The constant ache inside his chest intensified as he felt the full force of that smile upon him. Its power flooded through him until he had to tense against the sudden urge to grab her and kiss her breathless.
Fuck.
What the hell was this woman doing to him?
Vaughn jerked his eyes toward the water, not needing the Princess of the Boardwalk to know she could undo him with her smile alone.
Bailey
Dear God, Vaughn Tremaine was just a man.
I didn’t know why that surprised me so, but it did.
For the past few years I’d had my defenses up around him, but the attack, the adrenaline from the attack had shattered all of those. Without them, I could see Vaughn clearly.
He was just a man.
With extremely high defenses.
His words could still sting but I could also see the regret in his eyes as soon as he said them. And when I smiled at him . . . I saw . . .
Well . . .
Vaughn looked at me like he wanted me.
I knew there was power in my smile but wow.
For the first time since meeting this man I felt that shift of power. Sitting beside him I no longer felt like the inferior country bumpkin I’d felt before. I felt like an attractive woman.
An attractive woman Vaughn didn’t want to be attracted to.
All the hostility between us made absolute sense. Vaughn was right: maybe I wasn’t very good at reading people, because we were two people who were attracted to each other and didn’t want to be.
Of course there was going to be hostility.
And here I thought he was just a dick.
The truth was I should have been annoyed by the fact that Vaughn was attracted to me and didn’t want to be. Instead I felt a thrill tremble through me.
Yesterday if I’d discovered he wanted me but didn’t want to want me, I would have said it was because he still thought I was beneath him. Now, after having stared into those icy gray eyes of his, I saw something I hadn’t wanted to see before.
Vulnerability.
A wound, even.
Something had happened to Vaughn Tremaine.
I’d bet anything that something was a woman.
“Have you ever been in love?” I blurted out.
For a moment he just stared at me. My wine-flushed skin turned hotter than hell. “Have you?”
I nodded.
“How many times?”
A month ago I would have said twice. But now I wasn’t so sure. In fact . . . I wasn’t even sure if I ever had been. “Does it count if the person doesn’t love you back?”
And that’s when it happened.
For the first time ever, Vaughn Tremaine’s hard gaze softened, and I didn’t feel quite as stupid for showing him my underbelly. “Yes, Bailey. I think you can love someone even if they don’t love you back.”
Maybe it was because he said my name. Or maybe it was the kindness I’d never seen or heard in him.
But I wanted to cry.
I looked down at my lap as I tried to control the impulse. “Then once. I’ve been in love once. You?”
“My father . . . he loved my mother. The way he talks about her I’m not sure I’ve ever . . .”
His tone drew my gaze and once more I found myself captured in his study of me. “I’m sorry about your mother. I know you lost her when you were young.”
Vaughn stared back out at the ocean. I realized he did this, avoided a person’s gaze, when he didn’t want them to guess his thoughts. “I had my father.”
“I like him. Your dad. I like him a lot.”
“Most people do. He’s a very charming man.”
“A good dad?”
“A very good dad. A very good man.”
“He’s very . . . down to earth for a man of privilege.”
“Well he wasn’t always privileged. He’s the son of a postal worker.”
I was astonished. “I thought you were born a blue blood.”
Vaughn gave me a wry smile. “On my mother’s side. We’re not exactly on speaking terms. They weren’t too happy when their darling daughter married a man who’d muscled his way into society.”
“What an outdated attitude.”
“Not then. And lineage is still important to some people. Yeah, if you’ve got enough money and power, you can find your place. But there are still some of the old families who haven’t realized we’ve come a long way since the times of arranged marriages. The Montgomerys are one of them.”
“The Montgomerys. That’s your mother’s family?” Jesus. Vaughn’s dad might not be a blue blood but Vaughn certainly was.
It was hard not to be intimidated by that kind of history. Even I knew who the Montgomerys were. They were giants in the industrial revolution, and now owned a billion-dollar corporation that had its fingers in all sorts of pies—mostly in aeronautics.
“That’s my mother’s family. Or it was until they disowned her for marrying my father.”
The romantic in me swooned. “But she didn’t care, did she?”
Whatever he heard in my voice made his eyes soften again. My belly fluttered in reaction, like a schoolgirl with her first crush. “She loved them. She just loved my father more.”
The air between us felt too thick and I knew I was on the cusp of throwing myself at him. And I wasn’t even drunk. “So, Vaughn Tremaine believes in love,” I teased, trying to ease the tension between us. “Who would have thunk it?”
He gave me that lopsided smirk of his and I swear to God I felt that smirk from my nipples to the heat between my legs.