Not Another New Year’s (4 page)

H
annah awakened, and information sank slowly into her muddled brain, like marbles into half-chilled Jell-O (part of an extra credit science experiment performed by one of her students the previous year). Just like those weedies had descended into the thick, lime-colored quasiliquid, she gradually took in these facts:

It was morning.

It was morning and she’d slept in her underwear.

It was morning and she’d slept in her underwear and she was inside some kind of tent.

It was morning and she’d slept in her underwear and she was inside some kind of tent and she had a raging headache.

It was morning and she’d slept in her underwear and she was inside some kind of tent and she had a
raging headache and when she turned her cheek on the pillow it was to see that…

She was inside the tent with a man.

A man. It took another second for that last fact to hit bottom.

A man.

Oh. My. God. She’d really gone through with the one-night stand.

That’s when it all came back to her. Not
all
of it, not everything that had happened the night before, because, unfortunately, there seemed to be some gaps in her recollection. But enough memories presented themselves to explain how she happened to have a sheet pulled over her head (the mistaken tent) that still allowed enough light through for her to detect the golden-skinned, muscled arm and side of an almost-stranger.

She’d seen that body last night.

Hannah swallowed, remembered feeling it too, his hot chest beneath her fingertips, the hard press of it against her own as he cradled her face and said he’d be right back. He’d gone out for condoms, and then…

Well, obviously he’d returned.

Through the sheet came the sound of knocking—from the distant sound of it, likely against the front door. Hannah grimaced, unsure what she should do, only knowing most certainly that she didn’t want the man beside her to awaken.

The knocks sounded again, and she froze as he turned to his side. His limbs relaxed and she watched his chest—now facing her—rise up and down on a drowsy sigh. Still asleep.

Apparently the person at the front door gave up, because minutes went by without another disturbance.

Which left Hannah free to dash away without confronting the man in the bed or the person at the door. A good idea, that. A no muss, no fuss, no regrets ending to an anonymous one-night stand.

Not to mention all the other reasons she had to get going. There were things she had to do today. She had to make her meeting with Tanner Hart, and then begin what ever necessary procedures to get new ID, credit cards, money, and clothes.

Yes, it was time to get moving.

She sent the toes of her feet crawling toward the edge of the mattress and stared at her bedmate’s chest, alert for any signs of awakening. Her gaze followed the naked curve of one pectoral and then focused on the long silver chain he wore around his neck. Slung across the ridge of muscle, it tangled in dark golden hair. A couple of links had caught on his light brown nipple.

Hannah’s scalp prickled and her pulse started to skitter as she was struck by the sudden desire to release that metal chain. To brush it aside and touch that copper nub with the tip of her tongue. Her belly quivered and her reconnoitering toes halted their original mission to instead curl toward the soles of her feet.

Had she done that last night? Had she licked that wedge of muscle and then tongued the satiny-looking circle of skin?

Explosive, he’d said. It was going to be explosive between them.

Her neck and face flushed with heat as she remembered how certain he’d been. Had it really been explosive and she’d forgotten all about it?

She hated mojitos.

Except without them she wouldn’t have dared get this close to the gorgeous man to begin with.

She loved mojitos.

The internal debate was still going strong when she heard another noise from outside the bedroom. Her stomach clenched. It was the squeak of a door opening. The click of it closing shut.

Swallowing hard, Hannah stared at the slow rise and fall of Finn’s chest. He still wasn’t awake and someone was coming through his house toward them. She could make out the quick footsteps.

And then, since she was holding her own, she could hear the intruder take a long indrawn breath from his or her place at the threshold of the bedroom.

“I’m sorry to wake you up,” a female voice said. “But we have to talk.”

A
female
voice. Hannah’s muscles tensed, even as she wished she could melt into the mattress like Hershey squares on a summer sidewalk. She hoped to God it wasn’t an ex. Wouldn’t that just cap off her first foray into Sexventureland? Hannah Davis, unwilling witness to a confrontation between parted lovers.

“Are you awake?” the voice demanded.

The man across the sheets from Hannah twitched. As his head wasn’t under the covers like hers, she couldn’t see anything above his collarbone, but there was an alertness about his body that hinted he was no longer sleeping.

“Go away,” he mumbled, guaranteeing he was no
longer sleeping. And making it pretty clear that whoever had interrupted his beauty rest wasn’t welcome.

Whew. Maybe it was his sister or something.

“I won’t,” the female replied, sounding stubborn. “Wake up and talk to me.”

“Make an appointment with my secretary.” Her bedmate didn’t sound the least willing to cooperate. “Maybe I have an opening sometime in the next century.”

Hannah tried to be as still and small as possible. Maybe if she was really quiet, the intruder would take the hint and then the man she was in bed with would go back to sleep without recalling her presence.

It could happen, right? There was still hope to get out of here without muss, fuss, or regrets. Well, maybe not without regrets, she admitted, as the man rolled onto his back again. He must have scooted up on the headboard at the same time, because now she was looking at his navel and the elastic line of silky boxers instead of his chest.

Surely she’d regret never recalling what was beneath that slick material and exactly how skilled he was with it.

“I’m not going anywhere,” the per sis tent female declared.

The man beside Hannah released a frustrated sigh. “All right, then. What the hell is it that you want?”

“I’ve come to a decision.” There was a note of triumph in the other woman’s voice. “Something I should have considered a long time ago.”

“Yeah? What’s that?” From her own sibling life,
Hannah recognized his surly tone. Surely it signaled her bedmate was talking to his sister.

“We can’t go on like this,” the other woman said. “You’re going to have to marry me.”

Hannah jerked in shock. This wasn’t a sister. This wasn’t an ex. This was his current woman, and he’d just taken another—her, Hannah!—to bed.

The new pregnant silence in the room made clear her muscle spasm had given her away.

“You have someone there with you.” The other female sounded more surprised than accusing.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” her bedmate replied in agreement. Then he whipped the sheet down from Hannah’s head to expose her, blinking, to the full morning light and the speculative gaze of a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman.

A woman who, oddly enough, looked as if she was trying not to laugh. “Your secretary, I presume?”

Hannah slowly sat up, clutching the sheet to her camisole-covered breasts. Her glance skittered toward Finn and then jumped back to the exotic-looking female standing at the end of the bed. She was tall and leggy, about the same height as Hannah and with hair the same shade and length. In a pair of painted-on canary jeans, a flowered tunic, and tall stilettos, though, her sartorial style was the antithesis of a schoolteacher’s.

With the fingers of one hand, Hannah tried combing some order into her sleep-tangled hair. “I…um…I didn’t know,” she told Finn’s girlfriend. “You have to believe me.”

The girlfriend blinked. She didn’t appear dis
traught, or devastated, or any of the dozen other degrading emotions Hannah had experienced when she’d learned what Duncan had done behind her back. But Hannah had tried to put a good public face on it too.

She’d done all her cringing and crying in private.

Her hand left the mess of her hair to wave in mute apology. “You see, it was midnight, and—and—” She glanced over at the man in the middle of all this. Why was he so quiet? He could try helping her out here. It wasn’t as if he was dead or anything.

She heated her glance to a glare when he didn’t jump in with a word or an explanation of his own. He was pretty, and she remembered his gentle touch on her battered hands and knees, but now she figured him for a two-timing jerk. “Well?” she said, still staring at him.

He was staring at her too. He started, as if coming back to the present. “Well, uh…what?”

Maybe he had a subzero IQ as well. So much for her sense that he was someone worth her very first single-again sexual exploit. “Well, don’t you have anything to say?”

“Good morning?”

She squinted at him. “That’s it?”

He crossed his arms over his (still impressive, despite his other lacks) chest. “Look, sorry. It’s pretty early.”

“Maybe she means an introduction,” the other woman said.

“Right.” He ran his hands through his hair. The golden mass settled into straighter lines. “Deborah, Dez. Dez, Deborah.”

“Oh.” The word popped out of Hannah’s mouth.
Deborah.
She’d forgotten she’d given him a different name. Heat rose on her cheeks. She’d forgotten she’d given him
that
name.

The other woman strode around the bed to hold out her hand. “Desirée,” she said. “Or Dezi or Dez. What ever. It’s nice to meet you.”

Hannah found herself in the strange position of shaking hands with the woman whose almost-fiancé she’d just spent the night with. Looking into Desirée’s—so this was the famous Desirée—friendly face, she opened her mouth to get the situation back on a more honest footing. “It’s really Hannah,” she said.

“What?” This from the man she’d shared sheets with. He was looking at her with alarm, his body suddenly tense.
“What did you say?”

Confession time. “I gave you the wrong name, Finn. I’m Hannah. Hannah Davis.”

His horrified expression sent a chill down her spine. She scooted away from him, sliding half off the bed in one move. “I’ll be going now. No muss. No fuss. No regrets. Sounds good, right?”

He pounced like a tiger. One moment he was on his side of the bed, the next he had his right hand wrapped around her wrist. “Don’t even think about going anywhere,” he commanded, pointing his left forefinger at her. “You park your pretty ass right where it is.”

I
f Tanner had thought his luck would change with the change in the calendar, he was already proved wrong. Of all the gin joints in all the world for her to walk into a night early, of all the women in all the world for him to break his eleven-month-long vow with, he’d selected the one woman he was charged with looking after.

He’d taken to his sheets the one woman who held his career in the palm of her hand.

Christ, and the bed hadn’t even been made.

“Look, I’ve got an appointment this morning,” she said now, tugging on the arm he held. “There’s someone I’m supposed to see. You need to let go of me, Finn.”

“Yes,
Finn,
” Dez, the brat, said with a smirk. “Don’t you think,
Finn,
that you should let her go,
Finn
?”

Hannah Davis’s attention turned toward Desirée. Her head tilted. “Do I…do I know you?”

Dez’s head tilted the same way, and Tanner remembered how at first sight he’d mistaken Hannah for his bad luck charm. They did have a more than passing resemblance, which should have scared him off from the get-go. What an idiot he was.

“Do you watch much television?” Desirée asked. “Entertainment shows, gossip TV, that kind of thing?”

Hannah shook her head. “I’m a teacher and I make a deal with my students every September. No more than five hours of television a week and I throw a pizza party in class at the end of every month. I spend mine on crime dramas and the occasional sitcom rerun.”

Dez nodded. “But do you ever skim a copy of
US Weekly
?
People
?
The Enquirer
?”

Hannah shrugged. “I live alone. The fifteen-or-less line at my grocery store goes pretty quick.”

Tanner remembered what his former boss, Geoff Brooks, had told him about his niece. An elementary school teacher from the same small town from whence Geoff hailed. This young woman had been going through some “rough times,” and though the older man hadn’t specified exactly what kind, he’d made it just short of an order that Tanner take good care of Hannah while she was in Coronado.

“Show her the sights. Make sure she doesn’t have to sit at restaurants alone,” Geoff had said. “Keep the hounds away from her.”

Christ. Tanner knew what that meant, didn’t he?
He was supposed to protect her from himself and what they’d almost done last night.

What he’d wanted to do when he unveiled her a few minutes ago. Flushed and tousled, her warm body had spoken to his without any words necessary. He’d just stared at her, fascinated by all her pink and creamy skin, his gaze snagging on the cute pillow crease that ran across her cheek and arrowed his attention onto her puffy, blush-colored mouth.

Her lips were naturally red, the reddest, sexiest he’d ever seen. To disguise his reaction to his wayward thoughts, he gathered the sheet around him and piled it in his lap. He needed to boot Dez out the door so that he and Hannah could—

Damn it!
Damn
it!

His mind should be off her. Off her and off her mouth and off how he wanted to touch it, taste it, have it. Geoff would skin Tanner alive—or worse, ban him from the Ser vice for life—if he didn’t do right by his precious niece, and a one-night stand or even a ten-day fling certainly wasn’t “By the Book” Brooks’s idea of “doing right.”

What the hell was Tanner supposed to do now?

Suddenly aware that both the women were staring at him, he frowned. “What?” Then, realizing he still held Hannah’s slender wrist in his hand, he dropped it like a hot potato. His gaze met hers. “What?”

Oh, shit. She was doing it again, just with a look from her warm brown eyes. It was some sort of apple-pie and American Legion voodoo, which made him think of hay rides and picnics and having sex
outdoors. He could see her standing naked in a sunlit mountain pool. Shadows from the leaves of the surrounding trees would dapple the sleek surface of her wet thighs and rounded ass, focusing his attention on the palm-sized curve at the small of her back and the sweet dimples above her butt. Her nipples would be raspberry hard and he’d wade through the cool water to taste them, only to halt, mesmerized, as she lifted her face to a waterfall and let it drench her hair and from there run in clear rivulets over all that sun-warmed flesh.

“Are you all right?” she said from her half-dressed and full-dry, nonimaginary place on the bed, a frown wrinkling the spot between her dark brows.

“No, I’m not all right,” he snapped, yanking himself back to reality and his gaze away from her. This was all her fault, wasn’t it?

Hadn’t
she
landed on
his
lap?

Hadn’t
she
come on to
him
?

Desirée’s eyes went wide. “Gee, your bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired, pal. Maybe I don’t want to marry you after all…
Finn.
”

He shot her a look. “Cut it out, Dez. We’re
not
getting married. Not even if you subject me to that special sand-and-scorpions desert torture you’re always claiming as your birthright.” Then, with a sigh, he let his glance fall back on Hannah. “I gave you the wrong name too. I’m really Tanner. Tanner Hart.”

“Oh.” Her hand, still holding the sheet to her silk-covered breasts, flexed, squeezing the cotton with white knuckles.
“Oooh.”

“Yeah.”

Desirée perked up, her gaze darting between their
two faces. “This sounds intriguing. What’s a schoolteacher have in common with a disgraced Secret Service agent? Besides the same mattress, that is?”

Hannah looked a little green about the gills. “You won’t…you can’t…Uncle Geoff…” Her free hand made a little gesture. “My family would—”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said abruptly. “No one will ever be the wiser that you got any closer to a guy like me than my tour guide duties demand.”

“No, no. You don’t understand. My family worries—”

“Oh, but I do understand. I’m sure my family’s not too proud of the ‘disgraced’ part either.”

Desirée grimaced. “Tanner. That’s just me and my big mouth. I was teasing. You know—”

He cut her off too. “Don’t mention your mouth to me ever again, Dez.”

She pressed her lips together. But only for a second, naturally. “Fine. But my marriage proposal still stands.”

“I’ll try to stop myself from rushing Hannah to Tiffany’s as her first stop on her Southern California tour.”

The woman in question squirmed against the mattress. “I know Uncle Geoff asked you to give me some vacation tips, but I don’t want to impose.”

“It’s no imposition,” he replied. “Now, whenever you’re ready, I’ll drive you to your hotel—or did you rent a car at the airport?”

Hannah looked down at her lap. “Believe it or not, I don’t drive.”

He blinked. “You don’t drive?”

“Nope.” Her fingertip drew a pattern on her knee.
“I bike to work and live close to the grocery store. Then there’s my family…well, I never lack for rides anywhere I want to go.”

Still, it was weird. Tanner remembered Geoff telling him she was in her late twenties, and her looks confirmed it. But he shrugged. “No problem. I can drop you off where you’re staying.”

“That actually
is
a problem. I have several of them, as a matter of fact.” Then she proceeded to tell him as well as the apparently around-for-the-duration Desirée how she’d come to lose her purse and her luggage at the airport the previous evening.

“You poor kid,” Dez commiserated, though she figured she was younger than the other woman by two or three years. “I lost everything in Istanbul once. In Buenos Aires, it was just my makeup case, but my father moved heaven and earth until someone found it.”

Tanner doubted whether Desirée’s father, Prince al-Maddah, had ever moved a finger to help his daughter with anything. Maybe he’d commanded some minion to track down her stuff, though even that was suspect. More often that not, the child the Middle Eastern royal had created during his brief union with a famous American model was completely forgotten or ignored.

Both Tanner and Dez had paid the price for that. Dez more, of course, though he only acknowledged that in his more charitable moments.

“We’ll figure out something,” Tanner said to Hannah. “The banks won’t be open until tomorrow, but I’m sure we can find you some clothes—”

“I don’t have any money at the moment either,” she reminded him.

He waved that away. “Don’t you worry. I’ll—”

“Hey, don’t anybody worry!” Dez suddenly declared. “I know exactly what we’ll do.”

Tanner and Hannah looked at her. She was beaming.

“I’ve got that big suite at the Hotel Del Coronado. Not to mention two closets full of clothes there. Hannah and I look near the same size. She can stay with me as long as she wants and borrow my wardrobe to boot.”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Hannah said, shaking her head.

“Yes, you could. Because then I’d be doing Tanner a favor, and he’ll be the first to tell you I owe him. I owe him big.”

“There’s that,” he agreed. And it would be a hell of a lot easier to accept Desiree’s temporary help than marry the poor little brat.

Plus, it would get him out of clothes shopping.

“Hannah?” He cocked an eyebrow her way.

“It’ll be fun!” Dez declared. “Like an adventure.”

It was that last word that seemed to sway Hannah. Though still sounding uncertain, she agreed. So he boogied off to the bathroom in the hallway, leaving her to get dressed in the master bath. When he came out, she was decent again, all buttoned up in her black jeans and her starched—though wrinkled—shirt.

“Desirée’s waiting for me in the car,” she said, not looking him straight in the eye.

He narrowed his gaze. “Are you going to be okay? Dez said she’d bring you over to Hart’s once you’re
settled in and freshened up. She’s rich, but she’s not dangerous.”

Hannah gave him a small smile, still hesitating.

Moving forward, he put a finger under her chin and lifted her face to his.

Big mistake.

With their bodies aligned, it reminded him of being in bed with her again. He’d found her passed out beneath his sheets after his quick condom run. Staring down at her flushed cheeks and sleep-softened mouth, he couldn’t decide if he should wake her and take her home, or wake her and work to get her motor revving again.

Option one was sensible, option two infinitely more desirable. Deciding his half-inebriated state rendered him too conflicted to make a decision, he’d fallen onto the mattress beside her to sleep off the dilemma.

Instead, he’d stayed awake for hours, watching her.

He’d stared at the perfect arch of her dark brows, at the feathery fullness of her eyelashes, at the creamy round of one shoulder peeking over the edge of the sheet. And then he’d stared at her mouth.

Like he stared at it now, fascinated by the deep curve of her upper lip and the plump cushion of the bottom one. She made a little sound in the back of her throat, and he shifted his gaze to her eyes.

She cast her damn spell again. Just like that, he was once more consumed by lust.

But it wasn’t her, he told himself quickly. His damn vow was more likely to blame. Eleven months without a woman. Eleven months without kisses, without the sweet stab of a tight nipple against his palm, with
out that breathless moment of aching want and carnal discovery when he first opened the naked petals of a woman’s sex and touched her wet heat.

Hannah had been turned on last night, and Christ, that was the ultimate turn-on for him. On the outside, she looked starched and prim, like someone who required coaxing for a response. But then he’d knelt at her feet, and the tremble of her limbs and the stuttered sound of her breath told him different.

He was an idiot. If he’d remembered the need for condoms on their short walk from the bar to his house, or if he’d taken less time playing with her before recalling that there wasn’t a foil packet anywhere to be found on the premises, then now he’d know what it was like to feel the clasp of her body around his finger. He would know the way she liked her nipples sucked—soft and gentle, or strong and demanding. He would know the sounds she made when she came.

He would have screwed Geoff Brooks’s beloved niece.

Shit! It made him mad at her all over again.
Deborah,
she’d called herself.
Fuck.
Yeah, he’d renamed himself Finn, but she’d started it, right?

Dropping his hand from her chin, he stepped back. “Go on now,” he grated out. “Dez’s waiting.”

Hannah bit her bottom lip. He closed his eyes, remembering doing that himself the night before, and the way her pupils had gone wide as she made a shocked sound of yearning.

“Go on,” he said again, opening his eyes to make sure she obeyed.

She did, half turning, but then spun back. “So…was it as explosive as you, uh, imagined?”

Tanner stared at her. What? She couldn’t…She didn’t…

Oh, but looking at her blushing face, he knew she could, she did. She didn’t remember passing out. She thought they’d done the nasty.

Great. Did he look like a necrophiliac?

His temper heated all over again. He could set her straight, of course, or he could serve up a sweet little bite of revenge.

No contest.

“You know as well as I do it was explosive, sweetheart,” he said, relishing the deception. “It was freakin’ Armageddon.”

He watched her swallow. Nod. Turn around and scurry away.

That would keep her up nights, he hoped. She’d be staring at the ceiling, trying to recall what they had done in his bed. It was only fair. He’d be awake too, tortured by everything they
hadn’t.