Not Another New Year's Read online

  Not Another New Year's

  By

  Christie Ridgway

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

  Published by Christie Ridgway

  © Christie Ridgway 2011

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  FROM THE DESK OF HANNAH DAVIS

  Things I Hate About New Year's:

  Finding last year's list of resolutions and realizing that it might as well serve as this year's list too.

  Chapter One

  Hannah Davis stood on the wide sidewalk outside San Diego Airport's Baggage Claim and tried convincing herself she hadn't just lost everything. After all, she had her health (which was actually saying quite a lot for a second grade teacher during flu season) and she had relative youth, though she was on the downhill slide to thirty.

  But she no longer had her luggage and she didn't have her purse. Meaning she had no clothes, no shoes, no undies, no toiletries, no ID, no credit card, not even a ChapStick. She glanced down at her scraped and nicked palms and tested the flex of her bruised knees. Maybe running after the person she'd seen hurrying out the sliding doors pushing her purloined baggage cart—purse perched on top—hadn't been such a smart idea. But she'd only turned away for a moment to offer aid to a "mama"-wailing toddler, and when she'd turned back it was to see the backside of a stranger shoving her stuff outside.

  In her immediate pursuit, she'd tripped in her new black pumps, losing precious minutes. By the time she'd gotten upright again, the stranger and all her things had disappeared.

  Airport security had been as helpful as any busy law enforcement entity would be as night fell on New Year's Eve. They'd taken her statement and said they'd be in touch. Given that her cell phone had been stolen along with everything else, and since she didn't know where to say she'd be staying because she had no way to pay for accommodations, she'd told them one of the two addresses on nearby Coronado Island that she'd committed to memory.

  "Ma'am?"

  Hannah's head jerked around to meet the brown-eyed gaze of a young Marine dressed in sand-colored desert camouflage. His companion was garbed the same and had a set of freckles stretched across his baby face.

  "Ma'am, we saw you fall a while back. Are you all right?"

  Hannah's heart squeezed. She'd seen dozens of members of the military in her travels through airports that day. Young men and women sacrificing for their country. A trio had been in line at the Starbucks in Sacramento. The man in front of her had paid for their macchiatos.

  When a dozen had debarked the plane at the gate next to hers, spontaneous applause broke out all over the concourse. In the airport bookstore a motherly looking woman had given a young soldier a spontaneous hug.

  Obviously, to most people the sight of them spurred patriotism and pride.

  Her heart squeezing hard once again, Hannah looked at the pair beside her and could only wonder if either one of them was a bigamist.

  "I'm fine," she said, clearing the bitterness from her throat. "Thanks."

  For the fifth time she considered running back inside to the bank of pay phones by the escalator.

  One collect call and her overprotective parents would breathe a sigh of relief that they could make the arrangements to straightaway return her to the family fold and their small, Northern California farm town.

  She could be home before this year ended.

  Only to ring in the next without any relief from all the unanswered questions, the sticky pity, the hot-cheeked shame she'd been living with during the last one.

  Returning home would also mean returning without the vacation—the adventure!—she'd claimed she wanted to everyone who would listen. And without achieving the real desire that was in her heart.

  That thought was enough to turn her toward the nearby taxi stand. She couldn't go back without seeing these ten days through and learning just how her right choices had turned out to be so very, very wrong.

  Without finding out what was wrong with her.

  So she'd stick it out without resorting to any kind of bailout from Mom and Dad.

  On the slick vinyl seat of a cab that smelled like pine air freshener and Armor All, Hannah sat back, straightening the legs of her new black jeans, a necessary purchase after the I've-been-dumped her to drop fifteen pounds in the last eight months. Then she surreptitiously fished beneath her pressed overshirt and satiny camisole to locate the three twenties she'd slipped into the left cup of the built-in shelf bra (which was roomy anyway, thanks to the weight loss, a sure sign that God was a man).

  Finding the folded bills, Hannah blessed the travel savvy of Paula, the woman who taught third grade in the room beside hers at Harold Mott Elementary School. During the weekly meeting of their Potluck Club, she'd shared some of her expertise.

  Spare cash in the bra. Check.

  Memorize the address of your destination. Check.

  Never leave your purse anywhere but slung across your chest. Ooops.

  "Big date to night?"

  Hannah met the gaze of the cabbie in the rearview mirror. She pushed her straight dark hair off her face and behind her ears to get a better look at him in the dashboard's glow. With his bald pate and wattly neck, he bore a strong resemblance to her boss, Harold Mott Elementary School's principal. It had initially reassured her, always a bit nervous in a car, and now the similarity compelled a certain obedience.

  Hannah had always tried to do what was expected of her.

  "No big date," she said, her gaze shifting toward the side window. "Not long ago I was...uh..."

  How should she put this? Jilted? Ditched? Humiliated by the man whose engagement ring I wore?

  Picturing Duncan in her mind, a little fire kindled to life in her belly, but she instantly stamped it out.

  She shouldn't nurture bad thoughts about him.

  Clearing her throat, she looked toward the driver and started again. "You see," she said in an apologetic tone, "it's just that—"

  Wait. Apologetic tone? Why was she apologizing?

  The answer was almost as embarrassing as what had happened to her several months back. The truth was, she was sounding sorry because Hannah Davis didn't like to disappoint. Since six, Hannah Davis had always wanted to please.

  Need someone to review the policies and procedures manual?

  Need someone to permanently take over the cold and damp early-morning yard duty?

  Need someone to soothe little Timmy's manic mother who couldn't accept that at seven he wasn't yet prepared for matriculation at Stanford University?

  Hannah Davis had always been your (wo)man.

  "I ask," the cabbie said, as he took the exit leading to the Coronado Bridge, "because if you don't have a New Year's date, the address you gave me—of Hart's bar—well, it might not be the best place for a woman like yourself to find one."

  A woman like myself? Hannah's forehead pleated, then the question flew from her mind as they ascended the upward sweep of the bridge. Her breath caught at the view. The overhead lights rimming the curving span looked like suspended lanterns, leading directly to a diamond-strewn patch of carpet floating on dark Pacific waters. Beneath the bridge was a bay dotted with illuminated boats that appeared more like pretty toys than real modes of transportation.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the bristling skyscrapers of downtown San Diego, and while that view was spectacular too, what was ahead mattered so much more.

  For a country girl like herself, straight from inland farmlands, Coronado appeared beautiful and tempting and exotic. Like the adventure she'd claimed to everyone at home she wanted.

  Her heartbeat sped up and she let herself imagine that was all she was after on this trip. The island truly looked like an opportunity to see and do new things.

>   A chance to be someone other than dependable Hannah Davis who had been so easy to dupe. Who was such, as her students would say, a dope.

  The cab driver turned out to be even more like Hannah's paternal principal than she'd first thought, she realized, listening to his grumbles as they reached their destination. She took a swift glance at the anonymous-looking, innocuous-appearing, stucco store front that was the entrance to Hart's. To be honest—and to some comfort—it appeared a lot less foreign and exotic than her first glimpse of Coronado itself.

  The establishment took up one end of a small, utilitarian strip mall. There was a darkened nail place next door and a filled parking lot out front.

  "Should I really be worrying?" she asked, looking over at the older man.

  "I don't like to see any young lady traipsing into a bar alone," he said.

  "But I know people in there," she assured him. Not really. Her uncle knew people in there. A man who used to work for him, a man named Tanner Hart, had returned to his hometown of Coronado and was employed at the bar. Uncle Geoff had given this Tanner the heads-up and she'd been told to meet him there the next morning. To keep the family off her back about her solo vacation, she'd agreed to a little face time with a Coronado native.

  Now she hoped she'd find Tanner Hart here tonight. Maybe he could help her solve her no luggage, no ID, not-much-money dilemma.

  "Still," her self-appointed protector muttered from the front seat of the cab as he put together her change. "You look so...so...I don't know. Wholesome."

  Hannah wanted to cry. Wholesome were cows in the pasture. Wheat fields. Women who patiently waited for their playing around fiancé.

  Her fingers went to the first button of her staid, starched shirt and flicked it open to reveal the notch at her throat. "I don't know how you could tell such a thing about me during a short car ride," she declared.

  "I don't know either," the cabbie replied, handing some bills over the seat. "But you sure do seem like a schoolteacher."

  Hannah crumpled the money in her hand. Having grown up, gone to college, and got employed within a forty-mile radius, she'd always assumed people knew she was a teacher because...because they knew she was a teacher. They knew her. But now she lifted her left wrist and gave a tentative sniff. Was there Crayola in her pores? Did she smell like construction paper and glue sticks?

  Yes, she had precise D'Nealian handwriting, but that didn't show on her face, did it?

  Giving up on the depressing analysis, she climbed out of the car. Then she stood on the empty walkway outside the bar and waved as the cab drove away. She took a moment to breathe in the damp, salty air, so different from the earthy alfalfa and manure scents of home.

  After another minute she turned toward Hart's no-nonsense storefront. And stalled some more.

  She had the oddest feeling that once she opened the metal door in front of her she would never be the same again.

  Silly. That was part of the plan, wasn't it?

  Still, she hesitated, until the darkness of the parking lot seemed to creep toward her. Her scalp prickled and she moved forward as if some unseen hand approached from behind—

  The bar's door popped open. Light shot out.

  Music swamped the sidewalk.

  That reaching hand she'd sensed at her back was real. It caught her shirt between her shoulder blades.

  Pulse jolting, Hannah gasped. Wrenched away. Fell to her hands and knees for the second time that night.

  Looked up and between legs—male, female, and those belonging to the bar's chairs and tables—glimpsed the most beautiful man she'd ever seen in her life.

  Chapter Two

  The most beautiful man Hannah had ever seen in her life didn't notice her. But another pair of men did—they'd nearly tripped over her on their way out of the bar—and after lifting her to her feet with a hand under each elbow, they'd changed their minds about leaving.

  What sweet guys, she thought half an hour later, her mind a little muzzy as one of them placed yet another mojito in front of her on the small table they'd commandeered in the crowded space. She eyed the glass with some suspicion, though. Was it moving or was there something wrong with her, um, equilibrium?

  After a blink or two she decided that the dancing going on in the far corner of the bar was causing some Jurassic Park/T-Rex ripples, and thus it was safe to take another swallow of her second—third? —drink. It went down sweet and smooth and she wondered what was in it.

  The word "mojito" sounded as exotic as "Coronado," and the beverage tasted as forbidden as her vacation would have been if she'd told anyone her true reason for the trip. Another swallow warmed her from the throat down, and she smiled at her escorts. Usually she didn't take up with strange men, but in her surprised and bruised-for-the-second-time state, she'd gone along with the harmless-looking fellows. They were twins, and reminded her of her varsity football coach of an older brother, "Little" Ricky Davis, the biggest but kindest man in two counties. So she hadn't protested when they'd helped her to a seat and bought her the first drink and then the second (third?).

  "Thanks again for helping me," she told them. "New high heels."

  The shoes were certainly at fault for her first fall at the airport, but what about the one outside the bar? For a moment the mojito haze cleared and she remembered the premonitory chill rippling down her spine and that hand at her back. Now she wasn't sure it had been real. Her eyebrows crimped together.

  "Did you see someone out there with me?"

  "What?" Twin A could be forgiven for not understanding a word she said. Not only was the bar dimly lit, but it was louder than the school lunchroom on a rainy day, and there was a DJ working the sound system in the corner. His tip jar overflowed, benefited by the apparent dueling camps in the establishment—those that wanted Garth and Toby, with a little Gretchen mixed in, and others whose tastes ran more to Ludacris, Nelly, and the odd Green Day here or there.

  It was like Saturday mornings in the gym she had a birthday membership to, thanks to her second older brother, Tom. This particular combination of music presumably acted like a nonbanned supplement to natural testosterone.

  Which made her think of her beautiful man again. Sipping at her drink, Hannah let her gaze roam the room.

  Found him.

  Alone at a tiny table, he sat with his chair tipped back and his head propped against the wall behind him. His too-long blond hair and stubbled chin gave a hard edge to his golden good looks. Part surfer, part gunslinger, his eyes were at half-mast and there was a wry set to his mouth, as if he was amused. Maybe even by himself and the unfriendly chip she could practically see balanced on the ledge of his wide shoulder.

  No one approached him, and he looked as if that was the way he liked it.

  A gorgeous, spoiled boy, she decided. One who'd grown up into a beautiful but brooding man.

  Okay, call her a woman with an overactive imagination, but as someone who had been taming wild beasts every day for the past six years, she could size up the opposition pretty darn quick. If a twenty-years-younger version of this man walked into her classroom, she would assign him the desk closest to hers. Because no doubt about it, despite the very pretty package, he was trouble.

  Someone bumped the back of her chair, jostling her glass so that she spilled mojito over her wrist.

  Hannah's attention was forced away from the sexy, simmering guy as Twin B made a growling sound and handed her a cocktail napkin.

  "I'll get you another drink," Twin A said, looking around for the waitress who had served them before.

  "Oh, maybe I shouldn't," Hannah protested. She remembered she was supposed to be making contact with Tanner Hart, and her gaze moved to the bar. But there were so many people bellied up there, she couldn't make out those working behind it. "You've already been so nice, though I can't imagine why."

  "At first we thought you were Desirée," Twin B explained, his expression serious.

  "Desirée?" Maybe it was the mojito, but Hannah wanted to
preen a little at the idea of being mistaken for someone with a name as glamorous as "Desirée."

  "Yeah," Twin A agreed. "Dark hair, nice bod."

  "Oh." Hannah mentally preened a little more. She loved these guys. "But then we saw that you weren't," he continued.

  Twin B nodded. "No, up close you don't look so much like Desirée, you look like—"

  "A schoolteacher," his twin and he said together.

  "Mrs. Robertson—"

  "We had her for fourth grade."

  In an instant deflated, Hannah slumped in her chair. Was this what had gone wrong with her life?

  Had the blue liquid starch they used for tissue paper art projects replaced the blood in her veins? Did no one want her because she looked ready to blow a recess whistle at any moment?

  Depression darkening her mood, she drained the dregs in her glass and banged it onto the table.

  "Boys, it's New Year's Eve and I need another one."

  She needed something all right. She needed to prove something. But what, exactly? That she still knew how to have fun.

  As the third (fourth?) mojito chased away the blues, it occurred to her that she hadn't been to an honest-to-goodness New Year's party in four years. With her fiancé away for training or away fighting terrorism, she'd always spent December thirty-first putting together yet another care package and writing yet another long letter.

  She truly did deserve a good time, right? By the fifth (sixth?) drink—oh, why count?—she was grinning from ear to ear and having herself one.

  She danced with Twin A. She danced with Twin B.

  She danced with both Twin A and Twin B (there were more guys than dolls at this New Year's celebration, wahoo!) and almost forgot about being dumped. As a matter of fact, Hannah was feeling pretty darn pleased, not only with the way the night was going, but also with the cardboard tiara someone had slid over her hair. It was made like a headband, and there was lots of glitter and some red boa feathers gracing the top. When she made a restroom stop, in the mirror over the sink she noted that her cheeks and lips were flushed a matching color.