Can’t Say No

by Jennifer Greene

  Hart growled again. This time the sound rumbled from deep within his chest cavity. “Don’t tell me the woman’s decided to come out of hiding?”

  So amused, as he leaned over her, brushing his lips in her hair, rubbing his cheek on her smooth, soft skin. Bree felt, as usual, half inclined to kill him. Maybe she was having a tiny problem with cowardice about her choices right now; maybe there were some decisions she just couldn’t face yet. But to accuse her of hiding-that just wasn’t fair.

  And if he thought she was attracted to him, he was crazy. She was curious, that was all. Surely any woman who’d been quiet, morally upstanding and sensible all her life had a secret wish to be ravished, just a little, by an unprincipled, good-looking rogue who knew too much about women?

  And Hart did have a gift for making the nightmares go away. Dammit. His mouth dragged a slow chain of kisses down her throat, down toward the V of her robe. A foglike cotton clouded her brain; her flesh seemed to be raising goose bumps all over; her heart was becoming utterly confused, pumping in double time.

  There was too much of him. Everywhere. He moved with the lethal slowness of a mountain cougar, his lips prowling her vulnerable spots…behind her ear, down again to her throat, whispering dangerously around the quilted robe that just covered her breasts. Through a tumble of fabric, she was well aware that his leg had sneaked between hers, that his palm was making lackadaisical curls down her spine to her bottom, that he was rubbing her deliberately against him.

  And she was rubbing back.

  “That’s it, honey. Tell me what you like,” he whispered. “God, you’re responsive. I knew the minute I met you…”

  Only Hart would mistake simple curiosity for intense sexual responsiveness. Totally against her will, her fingers climbed his bare shoulders, traced the knotted cords in his neck, skimmed into the thick, rumpled mat of blond hair. Her eyes closed, the lids far too heavy to stay open. His mouth found hers in the darkness and molded itself to her lips, parting them.

  Her neck arched back and her limbs turned liquid. It was a very foolish sensation, like feeling caught in the rain naked, like feeling drenched in liquid softness. Hart’s tongue swirled inside her mouth, playing games with her tongue. Between them, her robe twisted open, helped no small amount by his hands. She tensed.

  “You have beautiful breasts, Bree…ssh. Let me see.”

  He raised himself up just a little, very gently pushing aside her robe. She seemed to be trembling, for no reason whatsoever. It was the moonlight coming in. The soft silver bared her flesh, illuminated the shadow between her breasts, made the orbs look white and swollen. His finger traced the shape of one, around, beneath, making a circle, and then a smaller circle, and then just softly touching the peaked tip. A whispered murmur escaped her throat.

  His eyes lifted to hers, all blue-black liquid. “Do you know what I want to do, honey?”

  She shook her head.

  “I want to kiss them, Bree. I’d like to bury my face between your breasts. I’d like to wash those little red tips with my tongue until you cry out. I want to feel the weight of them in my hands. I’d like to feel them crushed against me…” He bent down, to press a butterfly kiss…on her throat.

  Below, the heartbeat between her breasts was going like a time bomb, as if to say, What about me? You just promised…

  Hart slowly lifted his head again. “But you’re going to have to tell me what you want, Bree. Do it, honey. Tell me. Tell me, Bree…”

  Instinctively, she parted her lips…but there was no sound. No sound at all. He just looked at her, waiting, and the moonlight washed over her bare breasts like a shower of heat.

  “You have to tell me,” he whispered again. “You want me to make love to you, Bree?”

  Yes. It was crazy and it was wrong…and she’d never wanted anything more. Her body was sending out a frantic yes; he could hardly have missed the message.

  Abruptly, he draped the robe over her again. “When I was younger,” he murmured, “I used to enjoy the role of seducer. The hunt and chase and all that nonsense. It is fun, honey, but not nearly as good as when two people come together with honesty, both knowing what they want and willing to admit it.” He pressed one last kiss on her forehead before rolling over on his side. “I think you know what you want, Bree. But you’re going to have to tell me when you’re ready.”

  Bree stared at his broad back, a little stunned to be so abruptly deserted. So he’d suddenly turned virtuous? And the lecture he should have taped.

  Less than five minutes later, he was asleep.

  Less than five hours later, Bree woke up alone. She knew there was no one next to her even before she opened her eyes; the warmth and the smell of him were gone, the weight of his arm around her waist…Bemused at the sudden flood of memories, her eyes blinked open, to lazy ribbons of sun pouring through the cabin window.

  Groggily, she stood up, shaking her head to clear the cobwebs. That didn’t really work, nor did splashing cold water on her face. Folding up Hart’s sleeping bag and blanket, she felt another sleepy rush of images invade her mind. Hart had pulled back, yes, and he’d done it in his usual insensitive way, trying to goad her into talking…as if she had a choice. She wasn’t forgiving him that, but there were other pictures floating in her head. As she dropped his sleeping bag on the front porch, she remembered the woman who’d deliberately awakened the sleeping bear, who’d willingly lain next to him. She remembered an abandoned response that had come from nowhere…a response that started with Hart, with some crazy thing he did to her when he touched her. Free. She’d felt free. To touch, to entice, to just…let go. To be a very different kind of woman than she’d always thought she was.

  Put on your clothes, she reminded herself vaguely. Back to reality, Bree. He’s a selfish, arrogant man; it isn’t wise to forget that. You just ditched a perfectly decent fiancé-your life’s a mess, and he’s the last man on earth you would want to get seriously involved with.

  All true. That didn’t shake the bemused mood, the ridiculous feeling that she was utterly beautiful this morning. Silly. As she climbed the steps to the loft, the sun already felt hot, but she didn’t realize what time it was until she flicked an eye on the bedside clock. Eight. She’d really only had five hours’ sleep. A small smile touched her lips. She’d come to this cabin for rest, but she’d had very little since Hart came into her life.

  Pulling open the wardrobe, she grabbed a camisole top and jeans. By sheerest chance, her eyes settled on the telescope. It was supposed to go in the bottom drawer, not on the floor of the wardrobe, and en route to putting it away properly she lifted it to the window.

  There was action at the top of the ravine. The bare cement patio was about to be crowded with lawn furniture. A single chaise longue was already there. So was Hart, wielding one end of a white wrought-iron table. A little brunette was wielding the other end, laughing, dressed in a pair of indecently short shorts and an open-necked blouse.

  From a distance, the brunette had kind of a cantaloupe for a face, but that was primarily because Bree hadn’t focused the telescope. And wasn’t going to focus it. She felt as though someone had just socked her in the stomach. Jamming the telescope in the bottom drawer, she tugged on clothes and thumped barefoot down the stairs with a furious scowl.

  Call me when you evolve, she thought crisply as she flung bowl and Corn Flakes on the kitchen table. Darwin was wrong. Men were the lowest species, not the highest. Snakes went into heat less often than Hart Manning did.

  She ate her breakfast so fast she got hiccups. Water splashed every which way as she attacked the bowl with suds and dishcloth, hiccuping on every second breath. By the time she’d cleaned up the suds sticking to the floor and herself, her nerves were sandpaper. He’d deliberately made her believe that she could mean something to him. He’d deliberately touched her with tenderness, seduced her with those lazy eyes of his.

  She found herself staring at the white bowl, sparkling clean now twice over, and scowle
d again. In one quick movement, she sent it winging toward the door. It smashed obligingly. So did another plate. Actually, so did two cups and a saucer.

  Silence followed. The sun beamed in on the white shards of porcelain. Bree’s hiccups were gone. And she was so sick of silence she could have screamed.

  Chapter Six

  With the sun blinding her, Bree stared grimly at the rusty latch on Gram’s old shed. It just didn’t want to give-she’d been trying for the better part of an hour. She tugged again at the knob, then finally threw her weight against the door to force it open. With an eerie creak, the door swung in, Bree pitching forward with it. In that sudden dank darkness, her shin immediately connected with something bulky and hard. Her skin dented; the old tool didn’t.

  Using her entire vocabulary of four-letter words-silently-Bree massaged her aching shin and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness.

  The past five days just hadn’t been her best. Her luggage had arrived, but so had letters from home. Her mom wanted her to return; she was worried about her, and Bree hated being the source of that worry.

  The letter from her ex-boss had disturbed her even more. Marie was blithely ignoring her resignation and lining up projects for Bree to tackle as soon as you’re feeling better. Contec is seriously hurting without you. Bree’s first impulse was guilt for leaving Marie in the lurch; her second was wariness as she reminded herself that Marie was an expert at using guilt to manipulate people; and her third was a feeling of being totally unsettled, a state of mind that still hadn’t left her.

  In the meantime, she’d had to buy an entire set of dishes, since she seemed to have shattered all the old ones. And her sleep had been constantly interrupted by her own personal night watchman, Hart Manning. Sleep? There was little point in even trying.

  Squinting into the dark corners of the old shed, Bree stepped over an old wooden crate and sighed. The front yard needed mowing. Unfortunately, most of Gram’s tools seemed to have disappeared. A pitchfork was accumulating rust in the corner. Her eyes skimmed over Gram’s old gardening gloves, a small spade, a hand saw, an ancient scythe…but there was nothing remotely resembling a lawn mower or even clippers.

  With hands on hips, Bree shook her head. The scythe would have to do, dull and awkward though it was. It looked like something that belonged on an old Soviet flag, but its original purpose a century ago must have been to cut grass. You could always go home, Bree, said a little voice in her head. What exactly are you accomplishing by staying here-you haven’t had any rest; you’re still not talking. You’re worrying your parents, and at least you had a safe, secure job…

  Gingerly lifting the scythe from its hook, Bree took it outside and wielded it awkwardly in the sunlight with a stubborn cast to her chin. No. Not yet. For herself, she might still be confused over what she wanted to do with her life, but for Gram…She felt in some indefinable way that she owed Gram something-something that she could pay back only by being here.

  But Hart was making it extremely difficult for her to keep her mind on what she owed Gram. He’d showed up every night, once at ten, another time just before eleven, another at precisely ten forty-three. Each time he spread out his sleeping bag downstairs, made an unholy racket settling down, and disappeared before Bree awoke the next morning.

  She hadn’t acknowledged that he was there. She’d lain upstairs in Gram’s sensuously soft feather bed, stared at the moon and twiddled her thumbs, fuming. She’d spent hours during the day thinking of what she was going to say to him…when she got her speech back. And she’d spent the hours at night worrying that she would fall asleep and have another nightmare, that Hart would come up to her, that she would behave…foolishly again.

  Sooner or later, she’d fallen asleep those nights. There’d been no nightmares, but he was driving her nuts. Or maybe she was driving herself nuts, knowing she wasn’t doing a damn thing about him. She’d seemed to spend her entire life letting things happen to her, letting other people direct her actions; it had to stop. The big stuff takes care of itself if you handle the little things first, Gram used to say.

  The yard certainly filled the little-things slot. The grass was knee high and straggly. If the project seemed woefully minuscule compared with the momentous decisions facing her, at least she wasn’t moping around the cabin like an exhausted zombie. Enough was enough.

  Bree swung the awkward scythe, by the grace of God saved her left leg on the back swing, and noted without surprise that the blade hadn’t severed so much as a blade of grass. Whipping back her hair, she determinedly tried again.

  The blade was not exactly in the best shape in terms of sharpness. The sun beat down in a fever of heat, flies buzzed, Bree’s madras shirt and short shorts stuck to her; and blisters formed on her right hand before twenty minutes had passed.

  Three hours later, Bree collapsed flat on her back on the front porch of the cabin. She had just enough energy left to turn her head and survey the demolished lawn. Even, it wasn’t. Short, it was. The blisters on her palm were killing her; her throat was so parched she would have sold herself from a street corner for a glass of water; every muscle felt cracked like old leather…and she was grinning like a fool. She’d done it. Thought you couldn’t handle it, didn’t you, Bree?

  Yawning, Bree closed her eyes. In a moment, she would get up. She so desperately wanted a drink; her palm needed first aid; she longed for a bath and change of clothes. To heck with all that, she was so tired she could sleep like a baby.

  “Exactly where I was afraid I’d find you. Trying to nap in the middle of the day. It’s no wonder you’re not sleeping nights.”

  Bree didn’t jump. Familiarity breeds contempt, as they say. If she hadn’t actually seen him in several days, Hart had still managed to interrupt every single occasion when she’d tried to get any rest. Besides, her heart instantly recognized him by pumping in and out like a windy bagpipe, even before she opened one eye-Hart not being worth opening two for.

  As it happened, he was worth less than one. Gone was the urbane sex symbol in Italian suits. He wore his derelict straw hat sideways, his cutoffs showed hairy legs and he hadn’t bothered with a shirt, just a fishing pole.

  His eyes were dawdling over her long legs in the short shorts. “Come on, lazy lady. Leading the life of Riley, it’s no wonder you can’t sleep nights. If so many complications hadn’t cropped up at my place, I’d have been over here before to keep you busy during the day. Like now. Did I mention we’re going fishing? And I see your clothes arrived. No bras in your suitcases?”

  If that crack was supposed to bring a rise, it didn’t. And as far as Bree could tell via telescope, Hart couldn’t have too many problems at his place. His harem did all the chores.

  When she didn’t move, Hart tsk-tsked. “The bait’s worms. You probably can’t handle that, but I figure you could at least row the boat. Talking yet?”

  Why were all her new dishes put away, when she needed them to throw at this moment?

  “You want help getting up, or do you think you can manage that all by yourself?” Hart shielded his eyes with a closed palm, his dark blue eyes peering down at her. “Honey, you have a button that’s undone,” he said politely.

  Bree’s eyes whipped open, her fingers groping for the front of her blouse as Hart lazily surveyed her front lawn. “You did do a little something today, I see,” he drawled. “I thought you’d get off your duff sooner or later-couldn’t just sit around and do nothing forever, now, could you? I’m not a big advocate of industriousness, but when it becomes too much of an effort even to open your mouth, I draw the line.”

  Bree sat up furiously, ready to hurl back a slightly blue retort-in mime-but Hart had already turned away. His eyes narrowed on the scythe resting against the cabin wall.

  “You didn’t use that to cut the lawn?” His head whipped back to her, his dark eyes no longer lazy but suddenly blazing with anger. “You damn fool, you could have killed yourself! The thing’s half as big as you are. Did you ever
once think to ask someone for a little help? What the hell do you think I’m within shouting distance for, anyway?” He added in a low growl, “Let me see your hands.”

  She’d show him her hands the next time she had the inclination to dance naked in the village square. He advanced a step; she retreated, bottom first and chin up, into the shadow of the cabin porch. Unfortunately, bottom first and chin up were not conducive to speed.

  The next thing she knew, Hart had snatched her wrists and turned up her palms for inspection. “I’m going to kill you,” he announced darkly, “as soon as we wash these and put some antiseptic on them. Go ahead. Give me an argument, Bree.”

  Bree struggled valiantly for patience. Some men couldn’t help being insufferably patronizing. On the other hand…He didn’t move for an instant. It was seconds, not minutes, before he pulled her to her feet and propelled her inside to the sink. But in those seconds Hart’s face was inches from hers.

  His cheeks were red with rage. He hadn’t shaved, his lion’s mane was crushed beneath his hat…and his touch was infinitely gentle on her hands. A lover couldn’t have touched with more tenderness. She found herself staring, mesmerized.

  It was becoming an effort to keep hating him, in spite of his harem on the hill. The man had a magic quality, the ability to fill her world when he was around, blocking out everything else. He was worse than a sliver-worse than a bad sliver. He got under her skin and stayed there, saying aloud things she’d been thinking herself: that she’d been lazy, that she couldn’t talk because she’d been running away from life, that it was about time she did something about herself. Really, he was a very cruel man. She ached for Gram and she was confused; everyone wasn’t a bulldozer like Hart…but he made her feel that those were only excuses. In her heart, she agreed with him.