Harlequin - Jennifer Greene (20 page)

And until that grapefruit word poked in her mind and stabbed her sharply, she just hadn’t realized that Fox was thinking about her seriously. Not as a lover. But as a wife. Not as a red-hot mama when he needed healing.

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But as the kind of woman he might be willing to share a grapefruit with when they first got up in the morning.

Now she took a gulping huge breath. From the sound of the pups barking, they’d already located Fergus in the back room. She peeled off her fleece jacket, stashed her bag and mail on the kitchen counter, pushed off her shoes and tried to think how to handle seeing him, greeting him.

No magical or brilliant ideas occurred. She shook her hair loose, took a big breath and then walked to the doorway of her therapy room—then stopped, still.

The waterfall was done. Or it sure looked that way.

Fox was crouched down with the dogs, making a fuss, rubbing tummies and baby talking to them. There was still a mountain of trash and debris that he’d obviously just started to clean up, but the waterfall itself took her breath away.

It was her dream. The backdrop wall and sides were mortared in river stone. There were steps, as if you were in nature and really walking from shallow water into a deeper pool before you stepped under the waterfall. The tall windows above had the effect of skylights. You could lie in the pool, look up and see sunlight or stars, be secluded from the rest of the massage room environment. Lighting had been built into the lower pool. The outside steps had places to set ferns and plants.

“Oh, Fox,” she whispered hopelessly. “It’s so, so perfect.”

He spun around at the sound of her voice and immediately stood up. If the light hadn’t been straight behind him, she might have perceived his expression, but as it was, she caught his dusty knees, his rough-brushed hair, but his eyes were in shadow. “You’re here just in time.”

“In time for what?” she asked, and then shook her head for asking such a silly question. “Obviously in time to help clean up—”

“No. That’ll wait. I need a victim, an experimentee. Translate that to mean ‘sucker.’ Your waterfall’s done, ready to test. I know itworks, but I don’t want to put everything away until I’m positive we’ve got it all the way you want—height of the hidden shower head, water pressure, water temperature and all that stuff. I don’t think we’ll have to make any major plumbing adjustments—please God—but I still want to test the details.”

“Sure. What do you want me to do?”

“Just use it the way you’d use it. Close the drain. Turn it on. Fill up the pool the way you would if you were using it with a client. Just make sure everything’s the way you expected, then we’ll drain it and call it quits. I’ll keep cleaning up in the meantime.”

Something inside her froze for the oddest second. It was as if her heart understood she had a choice.

One choice. Right then. A choice, a chance, that would disappear if she didn’t take it.

Fox turned away again. Flanked by the dogs, who seemed to think he desperately wanted their company constantly, he started stacking spare parts, gathering trash, putting away tools. The whole time he kept up a conversation. “Now, you’re used to using oils in your work, right? You can’t in this. You’ll need your clients to take a ‘clean’ shower to get the oils off before they soak in the waterfall tub, or it’ll be too slippery.”

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“I hear you,” she said, as she pulled off her shirt. Fox didn’t glance back, just kept working.

“And then, I’ve been thinking about a way you could rig up a sling for babies. I assume that’s part of what you want to do, right? Use it for the little ones?”

“I had in mind using it for all ages. But when I’m working with babies, part of my idea was having their moms in there with them. So both of them could relax at the same time,” she said, as she peeled off her jeans and socks.

“Yeah, I figured that. So this sling idea…it’d be like a little hammock. Soft. But water flowing in and around it. Obviously you wouldn’t leave a baby alone in it, but it would be a way for a small child to feel the flow of water without it overwhelming him.” A couple of hammers and crowbars made a heck of a racket when he piled them in one long metal container.

Slowly, her stomach starting to curl, she unsnapped her navy lace bra and let it fall. Then walked barefoot into the new waterfall tub and turned on the faucets. “That sounds ideal for the babies,” she said. She stood there, not getting wet yet, just lifted her hand to the spray until she had the water temperature nice and warm.

She wasn’t completely naked yet. She was still wearing her favorite thong—the navy satin one, with the red, white and blue flag in the triangle. They weren’t the underpants of a shy, retiring girl. They weren’t underwear for a woman who wasn’t inherently in-your-face sexy. Which, of course, was why Phoebe had always worn the kind of clothing where no one could see them.

“Okay…well, while you’re letting the pool fill up, I’m going to start making a bunch of trips out to the truck. It’s going to take me quite a—” He turned around. Saw her.

Dropped a crowbar. Then a hammer.

While he was speechless, which she suspected wouldn’t last long, she stepped under the waterfall spray.

“You got the water pressure perfect,” she called out.

He dropped the whole damn toolbox.

She lifted her face to the pelting spray, feeling the water gush and rush and slink down her face, her throat, her body. Her hair went from a tidily brushed mass into a heavy, thick, water-soaked rope in seconds. She closed her eyes, trying not to feel how hard her pulse was thudding, her badly her tummy was twisting, how scared she was.

When it came down to it…this was how she used to feel when she was younger. About herself. About life. It would never have occurred to her that it wasn’t a joyful thing to enjoy the feel and the smell of fresh warm water on her bare skin, to love the explosion of her senses. To want to be this free—for a lover. With a lover. Open. Open in her heart, open in her mind, open to wherever the senses could take them both.

It had been gone—that freedom, that feeling—for a while now. And it wasn’t totally back. Phoebe wasn’t positive she’d ever totally get it back…but she knew, positively, that’s how she wanted to be for Fox. With Fox. With the man she loved.

“And you’ve got the temperature perfect,” she called out, and in that second, when she was blinking
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water out of her eyes, she almost jumped to the ceiling…because there was Fox.

Right there. His eyes inches from her eyes. His mouth inches from her mouth. He was still wearing all his clothes, except for his boots. His work socks already looked heavier than cement, and the rest of his work clothes were molding to his body faster than glue.

“Most of us,” she said tactfully, “remove our clothes before taking a shower.”

“Don’t you mess with me, red.”

She sobered, softened. “I’m not messing with you.”

“This is a pretty brazen, bawdy thing for you to do. Stripping in front of me. Getting naked in front of me.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said regretfully.

“You could give a guy ideas. Bad ideas. Ideas like…that you know how delectably beautiful that body of yours is. Like…that you want me to notice how delectably beautiful that body of yours is—”

“Fox?”

“What?”

“This is what you’re going to be stuck with. A brazen, bawdy woman. Who likes to get naked. For her lover. Only for her lover. No one else.”

“Oh, I hope so,” he whispered, and then leaned down and took her mouth. It was a kiss that started out hard and firm and just got more tenacious. The pelting warm water couldn’t compete with this steam.

Her Fox, her crazy wonderful Fox, seemed to forget that he was standing there in all his clothes. He framed her face in his hands and kissed her and kept on kissing her, closed-eye kisses, tongue kisses, silver kisses, come-on kisses, claiming kisses.

She was still feeling nervous and worried. But maybe not quite as worried and nervous as she started out, because a competitive streak seemed to kick in.

She could do kisses.

In fact, she could do downright fabulous kisses. For the right man. And Fox was so totally the right man.

She made him suffer through an intensive repertoire. She tried whisper-soft kisses and ardent, take-me kisses. Wooing kisses and shy, silky kisses. Kisses involving tongues and teeth, and kisses that barely touched, only hinted at what the future might hold. Could hold. If he was a very, very good boy.

“Phoebe?” he gasped in a breath.

She took the chance to gasp in some air, too. “What?”

“We’re drowning.”

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“That’s not the serious problem, Fox. You want to know the serious problem?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“You have all your clothes on. And that really is a problem that needs fixing immediately.”

“I’ll help,” he assured her, and there was a grin. A dark, intimate, wicked, pure, guy grin. The memory burst in her mind of how she’d first seen Fergus…so low, so sad, so unreachably angry and lost. It wasn’t her fault that that grin inspired her to huge, vast heights of risk. Getting wet clothes off a guy was no easy task…but she was up for it.

He was also definitely up for it, in every sense—particularly as she followed each loosened button with a kiss everywhere and anywhere she discovered bare skin. By the time she’d battled four shirt buttons, he was ripping off his belt, trying to tear off his jeans.

By then, the water in the pool had filled to knee height. Unfortunately, everything suddenly went kaflooey. His jeans were too soggy, too stuck to him, to pull off the rest of the way. He tried. She tried.

They bumped heads and staggered back, and both ended up sitting in the water with the waterfall exuberantly splashing water on both of them, and Fox, laughing, roared out, “Damnation. I needhelp! ”

“You think I’m not trying?” She’d started helplessly laughing, too, and between his sitting and bracing and her pulling, they managed to win the war with his pants.

“You’re not supposed to havefun when you’re this desperate,” he grumped.

But his laughing and grumping was what sealed his fate, she thought. And hers. Because the more they battled his pants, the more they laughed, the more they loved…the more she knew it was going to be all right with Fox. To be herself. Always. That this was the one man she could be with.

Fear melted away, not all at once, but in flashes of searing sensation…like when his teeth scraped the hollow of her shoulder. Like when his hands slid down her ribs, around her spine, onto her fanny, where he clenched his hands and drew her tight and hard against him. When she reached back to turn off the water—before the pool overflowed all over kingdom come—he could barely seem to give her that spare second before he reached for her again, too impatient and hungry to wait.

“I love you, red. Not just want you. Ilove you. Now. Tomorrow.”

“And I love you back,” she said fiercely.

“I meanlove. And you can take it to the bank, we’re going to love the sex. It’s going to be hot and wild and inventive for a long time.”

“You think?”

“I think. Because I trust you.” He lifted his head for just that moment, so she could see his eyes. So he could see hers.

And then he sank inside her, wrapping her legs tightly around his waist. Sunlight blazed through the skylight, shining gold on his shoulders, on his forehead. The water glistened on his skin like magic crystals. Night would have offered more concealment, more privacy, but this, Phoebe thought—sheknew

—was how she wanted to be with him. Naked, physically and emotionally. Her soul as bared as his.

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Her risks as great as his.

“Take me,” she whispered. “Higher. Hotter. Every which way, my love.”

“No,” he whispered. “You take me. All the way.”

Needs spiraled the more she clung to him. Tension built the more he teased and stroked. She twisted in the water, claiming him. He swirled her beneath him, claiming her. The doorbell rang. The dogs barked.

Her cell phone beeped. He sank under the water once, stealing a kiss that way…but by then their playfulness had turned serious. Heart serious. Future serious.

For so long, Phoebe had felt unsure of herself. Not as a person. Not as a worker. But as a woman.

Fox didn’t give her that confidence back. But for him, she found that steel-strong well inside of the woman she wanted to be. The woman she could be. With a man who challenged her to reach for it all.

When it was over, he sank back against the tile, gasping, pulling her with him, both semi-floating in the warm water until they caught their breath. His cheek nuzzled her cheek. “Are you going to kill me if I tell you you’re the most beautiful woman alive?”

“No.”

“What if I told you you’re the brightest, the most creative, the most generous and wonderful woman in the universe?”

“I guess I’ll survive if you told me that, too.” She sighed, knowing where his teasing was leading up to, because she knew him so well. “Go ahead. It’s okay. You can say it.”

“I don’t want to tick you off. Especially right before I discuss something serious with you.”

“You won’t tick me off.”

And out it came. “You’re the sexiest woman in the galaxy, red. You’re my dream of a mate. You make me proud to be a man, because of how you respond to me. With me.”

“All right,” she said warningly. “Now you’ve done it—”

When she reached for him, determined to mete out the punishment he deserved—and earned—he stopped her. “Wait,wait. I really do need to ask you something serious first. And before that, there’s something I have to see.”

“What?”

He insisted they get out of the water, and then he chased her upstairs. His excuse was that they were both more wrinkled than prunes and needed to get out of the water, but she figured out pretty quickly that he’d built up a humorous curiosity about her bedroom.