Almost Midnight (6 page)

“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.

“Miss Elliot, let me remind you that I am your employer, and as your employer, I will be the one to tell you how to do your job, not the other way around. We are no longer on a mountain top at midnight having a conversation about your car. We are in my house, speaking about my son.”

He flashed a quick look at Jeremy’s picture, then back at her, his gray eyes narrowing on her face as if she had a bull’s-eye painted on her forehead.

“You are his tutor, not his mother.”

Her heart twisted. Mother? No, that was something Nick never wanted her to be. As her fiancé, he had led her to believe he had wanted kids, but after they were married, he had wanted her all to himself. She had loved him, but she had also felt used. The night they had argued, he had taken off in the car and was killed on an icy patch of road. Maybe if she hadn’t pushed him...

Hannah blinked, hiding the grief that sank like an anchor in her soul. What had ever attracted her to Tanner Clearbrook in the first place? He knew nothing. Nothing!

She vaguely smelled the vanilla potpourri in the bowl on the table beside her. It was hard to believe she could smell anything since she was so exhausted from her cold and Tanner’s mightier-than-thou attitude.

When she didn’t answer, he moved closer.

“You’re a single woman, Miss Elliot.” His voice was as calm and crisp as a frigid autumn breeze. “Being a parent is a totally different experience. It involves a whole new world of responsibility. I don’t think you could ever imagine the significance of it.”

A suffocating feeling grew in her throat.

Avoiding answering him, Hannah turned toward the door and sniffed through her stuffy sinuses. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Tell Jeremy I’ll bring the gingerbread.” 

“He hates gingerbread.” The voice was so low she almost missed it. It was if the man was trying to goad her into sparring with him. But enough was enough.

Hannah pivoted slowly, and a faint thread of strange excitement swept through her at the sight of his body taking another giant step toward her. The tension between them grew.

 “Well, Mr. Clearbrook,” she finally said, “he likes it now.”  

A dark eyebrow rose. “Well, I hate gingerbread,” he snapped.

To her annoyance, his words stoked a fire inside her, and her brow arched back daringly. “Really? Like you hate a woman giving you police headquarters instead of her home phone number?”

She tipped her head to boldly meet his gaze and felt an almost perverse pleasure in watching his eyes flicker in surprised outrage.

At that moment, thoughts of Nick’s possessive attitude shot through her mind, and her spine became ramrod stiff. Though she needed this job, Tanner Clearbrook had pushed her too far.

“You seem to know a tremendous deal about me, Miss Elliot.” The man folded his arms across his chest and looked at her thoughtfully. “If I didn’t know better, I would say you have a chip on your shoulder. Is there something I hate that bothers you, or is there something you hate that bothers you?”

Stunned at his keen perception, Hannah stared at him, speechless. The question hit too close to home.     

“Don’t worry, I won’t fire you for your honesty,” he replied in a voice so smooth, so utterly calm, that she wondered what kind of man her employer was.

 “I tell you what you hate,” she said softly, her heart pounding like a thunder. “My guess is you hate life.” 

Triumph flooded through her when another flicker of irritation ticked at his jaw. But those words barely made it out of her mouth before she forged on.

“You see, Mr. Clearbrook, I’ve found that life isn’t fair, and sometimes it’s just the little things in life that count to the ones you love. Jeremy’s mother may be dead, but you aren’t. So take that beautiful son of yours and love him for all he’s worth, because someday you may never have him again, or he may not have you.” 

Her words were a mere whisper, sounding as if they came from someone else, a purging of some kind, a needed release.

But Tanner just stood there, immobile, staring at her as if she were a worm on the sidewalk.

Pain squeezed Hannah’s chest so tight she thought she might stop breathing. She didn’t wait for him to answer. She lifted her chin, turned, and strode past the study doors, walking out of the house with as much dignity as she could muster. A string of watery sneezes didn’t help the stinging that filled her eyes.

She had heard the Clearbrook family had come from some grand duke in England. Well, right now, she felt like one of the duke’s servants about to be sacked. Tanner Clearbrook may not be a duke, but he sure as heck acted like one with his pompous attitude.

She was astonished that he hadn’t fired her right there. But if she knew anything about millionaires and dukes, they didn’t take insubordination lightly. Tanner Clearbrook would give her the boot later that evening - because now, he did have her number.

Depressed at the thought of losing Jeremy, she slipped into her tin-can-of-a-car that was parked on the street. A cool mountain breeze blew through windows as she turned the key, reminding her too much of that night on the mountain.

Didn’t the man know how lucky he was to have a son?

She listened with dread as the engine clicked without turning over. It was dead. Again.

Her fingers curled into her palms. There was no way she was calling that man to fix it. She hit the steering wheel, her heart aching with grief as painful memories began to stir in her mind.

“I don’t want kids, Hannah. I want you all to myself!”

“But we agreed—”

“Well, I changed my mind, and that’s all I’m going to say on the subject, so drop it.”

With a sob, Hannah jerked the keys from the ignition and stepped out of her car. Now what?

She had stopped the payments on her cell phone. She couldn’t afford it. She remembered there was a gas station not too far away. A block or two maybe?

She started walking. She would pay whatever she had to before she asked Mr. John Tanner Clearbrook for help!

A frown spread across Tanner’s face as he paced the floor of his study, trying to control the urge to call Hannah back and apologize. He’d seen the naked pain in her eyes and wasn’t proud of the way he’d treated her. She probably had no idea the way she affected him. He combed a frustrated hand through his hair and sighed.

“Dad!”

Jeremy’s voice cut through Tanner’s thoughts like a knife.

Climbing the stairs two at a time, Tanner burst into Jeremy’s room and found his son pressing his nose against the window overlooking the front yard. The boy was clutching his red painted toe dinosaur under one arm and Max the Bear under the other. Max, Tanner thought. His younger brother had never heard the end of it after his nephew had named the stuffed bear after him.

“What’s wrong, partner?” 

Jeremy turned around, his watery gaze pushing Tanner’s guilt up a notch. “She promised to make me gingerbread, and now she’s gone. I don’t think her car could start and she just got up and left. Did she leave because I didn’t say I’m sorry again? I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to be so bad.”

Tanner knew
she
meant Hannah Elliot. The lady was a threat to him and his son, a threat to their harmony, however disordered that was right now. But that didn’t mean he had treated her nicely. He had never spoken so spiteful to a woman before. He felt like a real jerk.

“She promised, Dad.” Jeremy’s sob broke Tanner’s heart. “She promised to make it for me.”

Tanner stepped across the room, skirting a yellow dump truck, a black knight’s castle, and a red, white, and blue model rocket. Kneeling down, he rested his hands on his son’s shoulders. “Hey, partner. She told me she would bring the gingerbread tomorrow.” 

Tomorrow? Tanner wondered if Miss Red Toenails would ever show her face again after what he pulled. He would help out with her car, but at this point, he figured she’d made it around the corner to the gas station, and a hands-off approach seemed best for both parties involved.

“I like gingerbread.” Jeremy hiccupped, shifting his watery gaze back to the window. “But she promised I could make it with her and now she’s gone.”

 Tanner’s guilt overflowed as he caught sight of a tow truck barreling down the street. “She’ll be fine, partner.”

“I think you made Hannah sad.” The accusation hung in the air like a thundercloud. “I saw her in her car. She was really sad and her head fell on the steering wheel and she...she’s never coming back,” Jeremy sobbed. “Just like Mama.”

The shock of Jeremy’s words hit Tanner like a punch to the stomach. “Your Mama’s in heaven with the angels, Jeremy. Do you understand that?”

The boy nodded. “Hannah told me, but I didn’t want to believe her.”

Tanner grimaced as he turned Jeremy from the window. “You know your mama’s not coming back, don’t you, partner? She’s in heaven now.”

Jeremy squeezed his bear tighter. “Yeah.”

“But Hannah will be coming back tomorrow. I promise.”

Two gray eyes looked up at Tanner with such trust, he realized that even if he had to double Hannah’s wages, the lady would return. But how she would travel without a car was beyond him. A taxi maybe? A smile lurked behind his eyes. He didn’t think she was going to take up the offer of free limo service, he thought with a smile. The lady had too much pride.

Jeremy bit his lip. “You’re going to be here, too. Right?”

“I won’t be going on any trips soon, if that’s what you want to know. You’re the most important thing to me, Jeremy. Do you understand?”

Jeremy held Max the bear in a chokehold.

Tanner felt a lump in his throat. “Listen to me, partner. I know it’s been a long time since your mother’s been gone. And I told you before that I didn’t know she was that sick. Uncle Rafe didn’t even know and he’s a doctor. I never would have gone away if I had known. You have to believe me.”

Jeremy picked at Max’s button nose. “I don’t remember a lot about Mama, but I remember some things. She hugged me real tight, but she had ammonia. That’s what Uncle Rafe said.”

“Pneumonia.”

“That’s what I said.”

Tanner raised his gaze to the yellow and white cowboy border running above the window and drew in a regretful sigh. Julie had been his high school sweetheart, and they had been more in love than anyone deserved to be.

After Julie’s death, he had thrown himself into his work, avoiding any type of social gathering that wasn’t business related. As time began to numb his pain, he started dating again, being with women he never considered marrying, and he had let them know that fact right off the bat.

But eventually he began to realize that Jeremy’s grief had never been properly addressed. The boy was having trouble in school and making friends, and it had something to do with Julie or so the psychologist had told him. And now it seemed it took but a mere stranger like Hannah Elliot to pull his son out of his shell and talk about it. Tanner felt hurt and a little bit ashamed.  

He bent down and picked up the yellow dump truck, moving it to the corner shelf. “What about you and me making some gingerbread together?”

For a long moment, two wide silver-gray eyes stared back at him in surprise.

“You and me?” Jeremy asked, dropping his bear to the floor. “You want to make gingerbread with me? I thought you hated it.” 

Tanner had to wonder what had come over him. Gingerbread? What kind of spell had the green-eyes siren cast over him? He almost withdrew his offer, but the hope that flickered in his son’s gaze spurred him on. They needed this bonding time.

Tanner picked up the bear and the dinosaur and gave a sideways glance toward his son. “If I didn’t know better, I would have thought you weren’t keen on the idea.” He shrugged. “Suit yourself. Either way I’m taking Max and Rex to the kitchen with me. We love gingerbread.” 

Jeremy stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and stared back with his mouth agape. “I thought Hannah’s gonna bring some tomorrow.”

“We can surprise her and have double, but if you want to eat, you have to work. Didn’t you ever read the story of the Little Red Hen?” 

The pitter-patter of little feet followed Tanner into the hall. “You know that story, Dad?”

“Yep.” 

Tanner felt a warm glow spread through him when a small hand slipped into his as he descended the stairs.

“Can you read it to me when we finish, can ya? It’s kind of a little kid’s story, you know, and I’m not a little kid anymore, but I can read it. And it’s..well...it’s nice to hear it read by someone else.”