He barged up to the front door, rapped hard enough to crack his knuckles and then waited. Hissing in air under his breath.
Only…then she opened the door. And there she was, fresh and barefoot, wearing something that looked like pajamas—kind of a pale green, made out of a fabric that made him think of a soft, snuggly rug. Her feet were bare, her hair looped up with some kind of wooden pin holding it together. There was no baby in sight or sound. Somewhere she’d switched a light on, but the light barely trailed as far as the entranceway, creating only enough illumination to make her skin look impossibly soft. Softer than moonshine. Softer than petals. Softer than silver. And then there was the other stuff. She was wearing colors and smells that soothed. Her bare mouth aroused him, so did those sassy-bright blue eyes.
Suddenly it was easy to remember that he was pissed off. He didn’t waste time on hello, just went straight for the punch. “This isn’t going to work.”
She didn’t waste time on hello, either. “Yeah it is. Or it can.”
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
He started to walk toward her massage room, but she said swiftly, “Wait, Fox, we’re going to the living room.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re not doing a massage. We’re going to do an exercise to help you work with pain. Where is the pain, by the way? It’s not a headache this time, is it.”
She didn’t phrase the comment like a question, which further ticked him off. Damn woman knew things about him that no one could know. “My side’s giving me a little trouble. The left side.Not something you can help with, and not why I’m here.” He aimed his trigger finger at her. “You used my family against me.”
“Yup.”
“That’s unethical. Mean. Underhanded.”
“It sure is,” she agreed. “Whatever works, huh?”
He wasn’t buying into that smile. Not this time. “Don’t do it again. If I’ve got a problem, I solve it. I don’t involve family or anyone else.”
“Well, of course you don’t, you’re a grown man. But in this case, your family’s pretty frantically worried about you. So now we’ve given them something todo. That may not help you, but it sure helpedthem.
Think about it, Fox. I’ll bet the bank they’ll let up on the heavy-handed caring if they have a constructive way to feel they’re helping you.”
He thought about that and then scowled. “If you say one more wise thing, I may just put a fist through a wall. There’snothing more annoying than a woman who’s always right.”
“Got it. Heard it before. Let’s move along.” She motioned to the fluffy rug on the living room floor.
“What I want you to do is sit down—any way you want, cross-legged, with a pillow, lying down, whatever’s the most comfortable for you.”
He sat. Both her pooches beelined for him the instant he crossed his legs. He’d have scooped them onto his lap if she hadn’t crooned, “Mop. Duster. Lie down.”
She knelt down across from him—which gave him a binocular shot of the round swell of her breasts, the dip of white skin at her throat. Although her sweater was bulky, itwas loose at the neck. He wondered if she really believed the cumbersome fabric concealed anything. He also wondered if she ever wore shoes, and how in God’s name she’d found a pistachio color to paint her toenails. Her toes were damn near as cute as her—
“Fox,” she repeated sternly.
“Pardon? I didn’t hear you.” He heard the courteous hint of apology in his voice and damned his mother for raising him to be polite to women. “Phoebe, I really didn’t come here for any damn fool exercises. I came here to argue about—”
“I understand. You don’t like me. You don’t want to be here. You’re ticked off that I’ve been able to work with your pain so far, when you’d rather not be asking help from anyone.” She said all that Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
smoothly and swiftly, as if to get it out of the way—and as if the damned woman had been reading his mind. “We can fight about all that later, though, can’t we? Let’s just get this exercise out of the way first.
Then you can take all the time you want to rip me up one side and down the other. Take my hands, Fox.”
Heknew she wasn’t coming onto him. There was absolutely nothing about her attitude or dress or expression that let on she even remembered the heat of those kisses a few days ago. But for an instant…Fergus mentally corrected himself. It wasn’t even aninstant. Maybe it was a milli-instant. Or a micromilli-instant. But for that micromillisecond of an instant, when she said “take my hands,” the image whooshed through his mind of the taste of her mouth.
Of his touching her again.
Of her coming apart for him again.
Of him forgetting the whole damn world with her again.
Naturally that micromillifantasy was absurd and he immediately squelched it…only, it was already too late. The redheaded witch had done it to him again. Forced him to take her hands, forced him to close his eyes, and the next thing she knew, Charlie was stiff as a poker, and Phoebe was forcing him to do ludicrous things.
“Now, Fox…don’t talk…don’t think. I only want you to do one thing. Imagine. Put a picture in your mind…of the safest place you can possibly imagine. It’s a place where nothing can hurt you. Where no one can hurt you. Where you have absolutely no fear of anything.”
“Phoebe, I—”
“No. Don’t talk. You can in a little bit, but right now—just for a couple minutes—I want you to do this with me. Concentrate. Concentrate with everything you are, on imagining a safe place in your mind.” She waited. “Can you invent someplace like that? Imagine it? A place where you know you’d feel completely safe?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Now keep that picture in your mind and explore it. Look up. Look down.
