Fergus was clearly so safe that her defenses dropped faster than a drawbridge for a castle. He wasn’t going to hurt her. Or care about her. Those were absolute “for sures.”
Aw, man.
Just one look made her heart fill up with blade-deep compassion.
She’d assumed he’d be good-looking because Bear and Moose were such studs. Instead, he was Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
longer than Lincoln and scrawny. Dark eyes were deeply set in a sharp boned face with a slash of a mouth and a square jaw. He had his brothers’ barn-beam shoulders, but his jeans and shirt hung on him.
His brothers both had charm in their smiles, creases in their cheeks from laugh lines. Fergus, damn him, had so much pain in his eyes that Phoebe had to suck in a breath.
She only had that brief moment to study him—and to realize that her two fluff balls were curled on his chest—before he spotted her in the doorway.
He didn’t acknowledge her. He just said, “Bear. Moose. Get her out of here.”
He didn’t yell it. His voice wasn’t remotely rude. It was just dead cold and exhausted. Both brothers emerged from the kitchen fast and barreled in. “Take it easy, Fox. We were just getting some drinks from the kitchen. We just wanted to have a talk—”
Maybe Fergus was the youngest of the three—and for damn sure, the weakest—yet somehow he came across as the family CEO. “Forget it. I don’t know what you two thought you were setting up, but it’s not going to happen. All of you, just get out of here. Leave me alone.”
Phoebe found it fascinating, watching the two big, brawny guys try to bully their prostrate brother. That flower just wasn’t gonna bloom. Who’d have guessed the skinny, surly, mean-eyed Fox could express authority, much less win, against the powerful good guys?
But that wasn’t the reason her heart was suddenly pounding like a manic drum.
Phoebe took another quiet step closer. The longer she studied him, the more she realized that he’d never actually looked at her. Or his brothers. She doubted he was seeing much of anything. His eyes were smudged with weariness, and his skin wasn’t just gray because of the dim light. He was shocky from pain. Even trying to speak in that dead-quiet whisper seemed to sharpen the fierce, dark light in his eyes.
Worse than that, she saw one of his hands on Mop. They knew. Both her mutts always knew which humans to avoid and which humans needed attention from them. They were hell on wheels and nonstop nuisances, but they somehow responded instinctively to people in pain.
Now she understood why the place was so dungeon dark. Light undoubtedly made the hurt worse.
Phoebe told herself that her pulse was rushing hard for the obvious reason. She cared. She could no more stop herself from responding to someone suffering than she could stop breathing. It wasn’t a response to him as aman. She didn’t have to worry about that, she was positive. But just as positively, she could no more walk out on a human in pain than she could quit breathing.
She started by pushing between the two brothers. “You two, head outside for a few minutes, okay? Let me talk to Fergus alone. Mop. Duster. Lay down, girls.”
The dogs immediately obeyed her, but the boys weren’t quite so easy to order around.
Harry—Moose—looked uncertainly at Bear. “Maybe we were wrong,” he said unhappily. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to completely leave you alone with—”
“It’s all right,” she assured him, as she herded them both toward the door.
Of course, it wasn’t quite that easy. The brothers warily agreed to leave her alone for a short stretch with Fergus, but the instant the back door closed, the house was suddenly silent as sin. A goofy little Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
shiver chased up her spine—until she returned to the living room.
From the doorway she caught the gleam of Fergus’s broody, angry eyes and almost immediately relaxed.
Phoebe was only a coward about one thing.
This wasn’t it.
Nice guys she had to worry about. But a tortured, mean-tempered crabby pistol like Fergus, she could handle in her sleep. The poor guy just didn’t realize who his brothers had brought home to dinner.
Two
“Fergus…my name is Phoebe Schneider. Your brothers asked me to come here.”
He heard the voice and he saw her as a shadow, but it was like trying to process information through a fog. Trying to focus hurt. Trying to talk hurt. Hell, trying to breathe seemed to set off new knives in his temples. “I don’t care who you are. Just goaway. ”
There seemed to be a dog—or two—on his chest. A wet nose had snuffled under his palm. It was odd, but he didn’t mind. Maybe it was the surprise of feeling the pups’ warmth, their thick scruffy fur under his fingers. But then the woman quietly ordered them to the ground, and they immediately obeyed her.
“Honestly, I’d love to take off, Fergus. I never wanted to come here to begin with. This is crazy, right?
Why would you want a stranger around when you don’t feel well? But your brothers are rock-headed bullies. They got it in their minds that I can help you, and they’re just going to badger both of us unless I at leasttry. ”
The headaches always seemed to come with memory flashes. The little boy with the dark hair and beautiful, big, sad eyes. Shyly coming up to him. Taking the candy bar. Then…the explosion.
Over and over the headaches repeated the same pattern, the explosion in his memory echoing the explosions of pain. Sometimes, like now, he literally saw stars. Ironically they were downright beautiful, a dazzling aura of lightning-silver lights that would have been mesmerizing if a sledgehammer hadn’t been pounding in his temples. And, yeah, he heard the woman talking. Her voice was velvet low, sexy soft, soothing. Most of
