Not Another New Year’s (19 page)

Things I Hate about New year’s

all the holiday decorations come down.

“I
don’t know why you’re so angry,” Hannah said, her voice calm and reasonable.

Tanner clenched the steering wheel and stared out the windshield into the dark night as he drove them back to Coronado. Hell. He didn’t know why he was so angry either. But for some goddamn reason, Geoff Brooks’s offhand remark about Hannah’s dead ex had stung like a slap in the face.

“Your uncle assumed you’d told me all about him,” he muttered. “I felt like an idiot when I found out the guy was no longer with us.”

“Uncle Geoff shouldn’t have assumed I’d tell you anything about Duncan,” she said, still in that annoying, rational voice. “You’re merely my tour guide, right?”

Christ. Her tour guide. Tanner thanked the darkness, because it hid his aghast expression. How had he let this get so out of hand? As she pointed out, he was supposed to be her “mere” tour guide, and yet over the past couple of days they’d taken to exploring lands they should have left well enough alone.

“We both know I’ve become more than that, Hannah,” he said, aware of the bitterness in his voice.

“So what? It’s a vacation fling.”

And wasn’t
that
just another smack.

But maybe those metaphorical slaps had a purpose to serve, he told himself, trying to think through the blows. Maybe they were supposed to refocus his attention on the risk he was taking getting involved with Hannah. Warning smacks, then, telling him to back away, and that he didn’t need to know any more about her past, her pain, that ex.

Telling him to make it clear to her that the fun and games—
excuse me, that fling
—was over between them.

But before he could bring up the subject, Hannah released a resigned sigh. “So you think you should know about Duncan.”

He’d changed his mind about that. “Not real—”

“He was my childhood sweetheart. He was going off to war. End of story.”

Off to war?
Tanner lost his grip on the steering wheel and the Mercedes nearly plowed into a fire hydrant. At the last minute he jerked it away from disaster.

Hannah swallowed a shriek, and he remembered again she was a nervous passenger.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said. God, he needed to
get her out of this car and away from him before they both came to grief. He gritted his teeth and narrowed his eyes, focusing on the road ahead and putting everything else from his mind.

Get her to Coronado. Drop her off at the hotel. Regain your distance.

“What the hell do you mean, going off to war?” Tanner had no idea who spoke the words in his voice.

“I told you he was in the military. That day at the DMV.”

That day at the DMV he’d been caught up in weird fantasies that involved the flag, and he struggled to keep them from marching back into his thoughts now. “All right. Yeah.”

“He asked me to marry him just before he shipped out to Iraq the first time.” She said this in the same colorless, rational tone she’d been using since leaving her uncle’s place. What had happened to the purring sex kitten sitting beside him a couple of hours ago?

Not that he wanted to know.

“Over the next three years I didn’t see him. He was either in Iraq or briefly back in the U.S. for special training. When he was stateside, he told me he would be too busy for a visit, so we kept in touch through letters, phone calls, and e-mails.”

“Jesus, Hannah.” Tanner shook his head, his blood starting to boil again. “What kind of man is too busy for a visit from his fiancée? Didn’t you wonder about that?”

In contrast to his hot mood, she sounded as chilly as the January ocean temperature. “Maybe I should have figured something was up. But I went along
with his wishes because…because I usually go along with other people’s wishes.”

Except when it came to him, Tanner thought. He’d been wishing she didn’t tempt him so damn much, and so far the wishing hadn’t been working.

Taking the exit for the bridge, he tried loosening the coil of hot frustration twisting inside his gut. But at the moment, his willpower wasn’t working either. “Tell me the rest,” he grated out. “Tell me all of it.” Call him curious, call him crazy, but now he figured that until he heard it all he wasn’t going to be able to let go.

To let
her
go, and it appeared to be definitely the time to do that.

“What rest?”

He ground his back teeth. Was she being deliberately obtuse? Was she trying to drive him straight up a wall? Because that calm, collected voice of hers just might do it.

“I remember you said he never broke the engagement. That you found out he was married while you were still wearing his engagement ring.”

“Oh, that.”

Oh, that.
Christ.

“His parents were notified of his death. They, in turn, told me. We were in the middle of planning his memorial service—funny, I remember now I was sitting down with a paper and pencil, trying to write out what I planned to say, when Duncan’s parents came by again a couple of days later. With the, uh, other news.”

The uh, other news.
Tanner shook his head. “The news that he was married.”

“Yes. Apparently he’d met someone and married her during that last training session back in the States. He didn’t get a chance to tell his parents or me, I guess, before he was killed.”

Tanner turned his head to stare at her. They’d made it over the bridge and he turned right instead of left, choosing to take a longer route to her hotel. “What? How much time after his ‘I do’ until…?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Six weeks? Five months?”

His temper surged again. “Which is it? Six weeks? Or five months?”

She hesitated, but then spoke again in that unaffected tone. “He was in the U.S. for six more weeks following his wedding. Then another five months in Iraq.”

Tanner felt his eyeballs popping out of his head. “So he kept you hanging for over
six months
? What a bastard.”

“Don’t—”

“Don’t what? For God’s sake, Hannah, why the whitewash?” Did she still love the SOB? Was that what was pissing him off so much? But how could she? “He treated you like shit.”

“Don’t say that about him!” For the first time since leaving her uncle’s there was some real, honest-to-God emotion in her voice.

Yet he hated that it only came out in her ex’s defense. Spurred by an impulse he couldn’t define, Tanner pulled to the curb and shut off the car. A streetlight illuminated her profile: the stubborn thrust of her chin, the tight set of her mouth.

“Admit it, Hannah.” Maybe
he
was the bastard, but he wanted to hear her say it. His voice turned lower.
Harder. “Admit the truth. Admit that he screwed you over.”

“That’s not right. He didn’t—”

“Admit it.”

“He—”

“Admit it.”

Her hand flew up.
Crack!

She’d slapped his face.

Tanner reared back, and they stared at each other, both of them breathing hard. His third stinging smack of the night, though this one literal instead of metaphorical, and all his own fault. He’d pushed her to it, just more proof that when it came to Hannah, he was getting out of control. And the last thing he wanted was to feel more powerlessness in his life.

He reached for the key.
Get her to the hotel. Regain your distance.

“I can’t believe I did that,” she whispered. Her hand covered her mouth, her fingers trembling. “But you can’t make me say something bad about Duncan. He died a hero, did you know that? Tw-Twenty-seven men are alive thanks to his actions on the day he died. His…his wife was given his posthumous medals.”

Tanner’s hand fisted and dropped to his thigh. His eyes squeezed shut. A hero. Hannah’s SOB fiancé had died a hero. Didn’t that just make the story freakin’ more fabulous?

A fucking hero.

His jaw throbbed like a bitch, but it was nothing compared to his temper. It was alive inside of him again, pumping in time with his heart, filling his belly, his chest, his head.

“Now I know why I’m angry,” he whipped out. “Now I know exactly why I’m angry. Before I took you to bed, you should have told me I was replacing a ghost—worse, a fucking hero ghost. I might have done a better job, knowing how great the expectation.” He braced for her to slap him again.

Instead she surprised him by throwing up her hands. “So this is about you,” she said, her voice rising with each word. “Isn’t that just like a man? Thinking only of yourself. Thinking only about what will make you happy and not considering anyone else or anyone else’s feelings. Well, then damn you. Damn you, damn you,
damn
you, Duncan—”

Her voice halted.

Damn you, Duncan.
It echoed in the sudden silence.
Damn you, Duncan.

And then tears were running down her cheeks, the streetlight turning them silver like the raindrops that had flowed down the windshield that first time she’d melted in his arms. And then she was there again—as he stripped her of the seat belt in record time and hauled her up against him.

So much for distance.

“Shh shh shh,” he said against her hair. How could he have pushed her to this?
Why
had he pushed her to this? “Don’t cry. Don’t cry. There’s no reason to cry.”

“I’m not crying,” she said, her wet face pressed against his neck. “I’m just sorry. Sorry about…about…”

“Shh, shh.”

She ducked her head tighter against him. “Tanner, I’m so sorry I slapped you.”

“We’ll give you a time-out later.” He pulled her
into his lap and stroked his palm down the length of her silky hair as more of her tears made a stain over his heart. “I have an empty corner in the bedroom.”

There was no longer any doubt of where she would be sleeping to night. And there was no question of him letting her go now—he wouldn’t, at least not yet.

Dawn’s pink light softened the stark white of Tanner’s sheets and added a tinge of rosy color to the tan of his broad naked back and muscled shoulders. Sitting up against the headboard, Hannah studied his blond head, those shoulders, the shallow valley of his spine.

Last night she’d run her tongue along the groove, her hands curved around his straining biceps to hold him against the mattress. He’d groaned and made delicious promises under his breath if only she would let him go, let him up, let him have his way with her.

She’d had her way first—using touch as an apology and as a distraction from the tense emotions in the car as they’d left her uncle’s. She hadn’t wanted to talk about the past or about Duncan anymore.

Still, that distraction had been
her
plea sure, exploring all Tanner’s masculine territory of spine and scapula and muscled curve of his butt before turning him over to map the front with her hands. She’d stroked over his pectoral muscles with her palms, bumping over his small nipples and the soft fur of his golden hair. Kissing her way down from his heart to his navel, she’d found her mouth a breath away from his erection and flushed hot as she licked the round head with her tongue.

Tanner had been whispering to her again, more hoarse entreaties, but she’d blocked out the voice, only listening to the tone as it deepened when she sucked the sleek skin into her mouth. Her hand had drifted lower, finding other textures, cooler temperatures, feeling the way he held his breath as she cupped him and then rolled her tongue around and around and around.

It had been for him.

Not.

It had been for her.

Her heart had been pumping like crazy, her skin sensitized to the merest touch of his, her nipples as tight as if he’d squeezed them with his fingers. But she refused to let him touch her, instead bathing in the pool of her own sexuality. Reveling in how awake and alive she was when she was with him.

How safe he made her feel during her discoveries.

From the moment she’d landed on his lap at Hart’s on New Year’s Eve, he’d made her feel so safe.

So glad to be a woman.

She ran her finger over the stack of books on his bedside table and smiled at the memory of their dinner date when he’d turned her on by talking books. And movies.

“Nobody puts Baby in a corner,” he’d said, quoting
Dirty Dancing,
and she realized now that Tanner was her very own Johnny Castle. Like “Baby” in the movie, she had gone on vacation and found the man who pulled her onto the dance floor and encouraged her to fly.

Like the heroine in the movie, Hannah had shed her shell and—

Oh, God.

She’d shed her shell and fallen in love.

Her fingers gripped the sheet over her breasts and tightened, pulling the fabric toward her throat, where her heart was banging like a fist on a door. Getting her attention. Letting her know this feeling wasn’t going away.

It had to go away.

A wave of heat swamped her, then a second wave, cold, icy cold, like the Pacific Ocean, but it wasn’t cold enough to numb. It wasn’t cold enough to freeze the certainty of what had happened to her.

So this was it. This was love. Part admiration, part fascination. A sense of safety compromised by a frightening sense of risk. Of loss…

She’d lost her heart.

Her one-night stand had morphed into her vacation fling had morphed into the biggest mistake in her life.

Getting engaged to Duncan, the boy with whom she’d grown up, had ended in colossal, public failure and humiliating pain, but falling for Tanner was so much worse.

Now that she was truly alive, it was going to hurt so much more to lose him.

And she
would
lose him.

He’d only signed on for the few days she was here, and even then he’d been reluctant. Not because he didn’t like her in his bed—she knew he didn’t fake that—but because he wasn’t looking for forever.

And she’d thought she was done with wanting men who didn’t want her. How fickle fate could be.

Still, she could put some distance between them. If she insisted, Tanner would relinquish his role of tour guide. Away from him she could catch her breath. Lick her wounds. She had practice at that.

Swallowing hard, she lifted the phone on the bedside table. Tanner didn’t stir. She’d call information, then call a cab.