Something inside her froze for the oddest second. It was as if her heart understood she had a choice.
One choice. Right then. A choice, a chance, that would disappear if she didn’t take it.
Fox turned away again. Flanked by the dogs, who seemed to think he desperately wanted their company constantly, he started stacking spare parts, gathering trash, putting away tools. The whole time he kept up a conversation. “Now, you’re used to using oils in your work, right? You can’t in this. You’ll need your clients to take a ‘clean’ shower to get the oils off before they soak in the waterfall tub, or it’ll be too slippery.”
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“I hear you,” she said, as she pulled off her shirt. Fox didn’t glance back, just kept working.
“And then, I’ve been thinking about a way you could rig up a sling for babies. I assume that’s part of what you want to do, right? Use it for the little ones?”
“I had in mind using it for all ages. But when I’m working with babies, part of my idea was having their moms in there with them. So both of them could relax at the same time,” she said, as she peeled off her jeans and socks.
“Yeah, I figured that. So this sling idea…it’d be like a little hammock. Soft. But water flowing in and around it. Obviously you wouldn’t leave a baby alone in it, but it would be a way for a small child to feel the flow of water without it overwhelming him.” A couple of hammers and crowbars made a heck of a racket when he piled them in one long metal container.
Slowly, her stomach starting to curl, she unsnapped her navy lace bra and let it fall. Then walked barefoot into the new waterfall tub and turned on the faucets. “That sounds ideal for the babies,” she said. She stood there, not getting wet yet, just lifted her hand to the spray until she had the water temperature nice and warm.
She wasn’t completely naked yet. She was still wearing her favorite thong—the navy satin one, with the red, white and blue flag in the triangle. They weren’t the underpants of a shy, retiring girl. They weren’t underwear for a woman who wasn’t inherently in-your-face sexy. Which, of course, was why Phoebe had always worn the kind of clothing where no one could see them.
“Okay…well, while you’re letting the pool fill up, I’m going to start making a bunch of trips out to the truck. It’s going to take me quite a—” He turned around. Saw her.
Dropped a crowbar. Then a hammer.
While he was speechless, which she suspected wouldn’t last long, she stepped under the waterfall spray.
“You got the water pressure perfect,” she called out.
He dropped the whole damn toolbox.
She lifted her face to the pelting spray, feeling the water gush and rush and slink down her face, her throat, her body. Her hair went from a tidily brushed mass into a heavy, thick, water-soaked rope in seconds. She closed her eyes, trying not to feel how hard her pulse was thudding, her badly her tummy was twisting, how scared she was.
When it came down to it…this was how she used to feel when she was younger. About herself. About life. It would never have occurred to her that it wasn’t a joyful thing to enjoy the feel and the smell of fresh warm water on her bare skin, to love the explosion of her senses. To want to be this free—for a lover. With a lover. Open. Open in her heart, open in her mind, open to wherever the senses could take them both.
It had been gone—that freedom, that feeling—for a while now. And it wasn’t totally back. Phoebe wasn’t positive she’d ever totally get it back…but she knew, positively, that’s how she wanted to be for Fox. With Fox. With the man she loved.
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water out of her eyes, she almost jumped to the ceiling…because there was Fox.
Right there. His eyes inches from her eyes. His mouth inches from her mouth. He was still wearing all his clothes, except for his boots. His work socks already looked heavier than cement, and the rest of his work clothes were molding to his body faster than glue.
“Most of us,” she said tactfully, “remove our clothes before taking a shower.”
“Don’t you mess with me, red.”
She sobered, softened. “I’m not messing with you.”
“This is a pretty brazen, bawdy thing for you to do. Stripping in front of me. Getting naked in front of me.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said regretfully.
“You could give a guy ideas. Bad ideas. Ideas like…that you know how delectably beautiful that body of yours is. Like…that you want me to notice how delectably beautiful that body of yours is—”
“Fox?”
“What?”
“This is what you’re going to be stuck with. A brazen, bawdy woman. Who likes to get naked. For her lover. Only for her lover. No one else.”
“Oh, I hope so,” he whispered, and then leaned down and took her mouth. It was a kiss that started out hard and firm and just got more tenacious. The pelting warm water couldn’t compete with this steam.
Her Fox, her crazy wonderful Fox, seemed to forget that he was standing there in all his clothes. He framed her face in his hands and kissed her and kept on kissing her, closed-eye kisses, tongue kisses, silver kisses, come-on kisses, claiming kisses.
She was still feeling nervous and worried. But maybe not quite as worried and nervous as she started out, because a competitive streak seemed to kick in.
She could do kisses.
In fact, she could do downright fabulous kisses. For the right man. And Fox was so totally the right man.
She made him suffer through an intensive repertoire. She tried whisper-soft kisses and ardent, take-me kisses. Wooing kisses and shy, silky kisses. Kisses involving tongues and teeth, and kisses that barely touched, only hinted at what the future might hold. Could hold. If he was a very, very good boy.
“Phoebe?” he gasped in a breath.
She took the chance to gasp in some air, too. “What?”
“We’re drowning.”
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“That’s not the serious problem, Fox. You want to know the serious problem?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“You have all your clothes on. And that really is a problem that needs fixing immediately.”
“I’ll help,” he assured her, and there was a grin. A dark, intimate, wicked, pure, guy grin. The memory burst in her mind of how she’d first seen Fergus…so low, so sad, so unreachably angry and lost. It wasn’t her fault that that grin inspired her to huge, vast heights of risk. Getting wet clothes off a guy was no easy task…but she was up for it.
He was also definitely up for it, in every sense—particularly as she followed each loosened button with a kiss everywhere and anywhere she discovered bare skin. By the time she’d battled four shirt buttons, he was ripping off his belt, trying to tear off his jeans.
By then, the water in the pool had filled to knee height. Unfortunately, everything suddenly went kaflooey. His jeans were too soggy, too stuck to him, to pull off the rest of the way. He tried. She tried.
They bumped heads and staggered back, and both ended up sitting in the water with the waterfall exuberantly splashing water on both of them, and Fox, laughing, roared out, “Damnation. I needhelp! ”
“You think I’m not trying?” She’d started helplessly laughing, too, and between his sitting and bracing and her pulling, they managed to win the war with his pants.
“You’re not supposed to havefun when you’re this desperate,” he grumped.
But his laughing and grumping was what sealed his fate, she thought. And hers. Because the more they battled his pants, the more they laughed, the more they loved…the more she knew it was going to be all right with Fox. To be herself. Always. That this was the one man she could be with.
Fear melted away,
not all at once, but in flashes of searing sensation…like when his teeth scraped the hollow of her shoulder. Like when his hands slid down her ribs, around her spine, onto her fanny, where he clenched his hands and drew her tight and hard against him. When she reached back to turn off the water—before the pool overflowed all over kingdom come—he could barely seem to give her that spare second before he reached for her again, too impatient and hungry to wait.
“I love you, red. Not just want you. Ilove you. Now. Tomorrow.”
“And I love you back,” she said fiercely.
“I meanlove. And you can take it to the bank, we’re going to love the sex. It’s going to be hot and wild and inventive for a long time.”
“You think?”
“I think. Because I trust you.” He lifted his head for just that moment, so she could see his eyes. So he could see hers.
And then he sank inside her, wrapping her legs tightly around his waist. Sunlight blazed through the skylight, shining gold on his shoulders, on his forehead. The water glistened on his skin like magic crystals. Night would have offered more concealment, more privacy, but this, Phoebe thought—sheknew
—was how she wanted to be with him. Naked, physically and emotionally. Her soul as bared as his.
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Her risks as great as his.
“Take me,” she whispered. “Higher. Hotter. Every which way, my love.”
“No,” he whispered. “You take me. All the way.”
Needs spiraled the more she clung to him. Tension built the more he teased and stroked. She twisted in the water, claiming him. He swirled her beneath him, claiming her. The doorbell rang. The dogs barked.
Her cell phone beeped. He sank under the water once, stealing a kiss that way…but by then their playfulness had turned serious. Heart serious. Future serious.
For so long, Phoebe had felt unsure of herself. Not as a person. Not as a worker. But as a woman.
Fox didn’t give her that confidence back. But for him, she found that steel-strong well inside of the woman she wanted to be. The woman she could be. With a man who challenged her to reach for it all.
When it was over, he sank back against the tile, gasping, pulling her with him, both semi-floating in the warm water until they caught their breath. His cheek nuzzled her cheek. “Are you going to kill me if I tell you you’re the most beautiful woman alive?”
“No.”
“What if I told you you’re the brightest, the most creative, the most generous and wonderful woman in the universe?”
“I guess I’ll survive if you told me that, too.” She sighed, knowing where his teasing was leading up to, because she knew him so well. “Go ahead. It’s okay. You can say it.”
“I don’t want to tick you off. Especially right before I discuss something serious with you.”
“You won’t tick me off.”
And out it came. “You’re the sexiest woman in the galaxy, red. You’re my dream of a mate. You make me proud to be a man, because of how you respond to me. With me.”
“All right,” she said warningly. “Now you’ve done it—”
When she reached for him, determined to mete out the punishment he deserved—and earned—he stopped her. “Wait,wait. I really do need to ask you something serious first. And before that, there’s something I have to see.”
“What?”
He insisted they get out of the water, and then he chased her upstairs. His excuse was that they were both more wrinkled than prunes and needed to get out of the water, but she figured out pretty quickly that he’d built up a humorous curiosity about her bedroom.
In the upstairs bathroom, they toweled off and then sprinted for her bed, diving under her down comforter until they warmed up again. Then he leaned back against the pillows, pulling her onto his chest, while he looked around.
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“That’s what I couldn’t wait to find out. What color your bedroom would be, because of all the colors you used downstairs.” He shook his head in surprise.
“I didn’t have a lot of money to decorate when I moved here. And what money I did have, I needed to use on the downstairs where clients could see—”
“And that’s why you chose white up here?”
She looked around at the familiar furnishings—the down comforter and rug, the painted dresser and giant wicker rocker and antique bench. “I didn’t want virgin white,” she said honestly. “Or bridal white.
But when I came here, I kind of wanted blank-slate white. Because that’s what I was trying to do when I moved here. Start over. Figure out who I was all over again. Start with a blank slate, if I could.”
He scooched down, so they were face-to-face on the same pillow. “Would you consider putting a marriage date down on that slate, red?”
Her heart stopped, then came damn close to bursting.
“Don’t say no,” he insisted. “Hear me out. I want to build that home for us. For us—and for any kids we might want to add along the way. I know I’m unemployed and don’t look like such a great bet right now.
But I’ve got a good slug of savings put away. And I’ll start some real-work teaching next fall.”
Damn the man, but if he didn’t force her to kiss him again. Softly. On the temple and cheek and chin.
She had to kiss him. Softly. On the temple and cheek. “I’m glad,” she whispered.
“You knew I’d go back to teaching.”
“I know you adore kids. But I didn’t know if you’d realized you were healing.”
“I wasn’t. Until I met you. You healed me, Phoebe. But it scared the hell out of me when I realized you were hurting, too. And I had no idea how to be the healer for you.”
“Fox.”
“What?”
“Love’s what heals.” Since she’d kissed his one cheek, she had to kiss the other. Beneath the covers, he was starting to perk up again. Oh, this man was going to be trouble for a long, long time. “Love’s what’s always going to heal,” she whispered.
“Does that mean—”
“It means, yes, I love you. From my heart. With my heart.”
“And does it mean—”
“Yes. Yes. Yes.”
He stopped asking questions. That seemed to cover it all.
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COMING NEXT MONTH
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Come back every two weeks for newly released selections in eight varied categories offering stories that appeal to every taste and mood.
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Showcase
Enthralling stories by the brightest stars in women’s fiction—from MIRA Books, and big romances that sweep you away—from HQN Books
KILLER TAKES ALL by Erica Spindler, MIRA (psychological thriller) BEFORE SUNRISE by Diana Palmer (contemporary romance) DARK SKY by Carla Neggers, MIRA (romantic suspense)
50 HARBOR STREET by Debbie Macomber, MIRA (women’s fiction) GHOST WALK by Heather Graham, MIRA (paranormal mystery) Sexy Reads
Powerful, provocative tales full of heat and passion—from Harlequin Blaze, Silhouette Desire and Harlequin Presents
THE ITALIAN’S STOLEN BRIDE by Emma Darcy, Harlequin Presents UNCONTROLLABLE by Susan Kearney, Harlequin Blaze
WHATEVER RILEY WANTS by Maureen Child, Silhouette Desire SEXY ALL OVER by Jamie Sobrato, Harlequin Blaze
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HOT TO THE TOUCH by Jennifer Greene, Silhouette Desire TALKING ABOUT SEX…by Vicki Lewis Thompson, Harlequin Blaze Romantic Suspense
Danger…romance…adventure…suspense! Stories that will take your breath away—from Harlequin Intrigue and Silhouette Intimate Mo
ments
MAN OF HER DREAMS by Debra Webb, Harlequin Intrigue
LOVING THE LONE WOLF by Ingrid Weaver, Silhouette Intimate Moments GHOST HORSE by Patricia Rosemoor, Harlequin Intrigue SUSPICIOUS by Heather Graham, Silhouette Intimate Moments RIDER ON FIRE by Sharon Sala, Silhouette Intimate Moments Inspirational
Stories of faith, hope and love that warm the heart and nourish the soul—from Steeple Hill Love Inspired and compelling suspense—from Love Inspired Suspense LOVING FEELINGS by Gail Gaymer Martin, Steeple Hill Love Inspired FOR THE TWINS’ SAKE by Jillian Hart, Steeple Hill Love Inspired NOTE OF PERIL by Hannah Alexander, Steeple Hill Love Inspired Suspense UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS by Elizabeth White, Steeple Hill Love Inspired Suspense BLACK HILLS BRIDE by Deb Kastner, Steeple Hill Love Inspired WINDINGO TWILIGHT by Colleen Rhoads, Steeple Hill Love Inspired Suspense MILLION DOLLAR DILEMMA by Judy Baer, Steeple Hill Café STORM CLOUDS by Cheryl Wolverton, Steeple Hill Love Inspired Suspense Women’s Fiction
Books that celebrate the “next” stage of women’s lives…because every life has a second chapter! From Harlequin Next
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THERE’S ALWAYS PLAN B by Susan Mallery, Harlequin Next RIGGS PARK by Ellyn Bache, Harlequin, Next
CUTTING THROUGH by Joan Hohl, Harlequin Next
THE ME I USED TO BE by Jennifer Archer, Harlequin Next Women’s Action Adventure
Strong, sexy, savvy heroines who save the day…and always get their man. From Silhouette Bombshell ONCE A THIEF by Michele Hauf, Silhouette Bombshell
HOT PURSUIT by Kathryn Jensen, Silhouette Bombshell
DEVIL’S BARGAIN by Rachel Caine, Silhouette Bombshell THE GOLDEN GIRL by Erica Orloff, Silhouette Bombshell Chick Lit
Women’s fiction with attitude, these humorous, edgy, hip stories celebrate life’s little curves…From Red Dress Ink
WITH OR WITHOUT YOU by Carole Matthews, Red Dress Ink KILLER SUMMER by Lynda Curnyn, Red Dress Ink
DO THEY WEAR HIGH HEELS IN HEAVEN? By Erica Orloff, Red Dress Ink Fantasy/Science Fiction
Harlequin - Jennifer Greene Page 16
