Page 56 of Billionaire Unforgettable: Tanner

The awkwardness between the two of us was gone.

Unfortunately, that made the chemistry between the two of us ever more intense for me.

I opened my backpack and took out a bottle of water.

I took a long drink to hydrate myself before I said softly, “I missed this.”

He turned his head to look at me and our eyes met. “You missed what?”

“This,” I answered as I waved my arms out toward our surroundings. “Sharing space and new experiences with you.”

“You never found another guy who likes to mountain bike?” he asked, his voice rough.

Since honesty was now our policy, it wasn’t difficult to tell Tanner the truth.

I shook my head. “Nope. I rode solo in Washington. I didn’t date much in Seattle, and those dates were first dates only.”

“Why?” he questioned. “You’re an incredible woman, Hannah. There had to be men lining up to date you.”

I snorted. “I never saw that line. It wasn’t that I didn’t hope I’d meet someone I’d connect with, but it just never happened. What about you? I’m sure you’re inundated by women who want to date you.”

“Most of those women just want to date a billionaire,” he said drily.

“I’m sure that’s not true,” I protested.

“It is true,” he replied. “I haven’t had the slightest interest in dating since we broke up. I’ve never met anyone who changed my mind about that. You were the only woman who ever felt right to me.”

Incredibly, what I’d heard was true. Hehadn’tbeen with anyone else since we’d broken up.

God, I knew that feeling of nobody else feeling right because I’d felt the same way.

“We had a pretty tight connection at one time,” I agreed. “And it happened really fast. That hasn’t happened for me again, either.”

Tanner and I had clicked almost from the moment we met.

As different as we were, for some reason we just seemed to…fit.

I’d been drawn to Tanner for some inexplicable reason, and I was pretty certain he’d felt the same way.

“All the more reason for the two of us to start over,” he teased. “I’m not sure there’s another woman in the world who would actually put up with me.”

I laughed. “You have plenty of great qualities once a person gets past your bossiness and your desire to control everything and everyone around you.”

“I can’t say that I don’t still attempt to do that,” he mused. “But I realize now that controlling everything isn’t really possible. It’s an illusion. Sometimes, shit just happens, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

He was right. No matter how much we tried to control things, shit did just happen sometimes. Things that we had zero control over. Like his father’s death. I had a feeling that Tanner hadlearned that lesson the hard way, and knowing that made my heart ache for him.

“I think there’s times when we have to let go of our desire to control everything,” I told him gently. “If we don’t, it will make us crazy, and we get mired down by guilt over the things we could never have prevented.”

“Like my dad’s death and your mother’s heart attack?” he asked gruffly.

“Exactly,” I said with a sigh.

“I’m still going to try to control things and prevent bad things from happening to you,” Tanner warned me.

I smiled. “Of course you will. You wouldn’t be Tanner Remington if you didn’t.”

Tanner would be protective to the point of overbearing if someone let him.

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