Chapter Thirteen

God forbid Zoey minded her own business while Tanner went off to retrieve her cat for her. Nooo… Instead she took advantage of his absence to do more snooping. Somehow in the heat of the moment last night, she didn’t ever find a way to ask him about the whole mystery of the boy in the photo album. Not that the opportunity presented itself. She’d chosen to route things in another direction. She had yet to figure out a way to do this delicately. Not like she’d blurt it out and say, “Are you the same person I punched in the face when we were kids?” If he was that boy, he sure was trying to steer clear of the topic. Although maybe he hadn’t a clue who she was. Except he knew her name. And she now knew his: Tanner. But not Tanner Cox. Why would that be?

She returned to the photo album and pulled it down, going back to the page with the pictures of the boy who looked quite like the boy she slugged. She slipped the photo from the sleeve and flipped it to the back. “Me and Mom on the set of Dad’s film Wildcat, 1999” it said in sloppy kid’s printing. That would put it at the right timing. It was probably a year or so later that she’d had her fateful encounters with him. He sure looked like it. And it was on a film set. Who else could it be?

She quickly stuck the picture back and flipped forward to another page and saw irrefutable proof. It was a photograph of young Tanner, sitting next to the swimming pool with his dog Sunshine. It even said it on the back: “Me and Sunshine taking a swim, 2000.” That was the very pool where she and Tanner saw all the grown-ups. Jesus. What a small freaking world it was.

Back when this happened, to say Zoey was scarred was an understatement. She loved to pretend she was a sassy, sophisticated nine-year-old, but in fact, she was about as worldly as a toad in a pond. She knew grown-ups had their times when they didn’t want kids around, but she figured it was because they were discussing work or something. Not because they were going to be naked and do all sorts of nasty things right in front of everyone. In front of their prying children’s eyes.

As an adult, she could zoom out a little and see it from adult eyes as perhaps not quite so skeevish. Not that she was going to do something like that, but she realized that some people did. Take, for instance, her former fiancé’s behavior, which ought to have made her all the angrier. Until now she hadn’t even drawn the parallel. She laughed, imagining Rodrigo at some swank party up in the Hollywood Hills where everyone was stripping naked. He, of course, would win the whole night hands down what with that horse appendage that he could practically swing like a baseball bat. Probably intimidate all the men in attendance. And certainly it had made four women swoon. The bitches. But she thought it had comic potential as well. Like what about the caterers? Were they naked too? Or did they circulate through the party with drink trays and passed appetizers, offering up canapés to people with no pockets to stuff the disgusting caviar appetizer in once they realized what it was.

Yes, it was creepy that her parents were doing that stuff. But at the time it felt like the rug had been pulled out from under her. Sure, she knew her parents made her a low priority, and often she was a prop for their successful careers, someone to drag out and put on display to make them look better. But still, they were her parents. And, she figured, for the most part, they were normal and did normal things that would not include gallivanting around a cocktail party stark naked with your hands on another person’s body. Hell, she hadn’t even known her parents did that to each other at that point.

With so many years having passed, she could cut her parents some slack over their betrayal, at least when it came to this. But the overall fact that they sucked as parents? Not so much. So when she’d packed and ran last week, she’d meant it. She was over trying to forge a tepid relationship on their terms with people who didn’t care much about who she was as a person. As she stood in Tanner’s living room and assessed the situation, she realized she was officially on her own.

The good news? She had a fat trust fund that would always make her financial life comfortable. But as far as her personal life? She’d lost her fiancé and her parents all in the span of a week. It made a girl feel awfully alone in the world. Then again, sometimes when you take down large, dead limbs from an old tree, you realize how much more sunshine can get through. So maybe she needed to start seeing things through a different lens.

All of a sudden, she felt a cold puppy nose on her thigh, and she turned to see Suki and Suki’s dad standing before her. One was wagging a tail, one wearing a frown as she stood there looking guilty and foolish with a photograph of young Tanner and Sunshine in her hand.

“Uh, sorry, I realized when I was looking at your pictures last night I forgot to put one back in the sleeve, Dr. Eliasson.”

He reached for the photograph in her hands and took it from her, dragged it along the length of his pointer finger as if it were a playing card, then weirdly changed the subject. “If we’re going to be cohabitating, you’re going to need to call me by name.”

Huh. What a strange response to busting her spying in his photo albums. But she was going to go with it and see where it led them.

She lifted an eyebrow. “Which I was wondering about.”

“You were wondering about my name?”

“Well, sort of,” she said, her toe scuffing the hardwood flooring. “More like who you are.”

“I think you know who I am.”

“But do I?”

He nodded. “I’m Tanner Eliasson. I’m the vet who cared for your cat after your fender bender.”

“But who are you really?” He glared at her. Well, shoot. That wasn’t the response she was hoping for. “I mean, well, does the name Tanner Cox ring any bells for you?” He turned away from her and started to straighten out the magazines from the nearby coffee table. She followed him, standing right behind him. “Because I think it does.”