Chapter Three
Anonymity was Tanner Eliasson’s most prized possession. Which was saying a lot because he owned a stunning home on a sprawling ranch with a commanding view of the snowcapped peaks of the Rocky Mountains in northwest Montana. There, sunsets cast a fire of blazing orange along the mountain range so breathtaking, you’d want to cry. He was a stone’s throw away from pristine lakes and hundreds of miles of spectacular hiking and biking trails that probed deep into the Montana wilderness. In the winter, he could be on the slopes in ten minutes. In the summer, he often took a brisk sail before breakfast and was back in the office in time for a full workday.
But being able to be him, not subservient to his less-than-charming past, well, he couldn’t put a price tag on that. Tanner had made the decision long ago to sever ties with Tanner Cox, son of the famous film star Gina LeFevre and revered director Brady Cox. As soon as he was old enough to shake off the suffocating confines of his parents’ fame and fortune, he took off, first for college, then vet school, and finally, here, to Montana, where he could be himself, no pretenses, no hiding from mockery, and no longer frozen out beneath the long shadow cast by his parents’ larger-than-life world. And no Tanner Cox.
He’d gone so far as to drop his surname, instead substituting his middle name, Eliasson. He figured no one would put two and two together to link him with that part of his life that he had no interest in revisiting.
Tanner pulled up to the lake and parked the car. He dropped his kayak into the water and eased himself in. He savored being alone with his thoughts while out on the glassy early-morning lake. Usually it was a time for him to think about the medical history of some of his more perplexing veterinary cases. But today, for some reason he had his own history on his mind. It was like that for him: every so often Tanner couldn’t help but reflect on his dark past, if only to take a deep breath and relish that he was living the opposite kind of existence now: no reporters, no paparazzi, no film studio machine to orchestrate his behavior within a thousand miles of here.
He’d certainly not enjoyed the trappings of fame. Not one bit. And things only got worse on that fateful night when that damned girl, Zoey Richards—he’d never forget her name—up and coldcocked him in front of the cameras at the premiere of his father’s latest drama. Jesus, things went to shit fast after that happened. First off, it hurt like a son of a bitch. Who knew a nine-year-old could punch like that? He should’ve known—she was such a tomboy. But then, man, his face throbbed, his nose was gushing like a damned fire hydrant, and he’d soon learn it was broken.
At the time, he did the first thing you do when something unexpectedly awful happens to you—you seek comfort from someone you hope will actually go to the trouble of comforting you. But he was sad to realize that someone—his mother—was more upset his blood was ruining the designer gown she’d chosen for this special evening than she was about his welfare. Pretty quickly, a cadre of studio lackeys swarmed them all, mostly to try to salvage her gown, but one underling had the presence of mind to stick some cocktail napkins underneath his nostrils to staunch the blood flow. Crying like a girl in front of all those cameras had been an embarrassment, but he learned quickly that his father was even more mortified than he was.
“Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about,” he’d hissed into Tanner’s ear. Tanner sobbed a little longer and stopped except for a few gasping sighs here and there.
That was the day that Tanner decided he would man up, the way his father had so wanted him to. No more tears, no more emotion, no more nothing. Shame it was too late—the next morning the tabloids had given him his own unwanted moniker: the Weeping Wimp. The Variety headline read “Teary Tanner.” Nowhere did Zoey get called out for decking him for no good reason. Instead Tanner carried the shame for having done nothing but show up at his father’s stupid film premiere and get punched in the face, and it would take him years to live down the lingering embarrassment from that night.
All the kids at school teased him mercilessly. He was ostracized even more than he had been before for simply being a bit of a loner. Girls giggled at him; boys mocked him. Were it not for Sunshine, his life would have been a perpetual state of hell. She’s the thing that helped him get through it. God, he missed that girl to this day. She’d passed away when he was still in college, but it seemed like only yesterday. The first thing he did when he opened his practice out here in Montana was get another Lab pup. Suki was a four-month-old snowball of a pup, white as a polar bear with the most adorable edge of toasted marshmallow to her ears. Suki was his family now, albeit a mischievous one.
It had been years since he’d been back to Hollywood. His parents were older now. Last year his father came out of semiretirement to shoot a film he’d hoped would be his great comeback. It flopped. Tanner felt sort of sorry for him, but he also didn’t see the need to swoop in and soothe the man’s bruised ego. What goes around comes around in the world.
His mother occasionally did guest-starring roles on sitcoms playing the latest ingénue’s mother. He could only imagine how mortifying that was for her, her countenance puffy from age-denying injections, her unlined forehead resembling an overly starched sheet on a military-style bed. She could never smile due to all that Botox, which was a bit ironic, considering how she’d mastered the fake smile as a starlet. Now it was a look that was denied her merely due to her refusing to look her age. Vanity, thy name was still Gina LeFevre.
Sometimes he felt guilty about not being a doting son. But it was hard to gin up love and affection for two people who might have given him life but certainly didn’t give him joie de vivre. Attention from his folks had been sparse, so the role reversal seemed a natural progression. He made a mental note to maybe give them a call sometime to see how they were doing, but he’d likely forget.
He’d been kayaking for more than an hour, taking note of an eagle soaring overhead. Nearby a heron alighted from a rush. Along the shore, a beaver was hard at work damming in a quiet cove. It had taken Tanner long enough to get out to Montana, but he’d known the minute he settled here that this was home for him. All those years wishing he’d had a home, and it had been waiting for him, right here, all along, none of that baggage from his past life to cause him troubles, thank goodness.