Not Another New Year’s Read Online Free PDF Page B

grimaced. “Hold onto that, sweetheart. We’ve got a small problem. I need condoms. Unless you…?”
    She shook her head, trying to clear it. Condoms. Oh, of course. Condoms.
    He sighed, obviously taking her silence as a negative. “Don’t worry. I’ll just be a second, okay? There’s a place around the corner.” His mouth turned up in another smile. “I’ll run.”
    His face seemed to be wiggling, but maybe that was because the mattress was wobbling as he sprang to his feet. His last kiss was fierce. “Don’t forget about me while I’m gone.”
    “Can’t,” she assured his back as he left the lazily spinning room. “Explosive.”

5
    H annah awakened, and information sank slowly into her muddled brain, like marbles into half-chilled Jell-O (part of an extra credit science experiment performed by one of her students the previous year). Just like those weedies had descended into the thick, lime-colored quasiliquid, she gradually took in these facts:
    It was morning.
    It was morning and she’d slept in her underwear.
    It was morning and she’d slept in her underwear and she was inside some kind of tent.
    It was morning and she’d slept in her underwear and she was inside some kind of tent and she had a raging headache.
    It was morning and she’d slept in her underwear and she was inside some kind of tent and she had araging headache and when she turned her cheek on the pillow it was to see that…
    She was inside the tent with a man.
    A man. It took another second for that last fact to hit bottom.
    A man.
    Oh. My. God. She’d really gone through with the one-night stand.
    That’s when it all came back to her. Not all of it, not everything that had happened the night before, because, unfortunately, there seemed to be some gaps in her recollection. But enough memories presented themselves to explain how she happened to have a sheet pulled over her head (the mistaken tent) that still allowed enough light through for her to detect the golden-skinned, muscled arm and side of an almost-stranger.
    She’d seen that body last night.
    Hannah swallowed, remembered feeling it too, his hot chest beneath her fingertips, the hard press of it against her own as he cradled her face and said he’d be right back. He’d gone out for condoms, and then…
    Well, obviously he’d returned.
    Through the sheet came the sound of knocking—from the distant sound of it, likely against the front door. Hannah grimaced, unsure what she should do, only knowing most certainly that she didn’t want the man beside her to awaken.
    The knocks sounded again, and she froze as he turned to his side. His limbs relaxed and she watched his chest—now facing her—rise up and down on a drowsy sigh. Still asleep.
    Apparently the person at the front door gave up, because minutes went by without another disturbance.
    Which left Hannah free to dash away without confronting the man in the bed or the person at the door. A good idea, that. A no muss, no fuss, no regrets ending to an anonymous one-night stand.
    Not to mention all the other reasons she had to get going. There were things she had to do today. She had to make her meeting with Tanner Hart, and then begin what ever necessary procedures to get new ID, credit cards, money, and clothes.
    Yes, it was time to get moving.
    She sent the toes of her feet crawling toward the edge of the mattress and stared at her bedmate’s chest, alert for any signs of awakening. Her gaze followed the naked curve of one pectoral and then focused on the long silver chain he wore around his neck. Slung across the ridge of muscle, it tangled in dark golden hair. A couple of links had caught on his light brown nipple.
    Hannah’s scalp prickled and her pulse started to skitter as she was struck by the sudden desire to release that metal chain. To brush it aside and touch that copper nub with the tip of her tongue. Her belly quivered and her reconnoitering toes halted their original mission to instead curl toward the