Harlequin - Jennifer Greene by Hot Touch (read full novel txt) 📕

she’d treated him as a client instead of a lover. He scraped a hand through his hair.

“No, but I—”

“It’s okay,” she said in a normal voice, as if anyone could hear over the infant’s caterwauling. “Come on in. You’re welcome to visit. It’s just that I have Manuel…and the odds of Manuel being quiet are about a thousand to one.”

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She didn’t look shaken by the baby’s screams. As busy as she looked, her left hand stayed in touch with the little one, rubbing and loving and consoling. Because of the baby’s name, Fox assumed it was a boy; otherwise it would have been impossible to tell. The head was bald, the face all squinched up and red from the screaming.

“Manuel came from Chicago,” Phoebe filled in.

“How come you got a baby from so far away?”

“I don’t, usually…but I’ve had contacts with different agencies across the country for a while now.

Everybody’s got the same problems. What to do with throwaway babies. How to turn a baby around when there’s been no bonding or care to start with.” She ambled over, carrying a wooden spoon, lifting it for him to taste. “More salt?”

He tasted. “It’s perfect.”

“I dunno. I think it still needs something. Maybe a little more garlic or more tarragon…anyway. The crime statistics alone could put hair on your chest. Look at a kid in trouble, you’ll almost always find a baby who didn’t bond, didn’t get the nurturing he needed. I don’t have this little sweetie for long. Just three days.”

“Three days is enough to matter?”

“Yes and no. Yes, loving time—touch time—with a baby always matters. And it’ll hopefully be enough to see if we can start him on a different road…”

Fox was interested in the details. The work she did fascinated him. But just then it was hard to concentrate. “You’re sure he’s not sick?”

“Positive.”

“You’re sure he’s not hungry or dying or anything? I mean, the way he’s crying—”

She nodded. “It sounds inhuman, I know,” she said softly. “His birth mom was an addict, so this little darling came into the world in agony. He’s been through the whole withdrawal procedure, so at this point he isn’t feeling the craving for drugs so much as…anger. Misery at being alive. And maybe we can’t help him, but you know, we can’t just keep throwing babies away—”

No, he didn’t know. He also didn’t know how Phoebe could think, much less calmly hold a conversation, with a baby crying that relentlessly. But for damn sure, the part of his plan about talking with her—and then making love—fizzled fast.

It was a shocking moment to realize he’d fallen hopelessly in love with her. Not just because the chances of their making love any time in the immediate future were completely annihilated. But she was standing there in her bare feet, with the screaming baby and the spoon, backed by all her candy-colored rooms…and there it was. This overwhelming emotion, when he could have sworn he was no longer capable of any feelings, much less real ones. Yet just looking at her sucked him in so deep, so rich, that he could have died and gone to heaven, thrilled just to be with her in the same damn room for that instant in time.

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“You came over for a reason this morning?” she asked, just as if they’d been having a normal conversation.

“Yeah—I didn’t know if you were going to need the therapy room, but if it was free during the lunch hour, I figured I’d get some work done on the waterfall.”

“Oh! That’s great. And the room’s free—Manuel is all I’m trying to do today. I do have to wander back there now and then—”

“Well, will it bother him if I’m making noise?”

“Everything bothers him,” she said, with a tender pat on the baby’s diapered rump. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s the best thing for him to be exposed to normal sounds, normal life—because that way he finds out he’ll be protected no matter what’s happening around him. So go for it.”

He went for it.

First off, he hunkered down in the corner of her massage room and studied all the supplies she’d bought and her master plan. Good thing he had a contractor for a brother who could railroad the applicable licenses—and double good thing that his mom hadn’t raised any sons who ducked hard work. Act One had to be the plumbing, and after that he could move on to the easy stuff—mortar and stone and tiling.

Big messes. Big weight. Big work—at least for a guy who could barely bend without creaking and groaning. It was going to take some mighty long hours to build this insane indoor waterfall she wanted.

But it was so like her—to value something sensual and beautiful over something practical. And it was a way to do something for her. A way to give back. As far as Fox could tell, too damn many people took from Phoebe without her letting on that she needed anything—much less took anything—from anyone.

He poured on the coals, knowing that his body would give out quickly from this kind of physical work.

He didn’t realize how he’d become used to the sound of the baby crying, until there was suddenly silence. Instinctively he leaped to his feet, thinking that damn squirt must have died, and raced back through the house so panicked he forgot about his dusty hands and safety goggles.

He found Phoebe in her odd little mint-green room—the closet turned into an office. She was sitting at a desk, paying bills, the baby sleeping on her tummy.

Actually sleeping. He checked by hunching down and looking.

“It won’t last,” Phoebe whispered humorously. “But, yeah, he really is napping.”

“Any chance he’ll do this for a while?” Hell. He was afraid to even whisper.

“I dunno. When a baby’s born addicted, one of their problems is that they can’t rest. This little one’s past that…but he just seems angry all the time. No one got around to