Can’t Say No

Chapter Two

The mental pictures were so vivid to Bree that they never seemed part of a dream. It was just…happening again.

Charcoal clouds drooped low, and snow pitched down helter-skelter. Bree curled a protective arm around the diminutive shoulders of her grandmother, and squeezed. “I don’t believe I let you talk me into taking you out in this weather,” she scolded.

“Couldn’t stand to be cooped up another minute. What a winter this has been!” Gram chuckled, her pale blue eyes nestled in a sea of soft, wrinkled skin. “We bought out the stores, didn’t we, Bree? Haven’t a penny left in my purse.” Her lips compressed as Bree gradually stole two more packages from the armful Gram was toting. “What do you think I am, helpless? I can carry my own load just fine. Don’t you start treating me like a senile old woman who has to be humored.”

“All right. You want to carry all your packages and mine, too? Just to prove you’re a tough old cookie?” Bree asked.

“Old? Eighty-five isn’t old. Now ninety-ninety starts getting up there.”

Bree laughed, casting a loving glance at her tiny grandmother. Tenacious, sassy and fiercely independent-that was Gram, who stubbornly denied her failing health, who drank sherry with her peppermint ice cream, who had spurred Bree into every mischievous escapade she’d ever been on. Often Bree thought that Gram wished her granddaughter had been just a little bit more…wicked. More interesting. More prone to trouble. As Gram had been in her youth. Bree had always had a boring tendency to be good.

At the moment, she had a definite inclination to get Gram out of the snow and wind. “Now just wait here,” Bree ordered her, as she grabbed the rest of the packages and settled Gram under the sheltering canopy of a department store entrance. “I’ll bring the car around in two seconds flat.”

In four minutes flat, she pulled up to the store, her mind more on fixing Gram’s supper than on standing in a no-parking zone. Hats bobbed, blocking her view; she stepped out of the car, intending to motion to her grandmother. Bodies seemed to be deliberately obscuring her vision, and a tiny frown flickered across her brow.

And then someone moved, and there was Gram, clutching her purse as a stranger tried to grab it. Gram, shouting, her little gray topknot all awry, her gentle features contorted, and Bree was suddenly running, running…

She managed to get her hands on the thief; her head cracked when he slammed her against a concrete wall as he made his escape. There was blood on her scalp; she could feel it, but worse than that was the crowd, where curious blank faces surrounded her as she surged frantically toward her grandmother.

A man in a navy uniform tried to shield her from the small prone body…as if anyone could possibly keep her away from Gram! Bree threw herself down, feeling her knee scrape raw through slushy cement, not caring, not believing the terrible blue-gray color of Gram’s lips, the way she was clutching her heart. “I’m afraid it’s a heart attack, miss,” someone said, and Bree said fiercely, “No!”

Gram’s face was ashen, her hand far too cool and weak in Bree’s. “The cabin,” Gram whispered. “It’s for you, Bree, when you need it. Remember…”

“You’ll be fine,” Bree said desperately. “Don’t talk, Gram. Don’t…”

“Fight for what you want, darlin’,” Gram said. “Nothing halfway. Don’t you settle for halfway, Bree…”

Nothing could have hurt more than that machete slash of pain as Gram smiled one last time. The whine of a siren in the distance became a shriek, augmented by a terrible silent scream in Bree’s head that no one else could hear…

“Wake up. Now, honey.” Bree’s eyes flew open as a strong hand shook her shoulder and a pair of intense navy blue eyes fastened on her own. For a moment, she was totally disoriented to see a stranger’s face peering at her with such fierce concern, but then she recognized Hart Manning. And before she was fully awake, his lips had curled into an immediately relaxed smile. “Whether you know it or not, sweetheart, there isn’t a thing wrong with your vocal cords. You can scream like a banshee-in fact, you just did, in your sleep. And since you’ve deprived us both of any possible rest, you may as well buckle up. We’re landing.”

Bree’s lips parted to deliver a rejoinder, failed to produce any sound and formed a thin line to stop their trembling. Tears had collected in her eyes during the dream; she blinked them back, ducking her head to fumble with the seat belt-only to find she was draped from neck to toes in a blanket.

With a frown, she pushed the thing aside, not remembering when the blanket or the pillow behind her had appeared. For a moment, she couldn’t think at all but could only feel. Her emotions bounced from the guilt she felt for her grandmother’s death to her relief at being jolted from the endlessly recurring nightmare to…rage at the insensitive clod next to her.

Rage won out. Furiously, she fastened her seat belt. Hart, was it? Well, anyone with any heart would have at least offered her a little sympathy after a terrifying nightmare…

Of course, if he had, you would have burst into tears and embarrassed yourself no end, her mind’s voice swiftly reminded her.

“And we’d better finish putting you back together, honey…”

If there was anything Bree hated, it was someone who tossed out casual endearments like honey. After glaring up into a pair of fathomless blue eyes, she lowered her gaze and glimpsed her bone pumps, swinging back and forth from his finger. She snatched them, not remembering having removed her shoes any more than she remembered the appearance of the blanket and pillow.

A watery sun was peering through the tiny plane window, and Bree’s stomach went bump as the earth seemed to rush up at them. She put her shoes on, then hurriedly grabbed her purse and reached in for a brush and compact. What she needed was a bathroom and some soap and water; her compact mirror affirmed that three hours’ sleep hadn’t been nearly enough. Her makeup had long ago worn off: dark, bruised eyes and tousled hair confronted her, along with lips gnawed red in the process of reliving Gram’s death.

From the corner of the mirror, she glimpsed her seatmate’s expression. Her hasty brush strokes stopped. He was…staring. And the corners of his lips were just turned up, as if he’d caught her doing something intimate.

“You have someone to help you at the airport?” he asked.

Ignoring him, Bree shoved the brush back in her purse and hurriedly stood up, in a sudden rush to get off the plane, which had taxied to a stop. Hart stayed right behind her; she knew, because she could feel those navy eyes riveted on her back. And like a schoolgirl, she was conscious of bra straps showing through the silk of her blouse, of every motion of her hips…Darn it. Did her fanny sway or jiggle or bounce or whatever when she walked? She hadn’t worried about such idiotic things in years.

She forgot him for an instant as she stepped off the plane and climbed down the metal boarding ramp. Sultry heat assaulted her in dizzying, shimmering waves, and the early morning sun was almost enough to burn her eyes. Still, she could smell the mountains. A three-hour drive and she’d be in the Appalachians; there’d be woods and silence, and the trillium would just be starting to bloom. There was no softer solace than Gram’s feather bed…

Still, her fingertips touched her temples once she entered the main airport terminal. Frigid air conditioning chilled her skin; there was such terrible noise and confusion, and her heartbeat picked up the cadence of anxiety. Everything would be fine once she got to the cabin, but around people she felt isolated by an invisible glass wall, knowing she couldn’t communicate.

“So there isn’t anyone waiting for you. I should have guessed,” Hart said disgustedly.

She looked up, unaware he was still behind her until she felt his hand resting possessively on the small of her back, redirecting her steps to the right instead of the left.

“The baggage pickup is this way. You have to read the signs. You do read?” he asked conversationally. “First impressions are deceiving. I had you pegged for the efficient, self-sufficient type, if you want to know the truth. Now, do you think you can possibly cope from here?”

Depression didn’t stand a chance next to a healthy, invigorating surge of rage. Four-letter words tripped on her tongue, fell back and stuck helplessly somewhere in her throat. “Yes,” her lips formed frigidly. “I can cope just fine. Leave me alone, would you?”

“Can’t understand you. You’ve got an arousing pair of…lungs, honey. Why don’t you use them?”

He stalked off through the throng of people waiting for luggage. Anxiety faded in Bree, replaced by a second wind of energy. Furious energy. For two cents, she would have followed him and landed a right hook…but then, she wasn’t the type. She had no temper now and never had. “Bree’s my good one,” her mother used to say. “I can always count on her to stay cool and calm. She never even cried as a baby…”

Good Bree, good Bree, echoed the rollicking headache in her temples. An arousing pair of lungs, was it? Bristling, she stalked toward the luggage pickup. Lungs, schmungs. The first time she’d laid eyes on Hart, she’d guessed he was obsessed with that particular portion of a woman’s anatomy. You could always spot a breast man in a crowd.

Richard, being a decent man, would never have been so crude as to stare at any woman below the neck.

Richard would also have helped her with her luggage, instead of leaving her standing there, the last one in the crowd, to face a moving conveyer with nothing on it. Where were her two pale blue suitcases?

The attendant looked blank. After two phone calls and seven pieces of paper from Bree’s scratch pad, she gathered that her luggage was on some other plane. Apologies and promises were politely delivered…one day, at most two, hand-delivered to her doorstep…

Which was nice. Except that her silk blouse was already wrinkled and damp with perspiration, and her pencil-slim skirt was hardly cabin attire. Glumly, Bree stalked off in search of her rental car, her stomach starting to cramp from hunger and her muscles protesting too many nights of insufficient rest.

She became abruptly alert as she neared the car desk. Hart Manning was there, bent over the long counter as he filled out some forms, his leonine mane unmistakable. He certainly wasn’t delivering sarcastic comments to the clerk as he had to Bree. The blonde was laughing, all dimples and bright blue eyes.

Ducking behind a conveniently tall businessman, Bree bolted for the farthest clerk as she rapidly smoothed her blouse and flicked back her hair. On the off-chance Hart should look her way, she’d make certain that the egotistical, opinionated boor saw a-how had he put it?-an efficient, self-sufficient woman. Her smile was wide awake and brilliantly capable as the young redheaded man across the counter glanced up, indicating it was her turn.

“How you doin’, miss?” The clerk had a cheeky grin and a wink for a hello. “What can I do for you?” It took several seconds for him to readjust his eyes down from her face to the piece of paper her hand was frantically waving. “Bree Penoyer, a month’s car rental, huh? Okay, sweets…”

But he returned a moment later with a boyish shrug. “You sure it’s under that name?”

She nodded vigorously.

“Can’t find a thing.”

Already paid for it, you must, she scribbled rapidly on her pad, but he’d turned to answer another customer’s question, and he didn’t see the note. He just winked again in her direction. Two customers later, she regained his attention, at least insofar as he leaned on the countertop and stared at her like a lovesick calf. “Hi again.”

Weren’t there child labor laws in this state? The kid couldn’t have been eighteen.

My car, Bree scrawled desperately.

“Maybe it was another rental agency? You want a phone?”

A phone was as useful to her as diamonds in the desert. Tears were so ridiculously close she was ashamed of herself. She never cried. Please look again, she scribbled, and sent pleading eyes to the young redhead.

“Hey, look, no problem. There’s a convention in town, and we’re booked up, but we’ll get you something.” The boy brought back a computer list, suggesting three gas guzzlers that would cost her twice as much as the one she had arranged for.

Bree closed her eyes in frustration, dragging one hand through her hair.

“Now what’s the problem?” growled a baritone next to her.

Bree’s spine turned ruler-straight, her lips twisting in a stiff smile. “Nothing,” she mouthed to Hart.

“No problem exactly, mister…” The redhead explained the mix-up with a happy grin. That grin gradually faded as Hart let forth a stream of invective.

Fifteen minutes later, Bree had in her hand the keys to an affordable compact, and faced the nasty job of having to thank her rescuer. “Thanks,” she mouthed tightly.

“Can’t understand a word. I admit I’m fascinated by your game of not talking, but the immediate priority is food for the hungry. Usually, I offer a woman a meal before we’ve slept together-you’re a passionate snuggler, aren’t you, Bree? Or at least you were until you decided to start screaming. Now, now…” Hart shot her a lazy grin when her eyebrows shot up in outrage. He added in a whisper, “I had to pick up your name from the rental agent, since you’re so stingy with conversation. You look like hell, you know. Actually, a lot of men would probably burn for the way you look. I fail to understand why there isn’t a ring on your finger. You’ve been in Siberia for the last decade? Never mind. You can explain it all to me in sign language while we’re eating.”

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 opening 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.