Can’t Say No Read online

  A lynching, truthfully, would be too good for him. People were staring at them. Actually, it wasn’t people but women, looking not at them but at him. He drew every feminine eye as they passed, with his nauseating Greek-god profile and commanding stride. Furthermore, he was actually trying to tow her along with him…at least until she dug in her heels at the restaurant door, shaking her head vigorously.

  “I take it that’s supposed to mean no? Honey, I’ve heard more noes that mean yes from women than there’s honey in a beehive. I watched you the entire time you were racing around the airport-and we both know you’re in no shape to drive. You could barely keep your eyes open getting off the plane, and your stomach was grumbling half the night. And you have a headache, don’t you?”

  She shook her head in denial.

  He tapped her nose gently with his forefinger. “And you’re a fibber. Amazing how a woman can fib without even talking.”

  An hour later, Bree climbed into her rental car, locked the doors, checked the locks on all the doors, started the engine and jammed her foot on the accelerator. The weariness and depression that had been following her like a shadow these past weeks were gone. Every cell in her body was vibrating with life, after an incredible hour of that man staring at her over a restaurant table. He hadn’t been happy until she’d eaten ham, sausage, eggs and hash browns with two cups of coffee…She never ate that kind of breakfast.

  Nor had she ever met a pushier, nosier man than Hart Manning. The less she answered his questions, the more he looked as if he’d gotten hold of a priceless puzzle that increasingly intrigued him. And he’d almost-once-made her laugh, with his coaxing grin and irreverent humor. She’d stopped herself in time. A woman should never encourage a stranger, and she could guess his intentions from the way he kept looking at her, at her breasts and throat and eyes…it was nerve-racking. The man was probably in heat constantly. She’d had a cat like that once.

  She’d gotten rid of the cat.

  A car zoomed past her, and she flicked her eyes in the rearview mirror. And blinked. A navy blue Lexus was just behind her, and the driver had a leonine mane, eyes that matched his car and a large, powerful hand that waved, all friendly-like.

  Swiftly, her eyes returned to the road. Not that she could exactly accuse him of following her-he’d happily volunteered his own destination as a vacation cabin in the town just short of hers. That was still no excuse for his edging behind her as though she needed a caretaker. Her foot snapped down on the accelerator. So she looked sleepy, did she?

  An hour earlier she could have fallen asleep in Grand Central Station, but now, thanks to that…bully, she couldn’t have been less tired.

  And as for looking like hell…hurriedly, she glanced at the mirror again, only to see that she might look a little tired, but hardly comatose. Her hair was lustrous and shiny, her skin clear, her green eyes snapping with energy, and she’d taken care of those little circles with makeup in the restroom. There was nothing wrong with the way she looked. Nothing.

  Except for the delicate frown between her brows when she saw the flashing yellow light trailing her. Pulling over, Bree stopped the engine, took several deep, calming breaths, opened the window and faced the policeman.

  “Going fifteen miles over by the clock. License and registration, please.”

  Mortified, Bree hurriedly complied. She’d never in her life received a speeding ticket. The gentleman in the tan uniform was more than happy to educate her as to how it was done. Cheeks flaming, Bree accepted the oblong bit of paper and the stern admonition to control her hot-foot tendencies. Only by chance did she glance behind her.

  Hart had pulled his navy Lexus off the highway some distance behind her. He was yawning. Yawning!

  For the next three hours, her speedometer never once bounced above fifty-five. Neither did her shadow’s.

  Gradually, rolling hills led to mountains, and the road began to dip and curve. Streams gushed over the hillsides, stripes of silver where the sun hit. After a time, Bree flicked off the air conditioning and rolled down the windows. The air was sultry, but the smell of pungent woods soothed her fragile nerves.

  Hart was following her; she’d known from the minute he deliberately drove past his turnoff. It would be so simple to get rid of him if she could talk, but handicapped as she was, she felt utterly helpless. Then again, her polite no-thank-yous had gotten rid of any number of unwanted men-but she had a feeling they wouldn’t work with Hart. What would? She would have to do something about him. When she got to the cabin.

  Not now, not yet. For now, she inhaled deeply and remembered why she had come here. There was no other place on earth like the mountains in South Carolina in April.

  Clusters of trillium bubbled and tripped over the hillsides in incredible snow-white splashes. The woods were verdant and ripe with new growth; every leaf seemed to catch the sun. Silence was part of the magic. Suddenly, there were no cars except hers and Hart’s, just the soft shadows of woods, the occasional burst of secluded stream, the lush promise of shelter and privacy where no one would intrude.

  The road to Gram’s cabin curved down and around a valley. A very few other vacation cottages stood along the road, but all of them were hidden from sight, with only crooked mailboxes to indicate their presence. The ravine was just past that stand of trees, completely invisible from the road, a lush sanctuary for wildlife and flowers, rising up a steep incline…Gram had loved it so. Gram…

  Shoving the car into first gear for the last steep climb, Bree frowned absently, aware that she hadn’t thought of Gram in hours now, a first in how long?

  Braking to a stop, she let a pent-up flow of weariness flood her limbs as she gazed at the cabin. A shake-shingled roof, log walls, a porch with a swing…Weeds had overgrown everything, but if the place looked disreputable to a civilized eye, Bree saw only happy memories. Eating warm chocolate cookies on that swing; toting home a pailful of blackberries; wildflowers in every room; going to sleep with the smell of that white, delicate blossom that grew everywhere; a bear one night-how Gram had laughed at his antics, allaying the fears of the little girl Bree had been. Like an ocean tide, there was a rhythm to every minute she had spent in that cabin, the ebb and flow of silence and contentment, the soothing murmur of love she had so taken for granted as a child.

  There was no other place she could possibly have gone.

  It was the perfect place…

  A car door slammed behind her, jolting her from the sleepy memories. Gnawing determinedly at the inside of her lip, she snatched up her purse, unlocked the door and stepped out of the car, her heels sinking into the weedy, pungent earth.

  “Who on earth would have guessed you were such a country girl?” Hart’s eyes interestedly traveled the length of her, as if he hadn’t inspected her a dozen times already. “The mystery deepens, doesn’t it, Bree? I’d say you were a man after my own heart, but one look at you and a fool would know how inappropriate that statement would be.” His head whipped around as he jammed his hands in his pockets. “Looks like the place has been closed up for a few years.”

  Those blue eyes suddenly seared hers, and she could have sworn she glimpsed an unbelievable sensitivity, even protectiveness, in them.

  “So what exactly are we going to do about you, honey?” Hart murmured.

  Bree made several adequate sign-language motions, indicating he could drop himself and his car into the nearest ravine.

  He ignored her energetic hand signals. “I’ve always been happy with the place I rent, but you’ve really cornered a special little valley here. Any cottages for rent close by?”

  She shook her head vigorously from side to side.

  “I saw quite a few signs on the road-”

  Violently, her head whipped back and forth again.

  “Nobody’s lived in that cabin for ages, I’ll bet,” Hart remarked conversationally.

  She nodded yes, someone had. Another lie.

  “Fascinating, how you can fib without even openi
ng your mouth.” Hart shook his head. “I was positive there’d be someone waiting here for you-and there’s no one,” he said unbelievingly. “You just decided to take off for here, looking like a model for an urban magazine, playing some game about not talking, coping as well as a lost toddler in a circus…I don’t know why I’m asking this, but do you at least have food in the place?”

  She nodded.

  “So you don’t even have a box of crackers. Wonderful,” he said flatly.

  All of this just had to stop. Options flounced through her brain, most of them far too good for him. Nailed up by his thumbs. Boiling in oil. Tickled to death by African ants.

  A very tiny corner of her brain acknowledged a wayward and totally incomprehensible attraction to him. Or maybe it was just that he intrigued her. Most men she knew backed off at a frown. Hart probably wouldn’t back off for a bulldozer.

  The vibrations warned her that he was a dangerous man, but he strode forward with an innocuous smile, hooking an arm around her shoulder before she could blink. When she failed to move forward, his arm swept down and his palm lightly tapped her fanny. She definitely stepped forward then. The sexual voltage was undeniable, and as wanted as a toothache.

  “If you’re going to keep up this silent act, I don’t see you coping with a grocery store. Let’s get you inside and make out a food list, and then you can crash. You lasted pretty well during the drive, I’ll give you that. I was worried about you at the airport, but the spark is definitely back in your eyes.” He paused at the door, then pushed it open.

  Gram had never kept the cabin locked up. Why bother? This wasn’t robber territory. There was nothing to steal.

  There was also very little protection against a man who had suddenly developed an ominous scowl.

  Chapter Three

  Hart glared first inside the cabin, and then back at her. One hand rested loosely on his hip; the other pushed a shock of hair from his forehead as if he just couldn’t take much more. His voice erupted in a throaty growl. “You’re actually planning on living in this place? In the shape it’s in? I really don’t believe this.”

  That was it. Something clicked in Bree. She’d put up with his insensitivity over her nightmare; she’d taken his insulting comments about her cuddling sleep habits; she’d tolerated his yawning over the speeding ticket that was entirely his fault. But there was no way she was going to sit still and hear that man malign Gram’s cabin. Slamming her purse on a dusty wood table, Bree unsnapped the top of her ballpoint pen and bent over to scribble furiously on a notepad.

  Hart was leaving, whether he knew it or not. And if he ventured one more amused comment about her inability to talk, he would leave with the iron frying pan, preferably connected to his head.

  “I love it,” a husky baritone announced.

  Her writing hand wavered. Scowling, she glanced up. Hart had taken his jacket off and was holding it with two fingers over one shoulder. His other hand was in his pocket, absently jangling change. The white shirt clung to his chest and wide shoulders, and the suit pants seemed to have been purposely tailored to show off his flat rear end and muscular legs. Everything about him shouted sexual animal.

  Rationally, she said to herself, So what? Irrationally, there was a very stupid pulse in her throat that went ping when Hart’s head suddenly whipped around and his lazy dark eyes settled in on hers.

  “Everything in this place is a hundred years old or more, isn’t it?” he asked.

  She nodded warily.

  “It’s like going back in time. You’re a history buff?”

  She nodded again. Hart wandered, one hand slipping from his pocket occasionally to finger an object in the room. “Fascinating.”

  Gram had lived in the cabin until two years ago, when Bree’s parents had whisked her off to a South Bend apartment where she was close to medical facilities-and their watchful eyes. Her home, though, had always been here.

  The cabin consisted of the main room, a loft and a lean-to in back. A trapper had built it some 150 years before, and without sophisticated tools had hand-chinked and notched the logs to make a snug fit. Gram had lathered whitewash on the inside walls-Bree had helped make that whitewash, stirring the hot lye mixture in a kettle outside for two days in a row.

  In one corner stood a functional spinning wheel and carder; beyond it was an old oak chest with white porcelain pitcher and water basin. Behind Bree was the cooking corner-the scarred converted dry sink, the ancient wood stove that still cooked the most delicious stew this side of the Appalachians, the butter churn and vinegar barrel used to preserve eggs in the winter. A fat iron kettle still rested on the brick hearth, so heavy a woman could barely lift it, and Bree could well remember the hours when wax had melted in that kettle to make candles, even though the place was wired for electricity.

  Gram used to say that people had lost the essence of life. That living wasn’t weekends, or punching in and out at nine and five and playing the politics of promotion. That people had forgotten about the natural order of things, the laughter that no one had to pay for, the peace that you couldn’t buy.

  Certain things in the cabin were purely decorative; others were-or had once been-functional: the cradle that hung from the whitewashed rafters; butter molds shaped like pineapples; the hooked rug in blue and red and cream. Dried baby’s breath and thyme still swayed from the ceiling…

  Covered in cobwebs. The whole place was wreathed in a half-inch layer of them. The early afternoon sunlight filtered through thick dust motes, nestled in spider webs, and sent mottled streams of yellow everywhere. Bree suddenly closed her eyes, aware of just how much work it was going to take to make the place livable again.

  She was so weary she could barely move; for two cents she’d have walked out and flown back home…but then she thought of Gram. A shaft of guilt pierced Bree, familiar and painful, for failing Gram when she’d needed her. And because of all those memories of laughter and purpose and joy, Bree was going to find the energy to fix the place again. And to put her life back together, and to make herself talk…

  “You don’t mind if I take a look upstairs, do you, honey?”

  “Wait!” Bree’s lips soundlessly formed the words, but it was too late. Busybody was already ascending the narrow stairs to the loft.

  Darn it, that was a private place. Some very foolish young-girl dreams were locked up there; Hart just plain didn’t belong, though it would probably sound silly to vocalize her objections, even if she could. It was just…the rope bed was in the loft, covered with a feather mattress so thick you sank into a cocoon when you lay down. Moonlight had a way of trickling over that bed when you first went to sleep, so bright you couldn’t sleep but only dream-and they were always good dreams. The softness and the silver promise of night were plain old-fashioned erotic. The aphrodisiac of dew-scented flowers always wafted in through the window; the linen always smelled as if it had been softened and dried in the sun-because it had been.

  A few moments later, Hart paused halfway down the stairs to close the loft’s trapdoor again, then took three more steps down and perched on a step, studying her. Bree felt warmth rise in her cheeks for no reason at all…or maybe because she was thinking about feather beds. Hart’s lips curled in a perfectly wicked smile. “The place is yours?”

  The lump in her throat felt thick and heavy. Yes, it was hers. Gram had left it to Bree in her will. Bree crumbled up the nasty note she had started to write, and simply penned out a plaintive, Please. Won’t you leave me alone?

  In four swift strides. Hart was down the steps and standing in front of her. He chucked her chin with two curled fingers, and his eyes searched hers fiercely. “Whatever it is, Bree, it’s not that bad. Nothing’s that bad. Don’t you dare get that look in your eyes again.”

  His fingers dropped, as quickly as if he’d never touched her. Startled, Bree let out her breath, but Hart already had his hands jammed loosely in his pockets and was casually looking around the room again. “Guess it’s time I got y
our groceries,” he said idly. “You want to make out a list, or shall I just buy the obvious basics? How long are you planning to stay here, anyway?”

  After a moment, Bree’s lips formed a careful message: “Look, I don’t want anything. Please just-”

  “Didn’t catch that. What did you say?” Hart waited. “You know,” he said mildly, “I’ve always believed that people will walk all over you if you don’t stand up and shout about what you want in life.”

  He picked up his jacket from the kitchen table, where he had casually draped it earlier. “I’ll be back.”

  He closed the door behind him, but that didn’t stop his arrogant words from ringing in her ears like a promise. Seething with helpless fury, Bree spotted a plate within arm’s reach in the open cupboard. Gram had always hated that set of dishes, had meant to seek out more authentic crockery that would suit the cabin as soon as enough of that set broke or cracked to justify the expense. Gram was practical. At the moment, Bree didn’t feel in the least practical; she felt out-of-control frustrated, and she soon sent one china plate hurtling toward the door, to shatter noisily in a thousand tiny pieces.

  Shock replaced that instant silly feeling of satisfaction. For heaven’s sake, she’d never thrown anything in her life. Of all the childish…

  The door popped open again. A lazy, devilish grin was mounted on Hart’s lips like a trophy. “Tsk, tsk. Who would have guessed you had such a temper?” He added gruffly, “You hold on to that temper until I get back, honey. Anger’s a strong medicine that most people never take advantage of.”

  She didn’t have a temper. And once her nonexistent temper had calmed down, Bree leaned back against the closed cabin door and viewed her dusty domain with dismay. At least Hart was gone, but in the meantime wishes weren’t horses. The place wasn’t going to clean itself.