Doc Sidhe Read Free Page A

butterfly impaled on a pin, struggling with words that didn't seem to want to come out. "I don't think I can describe it."
    "Try." His voice fell to a whisper. "I can change."
    It was the wrong thing to say. He'd never known he could sound so pathetic. Suddenly he knew why she was doing this. He'd become a neighborhood dog and she was the woman he'd followed home.
    He wouldn't want a dog, either.
    Her next words were the rocks thrown to drive him off. "I think I need my keys back." She set down his own apartment key beside his silverware, then wiped at the tear that threatened to roll down her cheek.
    He looked at the key. She didn't even want to come out to his doghouse anymore. He almost laughed.
    He pulled out his keychain and wrestled her building and apartment keys off the metal coil. He set them down in front of her.
    She put them in her fanny pack and zipped it up. Her voice was low, pained. "Good-bye, Harris." And she left.
    Harris watched the door swing closed behind her. "Zeb should've put you in the ring tonight," he said. "You would've pounded Sonny flat."
    The waitress set Gaby's soup down in front of him.
    What the hell. His life wasn't over. He had a great bowl of wonton soup and a pair of well-tied shoes.
     

Chapter Two
    Phipps looked up as Gaby come out of the restaurant.
    An interesting change. Before, she'd been alert. Now she walked with her head down, hands stuffed into her jeans pockets. A more likely target for a mugger. Phipps might actually have to protect her. The irony amused him.
    The guy in the jeans jacket, the one who'd met her at the door, didn't come out with her. Phipps liked that. One less complication, assuming that she didn't hook up with him again later.
    He glanced at his watch. Three hours until midnight. All he had to do was keep near her for a couple more hours and everything would be all right. He gathered up his newspaper and blended in with the sidewalk traffic as he followed her.
     
    There was still some of the Stolichnaya in his cabinet. Harris uncapped it and carried it to his sagging couch. Gaby would be annoyed with him for treating the expensive vodka like common booze. He looked forward to that.
    On the end table was the file full of newspaper clippings his mother had sent him over the years. He groaned when he saw it. That's a call he didn't want to make. Hi, Mom, Dad. You know all that money you spent to support me while I beat people up in New York? Uncle Charlie was right: you wasted it.  
    He picked up the folder and shuffled through the clippings.
    Some of it was college paper stuff about the theater productions he'd been involved with: a picture of him onstage in Death of a Salesman , another of him backstage doing his own makeup for Ethan Frome . But the majority of stories were about tae kwon do.
    So many tournaments, competitions, demonstrations. His home-town newspaper had glowingly reported his Olympic career. It even made his first-round loss in Seoul sound like a moral victory. It wasn't; he'd just gone out there and gotten clobbered.
    Harris looked at the pictures of the happy, cocky, eager kid he used to be. Dark hair, features that looked brooding even when he was happy. "A soap opera hero face," Gaby had said a long time ago. "You ought to go over to NBC and try out for a part. Put that theater major to some good use for once."
    He tipped the bottle up and took a pull on it, felt the liquor burn down his throat. Maybe he'd do that now. They'd hire him to be the next bare-chested hunk. Gaby would be channel-surfing and would spot him licking the tonsils of some soap opera sweetheart. She'd drop her teeth.
    The thought warmed him. Or maybe that was the vodka. He took another swallow.
    Later, when the bottle barely sloshed as he set it down, it occurred to Harris that it was time to talk some sense into her. He needed to get out of the apartment anyway; ever since it had started rocking he'd felt seasick. Fresh air would help.
    Down on the sidewalk, he