“Of course.”
“To make matters worse, Caroline came to me and apologized, but told me she’d done me a favor and that I was marrying the wrong sister anyway. She said Camille was cold, and she was the opposite. She was also desperate. Both Camille and Caroline had been given a substantial trust fund on their twenty-first birthday. While Camille made smart investments and didn’t spend too lavishly, Caroline blew it all in five years.”
“She wanted to marry into money to keep up her lifestyle,” I concluded.
“Exactly.” Vaughn stopped. He stared out at the water and my heart started to beat a little faster at how gloomy he’d grown. “The night before the wedding was supposed to have taken place Camille called me. She begged me to change my mind about not marrying her. I’d never heard her like that. She was crying hysterically, telling me that she was humiliated, that she’d never be able to show her face again. She said if we didn’t marry, her life would be ruined. All of her friends had stopped talking to her, her mother’s friends had suggested she take some time off from her charity work, but it wasn’t out of kindness. These women, all of them, assumed she was somehow defective because she hadn’t been able to keep me. She said she couldn’t stand their pity. And then she kept telling me she loved me over and over.
“Not once did I ever get that from her . . .” He turned, his eyes hollow with pain. “She told me she loved me when we were together but I never really believed it. I still don’t know if she did or if she just loved our life together. So I let her rail at me. At first she begged, and then she yelled, and then she screamed, and then she cried.
“And then she hung up . . . and this awful feeling came over me.” He looked deep into my eyes. “I have good intuition, always have, it’s how I’ve become successful, and it’s how I knew that I needed to check on her. I still had my key to our apartment.
“God, Bailey,” he whispered, “I’ll never get the image of her out of my head.”
“Vaughn.” I grabbed onto his arms, fearing the worst.
He shook his head. “She was in the bathtub. Drowned. I got her out. I did CPR, got the water out of her lungs, got her breathing again, and I called nine one one. She recovered. At least physically. But it took her a long time to get over me. She’s engaged now to a neurosurgeon.”
“Thank God,” I breathed. “You should really have led with that.”
Vaughn gave me a dry, humorless smile. “What happened to her fucked with my head a little.”
“Of course it did.”
“I happily went back to never wanting to be in a relationship again. Not just because of how my defection caused a woman to try to commit suicide, but because I was happier before Camille. I was more comfortable in my own skin without her.”
That more than anything made me uneasy. What did that mean? And why were we having this conversation if that was true? “Vaughn, her reaction wasn’t a normal reaction. You get that, right? I imagine there have been other hearts broken by you and they didn’t react that way.”
“I get that. I do. But it still wasn’t easy to know that people, that we, were capable of hurting each other that much, because it was part revenge; she did that to hurt me as much as she did it to escape. And it was an escape, and that’s why Manhattan and I . . . we were over. If living that life, if needing the approval of those around her so badly caused a woman to try to take her own life, then I wanted no part in it. I wanted to run from it for as long as I could. That’s when Oliver told me about the old Hart’s Boardwalk Hotel.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. So I came here. I grew to like the quiet.” He faced me. “And I met you.”
“You hated me.”
“No, you hated me.” He reached out and curled my hair behind my ear and I felt that simple touch all over my body. “But you wanted me.”
My lips parted in consternation. “And how do you know that?”
“I told you. I have great intuition.”
“I didn’t want to want you.”
“I didn’t want to want you, either, but I did.” Vaughn stepped closer to me. “You are everything I’ve never known. I fell in love with you a long time ago, princess. I’ve tried to fight it, but I can’t, and I don’t want to anymore.”
His words thrilled me, they did, but they also scared the shit out of me.
Vaughn thought Camille was only worried about her reputation when he left her, about her status, but as cold as she may have been, I knew . . . I knew she’d loved him. It would be impossible to spend a year in his arms and not fall in love with him. Even with his guard up. Vaughn was capable, successful, hardworking, protective, and gorgeous. There was a whole lot there to like.
And that was what I was so afraid of.
“I want those things you said you don’t want anymore. I want marriage. I want kids.”
Taking my hands in his, Vaughn leaned down to whisper across my lips. “I’ll give you anything, Bailey Hartwell, anything you want.”
The sincerity in his eyes caused tears to well in mine. “You need to want those things for you, too.”
His expression turned thoughtful. “I used to want them. I told you that. I just . . . let myself let go of the fantasy of it. With you . . . God, Bailey, you’ve got me wanting things I gave up on believing I’d ever have.”
There was a part of me, that bright, young, nineteen-year-old girl still inside of me, that wanted to throw my arms around this gorgeous, complicated, stubborn man and say, To hell with it, let’s give this a go. But the cautious thirty-four-year-old who’d wasted too many years already on the wrong man was still taking the wheel on this one.