Not Another New Years - By Christie Ridgway Page 0,2

put together her change. "You look so...so...I don't know. Wholesome."

Hannah wanted to cry. Wholesome were cows in the pasture. Wheat fields. Women who patiently waited for their playing around fiance.

Her fingers went to the first button of her staid, starched shirt and flicked it open to reveal the notch at her throat. "I don't know how you could tell such a thing about me during a short car ride," she declared.

"I don't know either," the cabbie replied, handing some bills over the seat. "But you sure do seem like a schoolteacher."

Hannah crumpled the money in her hand. Having grown up, gone to college, and got employed within a forty-mile radius, she'd always assumed people knew she was a teacher because...because they knew she was a teacher. They knew her. But now she lifted her left wrist and gave a tentative sniff. Was there Crayola in her pores? Did she smell like construction paper and glue sticks?

Yes, she had precise D'Nealian handwriting, but that didn't show on her face, did it?

Giving up on the depressing analysis, she climbed out of the car. Then she stood on the empty walkway outside the bar and waved as the cab drove away. She took a moment to breathe in the damp, salty air, so different from the earthy alfalfa and manure scents of home.

After another minute she turned toward Hart's no-nonsense storefront. And stalled some more. She had the oddest feeling that once she opened the metal door in front of her she would never be the same again.

Silly. That was part of the plan, wasn't it?

Still, she hesitated, until the darkness of the parking lot seemed to creep toward her. Her scalp prickled and she moved forward as if some unseen hand approached from behind -

The bar's door popped open.

Light shot out.

Music swamped the sidewalk.

That reaching hand she'd sensed at her back was real. It caught her shirt between her shoulder blades.

Pulse jolting, Hannah gasped. Wrenched away. Fell to her hands and knees for the second time that night.

Looked up and between legs - male, female, and those belonging to the bar's chairs and tables - glimpsed the most beautiful man she'd ever seen in her life.
Chapter 2
The most beautiful man Hannah had ever seen in her life didn't notice her. But another pair of men did - they'd nearly tripped over her on their way out of the bar - and after lifting her to her feet with a hand under each elbow, they'd changed their minds about leaving.

What sweet guys, she thought half an hour later, her mind a little muzzy as one of them placed yet another mojito in front of her on the small table they'd commandeered in the crowded space. She eyed the glass with some suspicion, though. Was it moving or was there something wrong with her, um, equilibrium?

After a blink or two she decided that the dancing going on in the far corner of the bar was causing some Jurassic Park/T-Rex ripples, and thus it was safe to take another swallow of her second - third? - drink. It went down sweet and smooth and she wondered what was in it.

The word "mojito" sounded as exotic as "Coronado," and the beverage tasted as forbidden as her vacation would have been if she'd told anyone her true reason for the trip. Another swallow warmed her from the throat down, and she smiled at her escorts. Usually she didn't take up with strange men, but in her surprised and bruised-for-the-second-time state, she'd gone along with the harmless-looking fellows. They were twins, and reminded her of her varsity football coach of an older brother, "Little" Ricky Davis, the biggest but kindest man in two counties. So she hadn't protested when they'd helped her to a seat and bought her the first drink and then the second (third?).

"Thanks again for helping me," she told them. "New high heels."

The shoes were certainly at fault for her first fall at the airport, but what about the one outside the bar? For a moment the mojito haze cleared and she remembered the premonitory chill rippling down her spine and that hand at her back. Now she wasn't sure it had been real. Her eyebrows crimped together. "Did you see someone out there with me?"

"What?" Twin A could be forgiven for not understanding a word she said. Not only was the bar dimly lit, but it was louder than the school lunchroom on a rainy day, and there was a DJ working the sound