"She's very generous. With her clothes, with her space." Hannah sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and Tanner pretended not to see it. "But she seems, I don't know—lonely?"
"Well...yeah." Hell. Tanner hated thinking sympathetic thoughts about Dez, but the longer she hung around Coronado, the harder it was not to. "I'd say you're a quick study of character."
Hannah suddenly smiled, rounding her blush-apple cheeks. "When you get up every morning to face twenty or more students with just as many different family situations, scholastic strengths, and personality traits, being a quick study is called survival."
Tanner nodded. "Secret Ser vice work is like that too. Minute to minute a new situation that needs to be recognized, assessed, and then dealt with."
"So you're a quick study as well."
"I suppose I am." Tanner watched the breeze toss the ends of Hannah's hair, sending one strand across her mouth. It caught in the corner of her lips, and he shoved his hands in his pockets so he wouldn 't be tempted to take care of it himself. When the urge still itched at his palms, he tilted his head to study the pale blue of the sky.
Which brought back instant thoughts of her panties. The pale blue ones she'd been wearing last night. They'd felt sleek beneath his fingers and—
Hell!
Desperate for distraction, he jerked his gaze to the gray, pitted sidewalk and asked the first question that popped into his head. "So what did you think when you first saw me?"
"That's not fair." He could hear the frown in her voice. "You tell me what you thought first."
He looked up, a smile tugging at his mouth. "Truth?"
"Yes."
"I wondered about the color of your nipples."
There was a shocked moment of silence, and then she let out a startled laugh. "No!" Her hand swatted his chest, even as pink color crawled up her neck.
He caught her hand and held it flush against his sternum. "Yeah, that's exactly what I thought. Don't kid yourself about the domesticity of the XY half of the world, sweetheart."
"I know men—"
"When you haven't gone to bed with one in four years?"
The color on her face deepened and she pulled her hand away from him. "I said that when I thought that...that..."
"That we were going to bed and then never see each other again? Well surprise, surprise, we were both wrong there. And I just want you to realize that any other male you meet over this vacation has brain patterns the same as mine."
God, it was smart of him to hit her with the truth. Because now that he thought about it, if Hannah was out looking for jollies that had been on hold for four years—and since he was out of the running to provide such jollies—then she might go searching farther afield, never realizing what rough country she could wander into.
Out of nowhere, that urge to protect her was rising inside him again.
But hell, it wasn't out of nowhere, right? She was Brooks's niece, and as such, Tanner's ticket to life the way it should be again. He had an important stake in this. If she hooked up with the wrong guy or got hurt by some jerk while she was here, Geoff Brooks was going to blame it on the man he had assigned to protect her.
The Secret Ser vice motto was "Worthy of Trust and Confidence," and Tanner knew he needed to prove to his former and future boss that he was still a credible source of both.
"Obviously I wasn't looking for hearts and flowers last night," Hannah said, now starting to look irritated. "But that doesn't mean every man I meet—"
"There will be no men you meet while you're here. Got it?"
Perhaps he'd grown another head. She looked at him as if he had. "I don't even know you," she said, her eyes wide, her tone incredulous. "You're not in charge of my life."
He didn't like the stubbornness. He was helping her, for God's sake!
"I'm in charge of your good time," he replied from between clenched teeth. "I'm supposed to make sure you have a hassle-free, photo-worthy vacation."
She started sputtering, and the air between them heated with their rising tempers. Her breasts were moving in and out with her annoyed breaths, and he found himself staring at the smooth skin of her chest and the quarter inch of cleavage showing above the zipper of her jacket.
"Look," he said, waving his hand in her direction. "Just so you know, we're both mad, and I'm still thinking about your breasts."
"What?"
"Don't get any more pissed, I'm trying to make a point here."
She glared at him. "The point is you're a Neanderthal."
"Yeah." He nodded. "I resemble that remark, and so will every other guy you meet to whom you confess you haven't had sex in the past four years."
She looked ready to spit or slap or stomp, but just then the door to the bar was flung open and Desirée marched out.
Tanner could kiss—no, God, no, not that—but he could think of something nice to thank her for interrupting the moment. He needed to cool this conversation with Hannah. She hadn't quite accepted the way their situation was yet, but he'd take the heat off now and come back to it again later.
"Dez!" he said in a hearty voice. "Do you have a few minutes? I thought we could talk over itineraries. You have some time to do sightseeing and stuff with Hannah and me, right?" The smile he sent her was supposed to make her feel both guilty and cooperative.
She didn't seem to notice he was alive. Glancing over her shoulder at the bar door, she continued advancing toward the gleaming Beemer parked nearby. "Do you want to go back to the hotel now, Hannah?" she asked the other woman.
"I sure do." She shot Tanner a look full of displeasure.
He ignored a bite of panic. "But Dez, Dez. First just say you can help me show Hannah around."
She dug keys out of the tiny yellow purse in her hand. "No can do, Tanner. I've got other plans that are going to keep me pretty busy."
"No—"
"Yep. I've got a job working for your big, ignorant, insulting, insufferable, butthead of a brother."
He blinked. Dez was going to be working for Troy?
Speechless at the thought, Tanner could only watch as this year's trouble climbed into a car with last year's trouble. Though the car pulled away, Tanner knew it was a pretty sure bet that neither one of them was done with him.
Or his brother, either, which made him feel only marginally better.
FROM THE DESK OF HANNAH DAVIS
Things I Hate About New Year's:
Writing the wrong date on my checks until June.
Chapter Ten
The next morning, Hannah tiptoed out of the suite, aware that her hostess was still sleeping in one of the two bedrooms. Before shutting the front door behind her, she cast a last glance out the sliding glass leading to the living area's attached balcony. The incredible view of broad beach and foaming surfline only added to her reluctance to leave the place. It would be so much easier to step out into the salty air and let the forever stretch of water and that endless wash of waves on sand hypnotize her into somnolent inaction.
But it was time to wake up and smell the coffee! she told herself, shutting the door and forcing her feet along the path leading toward the Hotel Del Coronado's lobby. The resort was magnificent, a Victorian dream palace stretching wide along the beach and reaching high into the sky with red-roofed cupolas and towers. While yesterday the weather had been almost summer magnificent, showing it off to perfection, today the early-morning sky was heavy with clouds.
Suiting her mood, Hannah thought, as she lined up at a coffee cart set up in the corner of the sumptuous lobby, across from a King Kong-sized Christmas tree. Maybe a little caffeine would lighten her heart, but she doubted it. While she'd been mentally preparing for this morning's meeting a long time, her physical body seemed to protest the idea of carrying through with her plan.
What was she? she fumed to herself. A woman or a mouse? She'd been the latter for much too long, and today she was going to change that. Today she was going to get answers to the questions that had been plaguing her for
months.
The person at the front of the coffee line was served, and the rest of them shuffled forward as he stepped away. He.
Tanner Hart.
Her future fled from her thoughts and his footsteps halted as he caught sight of her.
From three feet away she let herself look at him again, forgetting for a moment he was the same man who'd made her so furious yesterday afternoon, with his presumption and his orders.
God, he was beautiful. His long hair brushed the collar of his white Henley shirt, which was tucked into ancient blue jeans. Despite the casual attire, her imagination could easily morph him to secret agent—Secret Service agent—wearing a Men in Black dark suit and sunglasses. Surely he'd have had a different haircut too, right? And she could see that as well, those straight golden strands sheared close to his head, leaving nothing to soften the lean planes of his cheeks and his hard, square jaw.
Suddenly she remembered the bristly caress of his chin along the line of her calf. Her whole body flushed, her breasts swelling to push against the cups of Desirée's decadent, demicut bra. Why couldn't she remember more of New Year's night? Every time she convinced herself he'd dished her up a plate of baloney, that in truth nothing more intimate had happened between them than what she could recall, she would hear the word "explosive" whispering in her head and...'d wonder.
Surely she would have felt the echo of any, uh, activity between her thighs? But God, she'd been so aroused, so surprisingly and incredibly ready for sex, that he could have slipped right inside—
"Jesus," Tanner said now, striding forward to shove one of the two coffees he held into her hand.
"I should have ordered it iced."
She cleared her throat and pretended intense interest in the plastic top. Had her thoughts been so clear on her face? "I don't know what you're talking about."
"It's the way you—" He broke off, shaking his head. "Never mind."
Then he muttered something about the American flag and grabbed her hand to tow her away from the line. "Hey, wait," she protested. "What do you think you're doing?"
He glanced over at her, still walking. "I'm getting going on our day. I pegged you for an early riser and I can see that I was right."
"Our day?" It would be bad enough without a witness. "Nuh-uh. I thought I made it clear to you yesterday I don't need or want a babysitter."
He'd managed to drag her outside, to the portico and steps that led to the parking lot and then to the street. "What about a driver? Don't you need one of those?"
Hannah had already asked for directions, and knew it didn't require a car to get where she was going. She freed her hand from his. "I have feet. I'm walking."
"To where?"
She shrugged. "Nowhere in particular." Lie. The park on Orange. "I'm going to explore." Deal with the woman who had done her wrong.
Tanner frowned, eyeing her and then glancing up at the sky. "Looks like it might be a wet morning."
"Everybody knows it never rains in Southern California." Oh, she hoped it didn't anyway. The last thing she needed today was wet weather. She'd hated it for over twenty years.
"Hannah..."
It was time to get firm with him—though hadn't she already? She narrowed her eyes, pretending he was seven years old and trying to take cuts in line. "Tanner Hart, that will be enough."
He stared at her a moment, then burst out laughing. "Or what, you'll take away my hall pass?"
Her neck burned, and then the flush rose higher. How often in how short a time could one person make it so clear to her? She was truly no good with men. (Or if not "no" good, at least woefully out of practice.)
God. Face it, Duncan's long absence had turned her into the proverbial old maid schoolteacher —albeit one who'd worn an engagement ring on her finger. She could hate him— No. She couldn't really hate Duncan.
Instead she silently swore at Tanner and started to move past him.
He caught her around the upper arm, just as a bellhop trundled out the entrance with a brass rack filled with luggage. Tanner released his grip, only to slide his arm around her shoulder and pull her near, out of the other man's way. They were chest to breast, the light jacket she wore brushing the long-sleeved cotton shirt he had on. This close, she breathed him in, smelling coffee, the tang of something citrus—his shampoo?—then a deeper note that reminded her of his sheets—and his skin.
Swallowing hard, she stared at the clean line of his tan throat and silently swore again. Why did he have to smell so good? Why did he have to feel so strong and firm against her body?
For years she'd figured her romantic life was set—though lacking a precise "I do" date. In all that time, loyal little Do Bee that she was, she had never looked at another man, let alone gotten close enough to lick one's neck.
And now she wanted to. God, she so wanted to run her tongue along Tanner's skin. She wanted to trail the tips of her breasts along his hard chest and feel the hot, thick evidence that he desired her against her thigh. She wanted to take him in her hand and have him take her in his hand, filling that aching place inside her.
Her scalp prickled and she looked up to catch him gazing down at her with the same kind of burn that was flickering low in her belly. It was like being hungry, this want that she felt, except the emptiness wasn't only inside. It was outside of her body too, in inches, yards, miles of sensitized skin that demanded a man's hand. A man's mouth.
Tanner's touch.
His arm abruptly fell away. He stepped back and a flick of his lashes doused the fire she thought she'd seen in his eyes. "You go on, then." Now there was even more distance between them, and she had to doubt whether there'd ever been any heat on his side at all. "Have a good morning."
Before she could gather enough of her pride to make clear to the man how extremely glad she was he'd finally taken the hint and was leaving her on her own, he was gone. There was nothing to do but suck in a few calming breaths and set off in the opposite direction.
Walking past blocks of shops and cafés while sipping at her coffee, she tried putting Tanner and her unprecedented, inconvenient reaction to him out of her mind. Not that she blamed herself exactly. For sure he was overbearing and overconfident. But he was also sexy and gorgeous (admit it, movie star beautiful), and she wasn't dead.
Suddenly, a little shiver tracked down her back. Hannah glanced around, wondering what had spooked her. There were people on the sidewalk around her, people with coffees or cell phones who didn't seem to be paying attention to a twenty-seven-year-old woman carrying her own cardboard cup.
But she felt someone's eyes on her.
Another chill skulked down her spine.
Glancing around again, her attention was caught by a man's figure across the street. Her heart crashed against the inside wall of her chest and her feet stuttered to a halt. With a dry mouth she watched him duck into a small juice bar, but not before she'd registered his dark hair in its military cut, the crisp lines of his khaki uniform, the heavy diving watch on his right wrist that she'd wrapped and sent to his FPO address two Christmases before.
Without thinking, she darted across the four-lane street. Horns honked, but she didn't blink or hesitate at the noise. Could it... Oh, God, could it be?
Even as she reached the opposite curb, the juice bar's door opened again. The man reemerged and she stared—
—only to recognize it wasn't Duncan.
This was some other naval officer, striding past her without a second look. Some other naval officer who was likely the object of some other woman's dreams. Maybe also a man who had made promises he didn't have the guts to rescind.
But he wasn't Duncan.
Her heart restarted, and after a minute she was calm enough to continue on her way. How silly she was. She knew it couldn't have been Duncan
At the thought, tears stung her eyes. Damn. Hadn't she cried enough for him? And hadn't she figured out after six weeks and approximately six hundred boxes of Kleenex that what she was mourning wasn't just
the loss of someone she'd seen as the focus of her future, but also the loss of the little fantasy she'd been living? The one in which she went along with everything everyone else thought was right for her and that then her life would turn out just perfect.
Caroline had taken that away from her too.
Hannah turned a corner and saw the park up ahead. Her feet slowed of their own accord. They even backtracked half a block to find a trash receptacle where she could dump her now empty cardboard cup.
Squinting, she staked it out from that safe distance. Against the backdrop of the dark gray clouds overhead, the grounds looked vibrant. Green grass broken up by tall trees, a white, Disneyesque bandstand, parking, picnic tables, a playground. In one corner, a group was practicing tai chi. At the concrete tables, older people were perusing newspapers. A handful of mothers trailed toddlers through the sand between swings and slides.
It shouldn't be too difficult to locate Caroline in the small crowd. Duncan's parents had a photo of her—of the two of them, actually. When Hannah had dropped by their house, three blocks from where she'd grown up, to return the heirloom engagement ring, she'd seen it atop the piano. If his mother had remembered it was there, Hannah felt sure she would have hidden it away, but her unexpected arrival had flustered both of his parents. She'd always known them, always loved them, so she'd pretended not to notice the framed shot.
Until they'd left her alone as they went for coffee and the ever-present Kleenex. Dry-eyed and maybe clear-headed for the first time in her life, Hannah had used the minutes alone to examine the fuzzy photo. And sow the seed that led her to this moment.
Hauling in a last deep breath, she reminded herself that she needed to do this. She needed to do this for herself and maybe for every woman in the world whose man and whose future she'd depended upon had been stolen.
At the crosswalk on the corner she pressed the button to wait for the light. The vehicle traffic was heavy—no wonder those cars had honked a few blocks back—and she waited for the little stick man to come to life and send her on her way.
Not Another New Year's Page 7