Every Little Thing (Hart's Boardwalk 2)

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.