her romantic life was set - though lacking a precise "I do" date. In all that time, loyal little Do Bee that she was, she had never looked at another man, let alone gotten close enough to lick one's neck.
And now she wanted to. God, she so wanted to run her tongue along Tanner's skin. She wanted to trail the tips of her breasts along his hard chest and feel the hot, thick evidence that he desired her against her thigh. She wanted to take him in her hand and have him take her in his hand, filling that aching place inside her.
Her scalp prickled and she looked up to catch him gazing down at her with the same kind of burn that was flickering low in her belly. It was like being hungry, this want that she felt, except the emptiness wasn't only inside. It was outside of her body too, in inches, yards, miles of sensitized skin that demanded a man's hand. A man's mouth.
Tanner's touch.
His arm abruptly fell away. He stepped back and a flick of his lashes doused the fire she thought she'd seen in his eyes. "You go on, then." Now there was even more distance between them, and she had to doubt whether there'd ever been any heat on his side at all. "Have a good morning."
Before she could gather enough of her pride to make clear to the man how extremely glad she was he'd finally taken the hint and was leaving her on her own, he was gone. There was nothing to do but suck in a few calming breaths and set off in the opposite direction.
Walking past blocks of shops and cafes while sipping at her coffee, she tried putting Tanner and her unprecedented, inconvenient reaction to him out of her mind. Not that she blamed herself exactly. For sure he was overbearing and overconfident. But he was also sexy and gorgeous (admit it, movie star beautiful), and she wasn't dead.
Suddenly, a little shiver tracked down her back. Hannah glanced around, wondering what had spooked her. There were people on the sidewalk around her, people with coffees or cell phones who didn't seem to be paying attention to a twenty-seven-year-old woman carrying her own cardboard cup.
But she felt someone's eyes on her.
Another chill skulked down her spine.
Glancing around again, her attention was caught by a man's figure across the street. Her heart crashed against the inside wall of her chest and her feet stuttered to a halt. With a dry mouth she watched him duck into a small juice bar, but not before she'd registered his dark hair in its military cut, the crisp lines of his khaki uniform, the heavy diving watch on his right wrist that she'd wrapped and sent to his FPO address two Christmases before.
Without thinking, she darted across the four-lane street. Horns honked, but she didn't blink or hesitate at the noise. Could it...Oh, God, could it be?
Even as she reached the opposite curb, the juice bar's door opened again. The man reemerged and she stared -
- only to recognize it wasn't Duncan.
This was some other naval officer, striding past her without a second look. Some other naval officer who was likely the object of some other woman's dreams. Maybe also a man who had made promises he didn't have the guts to rescind.
But he wasn't Duncan.
Her heart restarted, and after a minute she was calm enough to continue on her way. How silly she was. She knew it couldn't have been Duncan
At the thought, tears stung her eyes. Damn. Hadn't she cried enough for him? And hadn't she figured out after six weeks and approximately six hundred boxes of Kleenex that what she was mourning wasn't just the loss of someone she'd seen as the focus of her future, but also the loss of the little fantasy she'd been living? The one in which she went along with everything everyone else thought was right for her and that then her life would turn out just perfect.
Caroline had taken that away from her too.
Hannah turned a corner and saw the park up ahead. Her feet slowed of their own accord. They even backtracked half a block to find a trash receptacle where she could dump her now empty cardboard cup.
Squinting, she staked it out from that safe distance. Against the backdrop of the dark gray clouds overhead, the grounds looked vibrant. Green grass broken up by tall trees, a white, Disneyesque bandstand, parking, picnic tables, a