“Why?” That was the part he never understood. He crossed a line back then, more than one. No matter what Judson had done, he wasn’t the only one at fault for the position in which Hansen now found himself.
She froze in the middle of standing up. “That’s really your question?”
“A protective order isn’t a joke.” The words jammed in his throat. He had to clear it twice to get them out. “I’d understand if the information about the restraining orders changes things. Changes how you view me.”
“Hansen, while it’s true you try very hard to push people away and act as if you can’t tolerate anyone, I know the act is bullshit. You’re a decent guy, better than I think you even know, and Ruthie is a pain in the ass. The no-confidence vote for Ben and throwing her weight around to have you arrested . . . it’s all bullshit.” Sylvia winked at him. “I’m siding with you on this one.”
She nodded to Ben, then walked out of the room.
Another vote of support. Having people get it, get him, proved to be a humbling experience.
Tessa smiled at him. “She trusts you.”
He was starting to believe they all did, if only a little. After months of solitude and refusing to get involved, trying not to care, they reeled him in. The distance he put between them and him shrank. Being vulnerable, part of something—knocking down the last defenses he threw up against Tessa—scared the shit out of him. But truth was he needed them to believe in him. To fight for him.
He released Tessa’s hands and flattened both palms against the table. Drew in a deep breath before he started the apology tour.
“Look, I’m sorry for all of this. For not warning you.” He stared at Ben until he nodded, then turned to Tessa. “And I’m sorry for putting you in the position of keeping the details from Ben.”
Ben groaned. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear the last part.”
Hansen appreciated that, but the situation had grown past anything he or Ben could control. “This really could blow up.”
Tessa shrugged. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Always do,” Ben said.
They stayed so calm. So dedicated. “Are you two being nice to me because you think I’m a mess right now?”
“Of course,” Tessa said.
Ben nodded. “Clearly.”
The tension that had been pounding Hansen into the chair vanished. “Thanks.”
Chapter 12
After many hours and rounds of questions, reviewing internet information and island maps, Ben finally let them leave his office. He made it clear he didn’t intend to arrest Hansen right then because there was no evidence to support it, but he would if Hansen didn’t stay out of trouble. The good advice and friendly warning saved Tessa from having to say the same things.
Still, from all the talking and worrying about what surprises Ruthie had planned for tomorrow, Tessa had worked up an appetite. Being on edge and ready to do battle seemed to work like a fat-burning tool for her. Coaxing Hansen to join her at the lodge took another twenty minutes. At this rate they’d be eating lunch after two.
When they entered the main dining room, everyone—absolutely everyone, and for some reason there were four times the usual number of people in there—turned to stare. Two older ladies whom Tessa recognized from the craft shop gave Hansen a thumbs-up. Tessa vowed right then and there to learn to knit as a thank-you.
“This is awkward,” Hansen said under his breath as they walked over to the bar.
“And it’s only the first day.” She couldn’t imagine what the response would be after Ruthie’s sham of a hearing . . . or whatever she had planned.
Sylvia worked behind the bar, pouring drinks and writing up orders. “Thought you two might stumble in here eventually.”
Hansen sat on one of the open stools. “I was okay with soup from a can.”
“Canned food?” Sylvia snorted at him. “What’s wrong with you?”
Tessa loved Sylvia, enjoyed talking with her and the way she offered support without asking any questions or expecting anything in return. But she was surprised to see Sylvia here right now. “Thought you’d be working the board members for votes to help Ben and, by extension, Hansen.”
Sylvia smiled. “Don’t worry, hun. That’s happening behind the scenes.”
Dishes rattled as a person from one table knocked into another table. The hushed apologies quickly died out and a strange silence fell over the room again.
“Do people not know it’s pouring out there and they should stay home?” Hansen asked as he cleaned his glasses.
Tessa shrugged. “We’re here.”
“Neither rain nor snow nor dark of night will keep them from collecting interesting intel on one of their neighbors.” Sylvia plopped a copy of the island’s weekly newspaper on the bar in front of him. “In this case, you.”
Tessa leaned into his side to get a better look. The headline about Judson’s death jumped out. “The Ruthie Gossip Network moves really fast.”
“It’s not as if she’s the only one with the internet.” Sylvia put a mug of coffee in front of each of them. “From what I’ve been able to pick up from the whispers around here, the reporter, Lin, was on the scene at Tessa’s house and again at the marina, taking notes and photos. I’m sure he researched Hansen’s past for the article.”
A warning bell went off in the back of Tessa’s mind. Newspapers meant photos. Photos led to being discovered. “Let me see that.”
She paged through and there it was, a photo of her and Hansen at the marina. She had no idea how anyone got the shot. They stood in the parking lot, away from the ambulance and the crowds.
Her throat began to close as that familiar sensation of being hunted, tracked down, and threatened swamped her again. “We’re in here.”
Hansen took a quick look. “I made the paper . . . again. Great.”
“Be positive. It’s your first time on the front page of the Whitaker Express.” Sylvia turned the paper around to stare at the photo of Hansen and Tessa. “It’s a shame this one is buried inside where no one will see it. You two look good despite the rain.”
“I feel much better now. Thanks.” Sarcasm vibrated in his voice.
Tessa tried to ground herself by focusing on what Sylvia said. Buried. Yes, that meant not easy to find. Someone would have to be searching weekly newspapers from across the United States in order to track her down this way. Even then, the blurry photo didn’t give away much. A side view. Her name, but that shouldn’t matter.
She blew out a long breath, trying to get her jumping nerves to settle. She felt the heat of Hansen’s stare and rushed to cover the panic that had bubbled to the surface with a lame joke. “There is some good news. You might not have to worry about people calling you all the time to fix things.” When Hansen’s eyes widened she assumed she’d missed the mark. “What? I’m searching for a silver lining.”
Sylvia made a groaning sound. “That’s not the way.”
“Good afternoon.”
Hansen cringed at the sound of Ellis’s voice floating up from behind him. “Have we found that silver lining yet?”
Arianna shoved her way into the small space between Tessa and Hansen, ignoring the fact the bar-stools were bolted to the floor and there was only so much room between their bodies. “We hear you had a busy night.”
Ellis crammed in on the other side of Hansen. “And a nice little boat trip.”
“We had a view of the recovery from our house,” Arianna said as her gaze bounced between Hansen and Tessa.
The rapid-fire questions made Ruthie’s company seem like a fun time. Tessa tried to peek around Arianna to see Hansen. “I’m getting dizzy.”
Ellis picked up the paper Hansen had abandoned and paged through it. “Look, we want you to know we don’t believe the rumors.”
“Excellent. That’s very neighborly.” Sylvia pointed toward a table on the other side of the room. “You two ate an hour ago and left. Now that you’re back, why don’t I bring you some
dessert menus to a table?”
“I mean, we all have trouble now and then, right? Maybe the man . . .” Ellis dropped the paper against the bar with a thwap. “The dead one. What’s his name?”
“Jackson,” Arianna said.
Hansen rubbed his forehead. “Judson.”
“Maybe he got a little too familiar with Tessa, here.” Ellis made a tsk-tsk sound.
Okay, that was enough of that. “Please don’t spread that rumor about me. It’s not true.”
“It would explain the fight he and Hansen got into by Cliff’s place.” Ellis looked over Hansen’s head to talk directly to Arianna. “The folks around here understand jealousy. Protecting your own and such.”
Tessa ignored the backward comment. It was either that or yell and make a scene.
Hansen swore under his breath. “None of what you’re describing ever happened.”
“We didn’t know Judson was on Whitaker until we found him outside of my house.” Tessa felt the need to make that clear even if the only people listening were the eavesdroppers staked out around the room.
Arianna looked at Tessa, eyes glowing with excitement. “I thought you talked to him on the beach.”
Ellis leaned on his elbows on the bar to stare at Tessa, who sat two people away from him. “And there was blood.”
“What is going on right now?” Hansen slapped his open hand against the bar with a smack.
“Nothing that apple pie won’t fix.” Sylvia scooted around the edge of the bar. She slid her arm through Arianna’s and pulled her away from Hansen’s side with a firm tug. “Let’s take a seat and let Hansen and Tessa drink their coffee alone. They’ve had a rough few days.”
Hero. Tessa didn’t think she could love Sylvia more. She was wrong.
Hansen didn’t say anything for more than a minute. He concentrated on drinking his coffee with his gaze locked on the shelves on the wall behind the bar. Sylvia guided the unwanted couple away, then stayed in the dining room taking orders and talking to customers.
He exhaled. “This Tuesday sucks.”
Tessa could feel people staring at them and hear the rain pelt the floor-to-ceiling windows out to the expansive lawn. It was as if the entire room held its breath, waiting to see what happened next. She had no intention of feeding that beast.
“It’s Wednesday, and yes.” She followed his lead and took a sip of coffee. Tried to give off an outward appearance of calm while the newspaper photograph and what it could mean for her by being out there in public kept running through her head. “Any idea what the fight talk is about?”
“Cliff insists he heard something but I’m doubtful. He’s not exactly the best witness.”
“Maybe he likes the attention.” He was older and probably lonely. She couldn’t really blame him for trying to be part of the conversation.
“What Arianna and Ellis were saying . . .” Hansen let the comment trail off as he made a groaning sound.
Yeah, she got it. The headache from that back-and-forth would take hours to go away. “The most annoying couple ever but go on.”
“Well, it’s tough to admit but I haven’t really given you a reason to believe me.”
They’d been through this. They’d kissed. Slept together on the sofa. Shared breakfast and survived the meeting with Ruthie. Man, he was not picking up on the clues here at all. “You are desperate to have me not trust you.”
He shrugged. “I haven’t always been . . . as friendly as I should with you.”
“Understatement. You’ve been either demanding or snotty, sometimes both together, not to mention overly sarcastic and a bit of a dick.” She refrained from continuing the list because she’d never get lunch.
“It’s like you had that comment ready and were waiting to use it.”
Something like that. “Look, you’re difficult. That’s just a fact.”
The stress finally left his face. He almost smiled. “I’ve been called worse.”
“I’ve called you worse. That’s my point.”
“Yeah, well. You scare the shit out of me.” He went back to drinking coffee.
The comment ran all the other thoughts about her life before Whitaker and being discovered right out of her head. She struggled to get over the shock and ask a profound and reasoned question. When that didn’t work, she fell back on a shortcut. “Me?”
He slowly lowered the mug and shifted on his stool to face her. “I wasn’t supposed to meet you.”
The conversation grew more and more interesting. She almost felt bad that the rest of the room couldn’t hear his deep sexy voice . . . no matter how much they strained to do so. “What were you supposed to do?”
“Come here. Get my head together. Figure out a way to move on from what happened to Alexis, then go home.”
Made sense. Even though she couldn’t imagine his desperation and despair at losing his sister, she knew what it was like to be forced to set everything aside and regroup. “Your family’s idea?”
“Mostly Connor’s. We’re business partners in a design firm.”
That sounded like code for something. She had no idea what. “So, like paintings?”
“Engineering, building design, and construction.”
“A bit bigger than paintings then.”
“Paintings are cool. We commission murals sometimes, but yeah, we took over for Dad. He retired, which means he only comes in four days a week instead of six, or he did until I took a hiatus and he stepped back in to keep Connor from working twenty-four hours a day.”
“He’s a workaholic?”
“Yeah, but he’s also pretty great. Don’t tell him. It will make him intolerable.”
Pride laced through his voice. She could hear it, see it in his eyes. The man loved his family and that was a pretty sexy thing.
“Right. That explains Ruthie’s comment.” Powerful . . . Tessa’s least favorite type of person. She’d had her life turned upside down by one of those. But sitting there, hearing Hansen talk, gathering all she knew about him and all she’d seen, she knew he wasn’t anything like the people in the life she was running from.
“Which? I try to ignore most of what she says.”
“About you being well connected and using that leverage to stay out of trouble. Even though I think she’s confused because you didn’t do that from what I can tell. You accepted responsibility. There is a protective order.”
Tessa hadn’t really thought about how odd it was that he could pick up his life without a financial strain. She worked from home, took contract assignments. But most people didn’t have that sort of work freedom.
She didn’t know what to do with the information now that she heard it. Wealthy men who could weasel their way out of anything had chased her out of town. She was here on Whitaker because of them. Because of one, really, and Hansen was nothing like him. But still, powerful D.C. men were a type and she was not a fan.
“She . . . I do fine. It’s really my dad . . .” Hansen spun his mug around on the bar. “And we’re . . . not . . .”
Good. Lord. The fumbling was new and adorable. Combined with the limited eye contact and slight blush, it held her fascinated.
The cool and detached attitude he usually carried had vanished. This version of Hansen grew wary when an uncomfortable topic arose rather than his usual grumping his way around it and walking away. He spent a lot of time pushing up his glasses and fidgeting. She liked that money was the type of topic to turn him into a bit of a blubbering mess rather than something he wore as a sort of shiny honor.
But that sound. She put her hand over his to stop the thudding of the mug against the wooden bar. “I don’t need your résumé right now. Later? Yes. But let’s stick to this topic.”
“Right.” He set the mug aside.
She slid it even farther out of his reach. “Right.”
“I moved here for a break. Connor’s words, not mine.”
“Was he worried keeping you out of jail would become his full-time job?”
She hadn’t thought about that. Now that she did, a wave of queasiness rushed through her. “Damn.”
“Exactly.”
Her stomach continued to roll. She slid a hand over it to try to settle it down. “So, you think Judson was here to . . . what?”
“Frame me.”
She had no idea what to say. “Hansen.”
He stole a quick glance at the rest of the room. “And from the way the rumor mill is working, he might have succeeded.”
Chapter 13
Hansen walked into the cabin later that evening. He hated leaving Tessa at the lodge after their late lunch. A part of him worried she’d decide to grab a room there instead of staying with him. Sylvia twice offered her a room. Both times Hansen changed the subject.
Not that separating wouldn’t be smart. He could avoid sleeping on the couch. But the bigger issue was that he had a target on his back and a head full of confused thoughts. He couldn’t shake the sensation that someone aimed to take him not just down but out.
Even with Judson dead—maybe because Judson was dead—the little bit of calm Hansen had been able to establish on Whitaker evaporated. He morphed back to being frustrated, like he was swimming through slime and couldn’t get clean. This wasn’t the first time. Ever since his sister’s death he’d been treading water. Barely making it through.
Connor figured out within months how to compartmentalize his nonstop anger. He put it in a neat box somewhere in the back of his mind and only took it out and examined it when he had to. He funneled all of his energy into work and running. Hansen let it fester. He refused to forget Alexis or the awful thing that happened to her.
But now, as he shut the front door to his temporary home and saw Tessa wrapped up in a blanket on his couch, paging through a book with a steaming cup of tea right next to her, he wanted more from his life. He’d become so accustomed to suffocating darkness that he didn’t even know he wallowed in it until she burst into his life. All sunshine and light. Trusting and open. Part of him wondered how she survived this shitty world this long.
Her Other Secret Page 11
