"Sure. Great. Thank you. I will, sir." The words tumbled out, but he only had eyes for Hannah.
She was staring at his face while all the color left hers.
Though she didn't make a sound, he could read the single word running through her head, souring what should have been a happy moment for him. Making all that was right, wrong.
That one word she was so familiar with. Betrayal.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Stunned by the revelation of Tanner's bargain with her uncle Geoff—apparently making a pitiful, dumped old maid euphemistically "happy" bought him back a place in the Secret Service—Hannah didn't recover quickly enough to get herself a ride away from the bar with Finn and Bailey or even with her uncle. So she was stuck with Tanner as they completed the closing tasks, though neither one of them said a word to the other.
She didn't think she needed to say anything to him. The wary way he gave her a wide berth made it clear that he knew she was aware of what he'd done.
Gone behind her back.
Pretended an interest he didn't feel. Duped her.
Been there, done that, had been wearing the engagement ring the first time it happened. This time...oh, God. This time she was wild in love with the man who did her wrong. The warmth and affection she'd had for Duncan was a matchstick compared to this firestorm that burned inside her for Tanner.
No. Stop. Of course there was no firestorm.
She didn't love Tanner! A woman couldn't love a man who'd used her for his own ends, right?
She'd just imagined herself in love with him, thanks to mojitos and New Year's and the new beginning she needed to her life. It had been a bad combination that temporarily addled her.
Now that she remembered she was still a sensible, inhibited, schoolmarm of a woman, she had come to her senses.
Schoolmarms never fell in love with scoundrels.
So there it was. A small mistake in the diagnosis of her feelings, but she'd already dragged out the red pencil and made the necessary correction. Good to go.
Drying her hands on a paper towel, she glanced at Tanner, who she suspected had been stalling. Probably afraid to climb inside the confined space of his car with her.
"I'm done," she said briskly. "Are you ready?"
He was looking at her from the corner of his eye. "Sure. Yeah. Let's leave."
It was no more than four minutes back to his house. To Hannah, who was never comfortable riding in a car anyway, it seemed more like forty. As they pulled into the garage, she put her hand on the passenger door handle, eager to make her escape.
"Hannah." Tanner curled his fingers on her other arm. She wished he wouldn't touch her.
"Look," he said. "It's not what you think."
"Think? It's been a long day, and I'm not thinking of anything but going to bed."
Oh, God. Bed. The word clunked between them like a hammer hitting cement. She couldn't go to bed with him to night. But he'd suspect something, wouldn't he? He'd jump to the wrong conclusion that he had hurt her if she tried taking a blanket and a pillow to the living room couch.
He'd be wrong, but he might even get the impression she cared about him, despite the smarmy tactics he'd used to get back in the Secret Ser vice. Boy, she must be really tired, she thought, because there was a sting of exhausted tears pricking the corners of her eyes.
But she knew she just couldn't lie beside him ever again, not when the memory of the last time was still so fresh in her mind. She closed her eyes and could still feel the play of sun on her bare skin and the deep, searing way that Tanner had invaded her…her soul.
No. Her soul was still her own, thank you very much. Intact, and like her heart, hard as a second-grader's glazed-clay pencil cup fired overnight in the Harold Mott Elementary School kiln.
"Hannah, I know you suppose what happened between us was a...a ploy on my part."
She was going to keep her cool. "Don't be silly. I don't suppose anything. I know what happened between us was a ploy on your part." Whoops. That didn't sound so cool.
Wrapping her dignity around her, she wrenched her arm from Tanner's hold and scrambled out of the car. Then she stumbled into the kitchen and tried to think what to do next.
Where did they keep the lesson plans for moments like this?
Behind her, he slammed the door to the garage as she busied herself at the sink, pretending she needed water.
"I'm going to take a shower, then I'm going to sleep," he said.
She brought her glass to her mouth so she didn't have to answer. Then he was gone, and while the shower ran, she rushed around, gathering up her belongings and stashing them by the front door. As soon as it was light, she would leave for good.
Maybe she could even manage to depart without facing Tanner one last time, she realized. He'd done as he'd said, showered, and gone to bed, leaving her to huddle alone on the couch in the living room. Reading didn't work this time. For a few hours she watched television, her gaze shifting every few minutes to the windows, alert for the first glimmers of dawn. She had an appointment to keep in the morning before she left Coronado for home.
The sky was going from night to the gray-blue of almost-sunrise when Tanner stalked into the living room, a towel wrapped around his hips. She supposed he'd been sleeping naked.
The infomercial on the big screen was fascinating. As soon as she got home, she was going to order herself one of these 350-piece kits that you could use to set crystal rhinestones and metal studs onto any surface.
"What the hell are you doing?" Tanner grated out. "Why haven't you come to bed?"
"Did you know that you can embellish ordinary wax candles and give them as stunning Christmas gifts?" she asked from her place on the couch. It was the corduroy one he'd shown her to on New Year's Eve. It was long and wide, with about half a dozen plaid pillows piled in one corner. "Or you can use the winky-blinky little doodads to make inexpensive sheet sets look more classy, like something you'd find at a boutique hotel."
That's where she'd gone wrong. Moving in with Desirée at the luxurious Hotel Del Coronado, then moving to Tanner's. She should have found herself a plain old Motel 6, like the plain old maid she was. Everyone knew they left the light on for you there.
Here, Tanner had lit the fuse on hers, then smothered it out.
He sat down on the coffee table in front of the couch, blocking her view of the info-hostess using the special portable tool to put glittering stars on hanging draperies. "Your uncle asked, and I agreed to show you around town. You know that. You knew that from the beginning."
She noted that the towel was still damp from his earlier shower and the coffee table had a lovely wood finish. "I know you need a coaster under your butt."
"Hannah." He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Don't do this. We've had fun, right? Don't make it less than that."
"Less than 'fun'?" She straightened, her temper kindling, then grabbed one of the pillows and sat back, holding it tight against her stomach. Holding in anything that would give the (mistaken) impression she was hurt. "Well, I'll give you that it wasn't anything more than fun, does that work for you?"
"All right." His voice was weary. "I'm going back to bed. Please come with me and get some shut-eye."
"I need to see this segment they're doing with feathers and lamp shades. I'm not sure how the stud-setter comes into play."
As she spoke, his gaze drifted over her head, toward the front door. It narrowed, then jerked back to her face. "Where are you going?"
"Home."
"I was with you when you picked up your replacement ticket, remember? It doesn't leave for two more days."
She glanced out the window, noting the pale color of the sky. "I'm leaving earlier. I'm leaving today."
"Damn it, Hannah—"
"I'm sorry to end our 'fun' early, but I need to get back." As soon as she tracked down Caroline.
"You mean you need to get away from me. Hell, Hannah! I did not plan this...this..." His hand waved between
them. "If you want to know the truth, I resisted like hell. It was absolutely the wrong time for me and for this...this..."
"Fun?" she supplied sweetly.
A muscle in his jaw throbbed. "I told your uncle I would show you around. I did not plan on that including a tour of my bed. That just happened."
"But it made Uncle Geoff 's niece especially happy, right? And you'd do anything for the cause? Your personal cause?"
"Hannah—"
"Admit you never really cared about me. It was always about something else." She hated the way her voice was rising and threatening to break. All the red pencils in the world couldn't correct the wrong impression she was giving him, but she couldn't seem to stop herself. "It was about the sex or about the job, or maybe some of both. But it was never about me."
He shook his head. "I would kill Duncan if that valiant asshole wasn't already dead."
"Duncan?"
"It's his fault or maybe your wrap-you-in-Deborah's-cotton-wool parents. Why do you think so little of yourself, Hannah? How can you immediately leap to the conclusion that I wasn't with you for you? That I'm just another man ready to betray you like that? When this started, I was trying to help you."
"'Help' me?"
"Wait, that didn't come out right. I—"
"'Help me'?" She was on her feet too. She didn't know how that had happened, but her soles were flat on the hardwood floor, her knees were locked, and she was pulsing with an anger that filled her veins—evaporating any last vestiges of the blue starch that she would welcome now.
"That's what you call what you've done—helping me?" Her heart, which was supposed to be so strong, now felt like flimsy paper that someone had cut into a dozen pieces with dull, kindergarten-style scissors. "Then you, Tanner, have leaped to a conclusion too—that you're some sort of hero."
He stepped back. The tension left his shoulders and his eyes dulled. "So it's me you think so little of then," he said. "And you're right. So goddamn right. Everyone knows I'm no hero."
Without another word he stalked toward the bedroom at the back of the house.
Anger and despair warred inside of her. With a thousand words dancing on the tip of her tongue, too many of them desperate to call him back, she rushed in the opposite direction. At the front door she gathered her duffel bag and hurried away from Tanner and into the now sunny morning.
FROM THE DESK OF HANNAH DAVIS
Things I Hate About New Year's:
It means that Valentine's Day is just around the corner!
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Hannah was gone and it was too quiet in Tanner's house for him to fall back to sleep. The morning light was too strong as well. Not to mention that his guilt was as goddamn loud as a brass band and that his will was weak, weak, weak.
But he knew he should have stayed away from Hannah before, and he should stay away from her now. After all, she knew what he was like. She'd said it straight to his face.
No hero.
Tanner avoided the mirror as he pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. His feet slid into his running shoes and his keys slid off the dresser even as he kept telling himself he wasn't going after her.
After all, she could be anywhere.
Another inner voice reminded him that Coronado was 7.4 square miles and there was only so far a woman on foot could go. Another wave of guilt coiled his stomach as his protective instincts rose up to greet the day as well. Hannah didn't have a car; she didn't drive. He'd promised her uncle to look after her until she left the San Diego area, and yet Tanner had allowed the woman he loved—that is, who Geoff loved—to wander the early A.M. streets humping her belongings on her back like a hermit crab.
Of course he must go after her.
On his way out of the kitchen he saw her water glass sitting on the counter. It reminded him of the past few days, when she'd left her brush by his bathroom sink, her watch on his bedside table, the imprint of her head in the pillow beside his.
Somehow she'd left her mark on him too.
Shaking off the thought, he jogged to his car and then backed out of the driveway. Where would she go? To her uncle's? To a pay phone to call a taxi? To find coffee.
Even if she hadn't gone after it herself, he definitely needed a sixteen-ouncer to clear his head. But it wasn't any sissified Starbucks stuff for him. He pulled into the nearest gas station and went into the attached convenience store. It was his and Troy's favorite stomping grounds. Just about every morning since leaving the Secret Service, he'd run into his brother right about now. Inside, the high-octane combination of scents—refined crude oil, candy bars, and coffee—was enough, Troy said, to focus a man's mind.
It worked like his brother claimed, honing Tanner's thoughts.
He was on a fool's errand, he told himself as he filled his foam cup with a brew strong enough to fuel his Mercedes on a run to Mexico. Hannah was a grown woman, and he would be the last person she'd want tracking her down.
No hero, he reminded himself again. So he wasn't going after her.
Even knowing the coffee was hot enough to scald the top of his mouth, as usual he sipped it anyway—ooowww—on his path to the cash register. Standing in line behind a twelve-year-old buying his daily requirement of CornNuts, pork rinds, and Snickers, Tanner considered purchasing his own nutritious breakfast. He could go for a couple of Hostess cupcakes about now.
Maybe the fluffy filling would take his mind off Hannah and the sweetness of having her in his arms, his bed, his life.
His gaze drifted from the empty calories in the racks to the racks of magazines and tabloids. Fuck.
He strode forward and yanked a pulpy publication from its holder. "Fuck," he muttered. "Fuck fuck fuck."
DEZ & SECRET AGENT MAN STILL SIZZLIN', read the headline above the picture of him and Desirée. They'd recycled and/or doctored some old shot, he decided, squinting at the grainy rendition. Because that looked like the park on Orange, and he'd never met Dez there, and had never kissed his bad luck charm any time other than that night a year ago when she'd kissed him...
He brought the tabloid closer, then held it farther away. Christ, that wasn't Dez. That was Hannah, and it was a real kiss, the one that he'd laid on her just a couple days ago, before they dashed away from the paparazzi. Even now he could taste the heat and feel the tender softness of those lips.
God, she'd gotten to him.
He shook his head as he stuffed the pages back into the rack. No wonder he'd first thought she was Dez on New Year's Eve as she'd been reeling toward him. From a distance they could be twins.
Twins. The hairs on the back of his neck leaped to attention. His fingers tightened on his coffee.
Oh, God. Oh, God. No.
His hands shaking, he reached out to set his cup on the counter and then drew his cell phone from his pocket. Troy answered on the first ring.
"Yo, bro."
At any other time Tanner would have grinned at the carefree sound of his brother's voice. "Where are you?" he asked.
"At that 7-Eleven near the desert house," Troy replied. "You know I can't stand that vanilla bean crap Mom calls coffee."
"Yeah, I thought you might be there." He'd counted on it. Troy was a closet vegetarian and took his health seriously—except when it came to coffee. His brewed caffeine had to come in the junkyard dog category—black, muscled, and mean. "Check out the tabloid racks."
There was a moment of silence, then a rustle, then Troy's outraged voice. "I'm going to kick your ass!"
Tanner held the phone away from his head to save his eardrum, then brought it cautiously back. His heart was pounding and his stomach churned with cold dread. "Why do you say that?"
"What the hell were you doing kissing my Dez in the park?"
Tanner closed his eyes. "That's not Dez, that's Hannah."
There was another moment of silence. "Hell, from a distance, Hannah could be a ringer for my heiress."
"What about from even closer," Tanner said slowly, wishing he didn't have
to voice the question.
"And what if you didn't know them well?"
Troy didn't hesitate. "Even then, a dead ringer."
Tanner's sixth sense was starting to wail at him like a police siren. "I wish you hadn't just said that."
"Where is she, bro? Where's Hannah?"
"I've lost her." Oh, God, Tanner thought, I wish I hadn't just said that.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ignoring despair, Hannah nurtured her anger as she hoofed it toward the center of town. The object of her resentment varied as she strode through the quiet streets, but narrowed to one person as she found herself staring down Amstead Avenue. The one person who had been in her sights for months.
Caroline.
All roads led back to her, Hannah realized, from Duncan's defection to Tanner's seduction. Caroline, the bad apple in what had been Hannah's sweet, cinnamon-flavored life.
Platinum blond Caroline, with her heavy-handed mascara and her sticky fingers on Hannah's man.
How come Duncan had been so easy to steal? What predator traits did the woman possess that had made him turn away?
And so turn Hannah's life inside out.
Only a few of the restaurants on Amstead were open for breakfast. Filled with equal parts determination and ire, she shoved open the door of each one, ready to confront the person who had upended her well-ordered life.
Instead she startled a John, a Lupita, and some guy with dreadlocks, a pierced upper lip, and a nametag that read GARK. Each denied knowing a Caroline in their professional or personal lives. Hannah was back on the sidewalk in no time, stymied again.
She ground her molars as she marched back up the street. This time, damn it, she was going to find the other woman. This time she wasn't going to take the easy, passive, pleaser route and forget the whole idea.
Not Another New Year's (Holiday Duet Book 2) Page 22
