30. Vaughn
THIRTY
VAUGHN
I’d silenced my phone earlier, when we’d pulled up outside Alba’s apartment. Now, as she ducked into the bathroom at Koval’s, her cheeks still flushed with the orgasm I’d given her in the back of the car, I pulled the device out of my pocket and checked it.
Countless phone calls and emails and messages. The Midtown job had hit another snag. The price of materials had rocketed up between the time we bid on the job and now, and the team had been scrambling to find alternatives. But the lost time was costing us more than the price increase.
We’d hidden it from Arlo Noble’s people, mostly, but they weren’t stupid. This new wave of issues might be enough to make him walk away.
I scrolled through the call log and scanned the emails, and none of it seemed to matter.
Why was I doing this again? It had seemed so important to save this company, to find an investor, to keep on this trajectory of growth.
But I had money—and it would keep coming until my scaffolding patent expired, or someone came up with a better one.
By that point I’d have more than I could spend in a hundred lifetimes.
Alba emerged from the bathroom, looking much more composed than when she’d gone in, and I found it hard to care about anything other than getting this fitting out of the way so I could get her alone.
Koval bustled her into the back room. I took the dress box from the driver and followed. When I opened the top of the box, Alba let out a sigh like I’d only heard her make in private—but her eyes were on the shimmery purple fabric I’d just revealed.
“Mr. Koval,” she said, “you’ve been keeping secrets.”
The old man shrugged. “A dress is not a secret.”
She gave him a sideways look, then accepted the bundle of fabric from him and followed his gesture to the curtained cubicle to change. A couple of minutes later, she reappeared, her hair twisted into a clip, her body clad in sequined purple.
She looked unbelievable. My heart began to clatter at the sight of her, and when her eyes lifted to meet mine, I could hardly stop from sweeping her into my arms and back into the car idling outside.
“Up,” Koval ordered, flicking his hands toward the dais. “The hips are tight.”
“The straps are a little long as well,” Alba said. Koval hummed, then grabbed a pincushion and went to work.
“Are you sure you’re okay altering this dress for me?” Alba asked. “It could be a museum piece…”
“It’s your dress now,” Koval said, placing the lavender heels on the dais for Alba to step into. “It should fit you if it’s yours.”
Alba was suddenly taller as she stepped into the heels, and she met my gaze in the mirror.
The look on her face was one I’d never seen before.
She looked moved by emotion, soft and almost overwhelmed.
Then she gulped and moved as Koval directed, her hands skimming the dress when he wasn’t in the way, her head tilting to and fro as she took in her reflection in the mirror.
It was almost unbelievable that this woman had chosen me. She was a goddess. She was so beautiful it almost hurt to look at her.
And I wondered…
Had I made a mistake in inviting her to this gala? What if she got there, surrounded by all the glitz and glamour she used to know, all the people she used to know, and she decided that some blue-collar guy who’d struck it rich wasn’t good enough for her?
When the other guests saw the two of us walk in, they wouldn’t be looking at me. And if they did, they’d be wondering what a woman like her was doing with an oaf of a man like me.
I’d be just like my father. Begging for scraps at the table. Invited but not welcome. Forever on the outside.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and it struck fear in my gut.
Was I kidding myself? Was I just like my father?
Trying to build my company to heights unknown—why?
So I could be invited to events I hated?
To watch the woman I was falling in love with leave me for another man?
Because surely, once she got her foot back in that door, she’d want to step through.
I could offer her a good life—but I couldn’t offer her the pedigree, the privilege she’d grown up with.
Was she telling the truth when she said she never wanted to go back?
“Tomorrow,” Koval announced, and pointed to the change cubicle. “You come back for the final fitting.”
Alba nodded and, by the time she was back in her street clothes, I’d mostly gotten hold of my racing thoughts. I say mostly, because after Alba handed the fabric to the old man, she crossed the room and stopped in front of me, frowning. “Are you okay?”
“Fine. We’ll head back to your place. It’s closer.” I swept my hand down her arm and tangled my fingers in hers.
She blinked, then gave me a small smile. “Okay,” she agreed.
I kept my hand on her thigh the whole drive there. Alba ran her fingertips over my skin, tracing my fingers, my nails, my knuckles. Her touch was soft and absentminded, and it grounded me slightly.
Maybe it was what we’d done on the way here. I was keyed up. I needed release.
But even as I tried to justify it to myself, I knew it wasn’t unspent lust making me feel this way.
I was the same desperate kid I’d been before, scrabbling to hold my world together.
Back then, I hadn’t been able to convince my father to make good decisions, to focus on giving us a decent life by forgetting about the riches he was chasing.
I hadn’t been able to convince my mother to stop enabling him and put me first, for once.
Everything had always felt out of control, like I was in a dinghy on a stormy sea at night, hoping I’d make it until morning.
My marriage to Tiffany had given me a similar feeling.
I’d thought it was perfect. It had the veneer of the white picket fence, of everything going exactly according to plan—and then it fell apart.
Like the veneer of my father’s success, right before we got evicted again and again.
Tiffany had been the perfect wife, until I discovered the credit card debt, the months and years of lies and financial infidelity.
Until I discovered that our values hadn’t aligned at all.
That’s what was roiling in my gut as we drove to Alba’s apartment.
My business was teetering on the edge. My identity as the raging success that my father never was hung in the balance.
And Alba was there, a beacon of everything I’d never had growing up—and all I wanted to do was to make sure she was really mine.
I desperately wanted what we had to be true.
It was a clawing need inside me, to claim her, to be sure, to know she wouldn’t betray me the way others had done.
Her fingertips traced my palm, then moved up to feel the knobby bones of my wrist. I squeezed her thigh, and Alba shifted in her seat.
“Thank you for the dress,” she said quietly.
I glanced over at her, losing myself in her eyes.
I’d bought her the dress because I wanted her to feel good on my arm—but now I wondered.
Maybe I’d bought it because I wanted to prove to her that I could move through her world.
That I was worthy. That I had learned from the lessons she’d taught me, and I would be the right man for her.
“It looks beautiful on you,” I said. “I’m glad you like it.”
She smiled at me, and it was like a glimpse of the sun through the clouds.
Her fingers tangled into mine, and she rested her head on my shoulder.
I wanted it to be enough, the weight of her pressed in my side, the warmth of her hand on top of mine—but it wasn’t.
I needed her naked and panting for me. I needed her mindless, crying my name, telling me I was the only man for her.
My heart thumped, blood thrumming as we slid to a stop outside her building. The driver took an age to let us out. I slid out ahead of her and then took her hand and pulled her out of the vehicle, nodding to the driver as she jogged up to the building’s front door.
Her hands were trembling—but then again, so were mine.
On the eighth floor, we crashed through her front door, and then I had her pinned against it. She let out a sigh, her arms around my neck a comfortable weight.
“How much time have we got?” she asked.
“What?” I replied as I ran my lips up her neck, inhaling the sweet scent of her.
“Before you need to go to work. Your phone’s been going off like crazy.”
I huffed, impatient, and pulled out my phone. I’d taken it off silent by accident at some point. I turned it off with a swipe, then tossed it across the room. Alba let out a surprised laugh when it landed on her kitchen’s tile floor. “You’ll break it!” she exclaimed.
“Don’t care,” I said, then hiked her up into my arms. Her legs wrapped around my waist, and I carried her across the apartment to the bedroom I spied through an open door. “Need inside you,” I said, dropping us both onto the mattress.
She laughed, breathless. “You’re insane.”
“You make me that way.”
“I guess we’ve got that in common, because that’s how I’ve felt since the day we met.”
I pulled back to grin at her, then couldn’t resist the urge to kiss her.
Her mouth was my downfall—always had been.
I kissed her until I forgot who I was, where I’d come from.
Until all that mattered was her soft body beneath mine.
I ran my hand up her side, marveling at the softness of her skin.
I lifted her top over her head, then unclasped her bra.
Her breasts were perfect. Small and round with pink pearls for nipples.
I ran my tongue over the left one and enjoyed the shiver that went through Alba, my hand moving to plump her other breast.
The frantic energy inside me calmed slightly as I ran my hands over her body, but I still felt keyed up, on edge, just this side of out of control. My hands framed her chest, then moved down to span her stomach. I inhaled the scent of her skin, tried to ground myself with her presence.
“Vaughn,” she said, her hands clawing at my shirt.
I ripped it off. “I’m here.”
“I need you.”
Her eyes were blue, blue. Her lips were kiss-bruised. She was mine. I would never let her go. Not if she told me I wasn’t good enough for her. Not if some other guy tried to woo her away with promises of riches and privilege. She was mine now.