14. Vaughn
FOURTEEN
VAUGHN
We met at Koval’s the following Monday. Alba wore wide-leg pants and a crisp blouse tucked into them, the collar open to reveal that gold jewelry. Her hair was wrapped in a knot at the base of her neck, and I found myself staring at the line of her jaw, the hint of clavicle.
She and Koval spoke in another language, one with hems and seams and knits, waistcoats and lapels.
I stood there, pretending to listen but mostly looking at the way the light caught Alba’s hair, the way her hands smoothed over the fabric Koval presented her, delicate and sure, the purse of her lips when she mulled over the older man’s options.
“I can rent a tux,” I said, when they were arguing over evening jackets.
Two heads whipped toward me. Koval looked ready to throw me out of his shop. Alba looked exasperated.
“Quiet, you,” she snapped.
“Listen to your woman,” Koval suggested.
“I am not his woman ,” Alba said, rounding on him.
The older man shrugged. “Then let him rent a tuxedo from a mass-market shop,” he said mildly. “Makes no difference to an old man who knows nothing about anything.”
“You are impossible, Mr. Koval,” Alba said, releasing a sigh. “We’ll go with the peaked lapel.”
“You’ll see,” Koval replied, satisfied that she’d gone with his suggestion. “Big man. Big lapel.”
“Or he’ll look like he’s playing dress-up,” she muttered.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I couldn’t resist saying. The venomous look she threw me was worth it, and I flashed her a smile.
From Koval’s, we went to lunch at a French restaurant called Rebellieux. Alba glanced around the dining room, eyes scanning furtively, and I wondered if she was looking for someone, or simply embarrassed to be seen with me.
This time, I ordered the wine, and the rigamarole with the pouring and the tasting fell to me. Alba watched me, then nodded when the waiter left, both our glasses filled. “Good,” she said.
“I still feel like I’m playing pretend.”
She shrugged, unsympathetic. “Don’t we all?”
“It never bothered you? Feeling like you weren’t being yourself?”
She fingered the stem of her wine glass, her nails painted a soft shade of pink. “I’m not sure I even knew what being myself really meant,” she admitted.
“You seem to know yourself now.”
“A year of suffering will do that to a person.” Her smile was a bitter twist.
Another crumb of information, rare as a precious jewel. I stared at the red wine in my glass, tilting it the way I’d seen her do, and asked, “Has it been that bad?”
“What exactly did you read, when you were doing your creepy little internet stalking session about me?” Her eyes were narrowed when I met them.
I huffed. Shrugged. “Not much. Your engagement ended. Your parents are wealthy. I still wonder how you ended up at Carmine’s and cleaning an office building.”
She stared at me for a moment, and I stared back. I wasn’t sure why she decided to tell me anything, but she did. “Cole, my ex-fiancé, worked for one of my father’s companies. We were supposed to be a power couple, bringing together our families. I…didn’t go along with the plan.”
“Doesn’t seem like your ex did either,” I said, frowning.
She snorted, that twist in her lips deepening. “No. He didn’t.”
“But he gets his happily-ever-after, and you end up working yourself to the bone for a year?”
“My parents weren’t happy that I didn’t toe the family line. They cut me off.”
I was struggling to understand. “You didn’t… You didn’t have work to fall back on? A career?”
Her spine straightened. She touched the stems of her silverware, straightening them with sharp, precise movements.
“I know to a self-made man like you, it seems pathetic that I’d still be relying on my parents for money at my advanced age .
” Her words were precise, and she wouldn’t meet my gaze.
“But I grew up in a different world than the one you know. I was a pretty object, and I was expected to behave. Marry. Make babies. I didn’t. ”
“And they threw you out.”
Her eyes finally lifted, and they were hollow, dead. “They did.”
Part of me wanted to scoff. She was a grown woman, and she wasn’t an idiot.
Why would she rely on her parents’ handouts?
I’d known from a young age that I couldn’t rely on my parents for anything.
Everything they touched turned to shit. My father, especially.
My mother was mostly along for the ride, blinded by her love for him.
But then I thought about the way Alba moved when she was in a restaurant like this one. The things she’d known to ask Koval. The practiced, automatic steps of the dance she’d started to teach me.
Her whole life, she’d been molded to be the perfect little society woman, and then she’d been handed off to a man to marry.
It was outdated and insulting and wrong.
It made me angry for her. A woman who couldn’t stand to be told what to do, who was hard and driven and mean .
How did she stand it? How did she survive ?
Her eyes still held that horrible blankness, and I wanted to chase it away. I wanted to drag her over to my side of the table and needle her until she bit back or smiled or stabbed me.
I wanted to smooth my hands down her spine and draw her close, but I had the feeling that if I tried to be soft with her right now, she’d close herself off and never let me in. That was unacceptable.
…and when had Alba letting me in become a goal of mine? I forced myself not to look at that too closely and instead picked up my wine glass (by the stem) and leaned back in my chair to take a sip.
“So, your ex, your parents…who else?”
“Pardon?” she asked, brow wrinkled.
“People I need to kill.”
A surprised laugh fell from her before she could clamp her lips shut. Her eyes sparkled, and satisfaction coursed through me. “Stop it. You wouldn’t murder a fly.”
“Big concrete pour happening at our Midtown job at the end of the week,” I said casually. “Good place to dispose of a few inconvenient bodies.”
The older couple at the table next to ours glanced over, no longer pretending not to eavesdrop.
We both ignored them, eyes locked. Alba’s lips twitched. “Don’t slouch, Vaughn.”
I nudged her knee with mine and grinned. “Yes ma’am.”
She rolled her eyes, but her cheeks were flushed and a small, pleased smile haunted the edges of her mouth.
When we were done with our meal, I couldn’t resist the urge to guide her from the dining room with a hand on the small of her back.
Our coats were checked in the lobby, so I could feel the knobby bones of her spine above the waistband of her pants.
My hand splayed out as we went through the double doors into the lobby—and it was that touch, that closeness, that alerted me right away when she stiffened.
A brown-haired man stood at the coach check counter next to a woman with long, dark hair. The man glanced up when we entered, recognition flaring in his green eyes.
“Alba,” he blurted, and the woman with him spun.
Beside me, Alba turned to stone. “James,” she replied. She was frozen on the spot, tension thrumming through her back beneath the pressure of my palm. I eased my hand around her waist—it looked like she might need someone to hold her up—as she nodded to the woman. “Yvette.”
“Twice in a month!” the woman exclaimed, a smile curling her lips while her eyes went sharp and black. “What a surprise to see you here . Did your shift just end?”
I nearly choked on my own spit.
“Lunch at Rebellieux isn’t exactly surprising,” Alba replied, ignoring the woman’s final jab. Her voice was high and tight, and she swayed slightly on her feet. Her eyes flicked to the woman, then back to the man.
He cleared his throat, sidling closer to the brunette. “Long time no see,” he announced. I didn’t like the way he was looking at Alba, how his gaze raked down her body and back up again, openly assessing, almost possessive. Then he looked at me.
I let him see exactly what I thought of him, all the anger and aggression and territorial possession, and he replied by arching a brow.
“New pet?” the woman—Yvette—asked with a mean smile.
“Who, yours?” Alba shot back, then lifted her chin.
“Excuse us.” She motioned to the coat check, where the attendant was doing her best to look like she wasn’t gobbling up the interaction.
Alba’s back was straight as she swept past the couple, her movements sure.
I stared at the couple as they went through the lobby doors, then turned to Alba, who was handing her coat check ticket to the attendant with a polite smile.
While the attendant looked through the racks for our jackets, Alba stared straight ahead. Blotches of red bloomed on her cheeks, her neck, and I could see the thrumming of her blood in her neck.
“Who were they?” I asked quietly.
“Old friends,” she clipped. “Don’t worry about them. You did well today.”
“Alba—”
“Your jacket,” she said, nodding to the attendant as she handed mine over and grabbed her own. She still hadn’t looked at me.
“So. I’ll send through the details for our next session. I’ve got a train to catch.” She looked down at the closure of her jacket, her hands steady as she did up the zipper.
If I hadn’t spent time studying her every move, I would’ve thought she was okay.
But she wasn’t. Her mask was on—the one she wore in society. It was on tight, except for the very slight twitching at the corner of her eyes.
“Alba—wait.” I followed her out the door. “Hang on. Talk to me.”
“We’re both busy, Vaughn,” she called over her shoulder. “I’ll see you soon.”
I jogged to catch up, the bottom of my jacket flapping around my thighs. “ Alba .”
She spun when I curled my hand around her arm. Her eyes remained downcast, her breaths gusting out in big puffs of white. It wasn’t snowing, but the sky was overcast and oppressive above us. Cars went by, the sound of wet slush and melted snow squelching under their tires.
“Let go of me,” she said quietly, and I did.