Every Little Thing (Hart's Boardwalk 2)

In my angry embarrassment I leaned in to yank it from him, only to stumble as I did so. Vaughn moved to steady me, his strong fingers curling around my bicep. His touch panicked me and I jerked away, scowling at him.

Perhaps a year ago I wouldn’t have scowled so hard at him.

I would have scowled for sure, but maybe not so emphatically.

Up until last summer our interactions had always been antagonistic because from the day we met Vaughn had made me feel I was the uneducated provincial to his superior cosmopolitan self. He did this by mocking me, mocking Tom, and I didn’t like it. He was no better than me.

Admittedly, however, there was a certain amount of fun in teasing and mocking him back. That is until last summer, when during one of our many verbal battles he’d out and out said that he disliked me in front of Jess and everyone else whose opinion I valued. And okay, I might have deserved a harsh retaliation because I’d been particularly bitchy to him that day because of an argument I’d had with Tom . . . but . . . well . . .

The son of a bitch had hurt my feelings, and that was unforgiveable.

“As ever the gentleman, Tremaine.”

“Helping you retrieve your belongings was gentlemanly, I thought.”

“No—the gentlemanly thing to do would have been to assess the situation, realize that touching a lady’s unmentionables is ungentlemanly, ignore said unmentionables, and go merrily on your way while I tried to inconspicuously recover the unmentionables.”

The right corner of his mouth tilted up in amusement. “You’ve never crossed me as the shy and retiring type, Miss Hartwell. I wouldn’t have thought my seeing your panties would get them in such a twist.”

“Ha, clever.” I ignored him calling me Miss Hartwell. Or I attempted to. I never wanted him to know how much it bugged me that he never called me by my name. In retaliation I never referred to him out loud as anything but Tremaine.

We really brought out the maturity in one another.

He grinned. “I do find I’m wittier around you.”

“Yes, well, that happens when arming yourself in a battle of wits against a wittier opponent.”

There were moments, like now, when I thought I glimpsed a flash of respect in Vaughn’s eyes. But I knew that couldn’t be true. I was just looking for something I wanted to see. “We’re particularly feisty today.”

“Don’t royal ‘we’ me, Tremaine. I’m not impressed by your pomposity. In fact it pisses me off.”

He stepped closer into me, and I had to steel myself against stepping back. Vaughn Tremaine did not need to know his nearness made my breath catch. His eyes drifted over my face. He always did this, like he was savoring my every feature, and I knew his only purpose in doing so was to make me feel uncomfortable.

Mission accomplished.

Bastard.

“You shouldn’t tell me when something pisses you off,” Vaughn said. “You know it only makes me want to do it more.”

If he’d been anyone else, I would have laughed in grudging respect. Instead, like always with him, I took it personally. Like I said, it didn’t start out that way. Vaughn was smart. I think a large part of me actually enjoyed our battle of wits. But after he said he didn’t like me, everything he said to me became an insult. Worse, at around the same time he admitted his dislike for me, I actually began to see more in him than just an arrogant, selfish businessman who thought himself superior to me.

Deep down I knew Vaughn wasn’t a bad guy. I discovered that when he helped out my friends Cooper and Jessica last year. When Jess was convinced that things between her and Cooper were falling apart, Vaughn gave her a place to stay in town so that Cooper had time to win her back.

And the truth was we all felt safer with Vaughn around: there was the matter of Ian Devlin and his sons.

Devlin owned a lot of property in Hartwell, including the Hartwell Grand Hotel in town, and the amusement park behind the boardwalk. But he didn’t own anything on the commercial north end of the boardwalk. And just as he’d used less than honorable means to gain properties on the popular, touristy Main Street, he’d tried underhand ways to gain property on the expensive coastline. He was desperate to add boardwalk property to his portfolio. In fact, I guessed he was desperate to one day own the entire length of the north boardwalk. He had it in his head to turn it into a five-star resort, which would decimate what made Hart’s Boardwalk so charming.

When the old boardwalk hotel went up for sale, we, the close-knit community on the boardwalk, thought we were done for. Ian Devlin was the only man we knew who could afford to buy it.

But then came Vaughn. A hotelier with more money than God and a better pedigree than most Manhattanites. For whatever reason, he bought the old boardwalk hotel, knocked it down, and put up his own establishment.

The good thing though—despite the modern appeal of his hotel—was that Vaughn liked the boardwalk as it was. And even I had to admit that he seemed to genuinely like and respect Cooper. So when Devlin threatened Cooper’s boardwalk bar by bribing someone on the city board to deny Cooper his liquor license renewal, Vaughn stepped up alongside us to put a stop to it.

And despite the fact that was the moment he told me he didn’t like me, I saw what I hadn’t wanted to see.

Vaughn Tremaine may have been a pompous, smug, wealthy, arrogant businessman who thought he was better than me, but he could also be kind of honorable when he wanted to be.

Moreover, he was our defense against Ian Devlin.