Not Another New Year’s by Christie Ridgway Read Free Book Online

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 theirtwo 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