Read Online Harlequin - Jennifer Greene by Hot to the Touch - Free Book Online Page A

also promptly realized that he was naked as a jaybird under the sheet—and hard as a jackhammer.
    One look at her seemed to do it.
    She was curled up in a white rocker. All the blinds in the room were drawn, except where she’d opened them several inches in the south window above her. Sunshine beamed down—as if just for her. Her bare legs were swung over the chair arm, and the shape of her naked calves was enough to inspire another jolt of testosterone. Her bare feet were dirty, and she was wearing what he called Saturday clothes, sweats, shorts and a big old voluminous shirt that completely concealed her body.
    She held a mug of something steaming in one hand, a book in the other. He vaguely remembered her hair all pinned up and out of the way, but she’d let it loose at some point, because now those long red strands shimmied down her back like a gush of water, catching claret and cinnamon and tea and amber colors in the sunlight. The freckles on her nose were naked.
    He wished she were.
    He’d never met a more sensual woman. In looks, in touch, in everything. He felt both defensive and suspicious about that weird magic thing when she touched him. He just didn’t get it…how she could possibly induce so much feeling in a guy whodidn’t feel, didn’t talk, had cut himself off from life for months now—and wanted it that way.
    But none of that aggravation seemed to dent his fascination for her. Fox conceded that the issue might be a lot simpler than he was making it. Probably any man’d have to be dead not to respond to a two hundred percent handful of a woman like her.
    She startled, as if suddenly realizing something was different in the room. When she turned her head and saw he was awake, she immediately plunked down her mug.
    “What time is it?” he asked her.
    “Almost three.”
    Couldn’t be. “You’renot telling me I’ve been here all day.”
    “You were sleeping so soundly that I didn’t want to wake you. And there was no need. I was just puttering around here. No clients on a Saturday.”
    “I’ll pay you for the time I was here.”
    “Yeah, you will,” she agreed. “But if you feel up to it, I’d like to ask you some questions.” She pushed out of the rocking chair, came closer.
    “What kind of questions?” he asked suspiciously.
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    “A massage shouldn’t be able to dent the kind of serious headaches you’re getting, Fergus. Migraines and cluster headaches and stuff that bad…they’re medical. Physiological.”
    “Yeah, so I’ve been told.” She was close enough to see the tent in the sheet, but she seemed to be looking straight in his eyes. He willed the mountain to wilt, but damned if it didn’t seem to be getting harder instead of softer.
    “It just doesn’t make sense. That I’ve been able to help you with headaches as bad as you get them. Do you have any idea at all about what brings them on?”
    He closed his eyes, opened them again. “The docs said, after ruling out a bunch of medical reasons, that the headaches had to be some kind of stress response.”
    “Stress I can work with you on.”
    “Work with me,” he echoed.
    “I mentioned it earlier. I’ll work up a program, then send it over to you and your family, so you can look at it on your own time, see if you’re willing to give it a shot. The thing is, what we’re doing now is shutting the barn door after the horse is already loose. Trying to beat pain when it’s already sucked you under is like trying to reason with an enemy who’s already won. What you want, ideally, is to get power over the pain ahead of time. Before it’s gotten bad.”
    “Okay. Makes sense.” He was unsure why she sounded so tentative and wary. He hadn’t been very nice to her, no. But there was something in her voice, her face, as if she were braced for him to dismiss anything she said.
    Again she said carefully, “That’s all I can really do. Teach