Read Harlequin - Jennifer Greene for Free Online Page B

steam of the bathroom—real, then not real, clear, then not clear. Sometimes the boy turned into one of the students he’d had; sometimes it was the boy in the dusty yellow alley on the other side of the world. He leaned against the glass shower doors and tried taking a long, slow breath, then another.
    A headache was coming. A headache always followed one of the flashbacks to the kid. If he ever got his sense of humor back, he’d think it was funny for a guy, who used to dare anything in life, to be this scared of a headache. Of course, that was then and this was now. Before the pain attacked, he had to get himself out of the bathroom and settled somewhere safer.
    Abruptly he heard something…the sound of a door opening? Either he imagined the sound—which would hardly be headline news—or it was Harry, coming to restock the refrigerator with another set of dinners he couldn’t eat. Whatever. He leaned over, hands on his knees, waiting for the soupy feeling to pass. Beads of water started drying on his bare skin, chilling him. His hair dripped. The towel…it seemed he’d dropped the towel. He’d get it. In a minute.
    “Fergus?”
    It was Bear’s voice. Ben’s, not Harry’s. “In here.” Damn, he hoped his oldest brother wouldn’t stay long. Bear hovered over him like…well, like a bear. All fierce and protective. All angry at anyone and anything who’d hurt him. All willing to do anything to make it all better.
    Fox had told his brothers a dozen times that nothing was going to make this all better. The wounds’d heal. They were almost healed now. But whatever was broken inside him seemed like the old Humpty Dumpty story. Too many pieces. Not enough glue.
    “Fox?”
    He tried denying the dizziness, pushing past it, repeated, “In here.”
    The denial thing seemed to work. He forced himself to pluck the towel from the tiled floor and straighten before Bear saw him and got the idea again that he was too sick to live alone.
    “Hey, Fox, I brought…”
    Oops. He’d assumed it’d be his brother standing in the doorway, but his brother was six-three and a solid 220. The intruder had thick, straight, long red hair, almost as long as her waist. Small, classic features. Blue eyes that snapped with attitude, a few freckles on the bridge of a bitsy nose, pale eyebrows arched just so. And a soft, wide mouth.
    He remembered that soft, wide mouth. Actually, he remembered every detail of her features. It wasn’t that he wanted to remember her, but she was one of those rare women who no guy could possibly forget.
    God knew why. She was no angel. That was for damn sure.
    Even if her eyes and posture didn’t indicate excess attitude, she was wearing a red top again today—a Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    red that screamed next to all that thick red hair. She must have bought the jeans in the boys section, because they bagged at the knees and drooped on her nonexistent butt. Then there were the boots—which were beyond-belief girl shoes and not real boots at all—three striped colors and a high heel. She’d kill herself if she walked far in them.
    He caught all of her in a glance. One glance—that no amount of dizziness seemed to blur.
    Obviously, finding him in the bathroom doorway had stalled her in midsprint. She’d apparently been heading for the living room, where she’d found him last time. Even if she’d guessed the location of the bathroom, she wouldn’t necessarily expect to find anyone standing there, naked as a jaybird.
    Her gaze met his, then dropped below his waist, then shot right back up to his eyes faster than lightning.
    “Aw, damn. Aw, shoot. Aw, beans,” Bear said behind him. “Phoebe, Fox, I’m sorry. Fox, I should have told you I was bringing Phoebe—I never heard the shower, just assumed you were in the living room—”
    Fox took his own sweet time, wrapping the towel around his waist. Hell, she’d already seen the main event, and