Harlequin - Jennifer Greene (2 page)

She pushed on her shoes, grabbed her black-sashed jacket, but she couldn’t take off until she put on
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some lip gloss. Talking always made her lips dry. She found at least a half-dozen glosses and lipsticks in the dark depths of her bag, but she wanted the raspberry gloss that went with her sweater. And then…

“Ms. Schneider? Phoebe Schneider?”

She spun around, the tube of raspberry gloss still open in her hand. Two men stood in the double doorway—in fact, the two of them blocked the entrance with the effectiveness of a Mack truck.

Positively they weren’t hospital staff. For sure Gold River Memorial Hospital had some adorable doctors, but she knew none with barn-beam shoulders and lumberjack muscles.

“Yeah, I’m Phoebe.”

When they immediately charged toward her, she had to control the impulse to bolt. Obviously they couldn’t help being giants, any more than she could help being undersize. It wasn’t their fault they were sexy lugs, either, from their sandy hair to their sharp, clean-cut looks to their broody dark eyes…any more than she could help having the personality of a bulldog. Or so some said. Personally, Phoebe thought she was pretty darn nice. Under certain circumstances. When she had time. “I take it you’re looking for me.”

The tallest one—the one in the serious gray suit—answered first. “Yeah. We want to hire you for our brother.”

“Your brother,” she echoed. She got the lip gloss capped, just in time to drop it. The one in the sweatshirt and jeans hunkered down to retrieve it for her.

“Yes. I’m Ben Lockwood, and this is my brother Harry.”

“Lockwood? As in Lockwood Restaurant?” The town of Gold River had lots of restaurants, but none as posh as Lockwood’s. For that matter, the Lockwood name had an automatic association to old money and old gold, which was probably why Phoebe had never run into them before.

Ben, the one in the suit, answered first. “Yeah. That’s Harry’s place. He’s the chef in the family. I’m the builder. And our youngest brother is Fergus. He’s the one we want to hire you for.”

Phoebe felt a familiar wearisome thud in her stomach. Guys. Looking to hire a masseuse. For another guy. One plus one invariably added up to someone thinking she hired out for services above and beyond massaging.

Still, she didn’t waste time getting defensive, just gathered her gear and headed out. The men trailed after her down the hall toward the east entrance. Harry grabbed her box of slides—which tried to tip when she pushed open the door. “I don’t know why you two didn’t just call. I’m listed. And then I could have told you right off that I only work with babies.”

Ben had a ready answer. “We didn’t call because we were afraid you’d brush us off. And we know you work with little kids and babies now, but the hospital said you were a licensed physical therapist, the best they’d ever seen. Fox is in a special situation. So we hoped you might consider making an exception for him.”

There was no way she was taking on an adult male. None. Phoebe wasn’t short on courage, but her heart had been smashed too hard from a close encounter with the wrong kind. She would take another chance. Sometime in the next decade. But for now, the only risks she willingly took were for babies.

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None of that was any of their business, of course. She just told them she was booked up the wazoo for months—which had the effect of swatting a fly. Ignoring her protest completely, they trailed her through the parking lot like puppies—giant, overgrown puppies—carrying her bags and boxes, picking up the stuff she dropped, flanking her like bodyguards.

Typical of February in North Carolina—at least in the mountains—evening was falling faster than a stone. The afternoon’s brisk wind had turned noisy and blustery, and the clouds were puffing in hard now. In another month or so, magnolias and rhododendron would furiously flower on the elegant hospital grounds, but right now, even the sentinel oaks weren’t gutsy enough to leaf out yet. The wind shivered through her long auburn braid, teasing at the ribbon wrapped through it and threatening to unravel it.

The guys were starting to unravel her, too—but not for the reasons she’d first feared. By the time they reached her old white van in the third row, she had the ghastly feeling that she’d fallen totally in love with both of them. They looked at her as if she were a goddess. That helped. They treated her as if she were a hero. She liked that, too. Mostly, though, she had a strong sixth sense about predators. These two were just plain good guys. How was she supposed to resist that?

“Ben, Harry…look. I don’t know if the hospital misled you, but I don’t do any regular physical therapy anymore. I just don’t have time. And besides that, if your brother has some kind of special problems, I have no qualifications to help him.”

“Yeah, well, Fox has been to tons of people with blue-ribbon qualifications. Doctors. Psychiatrists.

Specialized physical therapists. Hell, we even brought in a priest and we’re not Catholic.” Ben made the joke but then couldn’t pull off a smile. “We have to try something different. We’re losing our brother. We need some fresh ideas, a different outlook. If you’d just take a look at him—”

Sometime over the next ten minutes. Phoebe picked up that the Lockwood brothers regularly referred to themselves as animals. Ben was Bear. Harry was Moose. And they called their youngest brother Fox.

She loved animals. Wild or tame. And the Lockwood brothers had clearly dropped their jobs and lives to come here and gang up on her, which said something about how much they loved their brother.

“Honest to Pete, I’m telling you straight, I can’t help you. I would if I could.”

“Just come and meet him.”

“I can’t.”

“We haven’t explained what he’s been through yet. At least listen. And then if you can’t help, you can’t.

We’re just asking you totry. ”

“Guys.I can’t. ”

“Just one shot. A few minutes. We’ll pay you five hundred bucks for a half hour, how’s that? I swear, if you decide you can’t help him after that, we’ll never bug you again. You have our word.”

My God. They wheedled and whined and charmed and bribed. Phoebe rarely met anyone who could outstubborn her, but these two were beyond blockheaded. Still. If she took on one adult patient, it would open the door to being asked again. And that wasn’t worth the risk.

“I’m sorry, guys, but no,” she said firmly.

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At seven o’clock that night, Phoebe flipped the gearshift in reverse and barreled out of her driveway. “I don’t want to hear any grief,” she told the dogs sharing the passenger seat. “A woman has a right to change her mind.”

Neither Mop nor Duster argued. As long as they got to ride in the van with their noses out the window, they never cared what she said.

“You two just stick by me. If something feels hinky, then we’ll all take off together. Got it?”

Again, neither mutt responded. Even after two years, Phoebe wasn’t dead positive who’d rescued whom. The two pint-size dirty-white mop heads had shown up at her back door when she first moved to Gold River. They’d been scrawny and matted and starved. Throwaways. Yet ever since they’d acted as if she was the throwaway and they were the benevolent adopters. It boggled the mind.

“The brothers really were okay. I know, I know, they were men. And who can trust anyone stuck with all that testosterone? But really, the situation isn’t what I first thought. Their brother sounds as if he’s in rough shape. So even if I can’t do anything, it just seemed heartless to keep saying no.”

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 evenbefore 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.

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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.

Sheliked 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
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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.