Not Another New Year's (Holiday Duet Book 2)

by Christie Ridgway

  Chapter Seven

  Her head doing a rerun of the woozy spins from the night before, Hannah ducked under the blacktop of the white convertible BMW parked outside Fi—Tanner's bungalow. She shut the passenger door, then kept her grip on the handle, trying to find an anchor in her once-again reeling world.

  "Ready?" Desirée asked from behind the wheel.

  "For what?" Hannah muttered, her gaze trained on Tanner's front door. Behind it was the man who'd uttered "explosive," and with that one word had relit a fuse inside her she hadn't known about before last night. Her skin tingled with an echo of shivery heat and she rubbed her palms against her arms to get rid of the goose bumps.

  "Ready for anything." With a grin, Desirée shifted the car into gear and shot out into the street, gaily waving as another vehicle honked in protest at being cut off. They sped through quiet, New Year's morning streets. To distract herself from the other woman's nerve-wracking driving style, Hannah focused on the passing neighborhoods. Instead of noting the car's speed, she studied the variety of suburban houses crowded so closely together, some of them small stucco bungalows like the one where she'd spent the night, others well-tended Craftsman cottages, and others Victorians with all the prerequisite fancy edgings and fanciful paint colors. Here and there a modern glass-and-angles home had been wedged into a narrow lot.

  The result might have been an odd mismatch if not for the lush landscaping that flowed between and around the houses, unifying them all. Tall and stubby palm trees, tropical-looking hedges, and flowering plants created a harmony between the diversely styled domiciles.

  "Shall we stop for coffee?" Desirée asked, and without waiting for an answer, took a two-wheeled right at the next intersection.

  Hannah braced her free hand on the dashboard and squeezed her eyes tight as the BMW just missed clipping a parked truck. What had she gotten herself into? she wondered as she prayed for her life. It wasn't too late to get Dorothy back to Kansas.

  Then Desirée took a second turn and they left suburbia for another, wider street. As Hannah chanced a cautious peek, she saw something spectacular out the windshield. Sand. Ocean. A wide expanse of gray-blue dotted by pockets of gold and silver sunshine.

  A frothy wave crashed onto shore, and she stared at it, fascinated. Oz'd.

  Thanks to more of her companion's aggressive driving tactics, they made it to a take-out place—Junie's Java—and into a corner of a parking lot beside the sand in what seemed like seconds. As they sat, blowing across the tops of their triple-shot lattes (Hannah's heartbeat finally slowing from its survival race with the BMW), Desirée hit a button and the convertible's top peeled back.

  The smell of saltwater mixed with the steamy scent of the coffee. Sun warmed the top of Hannah's dark hair and washed over her cotton-clad shoulders. She felt her hangover loosen its hold and a sigh of delight drew up from her toes and out her mouth. "It's January," she said to Desirée. "How warm must it be?"

  The other woman shrugged, her gaze straying to a pair of surfers who walked in from the beach toward a decrepit Volkswagen bus on the other side of the lot. They had boards under their arms, and while their black wet suits still clung to their legs, the top halves were unzipped at the back and dangled from their waists, leaving their chests and arms bare and the neoprene sleeves bouncing against their knees.

  "Watch this," Desirée whispered, still looking at the men. "It's why God invented Southern California surfing."

  Bemused, Hannah obeyed, giving them her attention as she sipped at her cup. The men opened the back of the van and slid their boards inside. Then they produced two striped beach towels. One rubbed his over his wet hair; the other, bigger man didn't bother. His head was shaved as clean as a baby's butt.

  After a minute, both men wrapped their towels around their waists and, half bending, reached beneath the fabric to shimmy out of their clinging wet suits.

  "Look at the way the tall one's butt wiggles when he does that," Desirée pointed out. "I don't think he realizes how hot he makes me."

  An odd note in the woman's voice pulled Hannah's gaze her way. "Do you know him?" She glanced back at the big guy and narrowed her eyes. "I think I know him."

  The man lifted his head as if about to peruse the parking lot, and Desirée slid lower in her seat.

  "You probably saw him at the bar last night. That's Troy, Tanner's older brother."

  Tanner. At that man's name on this woman's lips, Hannah stilled. She'd been putting off the inevitable, but now that she had coffee, fresh air, and a segue into the subject, she couldn't avoid it any longer. While she'd sort of agreed to be Desirée's temporary guest, and had gone along with Tanner's plans when it came to the rest of her day, she'd done it because it seemed the fastest way out of his bed.

  The option of leaving town ASAP, however, was still open.

  And at the moment, she was leaning toward doing it. This conversation would likely topple her right over.

  "Listen, Desirée," she said. "I suppose it's time we, uh, talked about Tanner and me."

  The other woman tore her gaze off the surfers. "Tanner and you?"

  Hannah inspected the seam of her cardboard cup. "Or maybe we should start there instead. Tanner and you."

  "Tanner and me?"

  Hannah knew her laugh sounded as jittery as her stomach. "I'm getting us all confused."

  "Why don't you just spit it out."

  Honesty again. After what Duncan did, she should know how important it was to be forthright.

  She looked up into the other woman's eyes. "You asked him to marry you. So I assume there's something between you, and I wanted to assure you that...that..."

  Good Lord, how was she supposed to get through this? If she was being honest and forthright, she would tell this exotic-looking female that Hannah had apparently had explosive sex with her almost-fiancé and one mention of it this morning and she'd wanted to have it all over again.

  Heat flooded Hannah's face and she took a breath. "You see, things like what happened last night are really out of character for me. A few months back I learned the man I was engaged to dumped me after I'd been wearing his ring for years. I found out that not only had he been cheating on me, but—"

  "What was his name?"

  Startled, Hannah blinked. "Duncan."

  "Duncan the stinkin' dog."

  "Oh, but we can't say bad things—"

  "No wonder you were looking for some nookie last night," Desirée said over her protest. "I say, you go, sister."

  Hannah stared at her. "But...but...that nookie was with the man you're almost engaged to."

  She fluttered a hand, nails manicured to perfection. "Didn't you listen? He turned me down, the dumbass."

  And Desirée didn't look all that upset over the rejection. Hannah clunked the back of her skull against the leather headrest and felt her hangover headache sink its claws into her again. Seagulls swooped overhead, turning circles that were less tangled than the thoughts running through her brain.

  "But...but don't you want to be his wife?"

  Desirée's glance shot toward the tall man now climbing into the beat-up van on the other side of the parking area. "I was just trying to think of some way to make it up to him. Marrying me would mean lots and lots of money for him. I come with a muy grande trust fund."

  "Make up for what?"

  Desirée stared into her coffee. "Well, I made him famous. Or, more accurately, infamous." She took a sip of her drink. "Even if you don't watch too much TV, I bet you read the newspaper."

  "Ye-es."

  "Remember the assassination attempt on Prince al-Maddah eleven-plus months ago?"

  Hannah nodded. "The Secret Service prevented it, though."

  "They have something called the Dignitary Protective Division. My father—that's the prince—was in the States for some meetings and charity events. I met him here in Southern California so we could spend time together."

  "But he's okay, right? They stopped the person who was after him.
"

  Desirée nodded. "Thank God. But in saving my father an agent was killed."

  Hannah's heart jolted. Her uncle Geoff was a supervising agent in the Secret Ser vice. Tanner had worked for him. Oh my God, had Tanner—but then, she realized, of course, that Desirée couldn't have been talking about him. He was alive.

  "The whole episode got a lot of global press."

  Hannah recalled the story with more clarity now. A young female agent had been killed taking a bullet meant for the prince. "The Secret Service came out as heroes."

  Desirée wrinkled her nose. "All except one."

  At that moment the Volkswagen bus on the other side of the parking lot rattled to life, then swung around to motor toward the BMW. Desirée slunk lower in her seat, but then shot straight up as the bus braked beside the convertible. Troy Hart stared through the windshield, giving Desirée the evil eye.

  His animosity traveled through glass and space, but Desirée seemed not to notice. She lifted her coffee in a little toast to him, smiling all the while.

  His mouth tightening, he popped the clutch in his hurry to get out of the lot. Watching the Volkswagen pull away, Desirée released a little sigh.

  "There's more to the story than was covered on page one," she went on to say. "While my father was leaving the ballroom where the charity event was taking place, while his life was threatened and then defended by the agents of the Secret Service, Tanner was inside watching over me. There was plenty of press there too, and I'd had a bit of champagne and I was a little miffed that my father had left without me and I...I didn't think of anything but getting some male attention. When I kissed the cute agent who was my bodyguard for the evening, camera shutters clicked all over the room."

  She grimaced, looking older than Hannah had first thought her. "There's a segment of the media obsessed with the rich and spoiled and their inevitable unsavory doings. All the available Internet sex tapes were old news eleven months ago, and so the celebutante and the Secret Service agent became the big story all over the world. Tabloids from New York to Nice are still speculating about us."

  Hannah didn't watch much TV, but she didn't live in a box either. She knew the kind of attention the other woman was talking about. "So Tanner lost his job because you kissed him?"

  Desirée shook her head. "More like Tanner resigned from his job because I kissed him. There's a reason why they call it the Secret Service. His face was too recognizable. And, of course, he blames himself for all of it—including what happened to the other agent."

  But it appeared that a different Hart—Troy Hart—blamed Desirée. "My uncle is Tanner's old boss," Hannah said slowly, putting the pieces together. No wonder he'd looked at her with such horror. Kissing women hadn't been going well for him lately.

  Desirée let out a little laugh, then shook her head. "Poor Tanner. Just can't catch a lucky break." Poor Hannah too, she thought. Because the more she knew about her one-night stand, the more she couldn't stop thinking about him. Last night was supposed to be a liberating sexcapade, an experience-it-now, forget-about-it-after event, but instead it had become a complication to her supposedly healing, supposedly relaxing, vacation.

  The best thing for her to do was give up and go home, she decided. She could forego the relaxing, she supposed. It had never been her priority anyway.

  But the healing?

  Hannah closed her eyes, imagining herself back in her small town, with the pitying glances and speculative stares. And those were just the ones she saw in the reflection in her own mirror.

  Damn. She didn't know whether she wished she could question Duncan or curse him—but both ambitions were out of her reach.

  There was, though, still a way left to salvage some of what she'd come to Coronado for. She'd given herself ten days to work up her nerve, but if she went ahead and took care of that one particular task today, she could get on a return flight and be back in Northern California by nightfall. Maybe it would be enough to make this next year a different one for Hannah Davis.

  She sent Desirée a sidelong look. "Do you happen to know where Taft Street is?"

  Desirée did know where Taft Street was. Coronado Island, she told Hannah, was really not an island at all, but a peninsula, connected to the mainland by the bridge or a narrow strip of land called the Silver Strand. And in terms of landmass, the "island" was only 7.4 square miles, so it didn't take much to become familiar with the layout. At the turn of the century two visionary businessmen had taken what had once been a whaling station and then a wheat farm and established it as a vacation paradise.

  From what Hannah had seen so far—from sugary sand beaches to charming homes and shops—they'd done a fine job.

  Taft Street was a curve and a corner past the municipal golf course that clung to the San Diego Bay side of the peninsula. She saw bright-sailed boats and cigar-shaped kayaks glide through the waters beyond the lush greens before Desirée turned inland onto the narrow, dead-end avenue that was their destination. The homes were smaller here than some others they'd passed, more like beach shacks, and the BMW pulled up to the smallest one.

  "Here's the address you wanted," Desirée said, studying the house. "Do you think your friend is home? It looks pretty quiet."

  Now that they'd reached the place, Hannah's heart felt as if it was pounding in her throat. She looked over the house and yard, noting the overgrown grass, the peeling sections of faded yellow paint, the old newspaper stuck in one corner of the cement porch, its pages brown and brittle as autumn leaves.

  Her own house in her hometown wasn't much bigger than this. It was even a mellow yellow too.

  But her little cottage's paint was tight and the white trim fresh—she'd done the job herself last July, wishing all the while she could overhaul herself just as easily.

  "Aren't you going to get out and knock on the door?" Desirée asked as Hannah didn't stir from her seat.

  She swallowed around that great lump that was threatening to strangle her. Confronting the person on the other side was her secret desire and the real motivation behind her solo trip. "I...I want to."

  "Well, then do it."

  Hannah sighed. Desirée made it sound so simple, when knocking on that door was something that she'd been fantasizing about for months, ever since one of her friends happened to let slip the name of the town. Though she'd tried to talk herself out of it for a solid week, eight days after hearing "Coronado," she'd been Googling with the limited information she had.

  Some mouse clicks later, and with the Taft Street address tattooed on her brain, she'd known what she had to do.

  What she had to do right now.

  Taking a deep breath, she popped open the door and stepped onto the cracked sidewalk. The short front walk felt as long as a church aisle, and she was more nervous than any bride. Her fingers were so cold they felt stiff as she curled them into a fist to knock on the front door.

  She couldn't hear footsteps on the other side over the loud wump-wump-wump of her heart. The wait for a response seemed interminable.

  Maybe it truly was interminable, because Desirée tooted her horn, and when Hannah looked around, the other woman mimed knocking again. Hannah did.

  But it was the door of the small house next door that opened. A little old man peered out at her, cracking his rusted screen to get a better look.

  "You need something?" he croaked.

  A new year, a new me, so many things, Hannah thought. She said, "I'm, uh, looking for

  Caroline?"

  "Oh." He shook his head. "She doesn't live there anymore."

  "She moved?"

  "Yep. A month or so back."

  Disappointment churned the coffee in her stomach. Hannah placed her hand over her belly. "You don't happen to know where she went, do you?" She still had time off before school started again. If she could get a location, and then ID and credit cards and clothes, she could still track down the other woman. It was that important.

  "I don't know her new address," the man said. "
I'm sorry."

  Hannah smiled—because that's what pleasers like her did, even when they wanted to cry. "Don't worry about it. Thanks anyway." Shoving her fingers in the pockets of her jeans, she turned toward Desirée and the waiting car.

  "But she's somewhere nearby," the old man called out.

  Hannah spun back. "What?"

  "She's somewhere around town. I've seen her at the park a few times since she moved. I saw her there just two days ago, as a matter of fact. I think she goes early in the mornings."

  "The park. In the mornings."

  "That's right," the man said. "The park on Orange."

  Hannah gave him another smile—a genuine one this time—and waved at him as she settled into the passenger seat of the BMW. "She's moved," she reported to Desirée. "But she's somewhere in town. Her old neighbor saw her just days ago."

  "Then you'll find her," Desirée said, jumping on the gas so that the BMW leaped back into the street. "You can't let the opportunity go by."

  No, Hannah couldn't, she realized.

  Despite the disasters of the last fifteen or so hours, she couldn't leave just yet. Confronting Caroline—inspecting, comparing, coming to some sort of understanding of where Hannah had gone wrong and what special power the other woman possessed (at least in Duncan's eyes)—had become even more important than getting on with her life.

  Chapter Eight

  Tanner tipped back his favorite chair at his favorite table in his favorite corner of Hart's. Though the front door was unlocked, the sign posted on it still read closed, and he followed suit with his eyes, allowing himself to absorb the peace and quiet. Though he'd been bored out of his gourd these last months working for his brother, at the moment he welcomed the stillness.

  He needed it to come up with a plan. Though he might be out of practice, he didn't doubt that he would. Secret Ser vice duty wasn't all dark suits, dark glasses, and taking down dangerous guys. They spent hours on advance work, scrutinizing the where and the how of potential threats to a protectee. Then there were the AOPs—"attack on the principal" drills—to prepare and rehearse.