I smiled, glad she was there, too. “Sorry to call you guys out so late.”
“Don’t be sorry.” She frowned. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”
“Crime scene?” Jeff asked.
“Her office,” Vaughn replied. “I was taking a walk, saw her doors open, thought I’d check it out. And I caught Stu Devlin attacking her in her office.”
Wendy scowled, swallowing what I knew were probably a few choice words, while Jeff looked taken aback. “Stu Devlin? Positive ID?”
“No.” I shook my head, furious. “He was wearing a mask.”
“Then how do you know it was Stu?”
“Oh, come on, Sheriff, I’ve known him my whole life.”
He sighed. “Show me to the office and explain everything from the start.”
I did just that, and was comforted by the fact that Vaughn stayed by my side throughout the whole thing.
Thirty minutes later, Jeff and Wendy had our statements and were standing in the garden of the inn.
“I’ll have one of the deputies drop by tomorrow morning to get statements from your guests at breakfast,” Jeff said.
“Thank God I already offered them free food,” I muttered, put out that my guests would have to be even more inconvenienced.
Vaughn’s hand settled on my arm and I looked down at it, shocked by the touch, as I listened to him say to Jeff, “And Stu?”
“All I can do is bring him in for questioning but without a positive ID from anyone I don’t have a lot to go on.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Tremaine,” Jeff warned. “It’s not that I don’t believe you. I’ll do what I can. I promise. Bailey, is there anything else I should know that might help me? Bailey?”
“Huh?” I jerked my head up from staring at Vaughn’s hand. “Oh. No. Not that I can think of right now. If I do, I’ll drop by the station.”
“Get some sleep.” Jeff nodded and turned to leave.
I waved good-bye to him and Wendy and then turned to Vaughn. I was more awake than ever, and I wasn’t ashamed to admit that I didn’t really want to be alone right now. “You should get back.”
He scrutinized me for a moment, and it was as if he could read my mind. “I spotted a bottle of wine in your office that managed to escape destruction. Want to open it? It might calm your nerves.”
I was more than a little surprised by the offer, and also touched. I was seeing the other side to Vaughn Tremaine that Jess swore was there. Maybe she was right. “Do you want to drink it on the beach? The water always soothes me.”
He nodded, amiable.
Actually amiable.
“Sure.”
I hid my shock as best as I could. “I . . . uh . . . Let me change first.”
Vaughn’s eyes drifted over my skimpy attire and he looked pissed off all over again. “You do that,” he muttered, striding off in the direction of my office.
“Well this is going to be interesting,” I murmured. I held the collar of his jacket to my nose and took a whiff. My stomach fluttered of its own volition at the smell of his cologne. Oh, holy hell. “Very interesting.”
NINE
Vaughn
He had offered to grab the bottle of wine from Bailey’s office to help calm her nerves. But it wasn’t just for her nerves. He needed to calm down, too. Adrenaline was pumping through him, and right now all Vaughn wanted to do was to work that adrenaline out with Bailey.
Don’t go there.
He was furious at Stu Devlin for breaking into her inn.
Do go there.
The anger distracted him.
As far as Vaughn was concerned Stu was a dead man.
He was also angry with Bailey. So angry at her for putting herself in danger, and being so unapologetic about it, that he felt this animalistic urge to fuck her into submission.
So much for the anger distracting him.
The tiny camisole and shorts she was wearing didn’t help matters and he felt like a bastard for thinking about sex when someone had just broken in and attacked her.
Vaughn grabbed the wine, knowing he hadn’t just offered to sit and drink with her to calm her nerves. He didn’t want to leave her alone just yet, and he had a feeling she didn’t want to be left alone.
As he came out of the office he bumped into her in the hallway. Vaughn was grateful to see Bailey had changed into jeans and a thick sweater. She handed him his jacket and nodded to the wine. “Let me just grab some glasses from the kitchen.”
When she returned she not only had glasses but a dish towel wrapped over ice. “For your jaw.” She handed it to him.
Grateful, he took it, not really wanting to sport a bruise his staff and guests would see. A few seconds later they locked up the inn and were strolling out of the gardens onto the boardwalk. The silence between them wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it wasn’t the silence of two people who didn’t know what to say to each other.
It felt like the silence of two people who were afraid of what they might say to each other.
Or maybe he was just projecting.
“So you were just strolling by and saw the door?” Bailey queried.
“Thankfully, yes.”
But there was more to it than that. He had Jessica’s warning about Devlin on his mind, and so he had Bailey on his mind during his midnight stroll.
He felt something was wrong deep in his gut when he looked up and saw the doors to the inn open. Fear, like he’d never felt before, had rushed over him as he stormed inside the inn and heard the struggle coming from the office. And when he saw Bailey underneath Devlin, when he saw Devlin pull back his fist to hit her, rage unlike anything he’d experienced crashed over Vaughn.
It was a bad idea to stick around a woman who inspired those kinds of emotions but Vaughn wasn’t making the decisions right now; the hot blood pumping in his veins was.
They continued down the boards in silence until they neared his hotel. Bailey stopped where the railings gave way to a ramp that led onto the beach. She sat down at the top of it.
He followed suit, keeping a little distance between them, and opened the wine. Bailey held out the glasses and he filled them, feeling her gaze on his face.
“I’m not going to let him do this to me.” She tried to hide the tremor in her voice and failed.
Vaughn renewed his vow to destroy Stu Devlin as he pressed the ice to his jaw.
He cleared his throat. “Do what?”
“Make me scared. Make me scared in my own inn.”
“You could install security,” he suggested, watching as she raised the glass to her lips. Her hand shook.
Definitely going to destroy the fucker.
“That’s letting him win,” she said before taking a sip of the wine.
“He won’t come after you again. Even he’s not that stupid.”
Bailey grunted. “I knew the man was a moron but . . . what an idiot. There’s no way his father had anything to do with this.”
“I suspect you’re right.” Ian Devlin was a snake, but he was a smarter snake than his son.
Bailey threw back the entire glass of wine and then held out the empty to him to refill. He did so without questioning it.
“I’m glad you were there,” she muttered as he refilled her glass.
Shock rippled through him and his eyes flew to her face.
Bailey was staring at the wine, refusing to meet his eyes.
Stubborn wench.
He smirked, amused by her. “I’m glad I was there, too.”
Now her eyes met his, her own shock alight in them. She saw his smirk, but he guessed she saw his sincerity, too, because she gave a huff of surprised laughter and shook her head. “Vaughn Tremaine coming to my rescue. I would have lost that bet.”
Something hard twisted in his gut. D
id she think he would let anything happen to her?
What else should she think? You’ve been nothing but an asshole to her.
He sipped at his wine, staring out at the dark ocean. The usual serenity it brought him was lost in the storm of emotions the woman beside him incited.
“I like to think I’m good at reading people,” she said. “But you are very difficult to read. To me you’re like that ice in your hand. Like you don’t care about anyone or anything but your hotels. But Jessica and Cooper swear that you’re a good man. And tonight, you came to my defense. Yet . . . here you are . . . back to ice.”
Vaughn studied the wine in his hand, feeling the itch under his skin; the itch to lose control. He could throw back the entire bottle and blame whatever he said and did next on that.
On that thought, or temptation rather, he placed the glass out of his reach on the boards beside them. “Maybe you’re not good at reading people, Miss Hartwell. Your boyfriend of ten years was having an affair behind your back after all.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he flinched.
There was a tense, awful silence but Vaughn could feel the heat of her gaze on his face. Bracing himself he turned to meet her accusing stare. “I’m sorry. I have a bad habit of being a bastard to you.”
Bailey’s eyebrows rose at his admission. And then something rueful and mischievous glinted in those beautiful eyes of hers. “Maybe that’s because I have a bad habit of being a bitch to you.”
He laughed before he could stop himself.
He felt her study his face as he did and when he stopped she was staring at him in wonder, like she’d never seen him before. Vaughn was uncomfortable with her obvious curiosity. “I do laugh once in a while, Miss Hartwell.”
“Well you’ve never laughed around me. And stop calling me Miss Hartwell. Please, I beg of you.”
He stirred, the heat in him rising as her words raised the ghost of a longstanding sexual fantasy he’d had about her.
Fuck.
“Why does it bother you? It’s your name.” His words came out more hoarse than he’d have liked, almost giving his arousal away.
“It’s the way you say it.” She shrugged, taking a sip of her wine. “And anyway, it makes me feel like a spinster at the moment.”
“Because of Tom? Do you miss him?” Why the hell did he ask that?
She seemed just as surprised by the personal question, and for a moment or two Vaughn thought she wasn’t going to answer.
But then she did.
And her answer shocked the hell out of him.
“No.” Sadness dimmed her eyes. “I miss my friend. But I don’t miss my boyfriend. What I miss are all the years I wasted with him . . . because it was a disservice to us both.”
Vaughn studied her face as she stared out at the ocean, taking in the way the muscle in her delicate jaw twitched, like she was clenching her teeth against a surge of emotion.
He wanted to know what the hell she meant. Maybe it was because she’d been so open with him, or maybe it was just sitting in close proximity to a woman he’d wanted for so long, but Vaughn’s self-control seemed to have taken a leave of absence. “What does that mean?”
She heaved a weary sigh. “Tom and I . . . we . . . we didn’t have what Jess and Coop have. We’ve never had that. I stayed with him because he was safe. I stayed with him because he was what I thought someone like me deserved. And vice versa. We weren’t right for each other and I knew it, and I didn’t speak up. He cheated because I didn’t speak up.”
“You don’t believe that.” He sounded annoyed.
Bailey narrowed her eyes on him. “Yes. What would you know about it?”
He ignored her angry tone. “Tom Sutton was a man punching above his weight. He knew that. Everyone knew that. And that is why everyone thinks he’s not only an asshole for cheating on you, but a fucking moron.”
“I don’t know whether to be flattered to have gotten a compliment out of you or pissed off. What does that even mean? Tom was less attractive than me? Isn’t that a little shallow?”
“I didn’t say he was less attractive than you. I wouldn’t know if he was less attractive than you. I do know I never spent a scintillating moment in that man’s company.”
“You’re saying he wasn’t interesting enough to keep up with me?”
He just looked at her.
Bailey couldn’t hide her amazement. “Huh. Really?”
Vaughn smirked, enjoying the fact that he could throw her off balance. “Just because you can be a bitch, Bailey, doesn’t mean you’re not an interesting one.”
“I’m only a bitch to people who are assholes.” She downed the rest of her wine. She didn’t ask for more, however. Instead she placed the glass out of her way and leaned back on the palms of her hands.
“As always you flatter me.”
“Why are you an asshole, Tremaine?”
“I would like to remind you that you’re the one who started a campaign of hate against me.”
“I was worried about the boardwalk. I thought you were going to erect this ugly, contemporary building that would compromise what we had here. The fact that you were so uncooperative did not help.”
“I don’t like to be questioned.”
“By a woman.”
“By anyone.”
“You were awful to me.”
He sighed, hating the hurt she tried to hide but just couldn’t. “Again, I’ll remind you that you were awful to me first.”
“I tried to be nice to you at first. You were a superior swine.”
“The first thing you asked was to see my architect’s drawings,” he huffed. “Like you had a right to them.”
“I felt I did.”
“Because you’re Bailey Hartwell, Princess of the Boardwalk. You’re not pissed at me for being a superior swine; you’re pissed at me for being the first person to say no to you.”
“Oh, believe me, you’re not the first man to say no to me.”
He tensed at the bitterness he heard in her voice. “I said person. Not man.”
“What?”
“Person, not man.”
Bailey shrugged. “Whatever. Let’s just agree I was a nosy bitch and you were a superior ass.”
“We’re using past tense?” he teased.
Their eyes met and he watched the way her lips trembled before they gave up and spread into a huge smile.
The constant ache inside his chest intensified as he felt the full force of that smile upon him. Its power flooded through him until he had to tense against the sudden urge to grab her and kiss her breathless.
Fuck.
What the hell was this woman doing to him?
Vaughn jerked his eyes toward the water, not needing the Princess of the Boardwalk to know she could undo him with her smile alone.
Bailey
Dear God, Vaughn Tremaine was just a man.
I didn’t know why that surprised me so, but it did.
For the past few years I’d had my defenses up around him, but the attack, the adrenaline from the attack had shattered all of those. Without them, I could see Vaughn clearly.
He was just a man.
With extremely high defenses.
His words could still sting but I could also see the regret in his eyes as soon as he said them. And when I smiled at him . . . I saw . . .
Well . . .
Vaughn looked at me like he wanted me.
I knew there was power in my smile but wow.
For the first time since meeting this man I felt that shift of power. Sitting beside him I no longer felt like the inferior country bumpkin I’d felt before. I felt like an attractive woman.
An attractive woman Vaughn didn’t want to be attracted to.
All the hostility between us made absolute sen
se. Vaughn was right: maybe I wasn’t very good at reading people, because we were two people who were attracted to each other and didn’t want to be.
Of course there was going to be hostility.
And here I thought he was just a dick.
The truth was I should have been annoyed by the fact that Vaughn was attracted to me and didn’t want to be. Instead I felt a thrill tremble through me.
Yesterday if I’d discovered he wanted me but didn’t want to want me, I would have said it was because he still thought I was beneath him. Now, after having stared into those icy gray eyes of his, I saw something I hadn’t wanted to see before.
Vulnerability.
A wound, even.
Something had happened to Vaughn Tremaine.
I’d bet anything that something was a woman.
“Have you ever been in love?” I blurted out.
For a moment he just stared at me. My wine-flushed skin turned hotter than hell. “Have you?”
I nodded.
“How many times?”
A month ago I would have said twice. But now I wasn’t so sure. In fact . . . I wasn’t even sure if I ever had been. “Does it count if the person doesn’t love you back?”
And that’s when it happened.
For the first time ever, Vaughn Tremaine’s hard gaze softened, and I didn’t feel quite as stupid for showing him my underbelly. “Yes, Bailey. I think you can love someone even if they don’t love you back.”
Maybe it was because he said my name. Or maybe it was the kindness I’d never seen or heard in him.
But I wanted to cry.
I looked down at my lap as I tried to control the impulse. “Then once. I’ve been in love once. You?”
“My father . . . he loved my mother. The way he talks about her I’m not sure I’ve ever . . .”
His tone drew my gaze and once more I found myself captured in his study of me. “I’m sorry about your mother. I know you lost her when you were young.”
Vaughn stared back out at the ocean. I realized he did this, avoided a person’s gaze, when he didn’t want them to guess his thoughts. “I had my father.”