Him.
The ghost from my past.
I spun around to leave, desperate for air.
“Bailey, I wanted to talk to you about the parade at the end of the summer.” Kell was in my face, blocking my exit. “I was thinking—sweetie, are you okay? You’re chalk white.”
“Excuse me, please.” I brushed past him, tripping over my stupid dress and cursing it.
“Oh, Bailey.” Sherrie stopped in my path. “I have family who want to visit in a few weeks from New Jersey. Any chance you might have a room available? On discount? Bailey? So rude!”
I heard her call after me as I marched away, my dress gripped tight in my hands.
“Excuse me!”
No!
My heart started hammering so fast it felt like it was climbing upward into my throat with each pound. Nausea rose up right there with it.
“Excuse me.” A strong hand curled around my bicep, pulling me gently to a stop.
I was swung around, face to face with my past.
He was still handsome. Still smooth and dapper. But there were lines around his eyes and mouth that didn’t used to be there, and a hardness behind the constant laughter in his expression that hadn’t been there when he was a young man, either.
“Oliver.” The word croaked as it escaped me.
And it was that little croak that saved me in that moment.
Why was I running away from him at my friend’s wedding?
I wasn’t a naive nineteen-year-old anymore! And I no longer felt inferior to this man. Whoever he was now. Whoever he had been. I wasn’t sure I even knew.
Throwing my shoulders back, I smoothed my expression. “What are you doing here?”
“So we have met?” He stepped into my personal space, smiling curiously.
Renewed anger burst over me.
The bastard didn’t even remember me.
Okay. Take a breath and count to ten. Do not deck him and cause a scene at your best friend’s wedding.
“What’s going on?” Vaughn appeared, pushing Oliver out of my personal space. He stared at the man like he wanted to kill him.
The blonde stood at his back.
Well wasn’t this nice and confusing?
No.
It wasn’t confusing.
Determination flooded me.
This was a wake-up call.
“This is Oliver Spence.” I gestured to my ex.
Vaughn stared at me, bewildered. “I know. He’s a friend from New York.”
Oh my, what a small world. That was a first for me, sleeping with men who were friends. And the fact that Vaughn was friends with him said everything I needed to know about this man who had tried so hard to get under my skin these last few months, and almost succeeded.
“How do you know each other?” Vaughn demanded of his friend.
Oliver studied me, and his brow cleared. “Hartwell!” He threw his arms wide and hugged me.
I extricated myself immediately.
“Oh, Hartwell . . .” Understanding passed across his face. “No hard feelings?”
“None.” I shrugged. “I just don’t hug strange men.”
“Well, I’m hardly strange.” He winked at me.
I made a face. Was he always this irreverently annoying?
Vaughn stepped between us. “Wait, what is going on? How do you know him?”
This was the moment. This was the moment when Vaughn Tremaine would finally get that I would never fall for his smoldering, longing looks again. “Oliver is the one I told you about. The asshole summer boy who told me he loved me when he didn’t.”
My revelation stunned Vaughn into silence, and I walked away, satisfied.
“That sounds like hard feelings to me!” Spence called after me.
I shuddered. God, what a stupid kid I’d been.
Vaughn
This whole reception had been a nightmare so far. First, he couldn’t get rid of Petra. She’d clung to his side from the moment Oliver had brought the women into the ballroom for the after-dinner reception.
He’d tried, unsuccessfully, to get away from the small group, and then found himself cornered by the model.
Then the evening got worse. Much worse.
When he’d seen Oliver abandon Karen on the dance floor and move through the crowds, he’d been stunned when he realized whom he was chasing.
Possessiveness, protectiveness had taken over and he’d followed, hearing Petra’s annoying, querying voice behind him as he did.
And then it had all gone to shit.
“Oliver is the one I told you about. The asshole summer boy who told me he loved me when he didn’t.”
Not only had she delivered information that made him want to kill someone; she’d said it in such a way he knew she was saying something else. You’ll never have me.
Fury, hurt, hurt for her, for him, and yes, jealousy that Oliver had tasted what he believed was his, pounded in his head as he turned to face his old friend.
Too stupid to recognize the dangerous glint in Vaughn’s eyes, Oliver chuckled. “Can you believe it? I almost forgot all about her.”
Wrong thing to say.
“You forgot Bailey?”
“Not now. Now I remember her. I spent a summer with her. A hot summer.” He grinned. “A lot of sex. I think I even loved her for most of it. But you know me, Tremaine, I get bored. And she’s a townie.”
Vaughn couldn’t stop himself.
Every ounce of control he’d been raised with was obliterated as he pulled back his elbow and let his fist fly. He felt the hard, painful, satisfying connection and crack as it hit his friend’s nose.
Oliver stumbled back.
Vaughn hit him again.
With a roar of fury Oliver lunged, wrapping his arms around his waist and taking him to the floor, but Vaughn was quicker, more agile, and much, much angrier.
His fist connected a few more times before he found himself dragged off of his now ex-friend.
He fought against it, his blood lust high. All he wanted was to knock every fucking word right out of Oliver’s mouth. He wanted to take it all back. He didn’t want it to be true.
“Tremaine, fuck, calm down.” He heard Cooper’s voice in his ear.
It sunk in that it was his friend, a good man, who was holding on to him and he stopped struggling.
Karen and Petra helped Oliver to his feet.
The band had stopped playing.
Shocked silence filled the ballroom.
He searched for her.
Bailey stood to his right, Jessica holding on to her, eyes round as she took in the scene. She didn’t look mortified at least. Merely shocked.
Vaughn cursed.
“What the fuck was that?” Oliver spat blood on the floor of his ballroom. “I think you broke my fucking nose. For that!” He pointed in disgust at Bailey. “Over a fucking townie I screwed years ago.”
He lunged at him again and not only did Cooper have to hold him back but Jeff King was there, his arm locked around Vaughn’s chest.
“Calm down, Tremaine,” Jeff urged quietly in his ear. “If he presses charges, there isn’t anything I can do about it.”
Struggling for that calm, for control, Vaughn trembled, his voice thick with emotion as he stared in revulsion at Spence. “Get the hell out of my hotel.”
Oliver laughed bitterly. “This is what our friendship has come to? You’ve changed, Tremaine.” He wiped at his bleeding lip. “And not for the better.”
He sagged as his ex-friend shot him one last baleful look and let the embarrassed girls at his side lead him out. Murmurings grew louder and louder as they moved through the reception.
Vaughn stared at Bailey.
He shrugged out of Jeff and Cooper’s hold. “I’m okay.” He met C
ooper’s concerned gaze, and felt guilty for causing a scene at his wedding. “I’m sorry.”
Cooper shook his head. “No problem. But if I were you, I’d go see your girl.”
“I lost that battle, Lawson.”
“I . . . I don’t think so.”
At Cooper’s tone his attention jerked back to Bailey. His heart pounded even more wildly than it already was as he watched her approach him.
Cooper and Jeff seemed to melt away.
“So”—she crossed her arms over her chest defensively—“that was annoying.”
“I am so sorry.”
Confusion clouded her beautiful eyes. “Why?” She gestured to his hand. “Mister-I-would-never-do-anything-so-embarrassing-as-starting-a-fistfight-at-my-friend’s-wedding. That’s the second time you’ve punched a guy in the face for me.”
Realizing honesty was his only recourse, he replied, “No one disrespects you, princess. No one.”
Her gaze dropped to her feet. “You confuse me so much.”
In that moment, seeing a spark of hope, he made a decision he should have made a long time ago. “Then let me clear a few things up for you. I’ll tell you what you need to know about me.”
Her eyes flew to his. “For real?”
“If I don’t, I’m just going to lose my chance with you anyway, right? You think I’m just like him?” He gestured to where Oliver had departed.
“I don’t know anything anymore.”
“Take a walk with me?”
Bailey considered him for a moment, a moment that felt agonizingly long. Finally she exhaled and nodded.
Vaughn didn’t know whether to be elated or to give in to the sudden nausea he felt.
TWENTY-THREE
Bailey
There was one thing very clear to me: Vaughn Tremaine caused me emotional whiplash. I didn’t think there was a moment in my life where I’d felt so conflicted in one day. First I was determined to ignore him. Then the longing, smoldering thing that he did got under my skin. And then he was Oliver Spence’s friend. I’d really wanted nothing to do with him in that moment.
Until he smacked the guy.
That was fifteen years in the making.
Wait until I told my dad that Vaughn got the chance to do something he’d wanted to do since I was nineteen: break the nose of the asshole who broke his daughter’s heart.
It was funny looking at Spence now. I didn’t even recognize him as the boy I’d loved. He was the man version of the boy who had told me I wasn’t good enough for his world. Smarmy, oily, slick, and it freaked me out that he had deceived me so well the summer we’d spent together.
And Vaughn . . . well . . . not only had he caused a scene in public, which was so very un-Vaughn-like; he’d definitely proven that he couldn’t give a crap that we came from different worlds.
That took me back to wanting to know why then? Why was his guard up?
So I found myself leaving my best friend’s wedding reception—Jess shoved me and Vaughn out the door, and I didn’t blame her—and strolling along the boardwalk with Tremaine.
It was lit up in the dark, all the neon signs blinking brightly out at the ocean. The boardwalk was always busy this time during the summer and tonight was no different. Laughter, music, sounds of the arcade games, and conversation floated all around us. I shivered in the breeze that blew up from the water and rubbed at my arms.
Like something out of a movie, Vaughn shrugged out of his tuxedo jacket and draped it over my shoulders. A second shiver rippled down my spine as he lifted my hair out from under it and his fingers brushed the skin at the nape of my neck.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He stopped and glanced down the beach.
I read his thoughts. “It’s quiet down there.”
“What about your dress?”
“It’s not like I’ll be wearing it again anytime soon.” I slid out of my shoes, grabbed them up in one hand while I lifted the hem with the other.
Vaughn followed my lead, unlacing his dress shoes and slipping them and his socks off. We slowly walked down the ramp onto the beach, and I relaxed at the feel of the dry, cool grain underfoot.
“Did he get you?”
“What?”
I gestured to his face. “Oliver?”
Vaughn rubbed his jaw. “He got in a lucky hit, but it wasn’t too hard. I’ll survive.”
We didn’t speak after that, not until the soundtrack of the boardwalk nightlife faded into the distance, and all we heard around us was the quiet rush of the dark ocean against the shore.
“I’ll start,” I said.
The right corner of his mouth tilted upward. “Of course you will.”
Ignoring that, I proceeded. “I will say that I’ve been holding on to what Oliver did to me for way too long. Yes, he broke my heart years ago but I don’t even know who that man in there was. Maybe I never really knew. It doesn’t matter now. What matters is that I let him make me think less of myself. But I took that power back from him after Tom cheated. I’m not letting another man take it away again. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
He stared at me in open admiration. “Completely.”
“You know, you staring at me with your emotions all there and smoldering out in the open for me is very unnerving. I’ve spent the last few years trying to read you and failing so, um . . . not going to lie, the open-book thing you’re doing is freaking me out.”
“I didn’t know I was being an open book. And if I am, it’s only around you.”
Okay.
Then . . . it was time to be brave. “Say I believe you; say you really do care about me . . . that doesn’t change anything. I’m still me. You’re still you.”
He watched his feet as we strolled and nodded. “True. But I’m not the man you think I am.” Vaughn looked up at me. “I’m not the man I thought I was, either.”
“What does that mean?”
“Remember the day at the festival when you suggested that my problem was my father and his inability to really let go of my mother?”
“Yes.”
“I never thought about it before. Or maybe I didn’t want to think about it. Yet, you’re right. I was only five when my mother died, and my memories of her are very vague, like they happened in another life. But I remember my father in the years after she died. I remember the couple of times after he’d read me a bedtime story how I’d crept out of bed and wandered down the hall to the living room only to find him weeping into a glass of scotch.
“It was crippling.” His words were hoarse, and they tugged at my heart. “To see a man like my father, who was this big powerful giant to a little kid, crying tears into a glass of whiskey. And even then I knew it was about her. As hard as he tried, the grief clung to that apartment. I was glad when we moved a few years later. I was glad as I got older I heard the rumors of my dad’s womanizing ways. To me it meant he was living again, in some small way.
“However, I started to think he had the right idea—don’t get serious with a woman. Keep it free and easy. I inherited the ambition bug from my father, and career has always been important to me. I concentrated on college and starting my own business. It wasn’t until I was about twenty-four years old that I even went on a third date. Around the same time my dad started dating Diane monogamously.” He threw me a crooked, boyish smile. “I didn’t even put that together. Not so smart for a smart guy.”
“You saw your dad finally taking a step toward something serious and you emulated him.”
“Yes. But the girl got too serious on me too fast. After her I went back to what I was used to, and that was okay. I’m not going to lie to you, Bailey, it was who I was. I had no interest in marriage or kids . . . Until about six years ago.” He exhaled, his features drawing tight as if he was remembering something unpleasant. “When I turned
thirty I started to really think about those things. I had a great relationship with my dad, he had a good relationship with Diane that benefited them both professionally and personally. Marriage started to have an appeal. Especially because I wanted children. I wanted to have the same relationship with my own kids that I had with my father. And I wanted to give my dad a grandchild because I knew that was something that he wanted. I thought marriage would be convenient.”
I guffawed at the idea. “Convenient.”
He grinned at me. “Not so smart for a smart guy.”
“Yeah.”
His smile fell. “Diane introduced me to Camille Dunaway. She was very beautiful, poised, classy.”
Huh. I didn’t like the sound of her one bit. “She sounds lovely.”
Jealousy must have seeped into my words because Vaughn threw me a smug, pleased look. “She was. But we weren’t right for one another. I thought we were. Camille is . . . she’s very reserved. People called her an ice princess but I never saw her like that at first. I just saw a woman who had been raised to play the society game and play it very well. I liked that about her. I liked that she never complained about my obsession with work, or the long hours I put in. She was there to support me, and to hold my arm at an event. Camille wanted what I wanted: marriage, a family, and the perfect society life as the perfect society wife and husband. I didn’t love her, but I believed I’d grow to love her over the years, and I promised myself that I would be faithful to her and take care of her.”
“So what happened?”
“We got engaged.”
Surprise shot through me. Vaughn was once engaged. To be married? “Really?”
“So incredulous.” He tutted. “Yes, really. Camille was happy. I thought I was happy. My father . . . he wasn’t happy.”
“Why not?”
“He saw what I didn’t until it was too late: that we weren’t right for each other. Camille was happy because she was engaged to the successful bachelor that all her friends had tried and failed to bring up to scratch.”
“Such modesty.”