Jennifer Greene - Can’t Say No

“You can’t be sure-”

“I’m very sure.” Without a glance at Hart, Bree whirled toward the cabin. Inside. If she could just get inside…Nightmare shadows were swallowing her up, none of them real, just something in her head. She had to be alone.

Escape didn’t prove that easy. As she walked toward the porch of her cabin, she heard Marie’s car sputter and cough, and then die. Without turning around, she heard Hart offer to take a turn at starting the rental car. It wouldn’t. She heard Marie say something in a panicked flutter, then Hart’s blunt, “I’ll put you on that plane. Believe me,” which effectively let Bree off the hook. She couldn’t conceivably cope with another hour of Marie’s company. She really couldn’t conceivably cope with anything for a little while. Her hand grasped the doorknob, and suddenly Hart was there, whirling her to face him on the dark porch.

“What the hell’s come over you?” he said furiously.

That fury seemed to come out of nowhere. She stared at him blankly.

“You were doing damned fine,” he hissed. “The broad’s like dynamite with a constantly lit fuse. When I think of you working for her day after day-never mind.” Hart’s jaws clamped together. “The point is that you should be giving a victory cheer, and instead you’re having a silent temper tantrum. What is happening?”

“ Nothing is happening. Enjoy your ride to the airport,” Bree said brightly.

Hart jammed his hands in his pockets. “For two cents, I’d take you over my knee.”

“You’d have two black eyes first.”

“I’ll take the black eyes,” he growled. “You just be here when I get back.”

“I won’t wait up,” she said pleasantly. “Marie will undoubtedly keep you busy, but then, you’re outstanding at handling lit fuses.”

Those cold blue of his eyes amazingly took on fire. “Make that one cent. After you tell me what you meant by that crack.”

Marie called out. Hart turned his head for an instant, and Bree slipped inside the cabin and closed the door.

It wasn’t hard to find her sleeping bag, but her tennis shoes were buried in the back of the wardrobe, and then there was the search for a flashlight with working batteries. Bree had no intention of being there when Hart returned.

Outside, she stumbled pell-mell toward the woods, quickly discovering that flashlights weren’t very effective against a night as dark as black velvet. In time, she made it to the pond. Clouds wisped across the crescent moon, and the water was like a still, charcoal mirror. The stone shoreline was not the most comfortable of sites on which to lay out a sleeping bag.

Keep moving, Bree. Everything will be fine if you just keep moving… A mosquito buzzed in front of her nose; Bree swatted it as she backtracked to the forest’s edge. The ground was a little damp, but once she’d tossed away a few branches and twigs, it wasn’t an unbearably rough mattress. She stretched out the sleeping bag, slapped another mosquito, slipped off her jeans and tennis shoes in a record three seconds, and zipped herself in up to her throat.

About then her lungs took in one wretched breath after another. She felt like an utter fool. Ungratefully spouting off to Marie, who’d come such a long way to see her, running off as if ghosts were chasing her, snapping at Hart…and she really knew why he’d been glaring at her all evening. Marie might not have known it, but she’d been describing Bree as a woman who jumped before anyone even told her how high. Hart had contempt for that kind of woman.

She didn’t blame him; so did she.

Her head felt as if it were coming off. Wearily, Bree closed her eyes and curled up in a ball.

The nightmare came back in the clouded mists of sleep. It started as it always had, with Bree guiding Gram through the stores, talking her out of carrying her packages, laughing as she ran to get the car. Then the dream turned into a nightmare…but this time there was no screaming siren. Before she felt crushed under the weight of guilt and helplessness, Bree awoke to a predawn world and utter quiet.

Silent tears streamed down her cheeks. She curled up inside the sleeping bag, folded her arms around her knees and cried, rocking herself back and forth. Aching grief surrounded her, inside and out. The tears she’d never allowed before came pouring out, like a flood, an open faucet, a bottomless well.

Up to this moment, she’d refused to accept the fact that Gram was gone. She’d tried so hard to believe that if she’d done something else, behaved in some different way on that cold winter’s day, that Gram would still be alive. Always, that was the nightmare. She’d take a thousand nightmares rather than the loss. Grief filled her up and was released in an explosion…an explosion of painful sobs. Yet the tower of guilt crumbled, and kept on crumbling.

So much pain…but this time it hadn’t been guilt for Gram, but the loss for herself. Dozens of people had loved and been loved by Bree, but only Gram had always understood the things no one else could grasp, the silly dreams and hopes she knew she couldn’t fulfill. Gram always believed she could. When Gram had died, Bree felt in some terrible way that she’d failed her, but Gram hadn’t died because Bree had failed to save her. Gram was a very old woman with a failing heart, and she had died almost instantly on a cold February day.

Tears kept coming, choking her silently now. Maybe that was the worst, knowing that change was happening inside her; that the process of learning to believe in dreams again was slow and not at all easy. It was happening, but Gram was no longer there to share it. Gram was gone…

“Damn you, Bree.”

Her head jerked up. Instinctively, she cringed under the single harsh beam of flashlight in her eyes, but the light was quickly diverted to the ground. She had one brief glimpse of his face, all dark shadows on granite planes, midnight-blue eyes haunted with anxiety, before Hart swooped down on her like a great offended bear.

He tossed some mosquito netting over her and tossed the flashlight aside before gathering her up, sleeping bag and all. His entire body was trying unsuccessfully to transform itself into a blanket, wrapping her up, covering her, securing her to his warmth.

She was still crying, and fighting very hard to stop. He sat down, still holding her; she made a frantic movement to rise, and had her face gently pushed into his chest for her trouble. “This time you’re getting it all out, Bree, and you’ll do it right now.”

He sounded so much like…Hart. A born bully, Hart, with a low, soothing baritone and huge, warm arms that wouldn’t let her go. How could she fight that? The way he murmured to her, you’d think it was perfectly all right to cry, to release the last of a lonely grief, to let it all go. The torrent of tears finally faded to a steady drip, drip, drip, and an embarrassing occasional hiccup.

“Better?”

She nodded.

He didn’t start scolding until she was ready to be mopped up, half with a handkerchief and half with kisses. “You realize how many hours I had to spend roaming around looking for you? Couldn’t you have just once, just once, accepted a little help from someone without trying to take the whole damn world on your shoulders?”

Exhausted, Bree said quietly, “I’m fine, Hart. Really, I’ve always been fine. I never needed a caretaker before, and I don’t need one now. You never had to-”

“No, I didn’t have to.” Hart pressed one swift, fierce kiss on her mouth before lifting his head to glare at her. “Since you didn’t take your car, I figured you had to be camping out somewhere, but I didn’t figure you’d pick a mosquito haven.” He slapped irritably at his neck before fumbling with the rough white netting between them. “Actually, I did figure it, having very few options at this time of year.”