itself from the line and took off.
Finally. “What were you going to say about Phoebe?” Fox demanded.
“Well…a couple weeks ago when her name first came up, I was just teasing about asking her out. But April and I quit even playing at making something happen between us. Not like we had a big thing going, anyway. The point, though, is that I really am thinking about asking Phoebe out now.”
“No.”
“No why?”
“No because.”
Bland-faced, Bear tried laying out a few of his dating credentials. “I make good money. Great money, in fact. Got good family genes, can offer a woman security, and I figure I’m pretty close to wanting to settle down. It’s been years since I had fun waking up with a hangover and a new woman. Just no interest in catting around anymore. I’d like a couple of rug rats. A woman I could talk to, be with every night—”
“And that’s fine, just fine. You’re getting really old,” Fox assured him. “You need to settle down. But not with Phoebe.”
“Ah. I get it now.”
“You getwhat now?”
“Moose knows it, too,” Bear said smugly. “That you’ve got a thing for her. We just weren’t sure how serious it was.”
“I don’t—can’t—have a thing for anyone. You think I’d ask a woman out when I don’t even have a job? Don’t have a clue what I’ll be doing even next month?”
“Okay, so right this exact minute you’re not on track yet,” Bear agreed. “But you only had two of those hellion headaches last week.”
And one, Fox thought, that he’d actually dented with that ridiculous exercise of hers—not that he could admit that in public. Even to a brother.
“What I was trying to say,” Bear went on, “is that you finally seem to be headed uphill, Fox. You’re not completely well yet, but you’re definitely on an uphill road. So…”
“So?”
“So, I’ll tell you what. I may or may not ask Phoebe out. But I’ll wait until you’ve finished the whole month’s program that she created, okay? Until you’re better. And that really is the key.”
“Whatkey?” Sometimes following Bear’s conversations was like interpreting politics. You had to weed through the words to get to the meaning. Assuming there was one.
“The key,” Bear said patiently, “is that you need to get better. It’s the best offense and defense you have. That woman’s got you tied up in knots. When you get better, you’ll be strong enough to untie the Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
knots, to figure what you really want out of the situation.”
Fox opened his mouth, closed it. He wanted to argue furiously that neither Phoebe nor any other woman had him tied up in knots or ever would, but there wouldn’t be much point in that. She did. Period.
But that didn’t mean Bear had everything right. Fox loved his brother, but Bear was almost always wrong, and this was no exception. He couldn’t possibly wait until he was stronger to fix the situation with Phoebe. Truth was, he doubted he could stand waiting even another minute.
A guy couldn’t just make love with a woman—not when the emotional connection had rocked his world inside and out. And then just go back to do those pansy “safe place” pain exercises as if he and Phoebe were nothing more than accidental business acquaintances.
He couldn’t let her get away with it. Healing him and loving him and giving 300 percent to him at every turn—and then taking zippo in return. The more Fox dwelled on it, the more he realized that he simply had to find out what was bugging her. Either that or risk losing what little mind he had left, because for damn sure, he couldn’t think of anythingbut her until they got this settled.
And after they got this all settled, then they’d make love again.
The more Fox thought about it, the more he figured he had a good plan coming together.
He was still feeling confident the next day, when he parked in her driveway and stepped out, carrying an impressive array of tools. The tools weren’t totally a disguise. She did, after all, have a waterfall that needed constructing. But as he lifted a fist to rap on her front door, he heard the unexpected sound of crying from somewhere in the house. A baby’s crying. And not a little mournful wail, but a full-scale, nonstop scream, as if someone were torturing an infant.
No one could be torturing an infant at Phoebe’s place—not if she were alive—so naturally he panicked.
Either there’d been an accident or some other crisis must have happened. So he pushed open the door, yelled out that he was here, and charged toward the sound of the crying.
He found Phoebe almost immediately, standing in the kitchen, stuffing some kind of long-stemmed, sweet-smelling, sissy purple flowers in a vase. She was barefoot—no surprise. Wearing a long jeans skirt, and a loose tee in bright red. Something bubbled in a pot on the stove—something with garlic and rosemary and some other unidentifiable saucy smell. It was the kind of mysterious sauce smell that could bring a man to his knees. Easily. Phoebe’s back was to him. She was humming softly, moving to an R&B
tune played low on the radio as she fixed her flowers and occasionally stirred the pot. The whole scene looked wonderful…except for the shrieking infant in the front pack strapped to her tummy.
She spun around when she sensed him in the doorway. “Well, hey you.” Her smile was bright and sexy…but not particularly personal. “Did I goof up the schedule? It’s just Wednesday, isn’t it? You’re not due until tomorrow, are you?”
The cheerful question slugged him straight in the gut. It was her reference to “the schedule.” How easily, this whole last week,
