She had him.
She knew she had him.
Something was hurting him. Bad. She knew it from his eyes, from the stiffness in his neck, from his surliness. He wasn’t going to turn down help, not when he was this miserable, no matter how much he wanted to.
“I’ve still got Christine right now.…” She patted the pink-blanketed baby again. “But if you’d head over to my place in a half hour or so, Fox, I’ll be ready. I was expecting to keep the baby all night, but I have a night sub, Ruby, so it’ll take me a few minutes to call her and set that up. After that…” She turned back to his family, not waiting for him to give her any more glares, grief or bologna. “You three can work out your schedules, how and when you can take Fox. But if it’s amenable to everybody, I’ll take him Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Thursday and Monday, late afternoon and evenings, all right?”
Bear and Moose heartily agreed, and a few minutes later they walked her out to the van, helping carry her stuff and approving all her ideas with exuberant thumps on the back. They treated her so easily as an honorary sister that Phoebe couldn’t help loving them. They were so easy to be with.
So was their mom.
It was just Fergus who made her uneasy.
Just Fergus who itched all her nerves—and hormones, too.
But she’d gained on the problem, she thought tonight. Coming over to his mom’s house to discuss the plan for Fergus’s recovery had been totally the right thing to do. Meeting his mom, being with his brothers, had helped her get a grip on her emotions, put the whole problem of Fergus in perspective. She needed to stick with a goal she could handle. Helping Fox heal. If she didn’t stray off that course, she couldn’t possibly get in trouble.
By the time she left she was humming up a storm. Bear and Moose kissed her cheek goodbye and left her with a chorus of “I love you, darlings” and “Take care of yourself” singing in her ears.
Fox was still scowling when his brothers came back in. He’d seen the guys walk her outside. Seen how their hands were all over her.
“I’m thinking about asking her out,” Bear admitted.
“Whoa. I thought you were tight with that teacher in town. Heidi. What’s-her-name.”
“Yeah, she’s nice. But there’s no real spark, you know? She’s as comfortable as chicken soup. Now, Phoebe, on the other hand—”
“If you don’t ask her out, I am,” Moose announced.
“Wait a minute.” Fox didn’t wonder why he was suffering from intense stress—and it had nothing to do with his injuries. Moose was the guy magnet in Gold River, had women climbing all over him—but those relationships never kept his attention more than a few months. Bear was the opposite. Bear was actually looking for a life mate. He’d done the wild oats, done the partying, was starting to look for someone to be with seriously. “Neither one of you is going to ask her out.”
“Why?” Both of them asked, and damned if his mother wasn’t peering over their shoulders, curious why they couldn’t, either.
“Because,” he said furiously.
They waited, gaping at him, but he’d said everything he had to say in that single word. And since his side was killing him, he felt completely justified in hightailing it out of there—after thanking his mother for dinner, of course.
He stumbled back to his place and started a shower, hid under the hot spray, hoping his side would Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
fix—it didn’t—hoping the hot water would splash some sense in his head. Which it did. Sort of. He climbed out, pulled on a fresh sweatshirt and jeans and headed out.
He wasn’t going to Phoebe’s becauseshe’d arranged the time, but because he needed to see her. Even if she was using witchcraft or ooga-booga and was a scary, scary woman, the reality still was that no one had fixed his headaches but her. There was nothing wrong with seeking her services.
The problem was that he needed to set up a fair payment schedule for her so they were totally on a business basis. And the other problem was…she bugged him.
In her driveway, Fox slammed the door of his RX 330. Damn woman. How could she possibly know enough about him to get under his skin? When it came down to it, what did she really know about him?
Nothing.
She was bossy. Domineering. Cute. Trouble by any man’s definition.
Why did it have to beher that made the pain go away? Five million drugs out there, why couldn’t one of them work? All the doctors and physical therapists and tests he’d been through and to—none of it had been worth spit. He’d stopped believing anything could help him.
He stomped up her gravel drive, scowling at her place. Even in the dimming light, he could see the whole place needed repair. The lawn was a weedfest. A shingle hung crooked from the roof—and if he could see one, there had to be more. And, yeah, he’d seen the inside of her house earlier.
The wild color scheme inside had taken him aback initially…until he’d studied it, figured out what she was doing. The colors were so striking and interesting that they drew the eye. You noticed the walls instead of what wasn’t there, such as furniture. Carpeting. All the stuff that people filled rooms with.
It wasn’t Fox’s problem if she was living on a financial shoestring, but hell, the whole damn world was greedy today, so why couldn’t she be? Instead she was feeding the neighborhood on Saturday mornings.
Donating her time weekends, and on nonpaying customers—like him.
That kind of generosity was a disgusting character
