Five's A Crowd Read Online Free Page A

mine played bridge together eons ago, before his parents moved to Florida and mine to the boonies, as they call it. I was surprised when I got his call last week, but he said he wanted somebody he could trust not to go running to the tabloids with the story of your injury, either now or after my job is done. It made sense. Lots of people make money on you, don’t they, Mr. Masters?”
    “Dozens of them. And Sid makes most of it,” Holden grumbled, opening the trunk and reaching in to pull out one of his suitcases, only to have Taylor reach out and grab his arm.
    “Not that way, Mr. Masters,” she admonished him, putting one hand on his forearm, the other on his back. Her pink spandex-encased body touched his from shoulder to hip, which did strange things to his concentration. “You’re not using the correct muscles.”
    He ignored the ripple of awareness that cut through his body, concentrating on Taylor’s words, rather than her hands, her slim body. Which wasn’t easy. “What?”
    “I’d give you the technical names for everything if I wanted to bore you out of your skull,” she answered, “but it would be easier to say that you have injured your shoulder and, because it hurts when you do certain things—make certain moves—you have begun to overcompensate, using muscles that aren’t injured to do what the injured ones used to do.”
    “You’re kidding, right?”
    “No, I’m not. And too much of that for too long a time, my friend, and you’ll end up with lost muscle memory and a frozen shoulder, which also isn’t a laughing matter. Now—stop shoving your elbow into your side to help yourself move and reach out with your whole arm to pick up the suitcase.”
    He did as she said. He didn’t want to, hadn’t even noticed that he had been moving incorrectly, but he wanted her to move away from him; move her honey blond hair and perfumed scent and strong hands far, far away from him.
    Or closer.
    “Damn!” he exclaimed as he fully extended his arm, then tried to lift the suitcase—sending a stabbing pain and a disturbing weakness through his right arm and shoulder. “That hurts.”
    “We’ll fix it,” Taylor said matter-of-factly, stepping in front of him and lifting out both suitcases at once, which made Holden long to fire her on the spot.
    “We, Miss Angel?”
    “Neither one of us can do it alone, Mr. Masters. I’ll set up my table after lunch, and we can do a thorough evaluation then—take a few measurements, check your range of motion, that sort of stuff. Until then, you and Thelma can get acquainted,” she flung back at him, then left him standing in the street.
    “Will I see you at lunch?” he called after her, wishing he could have thought before he spoke. After all, it wasn’t as if he’d miss her if she went away.
    She turned and looked back at him. “I do plan to eat, yes. And this isn’t some social experiment, Mr. Masters. This is my job and I plan to do it very, very well. You’ll see me morning, noon and night for the next eight weeks. Get used to it!”
    “I’ll work on it,” he snapped, then added, slamming down the trunk lid with his left hand, “and I’m still going to kill Sid.”
    T AYLOR HAD ALREADY thrown the suitcases on Holden’s bed and was halfway down the seeming half-dozen small flights of stairs before he passed her going the other way. She smiled her most blighting smile and kept on going, not stopping until she was safely behind the closed door of her own bedroom.
    “Uncle Sid—you’re in big, big trouble!” she vowed, looking up at the ceiling, ordering her heart rate to slow to a reasonable speed. It had gone into overdrive the moment she’d laid eyes on Holden Masters and had actually skipped a beat when he’d smiled at her with those gorgeous green eyes. She wouldn’t even think about what had happened to her when she’d touched him to correct his incorrect movement, when her fingers had pressed against the taut muscle beneath his