And she was in a terrible hurry to get back to him.
Bree gently pushed the ring box toward Richard, hating the hurt in his eyes, hating herself for being the cause of it. “Time won’t change things,” she said gently. “Please accept that. I can’t take it back, Richard, and I’m terribly sorry I’ve hurt you-”
“Now, Bree. Let’s talk about this,” he insisted.
One of Richard’s few faults was that he had such a thick skin. Helplessly, Bree watched the waitress serve a second cup of coffee and then a third. Richard started to talk computers, knowing from time-honored habit that shop talk inevitably calmed her down.
She tried to listen, feeling she owed him that much. She tried to smile, and her mind tried frantically to stop thinking about Hart. It didn’t work. The only thing in her head was how he’d walked off in such a final way. Maybe he was packing to leave now. It was like him, to sever a relationship as quickly as he’d established it. He wasn’t a patient man. He was an irrational man, with a thousand really maddening qualities. He expected people to change overnight. He had no tolerance at all for people who didn’t shout about what they wanted from life, who didn’t go after it, who didn’t run full speed after what made them happy…
“…I can understand your not wanting to work with Marie. I always thought she gave you the short end of the stick, Bree. There’s an opening in the company I work for. I know I could get you in, and-”
“Richard?” Bree interrupted quietly. She looked him square in the eye, stopped trying to smile and took a deep breath. Being nice was so much…nicer. It was just a pity that being nice didn’t always work. “No,” she said simply.
Silence echoed across the table for a good sixty seconds. Bree finally broke it by reaching down to pick up her purse.
Chapter Thirteen
As soon as Richard’s car left the driveway, Bree flew into the cabin and up the loft stairs, stripping off the yellow cotton frock she’d worn for dinner. She tossed on the bed, in rapid succession, her dress, stockings, slip and underpants. Stripped down to bare skin, she raced back downstairs, leaped gingerly onto the dry sink and started pumping in water. There was no time to take a bath in the pond. She was in too much of a hurry.
Maybe he was already gone. Or maybe he was just out. Or maybe he was picking up another woman somewhere. Or maybe…
Lowering her dripping feet to the floor, she rubbed her skin dry with a towel and flew back up the stairs again. Tugging open the wardrobe, she thumbed through the hangers impatiently, finding absolutely nothing with any seductive potential. She’d packed for solitary cottage living, not come-hither nonsense. And you shouldn’t be racing; you should be feeling thoroughly guilty over Richard, she told herself severely, as she lifted out a stark-white silk blouse, wrinkled her nose and let the blouse fall to the floor.
She did feel guilty, actually. She’d shared a great deal with Richard, and she cared for him and she was miserably sorry he’d traveled so far for nothing. But continuing to sit and listen to him wasn’t going to lessen his hurt and it wasn’t going to change her feelings. Besides, whether he knew it or not, she would have made him terribly unhappy. A good man deserved a good woman.
She just wasn’t that eternally good Bree anymore. She was a most imperfect Bree, a lady willing to throw away all common sense for the love of a most imperfect man. A man who made her feel terribly alive every second she was with him. A man who was a fibber and a fraud and a little bit of a bully and who regularly insulted her and who was far too attractive to other women…
Really, that she knew all his faults and didn’t care had to be either a sign of mental degeneration or an extreme case of a love worth shouting for.
Reaching for a mint-green camisole, she held it up to the mirror and decided Hart would like it…especially if she wore it braless. The straps were little more than satin ribbons, the bodice skimmed the tops of her breasts, and when she bought it, she hadn’t been absolutely positive whether it was a top or underwear.
Hart had to like it.
The mint-green short shorts weren’t exactly seductive, but she was limited by the wardrobe at hand. At least they showed off her brown legs…Bending close to the crooked mirror in the corner, she lavished on mascara, eye shadow and her most delectable perfume. On second thought, she brushed on a quick layer of blusher. On third thought, she added a little lip gloss. Her hair…her hair was a wreck, weaving every which way in determined auburn waves. One wave, when she worked with it, formed a seductive curl over one eye. Quitting while she was ahead, she raced downstairs.
And back up again for her shoes.
And down again. Panting in the doorway, she took in a steadily falling dusk and started off for the woods. Take the car, a small voice in her head sensibly reminded her. But it really would be faster to walk through the woods, if she could just find those steps Hart had told her about.
The rain the day before seemed to have washed down the sky. The air was clear, the night hot, and a yellow moon was rising over the hills. In that hush of evening, the scent of trillium and rhododendron flooded the stillness, a sweet, potent perfume that stirred her senses. Live, had always been Gram’s message. Live. Don’t waste even seconds; feel everything you can possibly feel…
It was there, inside her. The potential to love she had never felt before, the potential to give and hurt and laugh with sheer joy and share and, yes, fight for her right to those things.
Her fingers trembled suddenly, pushing through the undergrowth. Fighting for Hart was very different from fighting with him. What if…She stumbled over a half-buried stone and, muttering a few violent imprecations, decided to let the “what ifs” take a hike. Hart was stuck with her, whether he knew it or not. She might have had a screw loose originally, but he had convinced her that safety and sanity weren’t a pair, that something as nebulous as love could be unshakable and strong.
It grew dark faster than was fair. At least too fast for her to find the blasted steps. If she hadn’t been in such an impulsive rush, she would have taken the car. She’d been in an impulsive rush to something ever since she’d met the wretched man. And the bramble patch she walked into was worse than the one she’d tangled with the other night. One branch tried to take off with her hair, and another picked at her camisole. Tiny branches whipped her bare legs, and all of them were harboring huge, fluttering moths or nasty little mosquitoes.
By the time she reached the top of the ravine, Bree was hot, miserable and distinctly unseductive-looking. She was also in a rage. Her mascara had run; one camisole strap was dangling. She had a splotch of mud on the seat of her shorts, and dirt was itching between her toes. Hart’s fault. Everything was Hart’s fault.
If that judgment wasn’t rational, it covered up a terrible anxiety fairly well. He’d said he loved her just that morning. He’d said he wanted to marry her. It was just…when he’d walked away, her heart had picked up the cadence of fear, and she hadn’t been able to lose it since. Hart wasn’t the kind to wait around. And she’d hurt him. She hadn’t told him she loved him back, and he was still under the stupid impression that he was a free man. Hart wasn’t safe walking around loose. She ought to know.
Climbing onto his patio, she whisked what dirt she could off her shorts and ran frenetic fingers through her hair. Irritably, she kicked off her sandals and brushed her feet on his doormat so that they were at least reasonably clean. Lifting her chin then, she peered through the glass door, and when she saw nothing, frowned and arched a palm over her eyes to see in better.