Hot to the Touch Read online

  Again the mutts offered no input. They were both hanging out the open window, their bitsy tongues lolling, paying her no attention whosoever.

  Before the sun completely dropped, lights popped on all down Main Street. Wrought-iron carriage lamps lined the shopping district. If she hadn’t agreed to this darn fool meeting, she could have been suckered into the shoe sale at Well Heeled, or accidentally slipped into TJ Maxx. Well, it was hard to slip into TJ accidentally when the store was two blocks away, but the principle was still valid.

  Worry started circling her mood. She loved her work. The bank claimed she was a long way from solvent, but money wasn’t that important to her. Doing something that mattered was. She’d found a touch therapy for babies with unique problems that really worked. Babies were her niche.

  Men weren’t.

  She liked guys. Always had, always would. But she’d met Alan even before she’d hung up the masseuse sign, when she’d still been a physical therapist. He’d been a patient recovering from a serious bone break. Right off he’d judged her as a hedonist and a sensualist—a woman who loved to touch. And he’d loved those qualities in her.

  He’d said.

  He’d also claimed she was the hottest woman he’d ever met. He’d even said that as if it were a compliment. In the beginning.

  Edgily she gnawed on a thumbnail. She’d moved to Gold River to obliterate those painful memories and start over. She’d done just that. Her whole life was on an uphill track again—but she also had good reason to be careful.

  Those darn Lockwood brothers had sabotaged her common sense by painting a picture in her mind. A picture of their brother. A picture she just couldn’t seem to shake.

  Apparently this Fergus had volunteered to serve in the military and came home with a medical discharge because of injuries sustained from a “dirty bomb.” The Veterans’ Hospital had patched him up and eventually released him. Both Ben and Harry agreed that their brother had initially seemed fine, weak but definitely recovering. Only, he’d increasingly withdrawn after coming home. The family tried bringing additional doctors and psychologists into the picture, but Fergus had basically shut the door and shut down. No one could get through to him.

  The brothers claimed they’d heard about her through a doctor friend—a woman who’d said she had the touch of a healer with babies. That was an exaggeration, of course. Phoebe couldn’t heal anyone. Certainly not anyone as damaged and traumatized as this Fergus sounded.

  She’d lowered her defenses when it became obvious the guys weren’t looking for sex, surrogate sex, or any of the other ridiculous things guys assumed masseuses really were. But now she felt unsure again. Their brother had been through something terrible. He likely had post-traumatic stress syndrome or whatever that was called. It was sad and it was awful—but she had no knowledge or skills to help someone in that kind of situation.

  When it came down to it, she’d only agreed to come because she was a complete dolt. The brothers had been so darling that she just couldn’t find a way to say no.

  She suddenly realized that the slip of paper with the address was no longer on the seat, but had been stolen. “Damn it, Mop! Give it!”

  Mop coughed up the damp, chewed piece of paper. Thankfully the number on the address was still legible. At the next right, she turned on Magnolia, left three blocks later on Willow, then followed the hillside climb. In theory she knew where the rich lived. She just never had an excuse to dawdle in their neighborhood.

  A handful of mansions perched on the cliff, overlooking the river below where their grandfathers had once scooped up fortunes in gold. The homes were hidden behind high fences and wrought-iron gates. Still, the hardwoods were stripped bare at this time of year, so Phoebe could catch fleeting glimpses of the gorgeous homes. Most were built of the local stone and marble, with big, wraparound verandas and lush landscaping.

  The Lockwood house was tucked in the curve of a secluded cul-de-sac. Feeling like a trespasser, she drove past the gates, past the two-story house and five-car garage—as instructed—and pulled up to a smaller home beyond. The brothers had called it the bachelor house, which was apparently a historical term—a place where the young unmarried men hung out before they were married, where they could sow wild oats away from their mother’s judgmental eyes. The concept sounded distinctly decadent and Southern to Phoebe, but the point was that Fergus had been living there since he got out of the hospital, according to his brothers.

  Close up, the main house didn’t look so ritzy as it did sturdy and lived in, with cheerful lights beaming from all the windows downstairs. By contrast, only a single light shone from the bachelor house, making the place look dark and gloomy and ghostly.

  She liked ghost stories, she reminded herself, besides which it was too late to chicken out now. Before she could open the door and climb out, the back porch light popped on, so the brothers must have been watching for her. Mop and Duster bounded off her lap and galloped for the shadows, promptly peed and then zoomed straight for the guys in the doorway. Phoebe followed more slowly. The same Lockwood brothers who’d charmed the devil out of her were already giving the girls a thorough petting, but they stood up and turned serious the instant she approached.

  “I’ll pay you up-front,” Harry said quietly.

  “Oh, shut up,” she said crossly. “I told you that five hundred dollars was ridiculous. I don’t do bribes.” She added firmly, “I don’t do miracles, either.”

  “That’s not what we heard.”

  “Well, you heard wrong. This is so out of my league. Your brother’s going to think you’re nuts for bringing in a masseuse. And I do, too.”

  Neither brother argued with her—they’d already been over all that ground—Ben just motioned her in. The dogs frisked ahead.

  It wasn’t her kind of decor, yet right off the place drew her. The kitchen was cluttered with plates and containers of food—none of which looked touched—but beyond the debris were lead-paned glass cupboards and a slate sink and a clay-tiled floor. She had to identify things by gleams of reflected light, since apparently no one believed in turning on lights around here.

  Beyond the kitchen were doors leading to a utility room and bathroom and eventually a bedroom or two, she guessed. But off to the right was the living room. She caught a glimpse of stuccoed walls and an arched fieldstone fireplace before she heard a gruff, “What the hell?”

  So. Not hard to guess that the dogs were already introducing themselves to Fergus.

  She trailed after them, finally locating the one light source—a single reading lamp outfitted with a nominal fifteen-watt bulb. Still, even in the gloom, she easily identified the living room as a testosterone den. No froufrou had ever crossed this threshold. From the dark wood to the shutters to the hardwood floors, it was a guy’s place all the way. The couch and chairs were upholstered in a deep claret red, the coffee table chosen to tolerate boots and glass marks. The room smelled of dust and last night’s whiskey and silence.

  She heard the brothers talking in the kitchen, guessed they wouldn’t lag behind more than a few moments. In those spare seconds, though, the lonely stillness of the room tugged at her…and yeah, so did the body on the couch.

  At first look, if her hormones had perked to attention, she just might have turned tail and run. That was the threat, of course. That she’d care about a man who would hurt her again—who’d form preconceptions about her and her profession, who’d judge her based on surface impressions. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not with this man.

  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 longer than Lincoln and scrawny. Dark eyes were deeply set in a sharp boned face with a slash of a mouth a
nd 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 a man. 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 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

  “F ergus…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 go away.”

  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 least try.”

  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 her words didn’t register, because nothing was registering in his brain right then. But she was still there. That got through.

  He heard a small plop of sound, like a jacket or sweater being dropped. And there were suddenly new, vague scents in the room—camellias, strawberries, oranges. And through the scissor-slashing pain, he thought he caught a glimpse of long, dark-cinnamon-red hair.

  When the headaches got this bad, though, he was never sure what was reality and what was hallucination.

  “I don’t want you to waste energy talking,” she continued quietly. “But I need to know what these headaches are about. Your brothers told me you were recovering from injuries. So, did you get hit on your head or your neck? Is that the cause of the pain?”

  He tried to answer without moving his lips. “No. I’ve got dirty bomb parts sticking out all over my body. But not my neck. Not my head. Hell.” He squeezed his eyes closed, clenched his teeth. “No more talking. Go away.”

  “I will,” she promised him blithely, but then didn’t. “So this is a migraine?”

  He didn’t answer, but that didn’t seem to deter her.

  “If it’s a migraine, you’ve surely had a doctor prescribe some serious pain medication for you.…”

  It was like ignoring taxes. It didn’t work. So he tried answering her again. “I have buckets full of pills. Ergotamine. Beta-blockers. Calcium channel blocker. Codeine—” Hell. Even talking this quietly jostled new razor-edged nerve endings. “Quit taking them all. Don’t help. Only make me throw up. Then it’s worse…”

  Alarmed, he realized she was coming closer. She definitely had long, cinnamon-red hair. Other impressions bombarded him—that strawberry scent and hint of camellias. A wide, sensual mouth. Snapping clear eyes. Blue eyes. Too blue.

  “Get out,” he said. If he had to throw her out, he would. He’d undoubtedly hurl if he tried any real physical movement, end up shaking and sick from the exertion, but this time he meant it. He’d had enough.

  Finally she seemed to get it, because she obeyed and turned around. He heard the soft footfalls, heard the distant sound of the back door opening, his brothers’ voices, then the door closing again.

  The sudden silence should have given him peace, but it wasn’t that easy. He concentrated on closing his eyes, not moving, not thinking, not breathing any more than he had to. But the little boy’s face kept showing up in his mind. A child. A young child. Like all the young children he used to teach. And the drum thudding in his brain sounded like a judge’s gavel, as if he were being accused of a nameless crime, as if he’d been found guilty without ever having a chance to defend himself.

  He was sinking deeper into the pain when he heard her voice again—her voice, her sounds, her presence and, yeah, her dogs. One leaped on his stomach, tried to nuzzle under his hand.

  “Down, Mop,” she whispered
, and again the scruffy pup immediately obeyed. As if she thought he could conceivably be interested, she started chitchatting in that velvet-low voice. “Normally I work at home, so the dogs are used to being with me. And I do leave them sometimes. They’ve got a dog door and a big, fenced-in backyard. But the thing is, they just hate it when I leave in the evening, so I tend to bring them if I possibly can.”

  “No.” This had gone on far enough. He got it now—the purpose of the casual chitchat had been to distract him from whatever the Sam Hill she was doing. He heard rustling sounds behind him, smelled more odd, evocative fragrances, then heard the strike of a match. When she turned off the lamp, the only light in the room came from the teardrop flames of a few candles. The darkness was much easier on his eyes, his head, only the rest of the smells and sounds made no sense. They weren’t bad sensations. They were just alien to the house and him.

  “Close your eyes,” she repeated.

  “No. Why? For God’s sake, do I have to get up and throw you out of the house to get you to leave?”

  “Fox,” she said gently, “close your damn eyes and quit fighting me. I’m nobody you need to worry about. Just shut up and let go.”

  That was such a ridiculous thing for a stranger to say that momentarily he was too startled to respond. Even the memory flashes disappeared. He tried to concentrate, because he was determined to push past the pain and get up. She was leaving. He figured she had to be some kind of medical do-gooder his brothers had brought in, but it didn’t make any difference. He was a pinch away from losing his cookies. His only hope was staying so still that the pain got no worse.

  Except that he had to get rid of the redhead first. “You’re all done, lady. I don’t know what the hell you…I…oh. Oh. Oh, God.”

  She touched him.

  She was behind him, out of sight, must have knelt down right at his head, because he felt her hands on his temples. Cool, smooth fingers whispered on his temples and forehead. There was a substance on her hands—something slippery that smelled like Creamsicles. She stroked the narrow spot below his eyebrows, then the vee above his nose, then soothed that light-scented oil into his forehead, into his hairline.