Hot to the Touch Read online

  Fergus shot his brothers a look that would have fried an ice cube. They’d blackmailed him into this whole deal—setting him up with Phoebe, then conning him into being there when Phoebe presented this program thing. And now where were they? Taking in mom’s lasagna like vultures but not helping him worth beans. “Mom, get it out of your head. She’s not a date. Not anyone I’m seeing that way—”

  Precisely at that moment they all whipped around at a knock on the door. And there was Phoebe—who’d obviously poked in her head when she couldn’t rouse anyone’s attention any other way. When she stepped in, shock numbed his tongue. She looked nine months pregnant.

  A second later, of course, he realized that it wasn’t her stomach, but something on her stomach making that huge lump. A baby. A real live baby. All swaddled in some kind of papoose carrier that was strapped to her tummy.

  Fox recovered his breath and started to stand up and greet her, but never had the chance. His mother took one look at the baby and surged toward Phoebe like a human tidal wave, her eyes suddenly brighter than diamonds. “Well, you obviously have to be Phoebe! You didn’t tell me she liked babies, Fox. Isn’t that nice? Come right on in, dear, and I’ll get you a plate. I’m Mrs. Lockwood, but you feel free to call me Georgia. If you don’t want lasagna, could I talk you into some coffee or sweet tea? I was just telling the boys, how wonderful it was that you’d involved Fergus’s whole family in this, um, program…”

  Fox took one look at Phoebe’s face and felt his heart sink. Her friendly smile looked forced and frozen. She must have heard what he said—about not being a date, not being anyone he was seeing. She’d probably even heard the deprecating comment his mom had said about masseuses. Hell and double hell. She had no way of knowing that he’d just been trying to divert his mother from giving her the third degree…and now, she ignored him completely as she walked in. She greeted his mother and then crossed the room to give each of his brothers a kiss.

  His brothers.

  Both of them.

  Got the kisses.

  Not him. She ignored him as if he were a puppy puddle.

  “Why, no one told me you were bringing a baby, dear.” Her mom descended on Phoebe as if a long-lost relative had suddenly shown up. So much for a prejudice against masseuses. Put a baby in the picture, and Georgia was now happy to treat Phoebe like a goddess.

  “Actually, she isn’t mine. But I work with babies, and I’ve got this one for the night. I didn’t think anyone would mind if I brought her. I mean, I only needed a few minutes to—”

  “Are you kidding? Of course it’s all right that you brought her.” More beaming smiles from Georgia. “So you work with babies, do you?” A fierce look at her three boys. “No one told me that, either. Sit down, sit down.”

  Phoebe shot him a look then, but what that flash-gash of a look was supposed to mean, he didn’t have a clue. A knife suddenly ripped into his side. It had started this morning. Another teensy bomb part, working to the surface, this one above the kidney on the right side. He could see it under the skin. Metallic. Small. In a day or two, it’d wedge to the surface, break through, and then he could try plucking it out like a sliver. But right now, it just plain hurt.

  Which ticked him off. He didn’t have time for any damn fool weakness right now. He needed to look normal. He needed to be normal. It was one thing for his family to pester him and another for them to pester Phoebe.

  “…baby’s name is Christine,” Phoebe was saying to his mom. By then she’d been settled in the kitchen rocker and looked like a mythic earth mother, with her arms loosely cuddling the snoozing baby on her stomach. “She was brought to the hospital several days ago. Abandoned, somewhere in the mountains. She’ll go into the system—in fact, there’s a foster mom already waiting for her. But I’ve been working with Social Services for a while now on babies like this.”

  “You mean, babysitting them?”

  “No, not babysitting exactly. More providing a kind of interim care before they’re placed in a normal home situation. Abandoned or neglected babies often fail to thrive or fail to bond or both. If they’ve been hurt that young, they develop an instinctive fear of touch. So I do touch therapy. Love therapy, the social worker calls it—”

  “Oh, I love that term,” Georgia said delightedly. “What exactly is involved?”

  “Different things, really, because every baby’s different. But in Christine’s case, we’re doing what I call a connecting technique. Except for eight hours at night—when I’ve got an aide to take over—I’ll literally keep her attached to me for a solid three days, either directly carried or in the front carrier like this.”

  “And you do this because?”

  “Because we’re not sure if she ever learned how to bond. This basically forces the human connection. A real foster or adoptive mom can’t do this, of course, but if the ability to bond is there…Mrs. Lockwood, you don’t have to go to all this trouble.” Phoebe looked stunned at the sweet tea and fresh sugar cookies and apple slices and lasagna being heaped on the table beside her.

  “I’m fascinated,” Georgia insisted. “In fact, I’d love to hear more. So you—”

  Fox cleared his throat. It was nice that the two women were getting along, and that his mom had completely dropped the judgmental kick about Phoebe being a masseuse. But it looked as if the women could talk through the next millennium without coming up for air.

  Phoebe immediately looked up at him. There was something…shifty in her eyes. “You’re hurting, aren’t you?”

  Damn woman, kiss her a few times and she thought she knew everything. “No, but—”

  “I know, I know. I came to talk about a program for you, and so far all I’ve done is tie up everyone’s time.” Phoebe gently rubbed the baby’s back as she kept up a soft, steady rocking motion. “The reason I suggested your family listen to these ideas is so they could provide input. You may not go for this at all, Fox. But your family knows more about your health and life issues than I do. And we all need to be on the same team to figure out what motivates you.”

  Fox frowned. She sounded real sweet, real sincere. Her voice alone aroused every suspicious bone in his body. Something sneaky was coming. Something he didn’t want to hear. He just knew it.

  Five

  P hoebe braced for an explosion. Judging from Fox’s thundercloud expression, he definitely hadn’t liked the idea that he needed to be motivated—much less that anyone had the power to do it. And if that teensy idea had him already bristling, the rest of her suggestions definitely weren’t going to go over well at all.

  Phoebe directed smiles at her allies—Bear and Moose and, for sure, Georgia. Fox’s mom was adorable. Although her clothes were expensive, she was still wearing a tie-dyed shirt and jeans. And money or no money, she obviously still ruled the roost over her sons, as well.

  Phoebe had suffered knots in her stomach when she first walked in here…because, yeah, she’d overhead Mrs. Lockwood’s opinion of masseuses. Georgia didn’t have a mean bone; she was just expressing the stereotypes Phoebe had heard a zillion times. Masseuses were fine, just not someone you’d want your son to marry. You were happy to go to them for a sore neck, but they made a living touching people, for heaven’s sake, so naturally they were on the frayed hem side of respectability.

  For two seconds it had hurt Phoebe to hear Fox and his mother talking—but that was foolish. It was one of the main reasons she’d wanted to include his family in Fox’s health discussion—so he’d see how a man’s mom was likely to treat her.

  Christine let out a peep—a little breathy baby snore—and Phoebe rubbed and cuddled her. She’d also brought the baby deliberately. She could have asked her night sub to take over, but truthfully, she figured Fox seeing her with a baby would give him a big, fat, healthy jolt. Babies were a fabulous terror technique for bachelors. Just in case he’d harbored the idea of having wild, uninhibited sex with her, there was nothing like a baby to wilt the W right out of that wild. At least for men
.

  And for herself, she wanted to give up wild, uninhibited sex forever, anyway.

  That embrace the other day was still haunting her mind. She simply had to give herself a slap upside the head. It was time to quit mooning over the darn guy and concentrate on her work. She didn’t heal well from heartache. Ergo, she needed to stay away from guys who were especially likely to hurt her. Her attraction and pull toward Fox—toward yet another guy who wasn’t likely to value or want her long-term—had to be put to bed. Pronto.

  And tonight was a terrific chance to make sure he lost interest—assuming he ever had any.

  “Okay, now,” she addressed his mom and brothers, “these severe headaches Fox gets so regularly…”

  “I’m right here,” Fox mentioned.

  “Uh-huh. They’re not exactly migraines or cluster headaches—they couldn’t be or I wouldn’t be able to dent them with the basic massage techniques I’ve been using. So we’re talking the cause being stress, which one of Fox’s doctors already suggested.”

  “Yeah,” Bear and Moose both nodded from across the table.

  “I kind of have an unusual view of stress because of my work with babies. In a sense, the babies are suffering from massive stress. They’ve either been deprived of touch or associate touch with pain—so much so that they’ve withdrawn from wanting contact. What I do with the babies is a kind of touch therapy to force them—gently—to accept touch. To try to get them to see human contact as something wonderful and helpful.”

  “I love what you do,” Georgia enthused, looking as if she wanted to launch into another round of conversations about babies. Phoebe persevered.

  “From everything I’ve seen…Fox is actually suffering from the same kind of stress. He was hurt. So to protect himself, he’s withdrawn. In a way, his headaches function to protect him. So does the rest of his behavior. If he stays in the house, holes up, allows the headaches, he’s essentially put himself in a position where he can’t be exposed to more pain. You get the concept?”

  “Sure,” Bear said.

  Moose hesitated. “Well, I sure don’t. You mean he feels safer if he’s hurting? Like those headaches of his are a choice?”

  “No. God, no. No one would volunteer for those awful headaches—and all his other injuries are real, besides. But when an animal is hurt, he holes up in his den, right? He rests. He stays away from risk until he’s able to handle it again.”

  “Yeah, I totally get that,” Moose said.

  “So. Now we have to get Fox out of his den. We have to motivate him to want to get out—which means that we want to supervise his exposure to pleasant and nonrisky experiences.”

  “Okay, okay, this was cute for a couple of minutes,” Fox said irritably. “But enough’s enough. I’m not one of your babies. I don’t need someone to give me ‘pleasant’ experiences. I’m not an animal holing up in a den. Phoebe, if you’ve got some program you want me to do, talk to me, not to them.”

  Phoebe deliberately tried to make herself sound like a teasing sister. “Now, I can’t do that, darlin’, because you’d just argue with me. Bear, Moose, I need you on my side if we’re going to make this work. You, too, Mrs. Lockwood—”

  “Oh, I’m all for whatever you suggest,” Georgia said brightly. “This is exactly what Fox needs. To get out of the house, pick up his life again. He’s been so depressed.”

  “I have not been depressed,” Fox snarled.

  The baby stirred again. Phoebe knew the infant would need feeding soon, so she pushed on. “Okay. This is the program. Two times a week I’ll do bodywork on Fergus. Some of that’ll be massage, concentrating on building strength and stamina. But I also want to teach him de-stress and relaxation techniques—before those headaches get the better of him.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Moose said.

  “Then Moose, Bear…I’m counting on one of you to find the time to take him fishing once a week.”

  “Fishing?” Bear perked up.

  “Fishing? How’d that get into this conversation?” Fergus said disbelievingly, and was ignored.

  “I want him out of the house, outside somewhere. I know it’s still pretty cold to go out on a boat, but I still like the idea because he couldn’t just walk off, go home, you know? He’d have to sit there. And the sun and water could have a real shot at relaxing him.”

  “You got it. I’m your man,” Bear said, and added, “in all the ways you want.”

  She chuckled at his innuendo. “Thanks, you sweetie. Then, Moose, if you could take him for one evening a week—”

  “Take me. Like I need a babysitter?” Fox snapped.

  She honestly didn’t want to keep ignoring Fergus, but she still had information to cover, and the baby wasn’t going to stay good forever. “Moose, I want Fox doing something stress free, but still something that requires him to get out of the bachelor house. So it’d be a good idea if he went to your place—or any other safe place that would force him out of his rut—”

  “I’m sure as hell not in a rut,” Fox informed the entire room.

  “I was thinking…poker,” Phoebe mused. “Something you could do with some guy friends? But if you brothers aren’t into cards, I don’t care what you choose to do. The point is just getting him out of his den.”

  “I’m on it,” Moose agreed enthusiastically. “Phoebe, I think you’re absolutely brilliant.”

  “I am,” she agreed with a chuckle.

  “You’re not giving me anything to do!” Mrs. Lockwood wailed.

  “That’s because she’s fired,” Fox told his mother.

  “Now, Fox. You can’t fire me because I was never hired. This is just a program plan. Georgia, ideally I’d like you to spend two times a week with Fergus, making him cook.”

  “Making him cook? Instead of me cooking?” The idea was obviously new to Georgia.

  “Yes. I want you to have the ingredients and the recipes for his favorite foods around. You do the food shopping so he isn’t forced into public quite this fast. But make him do the cooking and preparing, whatever his favorites are. Just supervise. Do it with him.”

  “What a marvelous idea. Phoebe, it’s easy to see why my boys are so in love with you.”

  Fox raised his hand. “One of your boys is not in love with her. In fact, one of your boys would like to take Phoebe in the backyard for a little personal discussion. No one needs to call the cops or worry if they hear screams. It’ll just be me, killing her.”

  Phoebe refused to laugh, no matter how funny he was being. To his family she said, “I’d like to start this whole program immediately. I know it’s late tonight, but I’d still like to take Fox over to my place…give him his first class in pain management.” Finally she glanced at Fergus. “Unless you don’t need any help with pain control tonight?”

  She had him.

  She knew she had him.

  Something was hurting him. Bad. She knew it from his eyes, from the stiffness in his neck, from his surliness. He wasn’t going to turn down help, not when he was this miserable, no matter how much he wanted to.

  “I’ve still got Christine right now.…” She patted the pink-blanketed baby again. “But if you’d head over to my place in a half hour or so, Fox, I’ll be ready. I was expecting to keep the baby all night, but I have a night sub, Ruby, so it’ll take me a few minutes to call her and set that up. After that…” She turned back to his family, not waiting for him to give her any more glares, grief or bologna. “You three can work out your schedules, how and when you can take Fox. But if it’s amenable to everybody, I’ll take him Thursday and Monday, late afternoon and evenings, all right?”

  Bear and Moose heartily agreed, and a few minutes later they walked her out to the van, helping carry her stuff and approving all her ideas with exuberant thumps on the back. They treated her so easily as an honorary sister that Phoebe couldn’t help loving them. They were so easy to be with.

  So was their mom.

  It was just Fergus who made her uneasy.
r />   Just Fergus who itched all her nerves—and hormones, too.

  But she’d gained on the problem, she thought tonight. Coming over to his mom’s house to discuss the plan for Fergus’s recovery had been totally the right thing to do. Meeting his mom, being with his brothers, had helped her get a grip on her emotions, put the whole problem of Fergus in perspective. She needed to stick with a goal she could handle. Helping Fox heal. If she didn’t stray off that course, she couldn’t possibly get in trouble.

  By the time she left she was humming up a storm. Bear and Moose kissed her cheek goodbye and left her with a chorus of “I love you, darlings” and “Take care of yourself” singing in her ears.

  Fox was still scowling when his brothers came back in. He’d seen the guys walk her outside. Seen how their hands were all over her.

  “I’m thinking about asking her out,” Bear admitted.

  “Whoa. I thought you were tight with that teacher in town. Heidi. What’s-her-name.”

  “Yeah, she’s nice. But there’s no real spark, you know? She’s as comfortable as chicken soup. Now, Phoebe, on the other hand—”

  “If you don’t ask her out, I am,” Moose announced.

  “Wait a minute.” Fox didn’t wonder why he was suffering from intense stress—and it had nothing to do with his injuries. Moose was the guy magnet in Gold River, had women climbing all over him—but those relationships never kept his attention more than a few months. Bear was the opposite. Bear was actually looking for a life mate. He’d done the wild oats, done the partying, was starting to look for someone to be with seriously. “Neither one of you is going to ask her out.”

  “Why?” Both of them asked, and damned if his mother wasn’t peering over their shoulders, curious why they couldn’t, either.

  “Because,” he said furiously.

  They waited, gaping at him, but he’d said everything he had to say in that single word. And since his side was killing him, he felt completely justified in hightailing it out of there—after thanking his mother for dinner, of course.