyes, the more his hormones felt giddy with wonder. Goofy, but there it was.
To slap some reality into his head, he tried to move. She didn’t leap to help him, just watched him struggle to push himself into a sitting position. It took forever, which royally ticked him off. He’d had it with the recovery business in every way. Eventually, keeping the sheet bunched around his waist, he managed to angle his long hairy legs over the side and sit up straight.
“Fox,” she said quietly, “could you give me a bigger picture here? Your life isn’t my business, I realize, but it’d still help if I understood more about what you normally do, what you want to do. Your brothers filled me in a little. They said that you left a full-time job to join the military. That you got a military discharge from the service—so that’s off the table now. That you’re only temporarily living in the bachelor house, close to family, until you’re fully recovered.”
“So far you’re dealing aces.”
“Okay, but what’s the rest of the story? Are you planning on living in Gold River long-term? Planning on going back to work soon, and if so, what kind of work? What kind of physical activities or hobbies do you normally do or want to do?”
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He scraped a hand through his hair. There was a smell on his skin, in his hair, all around him. A softness.
That lemon balm scent thing. It wasn’t exactly girly, but it sure as hell didn’t go with hairy legs and a torso full of jagged scars.
“Before I joined the service, I was a teacher. A history teacher.” At her look of surprise, he said, “Yeah, I get that same look from everyone. My brothers chose businesses that make money hand over fist, and somehow I elected for the do-gooder career. Anyway. I taught middle school. The hellion ages, when the kids are all dripping hormones and getting big mouths and give their teachers grief nonstop. Teaching was kind of like juggling dynamite every day. Probably why it appealed.”
“So…are you hoping to go back to teaching this fall?”
“I’m never going back to teaching,” he said curtly. “Do you answer questions, too, or just ask them?”
She blinked. “What do you want to know?”
“How you happen to be living in Gold River.”
“I’d been doing physical therapy work for a hospital. I liked the work, but there came a point when I wanted to concentrate on babies—and I wanted to work independently, make my own business. So I started theBaby Love massage thing. And I just like it here. The town, the people, everything.”
“Originally you came from—?”
“Asheville.”
“And where’s the guy in this picture?”
“What guy?”
“That’s what I’m asking. You left Asheville for a small town like this, there was a guy involved,” he said with certainty.
“Okay,” she said cheerfully, and whipped around. “You’re obviously feeling better. I’ve got groceries to buy, dogs to run, and I’m going to the movies with friends tonight. So, I’ll let you get dressed in some privacy so you can take off. I’ll drop a program plan at your place. Then you can call if you decide it’s something you want to do.…”
He didn’t know he was going to do it. Ease off the table, twist the sheet around his waist toga fashion and go after her. It wasn’t as if she charged out of the room at gallop speed. He easily caught up with her by the hall, looped his hand around her wrist.
She star
tled at the contact, turned her head.
Fox was aggravated at that moment. It wasn’t a rational feeling, just an awareness that something was…out of kilter. She gave off heavy, warm caring vibes one second…and bristly defensiveness the next. She wasn’t his problem, so her being confusing shouldn’t matter. But it did. Somehow it did. There was something building between them…like ashes that could turn into white-hot coals if they were stirred.
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He couldn’t pin down his own intentions. Somewhere, though, he’d started worrying that she had feelings for him. Sexual feelings. Real feelings. And that couldn’t be, because for now and the whole indefinite future he was in no shape to care for anyone. So maybe he intended on scaring her. Or annoying her. Hell, who knew? He hadn’t had a functioning brain in a blue moon.
He just knew when he touched her arm, when she whipped toward him, when he saw the look in her eyes…that he was going to kiss her.
That she knew a kiss was coming.
And then…
Then he just did it.
Took that soft, crushable, sexy mouth.
Who could guess he’d set off an explosion? Maybe she hadn’t been kissed in a while. Maybe her body was going through some kind of hormone overdrive. Maybe she really did like him—well, that last theory didn’t seem likely. The Lockwood men used to be women magnets, himself included, but he’d thrown out any ability to charm when he’d taken on a body full of scars.
But damn.
Shedid seem to be igniting for him, even if he couldn’t explain it.
Her skillful, sensual hands slid up, looped around his neck, clung. That mouth molded under his, melted under his, moved under his, communicating yearning and longing. Communicating desire. Her tongue suddenly whispered against his. Her soft, full breasts suddenly ached against his chest. Her throat suddenly let out a sweet bleat of helplessness.
The sheet wrapped around his waist gave up fighting gravity and fell to the floor in a woosh. He knew he’d never manage to stand upright long—not just because his injured leg lacked strength—but because all the oxygen in his head had dropped heavier than thunder to below his waist.
His hands framed her face, holding her still as he grappled to understand how a single kiss could become Armageddon. He tried another kiss to find out, since the first one only raised giant-size questions and answered absolutely none. After that he took her mouth a third time, his reasons getting fuzzier. But the silky soft exploration of her lips and tongue and teeth seemed totally necessary. It wasn’t that he was looking for trouble…
His conscience nicked him for the fib. All right, all right, he was looking for alittle trouble. He’d righteously ducked away from thinking about women since his injuries, telling himself that love—and sex—simply had to be taken off his table indefinitely. How was he supposed to know that deprivation had been haunting him? Or that he’d beendamn worried about whether his body was still able to function normally.
It was.
Charlie, let loose, wagged around like a happy puppy tail, poking and pressing against her abdomen with uninhibited enthusiasm. Phoebe was short. Impossibly short. If he’d just had the strength, he could have lifted her, but as it was, his body creaked and groaned the longer he leaned down, crunching his neck, his Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
spine.
The pain nagged at him, but only like a pesky mosquito. Tasting her, touching her, sipping her, made him feel like a man who was offered a drink of cool, clear water after weeks in the desert. She was so like water, liquid, flowing around him, her kisses drowning the drumbeat in his ears, his head. He immersed himself.
There was no wasting time dipping his foot in the water to test the temperature. He dove straight in, all of him engaged, mouth, elbows, brain, heart—and for damn sure, Charlie. It wasn’t as if he were the only one acting insane.
She kissed him back and kept kissing him back. Her throat kept making those yearning, lonesome sounds. Her breasts kept tightening, swaying toward him, into him. Her soft hands held on as if she’d fall if he let her go.
Okay. Fox finally got it. What the deal was.
She wasn’t real. She wasn’t normal. She was a witch. A conjurer of men’s fantasies. Real women just didn’t respond to a guy like this—as if she wanted him to do anything he wanted, as if all her inhibitions blew away when he touched her, as if he were the hottest, sexiest guy ever born. As if she’d never lived until he touched her.
Fox remembered that whole fantasy from when he was sixteen. That’s how he daydreamed it’d be with a girl—but then of course he grew up. Real women took manners. Real women took finesse and care to ignite. They had to know a guy before they could trust him, and it took serious trust for sex to be good.
Well—any sex was better than no sex. But the best stuff was worth taking the time to do right.
With her it was as if someone had created her only for him. She knew just how to taste. Just how to sound. Just how to touch to make his world go dizzy and his mind go daft.
It was so weird. He’d been weak as a kitten for months, yet suddenly he felt powerful enough to move a couple of mountains. For a long, black time, he’d shut off emotion, yet this damned impossible redhead had him thinking about love again. About waking up next to somebody. About being able to weave his fingers through that, long, long silky red hair every night, any night.
“Hey.”
It seemed to be his voice, coming out thicker than molasses, interrupting them. Not hers. He lifted his head. She didn’t lift hers. He was the one stuck doing the honorable thing and inserting a little sanity into this madness. Where the Sam Hill was her common sense? She was giving him five millionyes signals. It was the middle of a Saturday afternoon, for Pete’s sake. Her dogs were sitting there with cocked heads as if they were trying to comprehend the totally strange behavior of the humans. The sun was beating in like a benediction. He was hurting. And God knew, pain wasn’t new, but he hadn’t experienced hurt coming from massive sexual frustration until two minutes ago.
“What’s going on here?” he demanded lowly.
“Huh? Weren’t you the one who suddenly came on to me?”
“But you didn’t stop me.”
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“Like that makes you less guilty for starting this?”
“No. It just makes me completely confused about why you let me kiss you. And why you kissed me back.” He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Her cheeks were punched with color, her eyes hectic bright.
Her hair had been tumbled before, but man, now he’d really made a wreck.
Had she been this breathtaking the first time he’d met her? How come he hadn’t noticed it then?
She averted her eyes. “Fox…I feel bad for you. You’ve been through so much. And you’re still going through a lot of pain.”
“Ah…so the only reason you kissed me back is because you felt sorry for me?”
She wrapped her arms under her chest, tight. “I know…no guy wants to think that a woman pities him.”
“You’ve got that right.”
“Butpity isn’t the right word, Fergus…it’s more like compassion.”
“So this is all about compassion?” Fox wondered if she’d ever considered selling heaters in the Amazon.
She gave a little laugh. “Okay. There was more to it than that. I’ll let you in on a problem I have.”
“Sure.”
“Guys often seem to think that I’m really into sex because I’m a masseuse. For me, that’s been a real conundrum. Obviously, I care about people or I wouldn’t have chosen this line of work. But when I touch someone as a masseuse—like I have been with you—it really is about compassion and nothing else. There’s no sexual component at all.”
Fox struggled to get his mind completely off Charlie. He sensed she was trying
to tell him something serious, something critically important, but it was hard to concentrate past his hammering need and her handing out this total nonsense. “I’m not sure what you mean here. Are you saying that you didn’t feel anything sexual?”
“It’s not personal,” she assured him. “I’m just trying to be honest. I’m just not a very sexual person. I’m more maternal, I guess.”
“Maternal,” he echoed.
She nodded vigorously. “Which is why I work with babies.”
“Because you’re maternal but not sexual.”
“Exactly,” she said.
Wednesday evening Fox still couldn’t get that conversation out of his mind. He picked up a glass of water, yet quickly forgot to drink, forgot the buzz of his brothers’ conversation in the next room, forgot the homemade lasagna steaming as his mom lifted it from the oven.
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What on earth had Phoebe been trying to sell him? That she didn’t like sex? That she wasn’t a sexual being? That she was just into compassion? Was he supposed to just nod his head and say, oh, sure, horses fly?
Memories kept swirling back. Except for mouth-to-mouth kisses, he’d barely touched her in any intimate way…yet he felt as if he had. And even though he’d been stark naked, she’d only physically touched him above the neck—yet she seemed to touch every emotional chord and hormone he’d ever owned.
So.
He’d already figured out that she was a frightening woman. Unsettling. Unnerving. Unfathomable.
But unsexy?
How could Phoebe conceivably believe that about herself? Why would she want to?
“Fergus, would you pay attention,” his mother said irritably.
Fox mentally jerked himself awake, but still knew that this was a precise measure of what a mess that woman had made of him. His mother was right here, carrying her world-famous lasagna, and yet all he could think about was sex and Phoebe.
Thatwas power.
No wonder he was scared of her.
“I was listening,” he assured his mother. His brothers loped into the kitchen, undoubtedly driven by the same addictive smell of the gourmet dish.
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