Can’t Say No

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