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 Desiree 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 Desiree'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 away. "Don't you worry. I'll - "
"Hey, don't anybody worry!" Dez suddenly declared. "I know exactly what we'll do."
Tanner and Hannah looked at her. She was beaming.
"I've got that big suite at the Hotel Del Coronado. Not to mention two closets full of clothes there. Hannah and I look near the same size. She can stay with me as long as she wants and borrow my wardrobe to boot."
"Oh, I couldn't," Hannah said, shaking her head.
"Yes, you could. Because then I'd be doing Tanner a favor, and he'll be the first to tell you I owe him. I owe him big."
"There's that," he agreed. And it would be a hell of a lot easier to accept Desiree's temporary help than marry the poor little brat.
Plus, it would get him out of clothes shopping.
"Hannah?" He cocked an eyebrow her way.
"It'll be fun!" Dez declared. "Like an adventure."
It was that last word that seemed to sway Hannah. Though still sounding uncertain, she agreed. So he boogied off to the bathroom in the hallway, leaving her to get dressed in the master bath. When he came out, she was decent again, all buttoned up in her black jeans and her starched - though wrinkled - shirt.
"Desiree's waiting for me in the car," she said, not looking him straight in the eye.
He narrowed his gaze. "Are you going to be okay? Dez said she'd bring you over to Hart's once you're settled in and freshened up. She's rich, but she's not dangerous."
Hannah gave him a small smile, still hesitating.
Moving forward, he put a finger under her chin and lifted her face to his.
Big mistake.
With their bodies aligned, it reminded him of being in bed with her again. He'd found her passed out beneath his sheets after his quick condom run. Staring down at her flushed cheeks and sleep-softened mouth, he couldn't decide if he should wake her and take her home, or wake her and work to get her motor revving again.
Option one was sensible, option two infinitely more desirable. Deciding his half-inebriated state rendered him too conflicted to make a decision, he'd fallen onto the mattress beside her to sleep off the dilemma.
Instead, he'd stayed awake for hours, watching her.
He'd stared at the perfect arch of her dark brows, at the feathery fullness of her eyelashes, at the creamy round of one shoulder peeking over the edge of the sheet. And then he'd stared at her mouth.
Like he stared at it now, fascinated by the deep curve of her upper lip and the plump cushion of the bottom one. She made a little sound in the back of her throat, and he shifted his gaze to her eyes.
She cast her damn spell again. Just like that, he was once more consumed by lust.
But it wasn't her, he told himself quickly. His damn vow was more likely to blame. Eleven months without a woman. Eleven