Jennifer Greene - Can’t Say No

Put on your clothes, she reminded herself vaguely. Back to reality, Bree. He’s a selfish, arrogant man; it isn’t wise to forget that. You just ditched a perfectly decent fiancé-your life’s a mess, and he’s the last man on earth you would want to get seriously involved with.

All true. That didn’t shake the bemused mood, the ridiculous feeling that she was utterly beautiful this morning. Silly. As she climbed the steps to the loft, the sun already felt hot, but she didn’t realize what time it was until she flicked an eye on the bedside clock. Eight. She’d really only had five hours’ sleep. A small smile touched her lips. She’d come to this cabin for rest, but she’d had very little since Hart came into her life.

Pulling open the wardrobe, she grabbed a camisole top and jeans. By sheerest chance, her eyes settled on the telescope. It was supposed to go in the bottom drawer, not on the floor of the wardrobe, and en route to putting it away properly she lifted it to the window.

There was action at the top of the ravine. The bare cement patio was about to be crowded with lawn furniture. A single chaise longue was already there. So was Hart, wielding one end of a white wrought-iron table. A little brunette was wielding the other end, laughing, dressed in a pair of indecently short shorts and an open-necked blouse.

From a distance, the brunette had kind of a cantaloupe for a face, but that was primarily because Bree hadn’t focused the telescope. And wasn’t going to focus it. She felt as though someone had just socked her in the stomach. Jamming the telescope in the bottom drawer, she tugged on clothes and thumped barefoot down the stairs with a furious scowl.

Call me when you evolve, she thought crisply as she flung bowl and Corn Flakes on the kitchen table. Darwin was wrong. Men were the lowest species, not the highest. Snakes went into heat less often than Hart Manning did.

She ate her breakfast so fast she got hiccups. Water splashed every which way as she attacked the bowl with suds and dishcloth, hiccuping on every second breath. By the time she’d cleaned up the suds sticking to the floor and herself, her nerves were sandpaper. He’d deliberately made her believe that she could mean something to him. He’d deliberately touched her with tenderness, seduced her with those lazy eyes of his.

She found herself staring at the white bowl, sparkling clean now twice over, and scowled again. In one quick movement, she sent it winging toward the door. It smashed obligingly. So did another plate. Actually, so did two cups and a saucer.

Silence followed. The sun beamed in on the white shards of porcelain. Bree’s hiccups were gone. And she was so sick of silence she could have screamed.

With the sun blinding her, Bree stared grimly at the rusty latch on Gram’s old shed. It just didn’t want to give-she’d been trying for the better part of an hour. She tugged again at the knob, then finally threw her weight against the door to force it open. With an eerie creak, the door swung in, Bree pitching forward with it. In that sudden dank darkness, her shin immediately connected with something bulky and hard. Her skin dented; the old tool didn’t.

Using her entire vocabulary of four-letter words-silently-Bree massaged her aching shin and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness.

The past five days just hadn’t been her best. Her luggage had arrived, but so had letters from home. Her mom wanted her to return; she was worried about her, and Bree hated being the source of that worry.

The letter from her ex-boss had disturbed her even more. Marie was blithely ignoring her resignation and lining up projects for Bree to tackle as soon as you’re feeling better. Contec is seriously hurting without you. Bree’s first impulse was guilt for leaving Marie in the lurch; her second was wariness as she reminded herself that Marie was an expert at using guilt to manipulate people; and her third was a feeling of being totally unsettled, a state of mind that still hadn’t left her.

In the meantime, she’d had to buy an entire set of dishes, since she seemed to have shattered all the old ones. And her sleep had been constantly interrupted by her own personal night watchman, Hart Manning. Sleep? There was little point in even trying.

Squinting into the dark corners of the old shed, Bree stepped over an old wooden crate and sighed. The front yard needed mowing. Unfortunately, most of Gram’s tools seemed to have disappeared. A pitchfork was accumulating rust in the corner. Her eyes skimmed over Gram’s old gardening gloves, a small spade, a hand saw, an ancient scythe…but there was nothing remotely resembling a lawn mower or even clippers.

With hands on hips, Bree shook her head. The scythe would have to do, dull and awkward though it was. It looked like something that belonged on an old Soviet flag, but its original purpose a century ago must have been to cut grass. You could always go home, Bree, said a little voice in her head. What exactly are you accomplishing by staying here-you haven’t had any rest; you’re still not talking. You’re worrying your parents, and at least you had a safe, secure job…

Gingerly lifting the scythe from its hook, Bree took it outside and wielded it awkwardly in the sunlight with a stubborn cast to her chin. No. Not yet. For herself, she might still be confused over what she wanted to do with her life, but for Gram…She felt in some indefinable way that she owed Gram something-something that she could pay back only by being here.

But Hart was making it extremely difficult for her to keep her mind on what she owed Gram. He’d showed up every night, once at ten, another time just before eleven, another at precisely ten forty-three. Each time he spread out his sleeping bag downstairs, made an unholy racket settling down, and disappeared before Bree awoke the next morning.

She hadn’t acknowledged that he was there. She’d lain upstairs in Gram’s sensuously soft feather bed, stared at the moon and twiddled her thumbs, fuming. She’d spent hours during the day thinking of what she was going to say to him…when she got her speech back. And she’d spent the hours at night worrying that she would fall asleep and have another nightmare, that Hart would come up to her, that she would behave…foolishly again.

Sooner or later, she’d fallen asleep those nights. There’d been no nightmares, but he was driving her nuts. Or maybe she was driving herself nuts, knowing she wasn’t doing a damn thing about him. She’d seemed to spend her entire life letting things happen to her, letting other people direct her actions; it had to stop. The big stuff takes care of itself if you handle the little things first, Gram used to say.

The yard certainly filled the little-things slot. The grass was knee high and straggly. If the project seemed woefully minuscule compared with the momentous decisions facing her, at least she wasn’t moping around the cabin like an exhausted zombie. Enough was enough.

Bree swung the awkward scythe, by the grace of God saved her left leg on the back swing, and noted without surprise that the blade hadn’t severed so much as a blade of grass. Whipping back her hair, she determinedly tried again.

The blade was not exactly in the best shape in terms of sharpness. The sun beat down in a fever of heat, flies buzzed, Bree’s madras shirt and short shorts stuck to her; and blisters formed on her right hand before twenty minutes had passed.

Three hours later, Bree collapsed flat on her back on the front porch of the cabin. She had just enough energy left to turn her head and survey the demolished lawn. Even, it wasn’t. Short, it was. The blisters on her palm were killing her; her throat was so parched she would have sold herself from a street corner for a glass of water; every muscle felt cracked like old leather…and she was grinning like a fool. She’d done it. Thought you couldn’t handle it, didn’t you, Bree?