Can't Say No

by Sherryl Woods

  Charm, Marshall, all the tabloids say you have it.

  Almost casually, he glanced down at her. Referring to her muttered threat—the last words she’d spoken—he asked, “Harvey who?”

  He already suspected the answer, and he knew now why there’d been a sense of familiarity about Audrey, the allure of some elusive past connection. Obviously, he’d seen her around the office.

  Blake didn’t spend a lot of time in the corporate office. He preferred the action of the fields or processing plant. The men and women who worked the fields had led tough, migratory lives until he’d given them a feeling of permanence. They worked hard with a sense of pride and dignity that he admired and respected. The men who took the grapes and turned them into wine were craftsmen. They excelled at the challenge of creating the best in a highly competitive field. Again, he found them more fascinating than the corporate desk jockeys he’d met through the years.

  Spending as little time behind his own desk as he did, it was no wonder he was only beginning to suspect what Audrey’s real role was at Blake Marshall Vineyards. If she worked for Harvey, she had to be tough and competent. Like him, Harvey wouldn’t tolerate anyone who couldn’t pull her own weight.

  “Harvey Fielding,” she responded. She scowled at him fiercely as she uttered the name with the vehemence of a curse. At least it had brought the color back into her cheeks. “You’d better start looking for a new PR executive, because when I get my hands on him I intend to do serious bodily damage to him.”

  He fought to suppress a smile. She was maybe 110 pounds to Harvey’s 225. It ought to be an interesting battle. “Harvey’s a good man. I don’t suppose you could leave him in one piece? Maybe if you’d just relax and enjoy the ride?” he suggested hopefully.

  “Not even for a hundred exorbitantly expensive bottles of your well-publicized private stock of cabernet sauvignon,” she retorted without so much as an instant’s hesitation. She was one very angry lady. In this mood, she just might be able to take Harvey on.

  Blake winced. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but do you know anything at all about ballooning, or is this a first trip?”

  “Do I look like I do this every day?” Audrey snapped back. “I’m not exactly convinced about the aerodynamics of a plane. This flimsy contraption isn’t even in the same league. Now that you know the awful truth about me, you can put this thing down anytime and I’ll be out of your way.”

  It was a sensible suggestion. It was certainly the only way he was likely to win the race to Glenwood Springs. He couldn’t concentrate on piloting and on her at the same time. Then his eyes roved leisurely over her, darkening appreciatively as they lingered on the full breasts heaving beneath her baggy sweatshirt. His heart pounded in a way he hadn’t experienced in a very long time. It was a fine time for it to engage in acrobatics. He took a very deep breath, then made his decision.

  “I don’t think so,” he said slowly.

  Audrey swallowed hard, but managed a confident, direct stare that increased his admiration for her. She was definitely a gutsy spitfire. She might be scared out of her wits, but she wasn’t one whit intimidated—or fascinated—by him. It was a unique experience. Most women, especially those who were interested in his sizable bank account, went out of their way to be accommodating. They’d have declared a passionate shared interest in ballooning. Some of them actually seemed to think if they got him at a high enough altitude, he’d lose his senses and propose.

  Unlike those women, Audrey Nelson depended on him for a paycheck, yet she was more than willing to tell him to take a flying leap straight out of this balloon. And she was definitely not harboring any thoughts of marriage. In fact, she was staring at him right now as though he were a particularly repulsive, if somewhat intriguing creature.

  “Why on earth not?” she asked incredulously. “I thought you wanted to win this race. Harvey says you’ve got this absurd obsession about winning and after listening to you issue orders down there like a drill sergeant, I have to agree with him. You’re a little weird on the subject.”

  She regarded him speculatively. “It’s not too late, you know. Most of the others probably aren’t even ready to take off yet. You have plenty of time to find the qualified person this Cal sent. I’ll just get busy on those press releases. We’ll forget this little incident ever took place.”

  She gave him what she obviously hoped would be a persuasive smile. He grinned back. All that good humor—hers so clearly phony, his sincere—hung in the air.

  “Do you intend to let Harvey forget?”

  Her smile faded so rapidly it made him regret having brought up the subject. “Perhaps sometime in the next fifty years or so,” she said darkly. “Until then, I want him to pay dearly for getting me into this.”

  “Harvey didn’t get you into this,” he reminded her. “He sent you to Colorado on a perfectly legitimate PR assignment. I hauled you into the balloon. Are you going to make me pay as well?”

  Her icy gaze met his, challenged the fiery look in his eyes, then faltered. The ice melted. “I’ve already said we could drop it, if you’ll just get me back on the ground.” It was a plea of sorts, but she was trying very hard not to beg. He liked that, too.

  “I have plenty of work to do down there,” she added, when he didn’t respond. “There are probably newspaper people, maybe even magazine writers from all over. We could get terrific coverage. I think I even saw a network camera crew. Harvey especially wanted me to try to set something up with them. If he doesn’t see you on the national news tonight, he’ll have my hide.”

  Blake waved his hand dismissively. “Forget the releases. The press has enough background and gossip about me to fill the entire feature section.”

  Her hard-won control snapped then and her eyes flashed at him angrily. “Then why the hell did you want someone from public relations out here?”

  He shrugged. “You know Harvey. When he told me about Joe’s situation, I told him it wasn’t necessary, that I’d handle things myself, but the man takes his job seriously. He seems to think if he has someone around, I’ll stay in line.”

  Suddenly, Audrey laughed. It began as a chuckle low in her throat. The sound rippled sensuously along his nerves, before erupting into a full-scale roar. Tears rolled down her cheeks. He watched her anxiously.

  “Are you okay? You aren’t going to go hysterical on me, are you?”

  The laughter died and she shot him a calculating look. “Will it get me down?”

  “Probably not.”

  She choked back another nervous laugh, rubbed the tears from her cheeks and sighed. “Then I won’t waste my energy.”

  She studied him curiously, and Blake felt another wave of heat sear his insides. “I’m surprised at Harvey,” she said, when she’d completed her rather thorough, disconcerting examination. “He’s usually very perceptive, but you don’t strike me as the type of man who’s easily kept in line. Goodness knows, I’m not having any luck at it.”

  “Maybe you’re not trying hard enough.”

  A flush stained her cheeks as she caught the blatant innuendo, but she responded gamely, “Does Harvey have some special technique he failed to share with me?”

  “Nope, but he does keep trying. I used to think he was worried about me, but then I figured out it was only the company. Every time my picture turns up on a tabloid at the supermarket checkout, he’s convinced our sales will plummet.”

  “If you ask me, they’d probably go up. The same people who read those things for vicarious thrills will probably buy your wine just to see if it improves things for them the way it has for you. Do you realize there are probably thousands of men sipping your Chablis and expecting some incredibly sexy actress to materialize by their side?”

  Blake grinned at her. “Precisely my point. The company benefits from my image. It was a calculated intention on my part that began the day I took over a failing winery and swore to turn it around. It’s probably the only PR gimmick for which Harvey isn’t responsible.
Now I’m caught in my own trap. If I had my way, I’d live a quiet, secluded life-style, surrounded by five or six kids and a doting wife.”

  She regarded him skeptically. “Why don’t you, then? According to the figures I put in the annual report, the company is now on solid financial ground. Surely, you no longer have to make the supreme sacrifice of dating all those gorgeous women just to keep it afloat.” She sounded as though she found the thought of all those women intensely irritating. “Maybe you’re enjoying it more than you want to admit.”

  To his astonishment, he realized that her irritation pleased him. Normally he sent a woman packing at the first sign of jealousy. Instead, he found himself wanting to offer some explanation that would remove that disdainful look from her eyes. She’d obviously accepted his playboy reputation as fact and found it distasteful. He wondered if she’d believe the truth coming from him, especially when he was holding her hostage. He decided to try.

  “Actually, my exploits have been greatly exaggerated. These days I’d be a fool if I behaved as irresponsibly as the press would like everyone to believe I do. Even so, doting wives are hard to come by in my particular circle of so-called friends, especially if it means living on a ranch that doesn’t even offer a Jacuzzi. Most of the women I know can’t live that far from Saks and Neiman-Marcus, much less Elizabeth Arden and their personal fitness trainer. Not one of them has any desire to see a grape until it’s been duly processed into an expensive vintage of wine.”

  Suddenly he peered at her intently. “Let me see your nails.”

  A dark brow lifted quizzically. “My nails? Aside from a tendency toward kidnapping, you also have some weird thing about fingernails?”

  He grinned. Thank God, she was finally making jokes. He tapped her on the nose. “Just humor me. Hold out your hands.”

  Like a child whose hand-washing technique was being evaluated by a critical parent, she glowered at him, but she held out her hands for his inspection. They were dainty, the sort of hands that could caress a man with a gentle, magical touch. Her short nails, just long enough for setting up shock waves along a man’s spine, were buffed to a clear shine.

  “I knew it,” he said approvingly, sharply aware of the little frisson of excitement that was racing along his own spine. “You don’t spend half your life at a manicurist. Do you realize how many women go into a deep depression if they break a nail? Do you realize how often some of them change their polish to match their outfits? I’ve been left cooling my heels while some woman had her nails wrapped, whatever that is,” he muttered in bewilderment. Sometimes he wondered how he’d survived the inanity of it.

  “Sounds like a tough life,” Audrey said with a touch of mockery. If he’d been expecting sympathy, he’d definitely taken the wrong tack. She gestured at the balloon. “What about this? Where does this fit in? Are all the stories about your obsession with this exaggerated, too? Is this just another public relations ploy?”

  Audrey watched closely as Blake’s blue eyes instantly sparkled with unsophisticated, boyish excitement. She saw the tension leave his shoulders and the gentle softening of his lips. “Now this is something else again,” he said in that husky tone that played over her nerves like a lover’s caress. “Every word you’ve ever read about my love affair with this is probably true.”

  “I don’t get it. Is it the danger, the thrill, what?”

  “It’s an escape. It gives me a sense of total freedom, a release from all the pressures of work, even though it has its own challenges. I think all of us harbor a desire to be able to experience flight like a bird. This is the closest man can come.”

  “It’s a little too close, if you ask me.”

  “Come on now,” he chided. “Just take a look around.”

  “I’d rather not,” she muttered, pointedly keeping her gaze directed at his knees, where the denim of his jeans was unexpectedly and charmingly worn and faded. Good heavens, what was wrong with her? She didn’t want to be charmed by anything about this man—not his infectious smile, his brief flashes of sensitivity and certainly not by a worn spot in his pants. “I think I’ll just stay right down here. I get dizzy standing on the first step of a ladder.”

  “Come on,” he taunted persuasively. “You’re no coward.”

  “Who says?”

  “I do. Stand up. You don’t know what you’re missing.” He held out his hand. His fingers were square and strong, his hands roughened by work, good honest labor. Blake Marshall was clearly no pampered executive and, for all the publicity, he was apparently far more than a jet-setting playboy. She’d heard tales of his days in the fields working side by side with his men. She’d thought they were merely publicity schemes dreamed up by Harvey. Now she saw the proof. It only added to the enigma.

  When Audrey took his hand at last, she told herself she wasn’t abandoning her fury at her predicament, that she wasn’t giving in. Except, perhaps, to temptation. She allowed him to pull her to her feet, then didn’t do a thing to stop him when he drew her to his side. She told herself she needed the support, especially since her eyes were clamped tightly shut again.

  “Now just look around,” he urged. “Have you ever seen anything any more beautiful?”

  She opened one eye and peeked. A bright yellow balloon, decorated with a large rat that reminded her rather vividly of her opinion of Harvey, hovered a few hundred feet away. A multicolored balloon was just above them to the right. Snowcapped mountain peaks beckoned from a distance, and far, very far, below were thousands of colorful specks dotting the meadow like so many wildflowers.

  “People?” she mumbled in a choked whisper. “Those are people down there? Exactly how high up are we?”

  “Not so far.”

  “How high, Blake?”

  “Maybe a thousand feet, probably less. That’s nothing. We’re just drifting now. Wait until we go over the mountains.”

  She twisted around until she could get a good look at his face. He seemed to be serious.

  “I am not going over any mountains,” she said adamantly. An assertive woman made her point without wavering, wasn’t that what she’d read? “Am I making myself clear? No way. You do not pay me enough money to make me go one foot higher in this thing.”

  The blasted man grinned at her. “Perhaps not,” he said, “but I do seem to have you at a disadvantage, unless you brought along a parachute.”

  She obviously didn’t have the knack quite yet for making herself perfectly clear. He thought she was still pussyfooting around. Like Harvey, he was just hunting for the right buttons to push. In this case, there most definitely weren’t any. She wanted to be back on the ground and she wanted to be there now! She was tired of being understanding about this little case of mistaken identity. She was tired of being patient. And she was definitely tired of floating around up here, like a dandelion caught on a breeze. The only thing she wasn’t tired of was Blake and that wasn’t something she cared to deal with.

  “Blake Marshall, you take me back down there this instant or I will report you to every government agency I can think of that supports and enforces employee rights. I will charge you with harassment, unsafe working conditions, discrimination. I will dream up so many lawsuits, your attorneys will be able to retire on what you’ll have to spend to defend yourself.”

  Her outburst, of which she was particularly proud, didn’t seem to faze him one whit. “Harassment, huh? Sexual harassment? An interesting idea.”

  There was a decidedly wicked gleam in his eyes that suddenly made her even more nervous. Her heart, which had been ready to stop when she looked out and saw where she was, was now palpitating so fast she was sure she ought to be heading straight for an emergency room. She doubted if Blake would even bother to call Mountain Rescue. His mind seemed to be on other things. Her mouth, for instance. He seemed to find it fascinating.

  His arm, which had never loosened its firm grip on her waist, tightened just a bit and his head lowered ever so slowly. She could see the kiss coming, could feel
the warm whisper of his mint-scented morning breath against her cheek and she was powerless to stop it. Blast it all, she didn’t even want to, which was the worst trick yet this morning. What good did it do to say no, when your whole body was shouting yes? Blake was a perceptive man. He obviously heard those shouts all too clearly.

  She caught the triumphant gleam in his eyes just before his lips covered hers, slanting heat across trembling moistness. She had just a fraction of a second in which she might have managed a half-hearted objection, but it stuck in her throat as his mouth teased gently and then possessed, taking away not only her breath, but all thoughts of protest. In fact, there wasn’t a rational thought left in her head as she gave herself up to the most provocative, enticing sensations she’d ever experienced.

  Maybe it was the altitude. More likely, it was Blake Marshall teaming up with her suddenly rampaging hormones. Whatever it was, the kiss left her weak and chastened and just about willing to do anything the man suggested, short of jumping out of the gondola at one thousand dead-on-crashing feet. For a woman who’d planned to spend the next week learning to be assertive, it was obvious she’d failed the first lesson. Worse, with Blake’s arms tight around her, she didn’t even mind.

  Then the phrase “good sport” crept into her mind, followed by “understanding woman.” It was like hearing a battle cry, with enemy troops just over the crest of a hill. She put her hands against Blake’s rather solid chest and shoved with all her might.

  “You have some nerve!” she said indignantly, when she could manage to get a word out without sounding all breathless and fluttery. “Is this how you seduce your string of women? Do you get them up in one of these dumb balloons and then take advantage of them, when they don’t have anyplace to run?”

  “At the risk of sounding egotistical, most women I know aren’t interested in running.”