Not wanting to touch that subject, I pushed at a wedding magazine. “Hey, we didn’t come here to psychoanalyze me. We came to talk weddings.”
“Vaughn is back,” Jessica said abruptly. “Cooper and I are meeting with him tomorrow to catch him up on the final preparations for the wedding.”
My heart hammered in my chest at the thought of seeing him again. It felt like forever since we’d spoken. Our night together, although vivid, was like a memory from a long time ago.
It was easier with him gone.
The pain was lessened.
I knew that for a fact because the idea of seeing him again smarted.
Hiding the hurt, I shrugged. “Then I guess we’d better get a move on choosing these dresses. We only have a few weeks left.”
“See, that right there”—Dahlia stabbed her half-eaten donut in my direction—“is why I’m worried about you. You’re lying! And you never lie.”
“She’s right,” Jessica agreed. “You always say what is on your mind. The fact that you’re not means this is something we should be concerned about.”
I could feel the panic starting to rise inside of me as they ganged up on me in loving but annoying concern.
“Guys.” Emery was tentatively firm. “Leave Bailey alone. She’s a grown woman, and I think she can handle herself pretty well. If she wants to talk about it, she will. But she doesn’t, so I think we should back off and look at bridesmaid dresses.”
Startled that my rescue had come from such a surprising source, I could only stare at Emery wide-eyed as an admonished Jess and Dahlia left me alone and got back to dress research.
Guilt consumed me.
For as long as I’d known each of these women I’d badgered my way into their lives with my determination to turn them into family. I’d been nosy. I’d been intrusive. And no matter that it had come from a place of kindness, I’d still done it.
I’d done it to Emery, too.
They’d given me their confidences (well . . . Emery would one day, once I was through with her), and they deserved that trust in return.
“I don’t want you to hate him,” I said. When they looked at me astonished, I met Jessica’s gaze. “Vaughn is your friend.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What the hell did he do?”
“Nothing. He didn’t make any promises or . . . I . . . I was stupid.” I looked at the table, watching my fingers knot together. “I’ve always been attracted to him but I didn’t want to be. And it was that whole damsel-in-distress thing.” I laughed hollowly. “Talk about letting my team down. I went weak at the knees as soon as a guy came to my rescue. And . . . I convinced myself that he cared about me.”
“He does care about you,” Jessica insisted. “I know it.”
“I thought I saw that in his eyes when we were together. But when it was over he got out of my bed and he told me that it was a mistake, and I realized all I’d seen was satisfaction that he finally got one over on me.”
Dahlia cursed under her breath.
“I’ve spent too long feeling like I don’t deserve something special, and I promised myself after I left Tom that I would try to do better by myself. Vaughn made me feel second-rate. I need to avoid a man who would make me feel that way.”
“You’re wrong about Vaughn,” Jess said. “He cares about you. He’s just . . . I think he’s scared of you for some reason.”
“And if you’re right? That means getting involved with a man who doesn’t know what he wants. I’m not chasing someone with that many issues.”
“But you’ll happily deal with Rex’s issues?” Jessica challenged.
“Rex is just a friend,” I repeated. “He isn’t a land mine waiting to explode. Vaughn is. My own personal land mine. You don’t know . . . I don’t even know . . . I just . . . I went from not liking that man very much to looking into his eyes and thinking, Wow, I can’t believe he was right in front of me this whole time.” My eyes burned and blurred with tears. “I thought for a moment that that asshole was ‘the one.’ And while I was thinking it, he was just getting off. Do you know how humiliated I was? How stupid that made me feel?”
I brushed impatiently at the tears that slipped down my cheeks, and Emery reached for my free hand. I let her grip it hard.
Dahlia’s and Jessica’s faces were tight with emotion.
“Don’t be mad at him, Jess. Please. You and Cooper are his friends, and he needs that from you.”
“Why do you even care?”
“Because he never promised me anything,” I repeated. “He tried to leave and I threw myself at him. I made him think it was just sex. Any normal hot-blooded male would have done the same. It’s not his fault I thought it was something more.”
“This is messed up.” Dahlia huffed.
“No. It’s just one of those things.” I brushed the conversation aside, wishing I could do the same with my feelings. “Now, can we look at dresses?”
There was a moment of quiet from my friends.
Jess pointed to a dress in one of the magazines. “We can rule out pink. I don’t want pink.”
“Good.” I was relieved for many reasons. “Pink clashes with my hair.”
FIFTEEN
Bailey
It was official: I was an idiot.
How else did you explain the fact that I was standing in the lobby of Paradise Sands Hotel knowing full well I was being manipulated by a would-be matchmaker?
Jessica had called me that morning.
“I need you with Cooper and me today. I want your opinion on our final plans for the reception room.”
Uh-huh. Yeah. I called bullshit. Except only in my head.
“Oh. Right. Well sure, of course,” I’d answered.
At the time I couldn’t believe the words had come out of my mouth. Only yesterday I was so sure that Vaughn’s absence was a good thing for me. But I let Jess manipulate me . . . because I wanted to see him. I wanted to be able to be around him and feel okay. To be strong. To have him finally know, or at least think, that he hadn’t gotten to me, that I wasn’t in the least bit humiliated.
Plus, I needed the distraction. Last night I’d been hanging out with Rex when he dropped the bombshell on me that he was attracted to me. Although flattered, I was also a little freaked out. I wanted to continue our friendship but I didn’t want to lead him on. So I’d told him about Vaughn and how I was still trying to work through getting over him.
In answer Rex insisted we stay friends. That he could wait for me.
He’d sounded sure.
I was not so sure.
Jessica led them through the hotel to the ballroom where the reception would be hosted. As soon as we stepped through the double doors, I envisioned how Jessica had described it would look on the day, and I knew it was going to be spectacular.
“I can’t believe you’ve managed to pull a wedding off in three months. That shouldn’t be possible.”
“No, it shouldn’t,” a wry, familiar, sexy voice said from behind them.
As my heart began to pound a mile a minute, I turned on my heel to face Vaughn. He wore his usual tailored suit, his hair perfect, everything perfect.
My body reacted to him, memories of our night together washing over me.
God damn it!
I hated that he could make me feel that way.
It’s just physical attraction. Nothing more.
His gray eyes were so hard to read. I wished I knew what was going on inside his head.
Oh yeah, sure, just physical attraction.
“I’m surprised Vivien managed to pull it off,” he finished, interrupting my inner war with myself.
Vivien, I knew, was the hotel’s main events manager and Jess’s wedding coordinator.
“I thought you employed only the best,” I said, mostly to make him look at me.
&
nbsp; And then I wondered why I wanted that, because his gray eyes seared into me with carnal knowledge. I’ve seen you naked, his gaze said.
Well you did want to be able to read his mind. Be careful what you wish for.
I ignored the shiver that whispered down my spine.
“Miss Hartwell.”
Back to Miss Hartwell, are we? Great. Well, I can play that game, too.
Even though I could feel it happening, and I disliked myself for it, I turned into a sullen teenager on him. “I’m surprised you came back. We all thought you’d left. Permanently.”
“Wishful thinking, Miss Hartwell?”
“I don’t care one way or the other, Tremaine.”
“Too busy with the new boyfriend.”
“What?”
“You mean Rex?” Jess said.
Vaughn raised an eyebrow. “His name is Rex? As in T. rex?”
Cooper coughed in an effort to swallow his laughter and I shot him a dirty look before swinging it toward Vaughn. “Rex like the Hollywood actor Rex Harrison. And he’s not my boyfriend.”
“Yet,” Jess added. “He told her last night that he wants to be. He intends on being very persistent.”
“Did we switch personalities or something? Usually, I’m the one that doesn’t know when to shut up.”
“Oh, so you’re aware of that flaw.” The jibe came from Vaughn. Surprise, surprise.
“Oh, really? You want to go down that path? Because we’d be here all day listing your flaws.”
“Flaws? What flaws? I’m perfect.”
“Perfect asshole, you mean.”
He looked at Cooper and Jess. “All I heard was I have a perfect ass.”
My friends tried to hide their smiles and failed. So he was being cute and funny. I could fight my smile.
“You just brought me here to torture me, didn’t you?” I said to Jess as Vaughn and Cooper walked ahead of us.
“You didn’t have to come.”
“I know. I just . . . had to see something for myself.”
“What? That all the hostility between you is masking an epic love?”
I shot her a look. “No.”
“You told Rex you couldn’t date him because you still had feelings for Vaughn. I’m just helping you out. I mean, you have to be around the guy to work out what you want.”
“It’s not about working out what I want. It’s about working past it because he doesn’t want me.”
“Oh, please. He’s like that kid at recess punching the cute girl on the arm every five minutes. He likes you. He just doesn’t know what to do about it.”
“If that really is the case, Jess, I’m not interested. I’m thirty-four. I’m not wasting my time waiting for him to grow up. I just need to move on.”
“Just here to slow down the proceedings as usual, Miss Hartwell?” Vaughn called back to me.
Jess threw me a knowing look and then hurried to catch up with Cooper. Vaughn waited for me, and Jess and Coop seemed to deliberately wander out of earshot.
“Why is it you’re such a jackass to me?” I asked.
Something flickered in his gaze. Something like guilt. “Because it keeps you at a distance,” he answered with startling honesty. “And I like you at a distance.”
In that moment I almost hated him.
Was Jess right? Did he actually care about me? If that was true . . . then wasn’t that worse? That he could care about me but still not want to be with me because I wasn’t good enough for him?
Anger swirled with passion, lust, and other devilish things inside me. I stepped into his personal space, our lips merely inches from one another, and his attention dropped to my mouth with hot focus. I ignored the impulse to kiss him. “Cowardice is such an unattractive quality in a man,” I whispered, and his gaze flew to meet mine. The steel in his was much too hot. I thought I even saw sparks in them. Flints of anger.
Done tormenting him as he tormented me, I stepped away and watched his whole body relax. “You’re right to keep your distance, Tremaine. Not even your pretty face can make up for your character defects.”
It was a terrible thing to say, but a woman scorned and all that.
“I hurt you,” he surmised. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. It was the last thing I wanted to do.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Vaughn,” I said, not unkindly this time. “You’re not the first one-night stand I’ve ever had.”
He studied me far too long, until I was squirming. “I was the first man you slept with after your breakup with Tom, however, wasn’t I?”
The personal question made me want to spin around and walk away but I had to find some easy ground with this man. I had to control my emotions and stop acting like a defensive teenager every time he said something to me. “Yes. So thanks for that.” I smirked. “Loosened me up, got me back in the game.”
Oh, God. I sound like a moron.
His expression darkened. “In time for the T. rex.”
And just like that we were back to sparring again. “Rex. He’s a friend. His ex-girlfriend is the woman Tom slept with. We bonded over the betrayal.”
“Wasn’t the woman Tom slept with younger than you?”
“Yes.” I knew what he was getting at. “And yes, Rex is nine years younger than me. What? Too hard to believe that a young, virile man would be interested in me?”
“Any man with a working dick would be interested in you,” he said, throwaway style, as if the comment wasn’t shocking. “So Jessica was telling the truth—he’s pursuing you?”
I blinked, trying to get past his crude compliment. “Um . . . what? Yes. About Rex? Yes.”
The muscle in his jaw popped as he ground his teeth together. I assumed it was to hold back a caustic comment. Instead he looked down at the floor, unable to meet my eyes.
He looked younger and very lost.
And damn it, he tugged at my heart. I remembered how I’d felt the night of the attack. How I wondered what it would be like to have Vaughn confide his worries to me, to understand this complicated, brooding man. I’d wanted his secrets. I’d wanted to salve his wounds. I’d just . . . wanted him.
It hurt that he hadn’t wanted me the same way.
But Jessica’s words kept haunting me, kept giving me that damn hope my dad had always warned us about. “Why do you care if Rex wants me?” I found myself saying, my words, my tone begging him to be honest, and to be brave.
He didn’t look comforted by my kind tone. Instead he looked pissed off. More than that, he looked wary. Like a stray dog who hadn’t seen much kindness in his life. I had to wonder where that came from. I’d met his father, and Liam Tremaine clearly adored his son.
What the hell had happened to screw up Vaughn?
I wished I didn’t care.
“I haven’t any interest in your love life, princess,” Vaughn said kindly. “I better go find the bride and groom.”
Frustrated anger held me in place as he walked away.
Ahhhhh!!! I screamed and raged in my head, so I didn’t slip off my shoe and throw it at his departing head.
That was the second time now that he had reeled me in.
“Fool me twice,” I muttered.
On that thought, I walked out of the ballroom, knowing Jessica would forgive me for my defection from the final preparations.
Marching down the boardwalk to my inn I really thought that Vaughn was the last person on earth I wanted to see at that moment. Hence my running away.
However, when I swung open one of the beautiful stained glass double doors to the inn, walked into the entrance, and saw a very thin young woman with fake boobs arguing with Aydan, I realized I was wrong.
There was one other person on earth I didn’t want to see at that moment. A person I really didn’t want to deal with because this person always invi
ted chaos.
My little sister.
If it weren’t for the fact that underneath her cosmetic surgery we were very alike physically, I would have doubted the relation.
For as long as I could remember Vanessa had been a selfish, spoiled little brat. She wasn’t raised that way, either. It was just innate. Part of her nature. But she hadn’t been all bad. In fact she’d been a soft-hearted kid who was forever finding wounded animals to bring home to nurse, much to my mother’s annoyance. When Vanessa’s impulsive actions hurt someone she felt remorse for the unintentional consequences. More often than not I was the one who felt the brunt of her choices, and afterward my little sister would spoil me with hugs and apologies and kisses.
That was our way. When we weren’t fighting, we were cuddling.
To my regret that all changed as we got older. We were very different people. Whereas I loved Hartwell and the inn, Vanessa considered the seaside town and the inn not good enough for her. She’d wanted to see the world. It wasn’t what I wanted but I understood why she did. I think, however, it made her start to feel like an outsider in our family. The distance between us grew greater, and finally, when she developed a crush on an older boy, an older boy I ended up dating, our relationship fell apart. I hadn’t known about her crush, but that didn’t stop Vanessa’s resentment of me multiplying. I’d hoped she’d get over it, that it was just a phase, but I was sad to say our relationship never repaired itself.
Vanessa had eventually used her looks and seductive powers to seduce an older, wealthy tourist years ago and he’d taken her to Los Angeles. He’d bought her fake boobs, designer clothes, and nice jewelry.
In gratitude she ran off with a younger wealthy man. He was only in it for the fun, so she seduced his father. He bought her new lips and flew her to his home in Southern France.
And so on and so on.
She kept my parents updated with her shenanigans and travels but I hadn’t seen or spoken to her in five years.
“Get out of my way,” Vanessa hissed at my manager. She pushed her heavily made-up face into Aydan’s, her boobs almost falling out of the skintight, low-cut, calf-length color-block dress she wore.