Can’t Say No

“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.