Almost Midnight (sweet contemporary romance) (Colorado Clearbrooks)

by Teresa McCarthy

  Tanner’s grandfather, on the other hand, was a domineering man who drank too much and died early. Although Fritz had inherited much of his wealth, the man gave to many charities and was on the board of directors for many of them. And while Fritz may not have had a college education like their mother, what the older man knew of the world was enough to give Tanner the jitters.

  As if reading his mind about Hannah, Fritz let out a snort of amusement.

  “She’s a sweet one, ain’t she? Rather like Julie. Like your mother too. God bless her soul. Good thing your mama made me promise to send you three boys to college. Not that going to college is for everyone. But you boys needed it. Your mama also made sure you wouldn’t be talking like your old man. Yep, the lady sure did have an education and turned you boys out just fine. Real fine. But she’d be turning in her grave if—”

  “Dad, that woman you hired painted the dinosaur’s feet with red nail polish!”

  “Yep,” Fritz said, ignoring his son. “Knew the moment I set eyes on Hannah she was the one for you, especially when I heard the little filly turned you down cold. No gold-digging there. Disciplines like your mother, too. You should take a lesson or two from that gal.”

  The older man rapped his mountain stick against Tanner’s desk. “I said, Fritz, I said, a girl like that should be Jeremy’s tutor. Your mother was a teacher, and this one reminded me of her.”

  “Oh, come on, now,” Tanner said, grimacing. “This woman is nothing like Mom.”

  He lied. Hannah’s intelligence that night on the mountain road reminded him too much of his mother. But it was her vulnerability that reminded him too much of Julie. The thought shocked him.

  Still, it was a good thing Hannah hadn’t left the car that night, because all he had wanted to do was hold her to keep her from shaking and let her know he wasn’t going to attack her.

  But that would have scared her more, because when she handed him that fake telephone number, the moment their skin touched, he was hooked. He felt that same electricity shoot up his arm when he’d held Hannah in the hallway. It was the first time he felt like that since his wife had passed away.

  Hannah’s body was tall and willowy, the opposite of Julie’s petite frame, and her bones were like fine china, but not her spine. Hannah Elliot definitely disciplined like his mother, a duty Tanner had failed to follow through with since Julie had died.

  “She paints dinosaur nails,” Tanner said, wanting nothing more than to keep his distance from Hannah. Holding her had been like playing with fire. “What’s more nutty than that?”

  “That’s blood, Tanner! Ain’t you never seen blood before? All tyrannosauruses gotta have blood on them or they ain’t fierce looking, and your boy painted it on, not Hannah. For your information, so you’re not fuming too much under that Armani suit, I found out from Harry that Hannah and her mother go to my church and I sought them out.”

  The walking stick thwacked the floor. “So there.”

  Everything seemed all too clear. Tanner hitched himself on the corner of his desk and sighed. When his father got involved in anything, it was worse than riding a bronco backwards.

  “Listen, Dad, I know you had good intentions, but you had no right to hire that woman.”

  “Hannah. Her name is Hannah Elliot, as you should well know since you asked her for a date through police headquarters. I’m surprised you didn’t seek out her address and phone number while you were talking to them. If you can buy and sell all those expensive companies, not to mention having all that computer stuff you got in your office, you ought to be able to do something right.”

  Tanner ground his teeth. He would never hear the end of that phone incident. Battling his emotions, he told himself he didn’t need Hannah Elliot. He didn’t need anyone but Jeremy.

  But now he understood why his father had Jeremy talk to him in at certain times in the morning and evening, on the phone and computer, when he was away. Fritz didn’t want Hannah to speak to Tanner or see him via computer in case she recognized the man on the mountain.

  “She needs the job,” Fritz went on. “Her mother has been ill. Hannah works part time here and part time at the library too. So if you boot her little you-know-what out that door, you’ll be putting her mother in the grave. Is that what you want?”

  “You’re changing my words around,” Tanner snapped. “How do you know what kind of people Hannah and her mother are? Did you check out the woman’s references?”

  Two white brows rose in question, and Tanner knew he was sunk. “You think someone could pull the wool over these cowboy eyes? If you went to church, you heathen, you would know what’s what. I already told you that little gal and her mother attend church every Sunday, not like some people I know.”

  Tanner shot his father a cold look. “I don’t need a sermon.”

  So Hannah was a church going female. Another strike against her. He hadn’t attended church since Julie had died. Hannah might make a good tutor, but her presence would drive him crazy. He didn’t need a Miss Perfect floating about the house, not with Fritz around. He didn’t need another wife either, and that’s what his father wanted.

  Though Tanner had wanted a date with Hannah that night, he didn’t now. After she shoved him off to police headquarters, he was appalled at his own behavior that evening.

  Women like Hannah meant trouble. Those green eyes of hers could sink like an anchor into his heart with just one blink of her lashes. After his wife passed away, he had dated the kind of woman he wouldn’t form an attachment to. Never a woman like Hannah.

  “Well, you’re about due for a sermon, sonny,” Fritz went on. “After Julie died you stopped going to church altogether. ’Course that boy of yours wants to make his mama come back, and it ain’t gonna happen. He’s sweet on Hannah, and I think the gal might just help him pull out of the past and into the present.”

  Tanner had the same thought about the situation when Jeremy had rammed into him only minutes ago. The boy hadn’t understood his mom’s death. Hell, Tanner barely had either. One day he had been talking to his wife about adding another baby to the Clearbrook clan and the next day she was dead.

  He had been away on a business trip. Even his brother who was a doctor had been shocked at the way Julie’s pneumonia had set in so swiftly and seized the life from her in less than twenty-four hours. She had always been a fragile little thing, but her death hadn’t seemed real at the time.

  “All right, fine,” Tanner said, gritting his teeth. “What other qualities does Miss Elliot have besides being a librarian and having a church going mother?” And besides her loving Jeremy and his son loving her. He’d overheard that sobering piece of information when he’d stood in the hall.

  Fritz rose from the chair, his gaze drilling into Tanner’s. “You better put in a word at that new medical company you bought over on the west end of town.”

  Tanner rolled his eyes at the change in subject. Sometimes his father’s mind reminded him of a rat in a maze, shifting directions all the time. “What does the west end and the new company have to do with Miss Elliot?”

  Fritz’s eyes lit up. “Hannah. I’m sure she’d let you call her Hannah, seeing as the two of you will be husband and wife just as soon as I see to a few things.”

  “That’s enough,” Tanner said harshly, glaring at his father. “I don’t want to hear any more about Hannah and me. I’m never getting married again, Dad. Never.”

  His father frowned, but there was a sparkle in the older man’s eyes that irked Tanner to no end.

  “Now, what about Reach Medicals?” Tanner asked in a reasonable tone, trying to calm down.

  Fritz’s face grew serious. “Little woman’s set her heart on taking a job there in the Fall. That dang library barely keeps Hannah and her mother alive.”

  Tanner raised a scrupulous brow. His father knew how to twist his emotions. Always had. “And how do I fit in here?”

  “You’re going to see to it that Hannah works here for the four hours a da
y I hired her, then you make sure she gets that job at Peach Medicals at the end of the summer. She’s just finished one of those fancy degrees, you know.”

  “Reach, Dad. Reach Medicals, not Peach.”

  “Yep, she is as pretty as a peach, ain’t she? And smart, too. Jeremy knows his multiplication facts back and forth. I was telling my friends at Bernie’s Bakery this morning, I said boys, that Hannah Elliot is something.”

  Bernies’s Bakery?

  Tanner groaned, waving his hands in the air for his father to stop. “Okay, I get the picture.”

  He didn’t need to hear any more about Hannah Elliot. Her soft green eyes reflected her emotions like a mirror. He could see she loved his son more than words could say. That alone had attracted him, never mind her beauty. But it was Jeremy he was worried about. The boy seemed too attached to the lady.

  “I’ll give her two weeks, Dad. Two weeks and we’ll see.”

  Fritz smiled and gave Tanner a hearty slap on the shoulder. “Dang it. I knew you’d see it my way, son.”

  Fritz hurried toward the door, looked over his shoulder, and gave Tanner a mischievous smile. “Yep, two weeks should be enough time for her to decide if she’d like the job of Mrs. John Tanner Clearbrook.”

  The door slammed behind him, and it was all Tanner could do not to call him back. Simmering in disgust, Tanner knew that whatever his father had planned between him and Miss Elliot was not going to happen.

  Marriage was out of bounds, now and forever. He would never put himself at risk of loving a woman and being hurt again. One time was enough.

  Tanner would get Hannah her new job before the end of the summer - that way she would be out of his hair and out of his life. He decided he could be cordial to her for two weeks and keep his distance. He would have to start looking for a new tutor tomorrow, inconspicuously of course, and Jeremy would be slowly weaned from the woman.

  He picked up Jeremy’s dinosaur and stuck it under his arm, then shifted his gaze to his son’s picture resting on his desk. Jeremy was sitting on a gray mare in front of his Uncle Max’s ranch. The boy had been six when the photo had been taken.

  Tanner lightly brushed his finger against the gold frame and a heaviness squeezed his chest. He needed to cut down on his business trips. Spend more time with his son.

  He lifted his head when the door whipped open and Jeremy bolted into the room. “I need my dinosaur. Mama gave it to me.”

  Tanner wondered if this would be a good time to talk to Jeremy about his mother? “Hey partner, we need to talk.” He said the words almost hesitantly, testing the waters.

  The boy halted and understanding seemed to flicker in the back of his gray eyes when he stared at Tanner, but then as quickly as it came, it was gone.

  “Are you going to get rid of Hannah? Because if you do, I’m never going to speak to you again.”

  Tanner stiffened. “You better curb your tongue, son.”

  “But I really love Hannah, Dad.”

  Jeremy dropped his gaze to the floor, and Tanner wasn’t sure if his son was crying or not, but he felt guilty as hell.

  “Here, take the dinosaur, we’ll talk later.”

  Without another word, Jeremy snatched the creature from Tanner’s arms...but it might as well have been his heart.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Hannah stood in the hall outside the study as Jeremy rushed past her, his dinosaur clamped to his side. The boy didn’t look up, but she had seen the dampness on his face.

  Her heart ached with pain. Pain for Jeremy, pain for Tanner, and pain for the family she never had.

  Jeremy needed her this summer just as much as she needed him. Her attraction to Tanner would have to be shoved to the back of her brain. The man didn’t want to be near her anyway, so the only thing she had to worry about was keeping her job.

  However, it didn’t help her any that her mother’s dream kept popping into her mind. Soulmate? Nah!

  “Well, Miss Elliot. You want to speak to me, I suppose?”

  Hannah spun around at the sound of Tanner Clearbrook’s deep voice. Blood pumped through her veins as she struggled to mask the chaos tumbling inside her.

  To her surprise, he’d taken off his suit coat. Dressed in a white shirt and blue slacks, he gave off an informality she didn’t want or need. When he wore his suit, it looked more like a uniform, and she could easily think of him from afar. But now, he seemed both approachable and dangerous. A lethal combination.

  She immediately recognized Jeremy’s photo in his hands before he replaced it on his desk. A flash of loneliness pierced her heart as if it were yesterday.

  She realized Mr. Clearbrook loved his child as much as she would have loved hers - that is, if Nick would have agreed to kids. They had argued about it the night he was killed.

  Mr. Clearbrook didn’t know how lucky he was. He had Jeremy, she had nothing.

  The man’s eyes caught hers and held. “I take it you would like to tutor me on my fatherly duties.” His cool voice broke into her reverie like a spray of ice water.

  Hannah lifted her chin, assessing his narrowed gaze with one of her own. She stiffened in indignation as he took in the sight of her flowered sandals that she’d hastily slipped on a few minutes ago. She couldn’t tell if he was angry or merely amused.

  “May I speak to you in private, Mr. Clearbrook?”

  He looked up. “By all means, Miss Elliot.”

  He walked forward, grabbed the door handle, bowed, and pointed her toward his study. She was acutely aware of his gaze glued to her back as she stepped into the room.

  His desk sat in the center of hunter green walls which were accented by carved-oak paneling. A mini bar was situated in the far corner, and on the opposite side of the room, two French doors overlooked the backyard pool. The place suited him.

  “Can I get you a drink? Wine, beer, soda?”

  “No, thank you,” she said coolly.

  His gray eyes became flat as he stared at her. “Mind if I have a beer? It’s been a long day.”

  She shrugged her shoulders as if she didn’t care and moved toward the windows. The sun was slowly moving lower over the mountains. It was closing on five o’clock. She needed to get home and change. She had a three-hour shift at the library tonight. Time had gone by too fast. She realized she wouldn’t have time to make the gingerbread she promised Jeremy.

  “Miss Elliot, I believe I owe you an apology.”

  Surprised, Hannah glanced over her shoulder and couldn’t help but raise her brows in question. “An apology?” That was the last thing she expected from this man.

  “You’re going to make this hard on me, aren’t you?” In spite of the cool tension in the room, his eyes sparkled with a tenderness she had instantly recognized when she’d first met him. She noted he hadn’t gone for his beer either.

  “I was out of line,” he said. “I should have given you the benefit of the doubt. It’s not just that my father didn’t tell me your name. My father set you up. He knows the police chief. They’re best of friends.” There was a moment’s hesitation, and he lifted a mocking brow. “Need I say more?”

  Hannah dropped her gaze, hiding her grin as she pictured Tanner Clearbrook on the phone with the police. She rubbed her hands against her jeans while the ticking of an old wall clock cut through the icy stillness that stood between them.

  His voice brought her head up. “My father’s interfered in my life as long as I can remember. He’s a stubborn old mule. So needless to say, your position here was not coincidence. Since Chief of Police Harry Brown is one of his good friends, my father found out about us like that.” He snapped his fingers in the air.

  “I see.” Hannah felt uneasy at the way she’d been hired and now she knew why. She almost laughed, but pride concealed her amusement. She noted the stern set of Tanner’s chin and wondered if the man had inherited the same stubbornness from his father.

  “Obviously, my father enjoyed your little jest. I really can’t blame you for not giving
a stranger your number. And for your information, I am not a limo driver. I was doing someone a favor.”

  He paused. “Back to my dad. Being on friendly terms with the police, it wasn’t hard for my dad to discover your address or which church you attended. But he did say that you were good for Jeremy. If you haven’t noticed, my son still has problems with his mother’s death.”

  “Mr. Clearbrook—”

  “Tanner. Call me, Tanner.” He turned his smile up a notch, and her heart slammed into her ribs. Tanner was dangerous. Mr. Clearbrook was safe.

  He stood there, so tempting and handsome, she almost forgot why she’d come into the room in the first place. “I like to keep it strictly business if you don’t mind, Mr. Clearbrook.”

  His eyes seemed to narrow. “I never mentioned anything but, Miss Elliot. If my father has your correct phone number, we can forget what happened a month or so ago. My son needs a tutor. I’ll give you two weeks to prove to me that my father didn’t make a mistake hiring you.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “Two weeks?”

  “Yes, was there something else?” He said the words slowly, dropping his eyes to her feet, then shifting his gaze back to her face, giving her plenty of time to catch the meaning.

  Oh, she got it all right. “There is something else,” she said, meeting his steely gaze straight on.

  His eyes lit up as he rested on the corner of his desk and slowly crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes?”

  She opened her mouth, startled by the effect he had on her. “Your son,” she finally blurted out.

  A muscle flicked in his jaw. “What about him?”

  She looked away. If she didn’t say it now, she never would. “You need to spend more time with him. These trips are tearing him apart. He needs some hugs, some discipline,” she darted a cool gaze his way, “from you, not just from a tutor who’s only known him for a few weeks.”

  With a hint of self-controlled anger, he pushed himself off the desk and stepped toward her. Hannah stumbled back, too stunned to reply.