“And you take mine.”
“We’re going to catch our death.”
“I know. We need to go in—”
“And we will. But I just have to tell you…” He shook his head, still smiling, still looking at her with midnight-dark, loving eyes. “You’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever known. You’re my dream.”
Her smile died. She froze completely—inside and out.
Nine
Fox turned the corner. Just ahead was Lockwood’s restaurant, lit up brighter than the Taj Mahal. His brother Moose had never done anything halfway. You couldn’t get in the restaurant door without a tie. A kid in tux parked the cars. Even on a cool spring night like this, the outside garden was decked out with teensy lights and a golden fountain. Hell, the cheapest thing on the menu was $50 a plate.
Fox parked behind the building, next to his brother’s BMW. Thankfully there were back stairs, so he could sneak up to Moose’s place without being seen. He was wearing old, battered jeans and a USC
sweatshirt from his college years—which was held together by threads.
He hadn’t played poker in over a year, and wouldn’t be now if Phoebe hadn’t put the idea of a night out in his brother’s head. Fox had to unearth his “lucky” clothes from the depths of his closet.
And he needed some luck, he thought as he clomped up the private back stairs. Not for poker. But with Phoebe.
He thought they’d turned a milestone the other night. Making love—my God, who could deny how powerfully they came together, who they became together? Even for a man who’d never wanted love, who didn’t believe he was in a position to offer love—or a life—Phoebe was forcing him to rethink everything.
If he couldn’t live without her, he obviously had to find a way to kick himself in the butt, completely heal and start a real life again.
It would seem he couldn’t live without her.
It would also seem that he couldn’t possibly live without making love to her—preferably every night, Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
possibly more often, for the rest of their natural lives.
Only, she’d freaked after. He mentally replayed those moments after they’d made love. Yeah, he’d told her she was the sexiest woman alive. That didn’t seem like an insult, did it? I mean, for damn sure, he should have said she was the most beautiful, the most brilliant, the most wonderful woman in the world before he got to the sexy adjective. But God knew, he meant the compliment with love. He meant it with honesty. And he could have sworn Phoebe didn’t need flowery packaging to tell her something straight from his heart.
Besides, he’d known she had a little thing about thinking of herself as unsexy. But that was the point.
Why he’d said it. Why he’d wanted to compliment her that way. Guys prayed to find a lover who was honestly, uninhibitedly hot for them, someone who fired up for the same things he fired up for. Yet no male with a brain really thought he’d ever find that. You worked at sex just like you worked on everything else.
Except with Phoebe. She was more than his dream. Every time they touched, she felt like his missing half. He’d reached heights with her he hadn’t known existed…and as far as he could tell, she had, too.
Yet he’d made that comment, and suddenly she’d run inside on the excuse of their needing to warm up.
Then she’d insisted his session time was up. He’d said, what the hell did that matter. She’d said, “Fergus, I thought you were only going to be here for two hours. I’ve got a baby scheduled to come over tonight.
It’s not as if I knew we were going to make love.”
And that was the crux of the crisis. Not what she’d said. But that she’d called him Fergus instead of Fox.
She might as well have punched him in the stomach.
When he reached the top of the stairs at Moose’s place, he knocked once, then freely opened the door.
“It’s just me,” he called out.
But he still couldn’t get his mind off Phoebe. He loved his brother, even loved to play poker, once upon a time. Just not tonight. He needed time alone. It wasn’t just that he was all riled up about Phoebe, but that he needed concentrated time to think about life. A job. The serious decisions looming imminently in his future.
Still, again his mind sneaked back to Phoebe with another itchy problem. He never had gotten an answer about what happened with her ex-fiancé. That had to be a major key, he figured, because hell, if it wasn’t a major key, he was in major trouble. She’d only committed to helping him for a month, and that month was up in a matter of days.
He knew, as sure as he knew he was allergic to clams, that once that month was over, she was out of there unless he found some way to stop her in her tracks.
“Moose? Where the hell are you?” he called out.
He assumed the poker table would be set up in the den. It always had been. But the den was as quiet as the kitchen, where Fox automatically opened the fridge and pulled out a beer.
The whole upstairs apartment was bigger than it looked, and Moose wasn’t one to deprive himself of creature comforts. The kitchen looked like an audition for appliance heaven, and the living room was fancied-up with a home theater, set-in bar, recessed lighting and a lit-up aquarium with exotic fish.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
“Moose? Am I really the first one here?”
Past the leather and sleek technology center were a pair of bedrooms and baths, one on either side of the hall, and then came a long narrow sun room that Moose had always used for an office. Now, though, Fox saw the gaming table as he crossed the threshold. He opened his mouth to offer a greeting and instead closed it faster than a gulping fish.
Moose jerked
