Can't Say No (17 page)

As a reward, Hart leaned forward to softly lap at her breasts, his hands cradling her hips. She went still then, content to have him take over again, but he whispered, “I’m right here with you. Go with the fire, Bree—don’t you dare stop now.”

He kept saying her name and his hands were everywhere, on her hips, on her breasts, and she started the ancient rhythm because…she had to. Because Hart’s whole body vibrated with need and because there was something incredibly exciting in watching him take fire when she moved, when she tightened her limbs just so, when he made it so very clear that she was doing everything…right.

A once-shy Bree turned exultant, bold, learning how to please him, testing the rhythms that made his eyes darken and his hips tense and his hands move restlessly over her flesh. His body was hers, for this hour. He belonged to her, and that was a heady, sweet power, purely feminine, deliciously exhilarating. She was loving him, not being loved, and for that instant it was utterly, totally enough in itself. Then, in the lushness of giving, her thighs suddenly tightened around him and her spine arched back and a sweet shower of silver flooded everywhere, within, without, all over.

Moments later, Hart tugged her down to collapse against him. His breathing was still rough, as was hers; their bodies were damp and warm. “You asked me,” he murmured, “what I wanted from you, Bree. Just that, love. For you to see, for you to shout it, that you’re a beautiful, passionate woman, capable of unbelievable giving, strong enough to demand what she wants in her life as well. Look at you,” he whispered.

She curled around him and snuggled to his chest, replete and exhausted and ignoring his utterly foolish demand. She loved him so much she hurt.

“You can stop
grinning
at me as if you’d won a war,” Bree scolded.

Hart lifted the spoon from his Corn Flakes bowl and wagged it at her like a finger. He hadn’t shaved, and in between the blond layers of stubble on his chin was an extremely smug grin that had been there ever since they’d awakened that mor—afternoon. “Eat your cereal, sexy. Heaven knows you burned up enough calories last night. You need your strength.”

Bree sputtered mentally, but not for long. What was the use? Hart had probably been born irreverent. Digging into her Corn Flakes, she passed him the front section of the morning paper, and buried her smile behind the lifestyle section.

Truth was, she felt the silly urge to sing this mor—afternoon. Turn cartwheels. Skydive. The mood was irrational, but there it was. Under the kitchen table, she crossed her bare feet, lifted them comfortably onto Hart’s lap and turned the page.

Hart finished his cereal. He reached for his coffee with one hand, while his other palm stole under the table to stroke her bare instep. Ticklish, she squirmed, scowling over the top of the paper at him. Hart
refused
to be restful this morning.

“Where we going for dinner tonight?” he asked her.

She blinked. “I wasn’t aware we were going anywhere.”

“Certainly we are. I had in mind a little steak cooked by the pond, around six. I’ll bring the steak, you bring the marshmallows.”

Unreasonably disappointed that he wasn’t proposing anything for the afternoon, Bree nodded. “All right.”

Hart chuckled. “You’re slipping, honey.”

“Pardon?”

“Even two days ago, you were still on the get-out-of-my-life kick. Do I sense a slight mellowing in your attitude?” There was a peculiarly intense light in his eyes in spite of his lazy drawl; she couldn’t read it.

Bree shrugged, returning to the paper. “I admit you’ve kind of grown on me.” Green eyes twinkled at him. “Kind of like a fungus.” Hart slid his nail down the bottom of her foot. Bree jerked, bumped her knee under the table, reclaimed both limbs and tucked them safely under her chair. “A more-trouble-than-you’re-worth fungus,” she said darkly.

He leaned both elbows on the table. “But you weren’t quite so nervous waking up next to me this morning. Notice that?”

“Do you really want an answer to that?” Swinging out of the chair, she reached for the breakfast dishes. Before she’d even carried them to the sink, he was behind her, deftly stealing the bowls from her hands and swinging her around.

“I really hate to say this,” he whispered, “but I think I’m getting through to the lady.”

“You are,” she agreed, and perched up on tiptoe to kiss him.

Her action seemed to take him back, for the brooding midnight darkness left his eyes and a crooked smile touched his mouth. “What was that for?” He sounded just the slightest bit wary, as though he’d just opened Pandora’s box and wasn’t sure what the contents were going to be.

“Honesty, Hart,” she said softly. Sincerity shone out in the vulnerability in her clear eyes. “You drive me nuts,” she admitted, “but you’ve also done something special for me. You
are
someone special to me. I’m not holding you to anything, Hart, I want you to understand that. You’re perfectly free when you want to be free.”

His smile abruptly died. “You’re a failure,” he murmured, “at playing it light and breezy, Bree. Don’t try.”

At the cabin, just before six, she was still trying. Her emerald-green blouse was tied at the ribs; white jeans led down to a frivolous pair of green sandals; and her hair was pulled back with cheerful green yarns. “Light and breezy” was the message—she even applied mascara with a light and breezy touch, which made the black stuff smudge all over her eyes.

Muttering darkly, Bree wiped off her smile and then the smudges, starting over again with her makeup. The crooked mirror in the loft didn’t help, mostly because it inevitably made one cheek look higher than the other, and she was fairly sure she wasn’t made that way. Picnic-type dinners didn’t call for a lot of makeup anyway, which was why she was careful to use every effective brand in her drawer, but so imperceptibly that Hart wouldn’t notice.

She didn’t want him to think she cared; she just wanted to look devastatingly casual.

Finishing up with blusher, she pulled the throat of her blouse open and generously splashed her chest with the most wicked perfume she’d created yet. Heck, the smell would dissipate in the open air anyway. Light and breezy, she echoed, as she stepped back and regarded her image in the mirror.

No good. The lady in the mirror had her heart in her eyes. Bree practiced another fake devil-may-care smile. So she adored the man. So what? So in time she would go back home like good, responsible Bree, and he would return to his harem on the hill. The trick was not to take it all too seriously, just to get into this business of having a wild affair and simply enjoy. Hundreds of women did it all the time.

A fine philosophy for a hedonist. By nature, she’d never been much of a hedonist. “You’re on the way to getting hurt very badly,” she scolded the braless gypsy in the mirror.

The gypsy practiced a careless shrug.
Oh, stop it, Bree.

But Bree didn’t want to stop it. The screw that had snuck loose when Gram died? She’d tighten it up in time; she’d go back and dust her apartment and pay her bills and find a nine-to-five job and
behave
herself again. But not yet. Her heart thumped helplessly in her chest when she heard the rap on the door downstairs.

After running the brush through her hair one last time, she skipped down the stairs. Grabbing the bag of marshmallows from the counter, she opened the door with a winsome grin of anticipation that abruptly died.

Hart was on her doorstep, but not alone. Next to him stood Marie, her one-time boss, dressed in a simple sharkskin dress and white sandals, her blond hair sleekly pinned in a French coil. Marie was not beautiful and never would be, but she carried off the image of a self-sufficient, independent woman without effort. Because she was one.

Bree promptly felt as underdressed as an orphan. Her eyes whipped up to Hart. In navy cotton cords with a stark white shirt, he dwarfed both of them. He was looking at Marie, and they were both laughing so hard that neither of them had heard her open the door.

A sock in the gut would have been kinder.

Bree knew Marie…so well. Just as Marie had been very good at stuffing Bree in the back office for the past five years, she was an expert at taking the limelight herself. Since Bree hated limelight and had always acknowledged Marie’s unquestionably effective skills with people, for a very long time they had gotten on remarkably well. Even after Bree had handed in her resignation, there were no hard feelings between them. Bree’s boss used her, yes, but the only fault had been in Bree, for letting that happen. Marie couldn’t help who she was.

And Marie was unquestionably a self-assured, successful woman. Exactly the type that Hart had said appealed to him when they first met. Really, Bree thought brightly, Hart and Marie were a natural pair, a matched set. It was amazing that she’d ever thought he could be permanently attracted to anyone as serious and unflamboyant as good old Bree…

“Bree!”
Marie turned with a startled little laugh and threw her arms around Bree in an exuberant hug. “Surprised?”

“I—yes.”
Total shock
was sort of a synonym for
surprise,
wasn’t it?

“Your dad called me yesterday, and when I heard you had your speech back, I just couldn’t resist coming! I knew you never meant to resign, Bree. You weren’t yourself, and I was just so
glad
that things have turned out all right for you again.” She nodded with a special smile for Hart. “I was just telling this neighbor of yours that I’d planned to take you out to dinner, so we could talk. I can’t stay—my return flight’s at midnight, and Hart says he knows this little restaurant—”

“Fine.” Bree smiled brilliantly. The sensations were all familiar, being squeezed into Marie’s self-imposed schedules.

“I was just telling him that you’re the best systems analyst in the business. And that I had to be half to blame for your taking off to this godforsaken place. You were working too hard, Bree, and I’m totally responsible for giving you a workload the size of a mountain…” Marie, turning, slipped on the wooden step.

Hart grabbed her arm. Bree’s eyes were fixed on Hart’s long brown fingers clutching Marie’s white sleeve, on the fluttering smile Marie cocked up at him, on the closeness of their two bodies and the late-afternoon sun pouring down on them. “It’s a little rustic for me around here,” Marie admitted with a little laugh to Hart. “I have to admit that I’m strictly an indoor-sports enthusiast.”

Ah, yes, Bree thought bleakly, feeling like a reluctant third as they headed for Hart’s rented Lexus. It hadn’t taken long for Marie to fall. Around Hart, it wouldn’t take any woman long to fall.

And Hart wasn’t fighting it very hard, if he’d already decided on a restaurant, if they were already on a comfortable first-name basis, if they’d been laughing like old friends after only a few minutes’ acquaintance.

“The steaks will wait for another night,” Hart murmured as he handed Bree into the car. She glanced up once at him, to glimpse a cool, unfathomable expression in his eyes that she’d never seen before. “Systems analyst, is it?” he muttered. “I’m just beginning to realize what else you were stingy about telling me. You had quite a boss, didn’t you, Bree?”

Bree ducked her head, feeling miserable. He didn’t have to
say
it.

“…but I wouldn’t miss this evening for the world. Get in, talkative Charlie. Let’s find out what else you haven’t told me.” The car door shut resoundingly in her ear.

Bree turned to Marie with a smile that was beginning to feel glued on. Hart was irritated with her—she didn’t have the least idea why. Marie was clearly unworried by Bree’s presence as a third party. Bree understood very clearly why—she had never been competition for Marie.

A trip to the Yukon seemed preferable to the evening ahead. Heck, Bree thought wildly, why get picky? She’d settle for Antarctica.

Chapter Eleven

“I started Contec on a shoestring about five years ago. There was just myself, Bree and Allen Spencer—but we got rid of Allen within two months, didn’t we, Bree?” Marie’s eyes flickered briefly on Bree before zooming instantly back to Hart. “Dead weight, that man. Bree could pick up a new system ten times faster than he could. But it wasn’t just that. When a company calls with trouble, you have to send someone who can understand not only their computer system but their specific problems as well, whether it’s a manufacturing difficulty or an unreliable accounting organization—”

“I’m afraid you’re going too fast,” Hart interrupted, leaning back against the red leather booth with a smile. “Computers are half Greek to me. From what you’re saying, can I assume that a systems analyst is a kind of troubleshooter?”

“Exactly—at least in our approach. Contec sells expertise in technology, not the equipment itself. You’d be surprised how many companies invest thousands of dollars in computers and then can’t make the system work for them.”

“So Bree goes in…”

“And educates. Or trains. Or revamps their system. Or custom-programs…”

A black-suited waiter brought a second bottle of wine. Bree tuned the conversation out and tipped the newly filled glass to her lips, delighted with the way the wine slid smoothly down her throat. Amazing, how suddenly fascinated Hart was by the subject of computers. And Marie had been delighted to educate him all through dinner.

Marie gave another scintillating, high-pitched laugh, and Bree downed the rest of her wine. To be honest—though she really had no interest in honesty at the moment—she hadn’t been ignored. Hart had turned to glare at her about every minute and a half, and Marie had waxed poetic on the subject of Bree’s ability on the job. Bree knew Marie was trying to seduce her back to work. Why Hart was so irritated she had no idea, except that he was probably astounded she would leave such a charming and attractive employer and such a “plush” job. Marie was good at making long hours and tedium sound delightful.

Bree had been too busy during dinner to join in the conversation anyway. After the second glass of wine, she’d been simply fascinated watching Marie bounce back and forth from manipulative boss to a lady who helplessly batted her eyelashes. It was really an interesting phenomenon; all Hart had to do was breathe and Marie’s laughter trilled out like a chorus of “Take Me.”