Jennifer Greene - Can’t Say No

“I remember,” she said stiffly.

“They’ve been friends of the family for years. I always see them when I’m on vacation.” He added mildly, “I diapered most of the girls a few years back.”

“They certainly haven’t needed that recently.”

“Beauties,” Hart agreed. “The two oldest are twins, seventeen, and they both definitely fill out a bikini. Nubile or not, I usually manage to control myself where children are concerned. And hard as it is to believe, I’m just too old to take on two at a time, much less six. Because most of the time they come en masse -”

“All right, Hart.” Bree could feel a flush of embarrassment heating her cheeks.

“Actually, they always help me set up house when I come here on vacation. And my mom usually houses the whole Reninger troop for a few weeks in August-”

“I get the picture,” Bree muttered uncomfortably.

“Sure?” Hart asked dryly.

“ Very sure.”

“And as for my absorption in Marie over dinner, my sweet nitwit, I wouldn’t have had to pump her if you’d been a little less stingy talking about yourself. Getting information out of you is like pumping a dry well. But if you read any more than that into the attention I gave Marie, I’m going to be insulted. I happen to have,” he informed her, “much better taste in women.”

He didn’t give her much chance to answer before his tone changed. The lightness was suddenly gone, and his eyes held a quiet watchfulness as his finger traced her cheek. “Bree,” he said quietly, “you persist in imagining racy scenes in my background. I’m not saying I haven’t been around, but fidelity happens to be one of those old-fashioned values I could never quite shake. You’ll be stuck keeping me happy, honey, don’t doubt it. And I certainly don’t plan on giving you any reason to look elsewhere for someone to keep you satisfied in bed.”

Flushed and nervous, Bree raked a hand through her hair. She suddenly knew he was serious, and the old Bree sneaked to the surface, the Bree who was terribly afraid of foundering in unfamiliar waters. “Hart,” she said haltingly, “you don’t marry someone just because you love them. There have to be other reasons. Sane, rational reasons. Sensible reasons.”

He was silent.

“We argue all the time,” she reminded him.

He said nothing.

“We haven’t known each other very long. We don’t have anything in common. I don’t even know where we’d live!”

Still he said nothing.

“And my life is a mess-haven’t you been listening? I-”

“Yes, I’ve been listening,” Hart interrupted quietly, “but I’ve never seen your life as a mess, Bree. All I saw was that you’d taken a turn you didn’t like and were backtracking toward a different path. Perhaps,” he added lightly, “I misunderstood a great deal. Because I never much gave a damn where we’d live. Or about ‘sane, rational reasons,’ either.” He sat up, ducking his head for a moment, and when he raised it there was a lazy grin on his face, typically Hart, swiftly erasing any hint of an earlier emotional turmoil. “You can put your smile back on, red. Nobody’s upset. And anyway,” he said firmly, “it’s time for breakfast.”

He pulled her to her feet, and for a moment Bree stood absolutely still. Then she reached for her jeans and tennis shoes. She’d hurt him. She’d rather break all four limbs than ever hurt Hart. She’d never meant to be insensitive; she’d tried to treat the subject of marriage lightly because Hart treated everything lightly…but not this. She could see from the quickly masked vulnerability in his eyes that he’d simply known no other way to ask her…or that maybe she’d never given him much of a chance.

“Corn Flakes at your place or mine?” Hart’s teasing grin was the same, only his eyes looked different. Hollow and weary.

“Hart-”

“Yours. Then you’ll get stuck with the cleanup. Come on, lady.” He gathered up her sleeping bag and the netting, motioned her to hurry up tying her shoes and then flung an arm loosely across her shoulders as they started from the woods, all devil-may-care. “We’re going to make wine today,” he said swiftly.

“Wine?” There was such a huge lump in her throat that she could barely talk. Her hands were trembling. Hart loved her. Could he really? He’d already dropped the subject as if it had never been mentioned. Bree didn’t want to drop it, but she didn’t have the least idea how to reopen the door she’d just closed in his face.

Hart stopped to turn and chuck her under the chin. Very gravely, he turned up one corner of her mouth and then the other as if he could order up a smile. “Cherry wine,” he continued. “There’s no reason to look all upset. We’re going to have a very good time. I picked up an antique press a few days ago, and I want to put it to use.”

Bree surfaced, forcing the smile he was so insistent she wear. She searched his eyes and found there only a shuttered determination that she didn’t know how to handle. Vaguely, her mind registered what he’d been talking about. “Hart, don’t be an idiot. Where on earth are you going to find cherries at this time of year?”

“I’ll get the cherries. And the sugar and the yeast. All you have to do is provide the brawn, honey.”

He wasn’t joking. Three hours later, Bree’s yard looked like a winery. A sticky winery. Hart had brought down two lawn chairs from his place. And two wooden barrels. And a hundred pounds of cherries.

The wine press stood in the center of the mess, an innocent-looking contraption. One poured a bowl of cherries into the machine and turned the crank, and voilà, cherry juice was supposed to stream out into the waiting sterile bowl, and the pits and cherry skins were all supposed to remain inside.

It wasn’t working. The pits and cherries remained inside, just as the cherry-press inventor had intended. But most of the cherry juice, as far as Bree could tell, was all over her. Wearing a fresh pair of white jeans-definitely a foolish choice of attire-and black halter top, she whipped back her hair with the side of her wrist and glared at Hart.

“How did you miraculously produce that clean white shirt?”

He grinned at her, his fingers still buttoning the shirt. “I picked up a pile of shirts from the local laundry yesterday, and left them in my car. And since the other shirt seemed to be a little sticky-”

“ Very little,” Bree said ominously.

“You’re obviously much better at this than I am.”

“The question is how I let you talk me into this to begin with.”

“I must have asked you real nice?” Hart peered down into the bowl, batting aimlessly at a few buzzing bees that had grown interested in the sweet project. “Think of the delicious brew we’ll have later on,” he coaxed. “Look, I’ll take another turn-”

“You will not. ” The last time he’d had a round at the cranking job, cherry juice had ended up all over the lawn. He’d been banished to the lawn chair. Wearing a pair of cutoffs and now a fresh white shirt, he barely looked as though he’d been in the first skirmish, much less the war.

“Bree-”

She gave him a suspicious look. The last of three. It would be just like him to act useless just to get out of doing any serious work. She knew Hart.

And her heart was so damned full of love for him that she was very close to crying, and had been all day. Hart would get her involved in some asinine activity simply to get her mind off her troubles. He’d done it before. She was only beginning to realize how often. “Take off your shirt,” she ordered briskly.

“My shirt? Why?”