19. Alba
NINETEEN
ALBA
I was surprised when we didn’t go to the penthouse.
Vaughn had said he was taking me home, but I hadn’t thought he meant home .
Walking into Vaughn’s townhouse felt like putting on an old pair of favorite jeans.
It was beautifully decorated but maintained a cozy vibe.
Much nicer than my current accommodation, and more in line with the places I used to live when I was part of my old world, but not so cold and impersonal.
Evidence of his daughter dotted the space, from a few drawings pinned to the refrigerator to a playroom full of toys just off the main hallway.
Where the penthouse had felt familiar and uncomfortable, this was a beautiful melding of comfort and luxury. I loved it the minute I stepped through the front door.
We found our way to the kitchen, where Vaughn pulled down two wine glasses from the cabinets and grabbed a bottle of wine from the dedicated wine fridge.
“I thought you said you weren’t a wine person,” I said, leaning against the marble countertop.
Vaughn glanced over, grinning. “I signed up for an online wine tasting course, and now I finally have a use for this wine fridge the interior designer insisted I needed.”
Laughing, I accepted the glass he handed me.
I wandered over to the big, stainless steel refrigerator and studied one of the drawings pinned there with magnets.
It was a drawing of a little girl, her father, and another woman.
Shamefully, a dart of jealousy went through me.
I’d slept with this man exactly one time and I already felt like I had a claim on him.
“Billie, her nanny,” Vaughn explained, shifting to stand behind me, and the jealousy faded.
His hand coasted over my side, stroking.
He’d touched me constantly since we left the dance studio.
Even when I’d frantically wiped down the mirrors and glass, horrified at the butt and handprints we’d left there, Vaughn had laughed, stroked my side, squeezed my hip, and made sure that he was within touching distance.
It was…nice. Cole hadn’t been like that, even though we’d been engaged to be married.
He’d held my hand occasionally, and he’d put his arm around me at events, but mostly we lived parallel lives.
James had touched me often, when we went out, but it felt more like he was treating me like an object rather than simply touching me because he wanted to.
With Vaughn, his touches were intimate and casual all at once. He’d rested his palm on my knee the whole way from the studio to his house. His hand found its way to my low back when he guided me through a doorway. His fingers brushed my shoulders as he took off my jacket.
I straightened from my study of his daughter’s drawing and leaned back against him, knowing his arm would come around me—and it did. He banded his free arm across my stomach, his other hand holding his wine glass by the stem, exactly as I’d taught him.
Spinning in his arms, I caught him staring at the drawing on the fridge. He shifted his gaze to me and smiled, but I could tell his mind was elsewhere.
“Thinking about your daughter?” I guessed.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. I saw a picture of her in your office. She’s adorable.”
His smile was soft. “Charlotte’s the best. You’d love her. She bosses me around the same way you do.”
I laughed. “I wasn’t the one doing the bossing earlier.”
His eyebrows twitched upward, a teasing smile curling his lips. Then he pulled me closer and kissed the tip of my nose. “That was different.”
“If you don’t mind me asking… What happened between you and Charlotte’s mom?”
He hummed, shifting to take a sip of his drink.
We pulled apart from each other, Vaughn’s hand sliding down my arm to tangle with my fingertips.
He tugged me across the kitchen toward the front living room.
“We were married for six years,” he told me, settling on the gigantic, royal blue sofa.
I looked at the huge piece of artwork behind, slashes of cream and blue and gold, then took a seat next to him and mirrored his position, with my legs kicked up on the no doubt extremely expensive coffee table, a view of the feature fireplace in front of us.
Vaughn slung his free arm around my shoulders, tugging me closer to him.
A part of me thought I should maintain some kind of distance—this kind of intimacy should’ve been reserved for a serious relationship.
I should’ve been protecting myself, especially after falling so hard for James and being burned by him.
But after the intensity of what happened in the studio, I felt tender and vulnerable, and being held by Vaughn eased some of the ragged edges inside me.
“Tiff and I both wanted kids,” he continued, “and we were ecstatic when Charlotte came along.” He swirled his wine, staring at the red liquid curving up the edges of his glass. “The divorce…” He trailed off. “It was hard.”
“You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to.”
He glanced at me, his thumb making soft sweeps over my shoulder.
Shaking his head, Vaughn said, “It’s fine.
I found out she’d been racking up debt on secret credit cards for years.
This was when the money from a patent I developed really started building, and Charlotte was just a year old.
I was blindsided. I felt like everything I’d been working toward was snatched away from me, like we’d never get out of the hole she’d dug for us. ”
I remembered what he’d told me about his dad and said, “History repeating itself.”
Vaughn looked at me then. Really looked at me.
“Exactly,” he said. “It hurt me in a way that I don’t think she ever really understood.
I’d told her about my childhood, about how uncertain it was with my dad chasing the next big thing, not knowing if the lights would cut out or if we’d suddenly have to move.
She just thought it was about the number.
She kept telling me we could afford it, but it wasn’t about that. ”
“It was a betrayal.”
“Yes.” He hesitated. “But… It wasn’t just Tiffany’s fault. That first year of Charlotte’s life, I felt this urge to work harder, to build my business, to make sure I was providing for my daughter. I wasn’t there.”
I could hear the guilt in his voice as I leaned my head on his shoulder. “So your ex spent all that money to try to fill the void.”
I could understand that. How many times had I dropped tens of thousands of dollars at a designer’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue, just because it was the only thing that had given me a temporary feeling of fulfillment?
Vaughn hummed. “By the time it all came to light, I was too angry at her for hiding the spending, and she was too mad at me for being absent. The relationship was unsalvageable.”
Trailing my fingers over the hand he’d wrapped around me, I snuggled into the crook of his shoulder and hummed.
He wasn’t perfect, but I liked that he recognized his part in the breakdown of his marriage.
And yet, he was still chasing this investment and the growth of his business, when all signs pointed to him already being a very wealthy man.
Had he learned anything? He still seemed to work himself to the bone. What was the end goal?
Not for the first time, I wondered if the paths we were on were just too different to be compatible.
The world he was trying to break into still seemed like a pit of vipers to me; I wanted nothing to do with it.
Even if my parents invited me back into the family fold with open arms and wide smiles, I couldn’t see myself going back. That version of me was gone.
Vaughn, on the other hand, was doing everything he could to get his foot in the door. That was the whole reason he’d hired me.
I looked up at him, tracing the line of his jaw with my gaze. My study of him drew his attention, and he caught my lips in his. With the first touch of his kiss, my worries melted away. It was so easy with Vaughn. The conversation, the touching, the kissing. So easy to trust him, to fall for him.
It scared me—but it felt too good to stop.
When we pulled away, our faces close, Vaughn stroked the back of my neck with his free hand and asked, “What about you?”
“What about me?” I asked, leaning back on the blue cushions.
“You’ve told me about your exes, but how…
” He frowned, searching for the right words.
“How did your family end up turning their backs on you? Even after everything, I still look after my mom. I make sure my ex has enough, because I want Charlotte to have a present mother who isn’t constantly worried about money. I couldn’t imagine…”
“Leaving them out in the cold?” I let out a bitter snort. “You’re not like them, Vaughn. My parents don’t think that way.” I leaned into his side, my eyes tracing the arch of the fireplace, the line of the mantel. “I’ll tell you a story,” I said.
Vaughn hummed, his hand back on my shoulder, his thigh pressed into the side of mine. I was warm and safe and comfortable, and I wanted to share.
“When I was seven years old, I was learning about the life cycle of plants.” Pain darted through my chest at the memory, even all these years later.
Taking a sip to hide it, I glanced at Vaughn.
“I was really into it. Something about planting a seed in a little cup, watching it sprout, moving it to the planters outside, watering it, running outside every day to see if there had been any changes… It just captivated my little kid brain.”
Vaughn smiled. “You like seeing progress. Like with me. I’m a project to you.”
I clicked my tongue. “You’re a lot more than a project, Vaughn,” I blurted, then caught myself.
Vaughn’s eyes softened, but he let me off the hook and didn’t ask me to elaborate. Instead, he said, “So seven-year-old Alba had a little veggie patch.”