Chapter 28
“Y
ou are flying high off that performance, huh?”
Hannah is virtually vibrating beside me on the back seat of the car. Her eyes are wide and bright, her back straight like she’s ready to spring into action, her smile broad, her face glowing.
“Yup. Is this what being on drugs is like?” She swivels to face me and rests a hand on my thigh. “Is this what being on cocaine is like?”
“Nothing like it.” I weave my fingers with hers. “You’re being nowhere near enough of an arsehole.”
Her excitement is infectious. That’s what it feels like when you finally get to do what you were born to do. It reminds me of how I felt when I signed my first band. But somehow that rush, the pure joy at attaining the dream, got shoved aside along the way—polluted with meetings, spreadsheets, and staff who throw Grammys at disagreeable singer-songwriters.
“Honest to God, Tom.” She slides her hand across my chest, pushing two fingers through a gap between the buttons on my shirt. Then she leans into me, heat radiating off her, and whispers, “How the hell am I going to keep my hands off you until we get back?”
Thank Christ I have a T-shirt on underneath. Her touch through the fabric has sent Mr. Stiffy on a swift trip north, so heaven help me if her fingertips had made it through to bare flesh.
She crosses her leg over mine and rests her piping-hot lips against my ear. “I just need you inside me, Tom. So fucking badly.”
“Okaaay,” I say, nice and loud, so Hermann can hear me taking charge of the situation.
As much as I’d love to tell him to pull over in a quiet spot and take a walk for a few minutes, this time I’m taking Hannah to bed.
Forcing myself to drag my leg out from under hers, I turn to face her so our bodies are no longer touching.
“Spoilsport.” She paws at my chest again and pushes out her luscious bottom lip in the sexiest sulky pout I ever did see.
Mustering every ounce of willpower, even ounces I didn’t know I possessed, I take a gentle but firm grip on her wrists and bring them to my mouth.
I lower my voice. “I can’t wait to get my hands on you either. But for Hermann’s sake, let’s try to behave for the half hour it’ll take to get back to my place.” I kiss the backs of her hands, then hold them down against the seat between us so she can’t do anything with them that might endanger my resolve or spark Hermann’s blushes.
“If I didn’t know better,” I say, “I’d think you’d downed half a bottle of vodka. But it’s way better than that. You’re drunk on finding yourself.”
“It was incredible up there.” Her eyes go distant and misty, like she’s transported back to the stage. “Dominique was amazing.”
“You were amazing.” Thank God she agreed to do it. Thank God she now has some idea of her worth, her talent, and what she could be. It is the most gratifying sight to behold. “I could not be more proud that?—”
Her lips are on mine. Jesus fucking Christ, how is a man supposed to control himself when the woman of his dreams is forcing herself on him in the back of a moving vehicle?
Woman of my dreams?
There’s no time to process it right now. Whatever she is, her delicious tongue needs to be out of my mouth, and her soft, eager lips need to be off mine before my zipper causes me a permanent injury or I have to put Hermann through extensive therapy.
“So…” I peel myself off her and try to get my breath back. Her eyes are still closed, face leaning toward me. When she realizes I’m not coming back, she opens her eyes and pouts again. “Not that I don’t love your lips on mine, but until we get home, let’s keep them busy with something else.”
“Oooo.” She makes an exaggerated seductive face and reaches for my belt.
How the hell did her hands get free?
I take a fresh, firm hold of them. “I mean with talking. Let’s keep your lips busy with talking. There are lots of things I want to know about you.”
“What? You want to chat? Now?” One hand breaks loose again and slides far enough up my inner thigh to graze one bollock before I can catch it. “Are you the most frustrating person alive?”
“Yes. To all of those things. Though you, Houdini Hands Hepburn, are giving me a damn good run for my money.”
“Seriously, I’m ready to tear off our pants and jump on you, and you want to spend time getting to know each other?”
I place one of her own fingers on her lips to shush her just as Hermann turns up the radio. It’s a phone-in on something to do with parking meters that seems to be getting heated.
“Are you sure you didn’t knock back a few shots when I went to the bathroom?”
“Stone-cold sober,” she says. “Just incredibly horny.” She wiggles her eyebrows. “Who knew performing would be such an aphrodisiac?”
“Me, for one. When I used to travel around with bands, the first thing they’d do when they got off stage was pick someone up for the night.”
“I’m very specifically horny for you, I mean. Only you. Not for just any guy who’d happen to be wandering around. Just you.”
“Very reassuring. But how about you help out my willpower and talk about something else? Just till we get back to the flat. You’ve had a whole life I know nothing about. Fill me in.”
“Why? Because you always find out the life history of every woman you’ve slept with before getting down to it?”
“No. But you’re not every woman. You’re Hannah.”
“Aw.” She descends into a sarcastic baby voice. “How adorable that you want to get to know me better right when my vagina’s about to explode.”
The radio volume suddenly gets even louder.
“I really do. You have no idea how much I do.” And I actually do. Whatever she’s been through since I moved away has made her into the person she is now—the beautiful, talented, resourceful, and incredibly frustrating person sitting next to me. There’s a story, I know there is. And, although I feel like I know her as well as I know myself, without that story the final piece of the puzzle is missing.
“Okay. This can be quick.” She sits up straight, like she means business. “You left. I was sad and alone for a year or so. Then I got together with Shithead. Had Dylan. My parents disowned me. Shithead ran off. Shithead’s parents didn’t want to know. Was alone and struggling for a long time. Got a job as a live-in housekeeper for a guy. After a couple years, we got together. Then I discovered he was a shithead too. Left. Went to stay with Jude. Bumped into Maggie. She gave me a job. Then you. Naked. Landing.”
“There we go,” she adds triumphantly. “All caught up.”
She reaches for my thigh again.
But I’m ready for her this time and manage to lace my fingers through hers before she gets anywhere close to her target. “Tell me about Dylan’s dad.”
“What does it matter?” Her shoulders slump. “He was nobody. Just the guy who filled the hole you’d left.”
“Someone from school? Do I know him?”
“God, no. I would have told you that.” She sighs and looks down at our joined hands. “Remember Joaquin Morales?”
“Good at physics.”
“Yes, him. He had a friend in a band that needed a singer. I got the job. Dylan’s dad was the drummer.”
Bastard. “Drummers have a high dick quotient.”
For a moment she says nothing, just squeezes my fingers between hers. “I’d wanted you to be my first.” Her voice is softer. “And you weren’t. And I’ve always hated that.”
Her words snap off a chunk of my heart. If only I had been. But I can’t turn back time. We’ve done what we’ve done. We are who we are now. “How long were you with him before you had Dylan?”
“We’d been together two years when I got pregnant. My parents immediately threw me out. So we got a tiny studio apartment together. He was doing a carpentry apprenticeship, and I was waitressing, so we had just about enough to survive.”
“Then he fucked off?”
“When Dylan was six weeks old.” Her eyes remain downcast. “It was awful at the time, but now I think it was for the best. I mean, I hate that Dylan doesn’t have a father-son relationship, but maybe it’s best to have none than to have a horrible one.”
“How did you get by, alone?”
She lets out a long sigh and rests back against the seat, resigned to the fact we’re having this heart-to-heart whether she likes the timing or not.
“Well, I couldn’t get a job because I had no money for childcare. And I had no money for childcare because I didn’t have a job. So I learned about grants and vouchers you can get for housing. And I made friends with another single mom in my building, and we traded babysitting so we could both work part-time. I went back to serving, and she worked at a grocery store.”
“How long did that go on for?”
“Almost two years.”
“Sounds hard.”
She nods. “The days were long. And exhausting.” She pauses and strokes her thumb across the back of my hand. “And depressing.”
“I bet.”
“Then one of the regulars at the restaurant told me she had a friend who was a single guy with a big house north of the city in New Hampshire. He went away a lot for work and needed a live-in housekeeper for the country home. I got the job. And couldn’t have been happier. It solved all our problems. A nice place to live. And a salary. And he was away so much that Dylan and I mostly had the place to ourselves.”
“What did he do?”
“Long-haul pilot. He also had an apartment in Boston for between flights and only came up to the house in Fullerton during downtime.”
I snort. “Idiot.”
“Why?”
“What a fool to have you, but not be around you every available second.”
“Says the man who ran off to London and abandoned me.”
Okay, maybe I deserved that. “Any chance we could set aside the swipes about that for now?”
She shrugs.
As much as I want to learn Hannah’s full story, hearing about her being with another guy turns my stomach. But it’s all part of what’s made her the woman she is today, and I need to know it all.
“Were you in love with him?”
“No.” The shake of her head is definite. “I probably did it more out of convenience than anything else. And because I knew it would be a good, stable home for Dylan.”
“And Dylan finally got his father figure?”
“Not really. They got along totally fine. But Nicholas wasn’t interested in being a parent. That was all down to me. And, like I say, he was away a lot. He and Dylan were more like acquaintances who lived in the same house.”
“Does Dylan miss him?”
“Kind of. I think maybe he just misses the company of a man, sporadic as it was. And he definitely didn’t want to leave the house. He had a huge room all to himself. I think he misses that more than anything.”
And now the sixty-four-million-dollar question. “And why did you leave in such a hurry?”
Hannah’s eyelids lift slowly, fraction by fraction, until those big blue eyes meet mine. “Because he was sleeping with two flight attendants, a bartender in Texas, and an Australian teacher who lives in Madrid.” She speaks slowly, deliberately. All the joy drained from her face. “We all thought we were the only ones.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Apart from the disgusting behavior, how the hell does anyone have that much time in their day? “How did you find out?”
“He left a phone behind. I guess when you have five, you’ll eventually slip up and forget one. Just after he’d headed off to work there was this ringing and ringing and ringing, and I found it under the bed. It was one of the flight attendants. She already had a suspicion about the other flight attendant, and then we cracked open the whole can of worms. I was out of there and at Jude’s before he got back from his trip.”
What a totally arse-faced jerk-wipe.
“I can’t believe what a fool I was not to notice for all those years.” Hannah rests her hand gently on my thigh, and I let her this time. “It’s embarrassing. Humiliating.”
The warmth from her touch spreads directly to my crotch, distracting from my fury, but not from a new and all-consuming desire to protect her, to make sure no one hurts her or breaks her, ever again.
“Don’t ever think any part of that was your fault. Don’t ever think you were the fool.”
I curl my body around her and pull her into my cocoon. I might not be able to fix what those shits have done to her, but I can do my level fucking best to make sure she understands I am not one of them. That she can trust me, depend on me. That I will not let her down.
She nestles her cheek against mine, perhaps a sign she realizes I am different.
Stroking the top of her sweet vanilla-scented head, I rest my mouth against her ear. “I hate that you’ve been treated so badly. I hate that it’s all been so hard.” Her body gives a satisfying shudder as my words and my lips brush her skin. “And I hate that you and Dylan don’t have a family.”
Her light touch traces the outline of my shoulders. “He said Maggie and Jim are like grandparents.” The words catch in her throat, the last one not making it all the way out.
As heartbreaking as those words are, I know for sure they’d bring deep joy to my aunt and uncle. “Did you tell them?” I ease back just far enough to see the side of her face. “They’d be delighted. God knows they can’t wait for all these boys of theirs to have kids now they’re all settled down.”
She bites her lip and shakes her head. “I didn’t want him to get close to anyone. But he’s already fond of them. And I’m going to take him away.”
“But you have the best reason for moving. He must be pleased he’s going to get some treatment that might help him hold onto his hearing.”
Hannah slowly lifts her gaze to meet mine. “I haven’t told him yet.”
Flashes of streetlights illuminate her full eyes as she lets out an ironic chuckle. “Have you forgotten being a thirteen-year-old boy? He can hear well enough now, and that’s all he cares about. He can’t see into the future any further than the end of his nose.” She boops mine. “He’ll be furious I’m taking him away from his friends. When they’re going to get together to play video games next is as much of the future as he cares about.”
Maybe that’s a lesson we can both learn from Dylan. To not worry about the future beyond the ends of our noses. To wallow in the moment. To not stress about having to say goodbye.
A single tear rolls down Hannah’s cheek. “This isn’t what was supposed to be happening right now.” I erase the tear with my thumb. “I’m not supposed to be trying not to cry all over your shoulder.” She strokes it again. “Your ridiculously sexy shoulder.”
I push her hair behind her ear. “What was supposed to be happening?”
The corners of her mouth twitch upward. “I was supposed to drag you into your bedroom,” she speaks softly enough there’s no chance Hermann will hear her over the caller complaining about the lack of a reduced parking rate for motorbikes. “I was supposed to remove all your clothes. And spend as much of the night as possible with you inside me.”
“We can still do that. I can’t think of a better way to spend the night. Or any night.”
“I didn’t expect it to be preceded by this whole warm and fuzzy tell-me-your-tear-jerking-life-story thing.” She watches her finger trace my jawline and then the outline of my lips. My skin tingles under her touch.
“Can we stop talking now?” Her voice is breathy.
“For the moment.” And I capture her mouth with mine.
The voices on the radio fall silent.
“We’re here, folks,” Hermann says.