Not Another New Year’s (23 page)

Things I Hate about New year’s

It means that Valentine’s Day is just around the corner!

H
annah 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 Ser vice, 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.

I
gnoring 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.

Today she was going to unearth Caroline and demand some answers and accountability.

Who would blame Hannah? Wasn’t it natural to want to see how she stacked up against the blonde who’d taken her fiancé away? It was instinct, right? From the first birthday bash a little girl attended in a frou-frou party dress, she automatically cataloged the competition. Who had the cutest face, who had the prettiest hair bow, who was best at prancing up to the little boys—particularly the ones with slicked-back blond hair, blue eyes, and three older brothers?

She shoved Tanner out of her thoughts as she tried deciding what to do next. Today was about Caroline. And Duncan.

His betrayal had been when things had started to go wrong for her.

Why had his head been turned by the other woman?

She must be something special in bed, Hannah decided.

Maybe I should have read
Cosmo
more often. Or rented XXX-rated porn movies.

But Tanner hadn’t had any complaints.

Him
again. “Unh!” she said out loud, smacking her sole against the sidewalk in frustration.

A woman walking past started, almost losing her hold on her coffee cup and her folded newspaper.

“Sorry,” Hannah mumbled, then watched as the woman gave her a cautious sidelong glance and hurried off in the direction of…

The park on Orange.

That’s where she needed to go next. It was the last place she’d found a definite Caroline lead. Sure, it had turned into a dead end on Amstead Avenue, but it was the only other clue she had. Tightening her grip on her lightweight duffel bag, Hannah stepped into the flow of morning foot traffic.

It was the earliest hour yet that she’d visited the popular park. As she waited once again to cross the street, she didn’t see sign of either raindrops or sharkish sedan, but when she got the green light she ran to the other side anyway, her duffel bag banging against her hip. Then she stood at the park entrance, breathing harder than the short sprint warranted, and took in the people on the close-cropped, emerald grass. This time she
would
meet with success.

Except once again no platinum blonde caught her eye.

There was the tai chi crowd, the newspaper-reading, coffee-sipping group, the dog walkers with their yet empty doggy-do bags waving like white flags out of their jacket pockets. In the playground on the other end a few mothers and strollers were already in evidence.

But no platinum blonde, engagement-wrecking, happiness-harpooning future stealer.

Hannah stalked around the perimeter of the grassy area, ticking off each visitor who didn’t meet her criteria. She’d dismissed yet another of the geriatric set when a voice behind her made her turn.

“Young lady?”

A few feet away a little old man clutched a skinny leash attached to a skinny creature that had the size and bright, protruding eyeballs of a squirrel. As its master drew closer to Hannah, the furred animal darted forward to sniff her shoes.

“Were you…were you talking to me?” she asked, eyeing the curious squirrel-thing and hoping it wouldn’t decide to run up her pants leg (a fear left over from an unscheduled visit by Pamster the hamster from Room 3 at Mott Elementary).

“I wondered if you’d caught up with Caroline.”

Hannah’s gaze jolted back to the senior citizen. His pet had distracted her, but now she recognized him as Caroline’s former neighbor—and the man she’d met the day Desirée had driven her to Taft Street.

“No,” Hannah replied. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t run across her yet.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. Did she leave already?”

Hannah frowned. “Leave? Leave already?”

He made a vague gesture. “I saw her a few minutes ago.”

“You did?” Her spine snapped straighter and she looked over his gray-and-liver-spotted head. “Where?”

The Pamster the hamster wannabe bristled, then started to yap. Straining at its kite-string leash, it caused its owner to be dragged a foot to the right.

“Got to go,” the old man wheezed out as the squirrel thing took off, its beady gaze focused on the stubby tail of a passing rottweiler.

“But where?” Hannah called.

“That way!” He made another vague gesture and was gone.

Hannah turned a circle on the grass. She was here, she repeated to herself.
Caroline was here.

Any minute now she would confront the woman and show her the face, the person, the real human, hurting emotions behind the engagement ring Hannah had still been wearing when the couple exchanged their I do’s. She would demand…demand…

Acknowledgment. Consideration. Respect.

She would demand that Caroline
see
Hannah.

And maybe Hannah would see why she was never enough.

But reapplying herself to the search didn’t produce the woman Hannah sought. Frustrated again, she looked around for the little old man, but he was gone too. With a shrug, she moved away from the grass to start checking over the visitors in the play
ground. Maybe Caroline was with a friend and the friend’s children.

The only blondes in the sand area were a pair of towheads on the swings and a sleeping infant in a stroller parked beside a mother who was reading on a park bench. When she looked at the woman’s face, the woman glanced up, and Hannah noted she was the one who had brushed dirt from her clothes after she fell in the street a few days before. They exchanged little smiles, saluting the shared memory, then Hannah turned away.

Only to remember the woman from that previous visit to the park who had known Caroline and passed along the Amstead Avenue tip. It was a long shot, but maybe this new mom was acquainted with Caroline too.

Hannah turned back and pasted an apologetic smile on her face. “Excuse me?”

The young woman looked up from her parenting magazine. “Yes?”

“Would you happen to know a Caroline? Caroline Griffen?”

“No.” The stranger shook her head and laughed a little.

Hannah laughed a little too. It
had
been a long shot.

“I don’t
know
Caroline Griffen,” the young mom went on. “I
am
Caroline Griffen.”

Hannah’s knees gave out. She stumbled to the park bench and managed to find a seat on the green-painted slats before her butt hit cement again.

Finally. Caroline.

Caroline and
her baby.

Duncan’s baby.

Oh, God.

Not only had Duncan and Caroline married behind Hannah’s back, but they’d made a child.

Bending at the waist, she put her elbows on her knees and buried her face in her hands. Her lungs expanded on one long breath, followed by another. Then she turned her head and looked into the other woman’s alarmed face.

“Your hair isn’t platinum. Or long. You’re not wearing mascara.”

Caroline slid down the bench, closer to the stroller, and put her hand on her baby’s blanket-covered legs. “Who are you?”

Hannah took in the other woman’s clipped nails, her ratty jeans, the ragged sweatshirt she wore and its raveled cuffs. She had nice skin, but it looked as if she hadn’t yet learned how to style her new, shorter cut. Her lips were chapped.

What of that had lured Duncan away?

How was all that better than she?

Her dry tongue ventured out to lick her own bottom lip. “I’m Hannah,” she said, suddenly not sure if the other woman would know the name.

Did “Hannah” mean anything to Caroline? Had she not even cared enough to learn the name of the fiancée left in the dust? Had Duncan never bothered to tell her the name?

Months ago the shame and disillusionment over Duncan’s behind-Hannah’s-back marriage had joined with the shock and grief over his death to form a tight
ball of anger inside of her. All this time it had lived there, pulsing like a black heart, waiting until the day it could break open and spit fire on the piranhalike predator named Caroline. It was supposed to then free Hannah from her pain.

And yet here was the piranha, in old jeans and without mascara, who was staring at her as if she didn’t recognize her name, let alone understand about that darkness Hannah had been harboring.

“Who are you?” the woman asked again.

“I’m Hannah Davis.”

Caroline pressed her back against the slats of the bench. “Hannah.”

Now it sounded as if she recognized it.

The baby—Duncan’s baby—started crying. Its mother instantly moved to lift the child into her arms. “Shh, shh,” she said, patting the baby’s back. “Shh, Davy.”

Davy. Hannah didn’t want to hear it, but it was impossible to ignore. Caroline and Duncan’s child was a boy named Davy.

The boy named Davy should have been Hannah’s baby.

But that didn’t seem real, just as this Caroline didn’t seem like the Caroline she’d been outlining and then coloring in with her hurt and angry crayon set all these months.

“Hannah.” The short-haired, chapped-lipped stranger beside her looked over her quieting child’s head. “I’m so sorry.”

Hannah’s black, pulsing heart of anger beat harder. “Sorry? Sorry for what?”

“That he didn’t tell you. That you had to find out the way you did. That…oh, God, I’m sorry that he was killed before you had a chance to kick his ass.”

Hannah blinked. “Wh-What?”

The other woman smiled, but bright tears glistened in her eyes. “Maybe we could have done it together.”

Hannah stared. “Kick his ass?”

“I didn’t know about your engagement, you know. Not until after we were married did he tell me about you. Imagine how I felt.”

“Imagine,” Hannah echoed. She’d been imagining for months that Caroline had felt empowered by the way she’d knowingly appropriated Hannah’s man and Hannah’s future. The idea of that had tortured her.

“He promised he was going to tell you.”

“He didn’t.” Her voice held a note of the caustic anger she’d been holding back. “He didn’t tell his parents either.”

Caroline swallowed. “I know that now.”

“And they didn’t tell me Duncan had a child.”

The mother rested her cheek on the baby’s downy head for a moment. His hair was the color of corn silk and glinted like polyester threads in the sunlight. When Duncan was a boy, he’d had hair like that, Hannah recalled.

“He’s Davy,” Caroline said. “David Duncan Griffen.”

Hannah looked away from the child. This wasn’t right! This was too hard. Putting Davy in the mix, looking at the reality of Caroline who wasn’t the gorgeous, femme fatale Hannah had written into the
story she’d told herself, the one titled “How Duncan Could Do This to Me,” gave her no place to put all her anger.

She’d thought Caroline had robbed her—not just of her fiancé, but of her future and her idea that if she made the approved, favored choices, she would have a charmed, favored life. Now, though, now looking at the young widow beside her, with shadows under her eyes and a fatherless baby in her arms, Hannah could only think that…that…

Nothing had been stolen. Not really.

It had just been lost.

Still…

“I don’t understand,” she said, the words bursting out of her mouth. “This isn’t right.”

Who was she if she wasn’t the victim?

Duncan was dead, so who could she blame if it wasn’t Caroline? Hannah, the good girl, the pleaser, the one who’d always gone along to get along, had nowhere to go with all that dark emotion inside of her.

Caroline nestled her child closer to her chest. “I know. I’ve felt that exact same way since the day I heard that knock on my door.”

Hannah’s belly clenched. She stood up, shaking her head, not knowing what to do. “Good-bye.”

“Wait.”

Despite her reluctance, Hannah turned back.

“I really would like to kick his ass, you know.”

“He’s dead,” Hannah said. It was why she could never bring herself to blame him or hate him for how she’d been hurt.

“I’d like to kick his ass for that most of all,”
Caroline admitted. “But you should know that he agonized over what he’d done to you.”

Hannah shrugged. “He could have told me the truth.”

“Duncan, for all his warrior aspirations, was still a softie at heart. He still found it so hard to tell something that he knew would hurt you, your parents, his parents. You know what I mean. You knew him.”

And, oh, God. Hannah did. She’d known him her whole life, and one of the reasons they’d been so compatible was that, like her, he’d often been eager (too eager?) to please. They’d both gone along with the engagement because so many people had told them it was their right next step.

But that had been wrong, she saw now. The right next step for Duncan was this woman. This woman who had guts enough to want to kick his ass even when he was in the grave. This woman who had guts enough to raise their child alone.