Not Another New Year’s (15 page)

W
ith Hannah in tow, Tanner sprinted toward the parking lot at the other end of the block.

“What is it?” Her breathless voice made him slow his pace. “
Who
is it?”

“Later.” He zigged around a couple stretched out on a blanket, then zagged around two dogs tangled in their own leashes. Glancing behind him, he saw the fat clown with the camera getting hung up on the pooches.
Yeah, good, go down on your intrusive, ugly face.

With his Mercedes in sight, he poured on a little more speed. Hannah tripped, and he tightened his grip and tightened his arm, keeping her upright. They had to get in the car and get out of here. More tabloid attention would only further screw his chances with the Secret Ser vice. He could read the
goddamn screaming headlines now:
Agent Dumps Dez For Different Darling!

How he’d hate to see Hannah’s lovely face front-paged on a tabloid.

Continuing to move, he fished in his front pocket for his keys. They didn’t cooperate, so he slowed as he neared his back bumper. His fingertips found metal. Yanking his ring free, he stepped toward the passenger side. “Come on, sweetheart.”

A car shrieked to a stop behind his. Focused on fitting key to lock, Tanner only then realized Hannah wasn’t right beside him. He yanked open the door, cursing as he saw her leaning against the back bumper, one shoe in her hand, her startled gaze fixed on the dark sedan and the second paparazzo sliding his torso out the window to get a photo.

“Head down,” he ordered her, then leaped forward and pushed against her neck so the guy wouldn’t get a clear shot of her face. With her hair hanging down toward her knees, she let him pull her to the passenger seat and shove her inside.

Then he slammed her in and rolled across the hood of the Mercedes to get to the driver’s door. Hannah unlocked it for him and he dove in, relocking it behind him.

“Get down, get down,” he told her. “Pull your hair over your face.”

The car hummed to life and he jerked it into Reverse. Hannah gasped.

“Head down,” he ordered again. “They’ll move, don’t worry.”

He gunned the engine, letting the assholes know he meant business. Then he let off the brake and shot
back, just as the dark sedan jolted forward with mere inches to spare.

Tanner spun the wheel left and then threw the car into Drive. It jumped at his command, avoiding the last-minute cutoff maneuver of an open Jeep in which Paparazzo Clown Number One was riding shotgun.

Christ. They always hunted in packs, like jackals.

He turned onto Orange and then made another quick right, then left, intent on losing any who dared follow. Two turns later he glanced at his companion.

Curled over her knees, she had her hands on top of her head in a classic duck-and-cover position. He remembered her fear of car accidents.

His adrenaline high crashed.

“Sweetheart. Hannah.” He spoke in a calm, sure tone, though inside he suddenly felt as shaky as his fingers as they reached over to touch her hair. “It’s okay now. You can sit up and buckle your seat belt.”

He checked in the rearview mirror and took yet another turn. In seconds they were traveling eastward across the Coronado Bridge. Some days the island was just too small. “We’ve lost them.”

She slowly sat up and reached for the seat belt harness. “Lost
who
?”

“Tabloid photographers. Freelance guys. They show up every few months, trying to catch Dezi and me together.”

“Then maybe you should have let them take our photo. It could’ve squelched the rumors about you two.”

“
No.
Not only would you like being the center of attention a lot less than you’re thinking, but…
but…just no.” She was his private woman. His. Alarmed at the thought, he shook it out of his head.

Her little sigh had him glancing over again. “Damn,” he muttered, hating the paleness of her features. On the other side of the bay he whipped into the first fast food drive-through he spotted and ordered a supersized, sugar-laden Coke.

He shoved it at her and then pulled into a parking space so she could drink and not stress about his driving. “Swallow that down, sweetheart. It will make you feel better.”

But what was going to make
him
feel better?

He’d spent twenty-four hours Hannah-free the day before and thought during that time he’d solved everything. Away from her, he’d put his lust in perspective and reminded himself that further intimacy could only cause trouble for him and his Secret Service aspirations. So he’d made the decision for them both—there would be no more “explosions.”

With his mind on the future, he was certain he’d be able to keep his hands off of her. He remembered their kiss in the park.

And now…

Leaning over, he cupped his palms around her face and turned her mouth for his kiss. Her cool lips tasted sugary. Carbonation detonated throughout his bloodstream. He sizzled for her.

An image went Technicolor in his mind. Her dark hair, her red lingerie, the silvery rain all around them like a star-spun cocoon. Hannah’s sexy mouth and sexy nipples and the sexy shudder as her body came apart under his touch. He should have done
what he’d wanted then, pressed the back of her legs toward those pretty breasts and—no!

He jerked away, leaving her to blink at him in surprise. “Tanner?”

Gritting his teeth, he ignored the question in her voice and placed his hands back on the wheel. They had to get out of here. Away from the confines of the car and its Merry Widow memories, but not back to Coronado where the bottom feeder photographers would be trolling for dirt.

With the flip of his wrist, he started the car and headed up the coast. “I know of a place where photographers are off limits,” he said. Where they could both take big gulps of fresh air.

“Tanner—”

“I promised to take you sightseeing, right? You wouldn’t want to miss this, I promise.”

A few miles north a paved side road dead-ended at a locked, wide-grated metal gate surrounded by twenty or so cars—only some with surf racks. Hannah climbed out of the Mercedes with her soft drink and her purse, and Tanner snagged a blanket from the trunk and the package that had been delivered to her in care of the bar that morning.

She eyed the overnight package, then was distracted by the view as she turned toward the west. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, Tanner.”

Unlike flat Coronado with its wide white beaches and calm waves, this coastline was rough, scrub and sandstone bluffs that dropped in a steep fall to grayer sand and heavier swells. Out on the break, a half-dozen surf vets bobbed on the water, sitting up
with their boards between their legs as they waited for the next set.

From Hannah’s expression, she liked the view.

She turned to him with such a pretty smile that he would have paid the damn paparazzi himself for a single close-up shot. “I love the beach.”

Hitching the blanket under his arm, he headed for the narrow dirt path on the other side of the fence that wound down the steep hillside. She followed, and he let her alone until he heard her gasp, then heard the slide of her soles on the gritty surface.

Without a word, he reached back. Without a word, she put her hand in his.

When they reached the bottom, she gasped again. He glanced down at her, trying to hold back his smile. “You couldn’t go back home without seeing everything Southern California has to offer.”

Her gaze was fixed on his face, yet her pink cheeks gave away the fact that she’d noticed what else was on the beach besides the surfers’ flipflops and their piles of outer wear. He lowered his voice. “This is a notorious nude beach.”

Not everyone was naked, but it was seventy-something degrees if you were flat on the sand, and that’s all it took to bring out the sun worshippers.

Hannah sucked on the straw of her Coke and let her gaze dart here and there, then back to his face. “Uh, Tanner.”

“Yeah?”

Her voice was a whisper. “These aren’t, um, attractive nude people.”

He bent over to spread out the blanket and to hide
his laughter. “I know.” It’s why he’d thought of the place. There was nothing arousing about the nakedness of the dozen or so people around them baring their all. Coming out here with a raging libido could work on cooling a person down like a field trip to visit lifer cons could scare juvenile delinquents straight.

Dropping to the blanket, he looked up at Hannah, then patted the space beside him. “Think of it as an adventure.” At her doubtful expression, he held up the package. “And a chance to get some of your life back.”

That got her down to his level. She arranged herself on the blanket cross-legged, using the full folds of her skirt to cover her gorgeous long legs. Her head ducked as she reached for the package he held. “Tanner, that man over there is checking me out.”

The man over there was about seven and a half decades old, the average age of the nudists who hung it all out at Bentley’s Beach. The oldster’s whole body looked like a frankfurter left too long on the grill. “Let me know if he expresses an interest,” Tanner said, giving her a grin. “You know what to look for, right?”

One slim finger picked at the envelope’s seal. “Hardy har har.”

“Your ripostes overwhelm me with their intellectual substance and mature style. You must practice that.”

“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” She dumped the contents of the overnight package on the blanket between them. “Yet it’s just another perk of spending the day with seven- and eight-year-olds that I can chalk up in my favor.”

“Points for mentioning chalk too. You being a schoolteacher and all.”

Her mouth twitched, and she glanced up at him through her lashes in that innocent-sexy way that slayed him.

Except it glanced right off his chest this time, because he’d decided it behooved them both to chill their relationship.
They had their memories, baby.
Except the ones he’d lied about.

From the piles of papers, Hannah pulled out two envelopes. “Credit card and ATM card. Thank you, Mom,” she said, first opening one, then the other.

“And even a wallet to put them in.” Tanner brushed more paper aside to completely uncover a slim leather square.

She picked it up. One snap unfolded the sides and Hannah looked down at the open wallet, shaking her head. “My mother,” she explained, fingering the bills in the money slot and then poking a finger through the handful of change stashed in the coin area.

She grimaced as she flipped a piece of leather over to reveal the plastic photo sleeves. “And my family,” she said, tapping the picture that was inside.

He craned his neck, and she obligingly turned it upside down to give him a better view. “She really takes care of you, doesn’t she?” he said.

The shot was a candid one, a good-looking matriarch and patriarch and their three grown offspring—Hannah posing as the filling in the middle of the Davis family sandwich.

“They all take care of me,” she said. “Too much.”

She rummaged through the other items on the
blanket. “Letter from Mom. Note from Dad. Oh, this is fun. A newspaper clipping about one of my friends from high school who got a promotion at the bank.”

A breeze fluttered the papers and one kicked up, eager to fly. Tanner clapped it against his chest, then turned it over. “Here’s your birth certificate.”

“They must have thought I’d need it for identification.” Hannah held out her hand.

He frowned down at the listed name. “
Deborah
Davis?”

The woman across from him froze a moment, then snatched the paper from him and inspected it herself.

“Who are you?” Tanner asked.

A red flush flagged her cheeks. “This is a mistake. My mother sent me my sister’s birth certificate instead of mine.”

“Ah.” Except he remembered that “Deborah” was the name she’d called herself that first night at the bar.

She must have been remembering that too. “It just popped out,” she said. “On New Year’s Eve. Kinda Freudian, huh?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“I can.” Hannah shoved the certificate into the padded envelope and then started gathering up the rest of the items too. “In a lot of ways I’ve lived Deborah’s life. She wanted to be a teacher. She loved our little town and wanted to stay there forever. She would have loved Duncan too, and would have thought he was the perfect person to marry.”

Tanner blew out a breath. “Are you saying you didn’t want those for yourself?”

“Sometimes I’m not sure,” Hannah admitted. “I’ve been so busy doing what everyone else was deciding for me that I’m not entirely sure when a choice has been mine and mine alone. Pretty lame, huh?”

Guilt gave Tanner a little stab. Hadn’t he been doing the very same when it came to her? Making decisions for her? And he of all people should understand how lousy that could be. His life hadn’t been his own for the last eleven-plus months, and he’d resented every breath of it.

She stowed all the items back into their packaging, then held the envelope in her lap, her attention directed out to sea, where she stared past the bobbing surfers toward the horizon. “I love it,” she said, gesturing toward the water. “It looks endless. It tells me there are endless possibilities in the world.”

He stared at the dips and curves of her profile, struck by her pretty face and the open yearning in her voice. Hannah had missed out on so much.

The ocean breeze kicked up, catching her hair, and the long ends flew his way and tickled his cheek. Without thinking, he wrapped them in his fist and then used them to gently tug her closer.

A smile curved her lips as she obligingly scooted until they were hip-to-hip. His arm circled her shoulders. Hannah fit there so well.

He inhaled, taking in the smell of her sun-heated shampoo and saltwater and the coconut oil that was basting one of the nearby nudists. “Maybe you’ve been thinking too long-term,” he told her.

Christ,
he
was, because he could imagine a hundred thousand moments like this one, with Hannah in the curve of his arm and her mouth just a kiss away.

She turned her head toward him, and that mouth—those soft, red lips—was even closer. “What do you mean?” She was so close that her warm breath reached his face before the breeze could snatch it away.