Can't Say No (14 page)

“Bree, don’t talk about it,” Addie admonished worriedly.

Bree touched her mother’s shoulder reassuringly. “I’m not about to lose my voice again,” she said gently. “But as far as Hart goes, Dad, he’s not the reason I’m staying here.”

Burke hesitated. “I just don’t want to see you hurt, sweetheart. I’ve thought a lot about what Manning said to me, and he made his feelings more than clear where you were concerned. But it wouldn’t matter how good a man he is, if he isn’t what
you
want and need.” Burke scratched the back of his neck, the way he always did when he was nervous. “You know, it was a devil of a lot easier being a parent when you were of grounding age. You’re grown, Bree. I respect you as an adult, and I respect your choices. But as your father, I know you’re at a time in your life when you’re vulnerable. He’s a good-looking man…”

Bree shook her head. “Since when have I ever been swayed by a pretty face?” she said teasingly.

“Bree—”

“Look, Dad. I know what your first impressions were, but you’d like him if you gave him half a chance. Hart’s the kind of man who does what he thinks is right no matter what other people think. He makes me laugh, and he makes me
think.
And there’s something there I never had with Richard. Also, he…takes care of people, and he does it in such a way that you never even realize that’s what he’s doing, and…”

“Burke, I really feel we should start packing,” Addie interjected, her eyes darting from father to daughter.

“Yes.” Burke’s eyes searched his daughter’s face as he rose from the rocker. He smiled suddenly.

The smile didn’t register with Bree. She was busy gnawing at her lip, startled to hear herself defend Hart. Defend Hart? Heck, her dad hadn’t even been attacking him. And to defend him, the egotistical, pushy chauvinist, who claimed to lead such a decadent lifestyle, who’d never offered her one ounce of sympathy, who had a harem of women up on the hill?

Heck, he was the son of a seadog he’d labeled himself. He’d seduced her without one word of love or commitment and expected more of the same action free and clear.
Bree, you’re not only a fool with a screw loose, you’re an idiot,
she chided herself.

Scratched and panting, Bree clapped her hands together to get rid of the dirt and stood up. Dusk was bringing in mosquitoes. Dusk was also, not surprisingly, bringing in darkness. A simple fifteen-minute stroll down her backyard, around the pond and up the ravine to Hart’s place had proved an obstacle course. She’d just tumbled over a hidden rock. Much of his hillside was made up of rocks and waist-high bramble bushes.

Rubbing her hands on the backs of her jeans, she glanced up. Clouds had been rolling in all day, but had waited until after dinner to start seriously rumbling overhead. A thick tangle of branches blocked her view of the sky, but in the direction of Hart’s house there were still glimpses of lamplight. Way up there.
Still
way up there.

How Hart had scurried down to the pond so swiftly was beyond her, particularly without being scratched to bits and devoured by the man-eating mosquitoes. Irritably, she slapped at her neck, and then shook her head in despair. Her neck felt bruised, and the mosquito was still free, along with its supporting cast of thousands.

Digging her tennis shoe into a rocky crevice, she stubbornly groped for another foothold. And then another. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck; a bramble grabbed her hair.

Her goal was to get to Hart before he showed up at the cabin. Only why couldn’t she have had the sense to take the car and drive
around
the mountain?

Because she hadn’t thought. Her mind had been totally on getting this conversation over with. Her parents were gone, and if they weren’t completely in agreement with her choices, at least there was peace between them. Bree couldn’t feel equally peaceful with herself until she’d communicated with Hart.

The romp in bed had been nice, but there would be no encores, though she had in mind telling him so tactfully. She’d rather gentled toward him, since he’d taken that silly chivalrous role the day before with her parents, but that really changed nothing. A flat-out sexual relationship with a man you argued with constantly the rest of the time—it just wasn’t her thing.

Thunder clapped overhead. Bree scowled. One fat drop of rain made it through the umbrella of leaves above and splashed on her nose.

Concentration was difficult. Mentally, she was trying to rehearse the proper words.
Hart, I don’t think you were listening to me when we woke up yesterday morning, but I’m really not in the market for an affair. Shake hands on it?

No, Bree.

Hi, Hart. Did you know I’ve been under an incredible amount of stress? I didn’t think you did. You see, when your entire life is falling apart, occasionally you can be forgiven for spending a night…out of character. You see, that wasn’t really
me
you were sleeping with…

Who was it then, Bree?

Well, maybe she didn’t have a fully prepared speech yet, but how was she supposed to
think?
The rain was sneaking down, sliding into her hair and down her shirt.

His patio was cement, braced into the hillside with steel beams. She crawled under and then around it, and when she stepped onto the smooth flat white surface, a deluge of warm, utterly drenching rain greeted her. She lifted her face for a moment.
Thanks, God. You couldn’t have held off a few more minutes?

“You look more drenched than the rat the cat rejected,” Hart drawled from the open glass doorway. “Couldn’t you have waited another hour for me to come to you?”

Chapter Nine

Bree whirled, her fingers scrambling to comb some kind of order to her rain-tangled hair. Hart had a brandy glass in his hand, the amber liquid shimmering in the fading light. He was dressed like a mountain man again, bare feet and dark jeans and a dark shirt open at the throat. Actually, that wasn’t specifically mountain-man attire, but the image was there, in his mane of gold hair and cougar-fierce eyes that seared on hers straight through the darkness and rain.

“Let’s get you inside and dry. Your parents gone?”

“They left for home. Listen, Hart—”

“Listen nothing. Let’s get you into a hot shower.”

Stepping cautiously over the threshold, she shook her head firmly. “I won’t be here that long. I just wanted to tell—”

The thought was difficult to finish when her jaw was dropping. As swiftly as her eyes were taking in the incredible look of his living room, Hart was taking in the look of her bedraggled hair and wet clothes and unconscious shivering. “Shower
immediately.
”

Good intentions about staying cool didn’t last long. “Hart, you have to stop ordering people around sometime,” she started heatedly, but again lost her train of thought as she stared around her.

“You’re absolutely right, Bree,” Hart agreed, as he nudged her gently through the debris.

And there
was
debris. Somewhere at base level, there were the cream walls and matching carpet that the original owner must have put in. Maybe there was even a couch. It was hard to tell.
Everywhere
there were boxes and string and brown wrapping paper. Resting on top of one package was an enameled vase, preciously scrolled in teal blue and rose and gold. A two-foot-tall porcelain elephant was sitting on the floor. An Oriental carpet was half unrolled; Bree could just catch glimpses of its lusciously rich apricot and cream pattern. A harem of carved ivory dancing girls had been scattered on a table. More or less in the center of the floor she saw a legal pad and a pen.

“Where on earth did all this
come
from?”

“A delivery truck that wasted my
entire
afternoon. I’m surprised you didn’t hear the noise and confusion at your place.”

“I was out with my parents.” She wanted to get another look, but, fingers dancing up and down her damp spine, Hart was coaxing her down a long hall, imperceptibly pushing. “Look. I am
not
going to take a shower,” Bree said irritably.

“Okay, honey.”

She glanced up at the rare malleable tone in his voice. He must have recently showered himself, because he smelled like soap. He looked tired, and she half frowned. Hart
never
looked tired. She didn’t want him to look tired. She just wanted him safely on a different side of the globe from her, but when she parted her lips to start her tactful speech, he draped a hand loosely around her neck and pressed his warm cheek to her trembling cool one. He turned his face, and his lips stroked the spot where his cheek just had.

She’d drawn up such a wonderful set of determined goals over the past few hours. They dissipated like fog in early morning.

As she took a breath, her brain scrambled to salvage a little common sense. His palm settled gently over her ribs, and pushed. One step back, and Hart had the space to close the door between them.

“I’ll bring you some clothes,” he called out. “When you’re done just toss your stuff out. I’ll throw ’em in the dryer.”

Bree closed her eyes in exasperation. A moment later, she opened them to an ordinary bathroom in pale blue—ordinary except for the shiny brass dragon breathing fire at her from over the john.

Hart evidently liked his own things around him.

Her image confronted her in the mirror, and she frowned. The waif in the reflection was shivering violently. Anyone who looked as much like a dead rat as she did had a lot of presumption thinking she needed to call off an affair. And furthermore, there didn’t seem any point in catching pneumonia for a few principles that would still be there a few minutes from now.

Besides, a shower would give her time to prepare more speeches. Flicking on the hot-water tap, she started stripping off her clothes. Ten minutes later, she turned off the pelting spray, dried off and discovered Hart had been in and out in the meantime. A brush and hair dryer had been laid on the counter, and a man’s soft plaid flannel shirt, in dark red and gray, was hanging from the dragon’s nose.

With a rueful grimace, Bree snatched the shirt and outstared the dragon. “You don’t seriously think this is all I’m going to wear around him, do you? You think I’m that stupid?”

The dragon failed to respond.

“I don’t suppose you’re willing to tell me where he keeps his jeans? Or what he’s up to out there in the living room?”

The dragon wasn’t willing.

“I get the nasty feeling you’re trying to tell me I’m on my own here,” she muttered glumly.

In minutes, her hair was dry, give or take a few damp curling strands around her neck. Inevitably, it looked flyaway soft after its soak in the rain. There weren’t any rubber bands to tame it, although Hart’s medicine cabinet yielded aspirin, toothpaste and antacid tablets. She borrowed an antacid in lieu of a rubber band, gave her hair one last punishing brush in hopes it would stop looking like the mane of a wanton sixties flower child, and padded barefoot down the hall, Hart’s shirt flapping around her bare thighs.

Silence. A tiny snooping foray down the hall later, and she discovered his bedroom. Her lips compressed the instant she walked in. Maybe if they shared one single value, maybe if her life weren’t already totally in flux, maybe if he didn’t constantly infuriate her,
maybe
she wouldn’t have felt quite so definite about breaking it off with him. His bedroom, though, just added another very good reason why she was headed for trouble if she didn’t. A king-sized bed. Natch. Scarlet satin sheets. A full-length mirror, and a really exquisite oil painting on the wall of a naked woman.

A clock tick-tocked from his bedside table. Briskly, Bree forced her eyes away from the reclining lady. The only reason she was invading this overgrown wolf’s den was to find a pair of jeans. She found a half dozen in the closet. Her eyes whisked back to the satin sheets as she donned a pair of white cords. Honestly. He was a womanizer to the core. He didn’t
care
about her. There’d been a woman around, so he’d taken the opportunity; it was Bree’s problem entirely that she’d given him the impression she was amenable to a fast, sweet fling. An impression she simply had to correct.

She bent over, cuffing the jeans four times. When she stood back up, she sighed. Unless she held up the pants, they weren’t going to do much for her modesty; she could see clear down to her knees. She grabbed a belt, drew it through the loops, tucked her shirt in and lashed the belt at its tightest notch.

Now, for battle.

Just outside the door to the living room, Bree took a deep breath, rapidly smoothed back her hair for the hundredth time and pasted a serene smile on her face.

Hart clearly hadn’t heard her approach. He was on the floor, straddling a huge box, attempting to balance a vase in one hand while scribbling on a legal pad with the other. He kept turning to study the exquisite ebony-and-gold vase. Setting it down, he reached absently for his brandy glass.

Bree frowned when he gulped down the contents of the glass in several long swigs. Before he’d finished swallowing, he was pouring himself another from a sweat-dripping silver pitcher on a tray on the floor. It appeared he’d already polished off half of the pitcher’s contents.

Still, for a man who had to be inebriated, he handled the vase with delicate…almost loving…care. Momentarily diverted from her purpose, Bree jammed her hands in her pockets and crossed her bare feet in the doorway with a wisp of a smile on her face.

It was like watching a bear playing with butterflies. He looked so rugged and huge, and Lord knew his hands could move at the speed of light…yet the way he touched each item he unwrapped, she could see all the tenderness the man was capable of. He wasn’t smiling. He was concentrating; the furrow between his brows was testimony to that. She’d never seen Hart with his guard so far down. All masks had slipped; there was only a man working—and loving it.

She cleared her throat delicately. “Is this stuff from the import business you told me you hated so much?”