The Awakening of Dr. Brown

skin. She shivered, nerve endings prickling as if a thousand Fourth of July sparklers had exploded at once inside her. A soft moan came from her throat, a sound she’d never heard herself make before. His gentleness was exquisite torture…both delicious and intolerable. She was torn between sensual ecstacy, wanting to roll and wallow in it like a cat in a puddle of sunshine, and a passion so urgent and intense she felt almost angry-and much more tiger than pussycat. She wanted to rake at his clothes and hurl herself against him, feel his weight bearing her down, crushing the breath from her; she wanted to encircle his body with her legs and feel his heat and strength deep inside her.

Her moan became a growl. She rocked against him, passion making her movements jerky and graceless as her hands clutched first at his shoulders, then pushed upward, fingers driving through the dense thicket of his hair. She turned her head, not to give him access to her neck, now, but to deny it, instead frantically seeking…no, demanding. Her heart gave another leap, this one of joy. Her body sang, her whole being danced when she felt his chest harden against her breasts, when his muscles tightened beneath her belly and thighs. When his hands swept down to grasp her buttocks and his mouth came, at last, to cover hers.

Seduce? This man? How foolish she felt now to ever have imagined that she could- like reaching with supreme confidence to pet a kitten and instead finding herself holding on for dear life to a tiger’s tail. She felt scared to death, exhilarated, out of control, and with no idea in the world how to let go. For Phoenix- the Phoenix she knew-it should have been a terrifying, completely intolerable place to be, and it was. Oh, it was. And at the same time, she never wanted to leave. She ricocheted between helpless wanting and total panic, her heart knocking in syncopated rhythms. So much feeling. Too much. She wasn’t used to it. Had spent a lifetime insulating herself against it…hiding from it behind various disguises. Her responses felt raw and trembly, like parts of the body that haven’t been used in a long, long time.

As if he understood that-the physician always-he withdrew from the kiss gently, holding her against him for a few moments longer and pressing short fervent kisses into her hair, almost as if in apology. She drew back from him, some sort of light remark balanced on her lips. And as the thunder of her own heartbeat receded, she heard it, too, and understood the reason for the apology. The telephone was ringing.

“I’d better take this,” he murmured, his eyes calmly searching hers. “It rings in downstairs. There’s only a few people they put through up here.”

She nodded and shifted to one side, a hand going casually to the tabletop to help steady her. She wondered if he’d noticed she was trembling. Of course he had. She hoped not.

His hands slipped from her waist to her arms…rubbed lightly over her goose bumps, igniting fresh shivers. He kissed her once more, softly, on the lips, then left her. She watched him walk out of the kitchen without a trace of a wobble in his step, but it was several minutes before she trusted her own legs enough to follow.

In the living room, Ethan located the cordless phone amongst the clutter of food containers on the coffee table and cleared his throat in an experimental sort of way before he punched the on button. “This is Dr. Brown.”

“Hey, Ethan-honey…”

A smile spread across his face as he answered in the Texas style, “Hey, Dixie, how’re you?”

“Didn’t mean to call so late-I just never can remember which nights you’re home. Anyway, I won’t keep you long, and I know you can’t talk-Tom said you had company…?” He heard the eager curiosity in his stepmother’s voice, though he knew she respected his privacy too much to ask outright.

“That’s right,” he said in a neutral voice, watching Phoenix as she came toward him, not with her patented Phoenix stride, but tentatively, as if she wasn’t certain of her welcome or her place.

It came to him suddenly that it must be he who had robbed her of her customary self-confidence and presence, and he knew a shameful moment of pure masculine elation at the thought that he could have that kind of power over such a woman. But that feeling was followed quickly by a sense of sorrow and loss that surprised him. Because he suddenly knew that, whatever it was he was trying to accomplish with this woman, whatever it was he wanted from her, changing her in any fundamental way was not part of it.

“I thought you’d want to know what we found out-about that information you wanted?”

“Yeah, right.”

“Well, I have to tell you, so far there isn’t much. There isn’t any history on Phoenix at all prior to when she was about fourteen. We have a date of birth, but no place, no family, no nothing.”

“What about the other one?” Ethan’s eyes were following Phoenix’s movements as she poked in a desultory way among the cartons of Chinese food, selected a sweet and sour shrimp-one of his selections-and put it in her mouth.

“Joanna Dunn? I’m still workin’ on that.” He heard the sigh of exhaled breath. “It would help a lot if you could narrow it down some, sugar. This is a great big ol’ country.”

“How about here?” he said without inflection. Phoenix had wandered over to the stereo and was squatting beside the toppled stack of CDs, slowly putting them to rights, stopping to read a label now and then.

“Here…? Oh-you mean where you… Well, sure. Okay, that’ll help. Give me a couple days-I’ve got some things on my calendar, and I have to tell you, I am not lookin’ forward to entertainin’ the Japanese prime minister and his wife. They make me go through these trainin’ sessions to make sure I get all the protocol right, but it never seems to help, I’m still bowin’ when I’m supposed to be smilin’, know what I mean?”

“Dixie, you’ll do fine,” Ethan said, laughing. They both knew there wasn’t a soul on the planet who didn’t love the First Lady, in spite of-perhaps because of-her breezy Texas ways.

“Well, let’s hope so. Anyway, I’ll get back to you if I find out anything, okay?”

“Thanks, Dixie. Very much.” He paused. “Is…Dad there?”

“’Fraid not-he’s downstairs goin’ over his ‘remarks’ for the prime minister.” There was regret in his stepmother’s voice.

“Well, tell him I said hello. And that everything’s fine.”

“I sure will.” There was a pause, and then, “You’d tell us if it wasn’t, right?”

“Of course,” he murmured, and wondered if it was true. He could tell by his stepmother’s exhalation that she wondered, too.

“Well, okay, sugar, I’ll say bye-bye then. You have fun, and take care now.”

“I will, Dixie.”

“Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Phoenix didn’t look up when he placed the phone back on the coffee table. She’d put a CD on the stereo, the volume turned so low he couldn’t tell which one it was until he walked over to stand behind her, close enough to touch her but not doing so.

“The Parish Family-good choice,” he murmured, faintly surprised. His eyes had begun to follow the path of the braid he’d woven into her hair…thick and loose between her shoulder blades…tapering to the knot she’d tied, bumping now against the place a bra strap would cross if she’d been wearing one…the loose end curling slightly as it brushed the strip of tiger print material at her waist. He thought how close he’d been just a few minutes ago to loosing that knot…unraveling his own handiwork and filling his hands with the vibrant mass…his nostrils with the scent of it. He still could. The knowledge made his stomach churn.

She threw him a look, a sardonic little smile, over her shoulder. “Dinner interruptus?”

His laughter felt uncomfortable and no doubt sounded as false as he felt. “There seems to be plenty of food. Would you care to join me?”

She shook her head and looked away, the corners of her mouth pinching with the strain of maintaining the smile. “I seem to have lost my appetite.” Along with the moment, she thought. Because she’d seen by the quietness in his eyes that they weren’t going to be picking up where they’d left off in the kitchen. Obviously, the doc had come to his senses, and she was damned if she’d be the one to bring it up. Desire was one thing; pride was another. Phoenix did not beg.

She snatched at a breath as she moved away from him, like a diver coming up for air. “It’s getting late. Maybe we’d better see if Mr. Tall Dark and Dangerous down there has worked out those logistics yet.”

“Sure.” She watched him retrieve the cordless phone from the coffee table mess and press a single button. He mumbled into the phone for a few moments, then punched the button and put the phone back among the cartons. He looked at her and said in a neutral voice, “Any time you’re ready.”

She lifted her hands and shoulders together-an elaborate “couldn’t care less” gesture. “I’m ready.”