Jennifer Greene - Can’t Say No

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?