Every Little Thing (Hart's Boardwalk 2)

“Let me put it bluntly—”

“That wasn’t you putting it bluntly?”

“Tremaine, everyone thinks you think that you’re better than us. They think you have a giant stick up your ass. Show them you’re fun and human. It will go a long way with them.”

“Yes, that was definitely more blunt.”

I grinned at him. “I’m just trying to help.”

“By suggesting I remove the stick from up my ass?”

“Yup.”

He shot me a bemused look and then stared out at the ocean.

I wondered if he was still considering my advice, but when he spoke his words weren’t the ones I’d been expecting. “Despite our differences I hope you know I would never walk away from a woman in trouble. I would never have just walked on by when I saw the inn had been broken into.”

At his stiff reply, I touched his knee without even thinking. “I know that.”

He glanced down at my hand and I realized what I was doing.

I snatched my hand back. “You know I walked into my office, calling the police, so confident that Stu wouldn’t hurt me, and I just strolled in there quite the thing and gave the asshole a chance to swipe at me, and he did. I still can’t believe he did that, and now I have to hide it from Cooper and Jess so they don’t, you know, try to kill him, and I just don’t how I can hide anything from those two—”

I was cut off by the strong, warm hand that curled around mine.

I looked down at Vaughn’s beautiful, masculine hand, holding my small one.

“You’re rambling.”

“I do that sometimes.”

“I know. You’ve just never directed a ramble at me before.”

“It annoyed Tom.” I wondered if it annoyed Vaughn.

His answer was to squeeze my hand and then let it go.

My rambling didn’t annoy Vaughn.

And just like that I was again overcome with the urge to throw myself at him.

Maybe it was the adrenaline still coursing through my veins, kicked up into gear again by the memory of Stu attacking me. Or maybe it was because I was just an idiot woman easily seduced by men like Vaughn Tremaine. Or maybe, and this was more likely, I was the kind of woman who was attracted to the wounded.

I liked to rescue people.

Not in an aren’t I a wonderful heroine, running around saving people? kind of way. I just . . . So many people looked past other people’s pain. Mostly because we had our own pain to deal with, it was too hard to deal with some stranger’s.

But I had people in my life. People who loved me. Cared for me.

I was one of the lucky ones.

There were people out there, people like Jess and Dahlia and Emery, who didn’t have anyone. So I gave them me because I didn’t know any other way to face the world. I made wounded strangers my family in the

hopes that it would make it easier for them to deal with their pain. And yes, it wasn’t entirely altruistic. I missed my own family. In reaching out to those who needed it I was making another family closer to home.

I was still working on Emery.

I guess in a way I was still working on Dahlia, too.