Not Another New Years - By Christie Ridgway Page 0,1

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