A single light was on in his living room. The unpacking mess had been cleared up. A pair of tennies and a pair of dress shoes were lying on the floor, which gave her at least a reasonable expectation that he hadn’t skipped town. She raised her knuckles to the glass, then hesitated.
Knocking was one of life’s basic courtesies, requesting permission to enter. Courtesy suddenly seemed terribly expensive, when it carried the risk that he just might not willingly give her that permission. Determinedly, she slid open the door and called out a tentative “Hart?”
There was no answer. She stepped in. “Hart?” Rubbing her forearm with her other hand, she hesitated again. His house was cool; she felt a chill steal up her spine. Too cool, too quiet.
Wandering forward, she poked her head in the kitchen but found nothing except a predictable sinkful of dishes and the remains of a TV dinner. She sighed irritably. So he wasn’t much of a housekeeper, on top of everything else. Thanks, God. I had to fall for one of the uncivilized ones.
She tiptoed down the hall, feeling like an intruder. Had he already written her off? She couldn’t bear the thought.
“Hart?” she whispered at his bedroom door, and then pushed it open a little. He wasn’t there. The bed was made, though, giving her slight cause for rejoicing as to his potential for being domesticated. If she’d felt like rejoicing. She felt like bursting into tears. Too late, too late, too late, her heart echoed. She recalled all the times he had battled past her armor, the times he’d just been there for her, the times he’d brought out a passion that she would never have believed she had, the times he’d forced her to say out loud what she wanted, to face things she’d thought were hard. They weren’t so hard. Losing him-that was the only thing in life she couldn’t bear. But maybe he’d just had enough of battling, and she couldn’t blame him.
Despair was trying to seep into her heart. She forced herself to walk the rest of the way down the hall and push open the door to a spare bedroom she hadn’t seen before. She found boxes stacked to the ceiling but still no man with navy blue eyes and a lion’s mane of hair. Glumly, she paused at the bathroom, gave the door a token push and then uttered a startled gasp.
The room was shadowed and dark. From inside, she heard a loud slosh of water that nearly scared her out of her wits, and then a giant surged up out of the darkness. Grabbing the door handle, she slammed it shut and leaned back against the opposite wall.
“Bree?”
“What the devil are you doing taking a bath in the dark?” she yelled. Her heart was beating like a rabbit’s. Terrifying her like that-it was on the list of things she was never going to forgive him for.
“It wasn’t dark a half hour ago. You’re welcome to come in.” The baritone positively exuded lazy amusement.
“No, thank you.” She slumped back against the wall, and then let gravity take over. Her back slid down until her bottom hit carpet, and she just sat there. Silence echoed up and down the hall ominously. “Hart?”
He didn’t answer, but she could again hear water sloshing around in there. She bit at the nail of her little finger, looked at it disgustedly, and folded her arms across her chest. “I came to tell you a few things,” she called out irritably. Great beginning, Bree. What did he think you came here for, a game of tiddlywinks? “Listen. I’m not going to do all the cooking and cleaning up, you know.”
When there was no answer, she raised her voice a little. “And there are a few other things. I know that by some miracle you settled things with my dad, Hart, but it’s got to go further than that. I want you to like each other…because of Christmas and babies, and all that kind of thing. And I don’t have the least idea where you really live, but I’d just as soon settle in Siberia. I can tell you right now I’m not going to put up with the way other women look at you.” She gnawed at her lip. “And this bullying tendency of yours. I’m not saying I didn’t occasionally give you cause, but if you think you’re getting a pushover, Hart, you’re going to be terribly disappointed.”
She waited, but there was nothing. Suddenly, there wasn’t even the sound of sloshing water. She bit at her fingernail again. “And you should computerize your business. The system you have is terribly inefficient-honestly, you should be ashamed of yourself. That’s something I could do for you, Hart, but not full time. This will probably sound perfectly frivolous, but all my life I’ve secretly wanted to make perfumes. I’ve got to learn some chemistry, because I mean to create, produce, market…the whole bit. Does that sound crazy?” Her voice trailed off. She wasn’t at all sure why she was rambling on about such ridiculous nonessentials.
“Are you listening?” she asked weakly.
He said nothing. She shook the finger on her left hand, having bitten the nail down to the quick. “Hart, I love you,” she said helplessly to the closed door.
It opened as if by magic. Hart’s hair was damp, and he’d wrapped a towel haphazardly around his hips, and he loomed over her like a big, blond, wet bear. The smile that wreathed his features bore no relationship to his thundering growl. “What the hell took you so long to get rid of him?”
“Richard?”
“Whoever.” Hart scooped her up, ignoring her startled squeal. He was still wet. “I’ve been waiting for you for hours, you know.” His mouth hovered over hers, homed in. And lifted again. “If you’d come much later, you would have found me halfway through a bottle of brandy.”
“You mean apple juice.”
“Honey, I mean brandy. And what happened to your eyes?”
“Nothing,” she said tersely, well aware her three layers of mascara had smudged.
“You look like you’ve been through a war.”
“Do I really need this?” she asked the ceiling absently, and found the ceiling falling a distance away as Hart released her and she hit the bed.
Hart followed, a gleam in his eyes as brilliant as a sapphire’s. One long leg swiftly looped over hers, pinning her, but the fingers that reached out to brush back her hair were neither playful nor rough, but infinitely tender. She looked into the mirrors of his eyes, they were that close, and she could see a beautiful, infinitely wanted, deeply loved woman inside them. Her heart slowed down for the first time in hours.
In fact, it went sluggish, as Hart’s lips grazed her temples, then her nose, then her upper lip. His mouth sank down slowly, with exquisite patience. The kiss was soft and cherishing rather than sexual. Her fingers pushed back his damp, thick hair possessively. “Hart? Did you hear one word I said?” she whispered.
“I heard you. And I’ll cook, Bree.” Being Hart, with his particular mammary obsession, his eyes located the broken ribbon on her camisole before she’d noticed it herself. With very little effort, he broke the other ribbon strap and pulled the soft material down to her ribs. Only reluctantly did his eyes shift back to hers. “In the interests of honesty, I have to admit the only thing I can cook is spaghetti. But I buy terrific TV dinners.”
He nuzzled first at her throat, tickling her with a softly lapping tongue, then trailed down to her breasts. He tasted first one and then the other before his eyes returned to hers. “I’ll also make friends with your father,” he promised gravely. “Frankly, I think we’ll get along just fine. We both share a great many values-you being the first one. We both want to make you happy. We both love you. And if I’d come to my daughter’s house and found a man’s clothes strewn all over the yard, I would have killed him. Your father is a man of remarkable restraint.”