Chapter 3 Vaughn
VAUGHN
With her awake and my memory stirring alongside her, a few things became clear.
First, she was intelligent. There was something almost refined about her.
I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what, but that word came to mind.
There was no pretense, giggling or flirting, or errant hair extensions or false eyelashes lying on the pillow.
She didn’t pretend this was a happy accident like maybe fate had brought us together, the way I imagined most women would when they found out they married a wealthy man.
Second, I knew she was hiding something.
Call it my overactive imagination, though I had never been accused of possessing one before, but there was something haunting about her last night. It was one of the many things that had factored into approaching her to begin with, not to mention her beauty.
Her beauty was on display now, even with the raccoon rings of mascara under her dark eyes and a distinctly greenish tint to her complexion.
There was something wounded in her gaze, something still haunting—big, brown doe eyes which even now drew my focus when she looked me up and down while I sat in the armchair near the bed.
“What are we going to do?” she asked in a husky voice that could have had to do with all the shouting it took to be heard over hundreds of voices and a constant barrage of music.
Music so loud I vaguely remembered not catching her name despite her repeating it. “You have a unique name, right? You’re…”
“Nova,” she murmured before her existing frown deepened. “And you are…”
“Vaughn,” I replied.
“Right.” So that was out of the way. I now knew my wife’s name.
Not like she’d be my wife for long. “Quickie annulment?” I asked with a shrug. This was an experience I could cross off my bucket list—the morning after, with wedding rings included and definitely not a situation I wanted to repeat.
“That sounds good to me. Just making sure.” If it sounded so good, why did she sound so hesitant?
“So, you never did tell me last night,” I ventured. It seemed necessary to get a read on her somehow. It wasn’t a fuzzy brain that left me unable to remember much about her. She had gone out of her way to avoid answering personal questions. “Who are you related to?”
Her brows drew together like someone pinched them. “Excuse me?” She sounded almost offended.
“At the wedding,” I explained. The fuck was with her attitude? “Who were you there for? I should’ve asked that way, I guess.”
“Oh. Right.” Her mouth pulled upward at the corner—nice mouth, full lips, the sight of which made my mouth go dry. “The groom.”
Interesting. What interested me more than her willingness to go further, though, was what I saw on her arm when she lifted her hand to run it through her tousled hair.
The sunlight hit it just right, making the ugly marks on her bicep stand out in contrast. Bruises.
The dress she wore last night must have covered them unless I made them myself.
I couldn’t imagine why or how. Even if we tested the bedsprings, which I didn’t believe we had, I wasn’t the rough type.
No amount of alcohol would have changed that.
She caught my stare and drew her arm beneath the duvet in a fluid motion without offering an excuse. “Anyway, I guess I’ll get out of your hair. This is pretty awkward, isn’t it?” Her laughter was soft, half-hearted.
I couldn’t laugh, even the empty sort she managed to come up with. Is someone hurting her? Should I ask? Wait, what was I thinking? I didn’t know her. Her problems were not my problems.
Though if the person who gave her those bruises found out she was married, even in a drunken stupor, they might take it out on her.
I would hate to be his excuse to do worse.
“Is there anything I need to be worried about?” I asked rather than blurt out the concern bouncing through my head—a head that truly wasn’t up to the task of thinking about much of anything.
“I mean, I already said I’m ready to get an annulment,” she reminded me, lifting a sculpted shoulder. “I’m not sure what else I can say.”
Evasive. None of it boded well. In fact, it pointed toward a much larger issue. “Was there someone at the wedding you were trying to get away from? Is that what this is all about?”
“Excuse me?” She had the nerve to take offense, her shoulders rising around her ears, where a large pair of diamond studs sparkled. They were the real deal. “What are you trying to say?”
Waving a hand between us, I asked, “Was this whole thing between us a way of getting back at whoever bruised your arm? I need to know. I think it’s only fair.”
The way her nose wrinkled, I may as well have been last week’s leftovers forgotten in the back of the refrigerator—something nasty, disgusting.
“Well, I now understand why you didn’t have a plus one with you last night,” she concluded, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and tossing the duvet aside.
It was a shame she chose to do that exactly when she did because my heart stuttered at the sight of long, lean legs, perky tits encased in lace, a flat stomach, and a small waist that flared into full hips.
The sort of hips a man liked to sink his fingers into while…
If anything, the fact that I could muster up such thoughts in my pitiful condition was a victory in itself. “Don’t take it personally. We both live in the real world. You seem like a smart girl.”
“Thank you very much.”
She slid into a black dress that sculptured perfectly to her body as the fabric poured over her curves.
It had elbow-length sleeves—that would explain why I didn’t notice the bruising last night.
No doubt in my drunken state, I would have demanded answers before threatening to discuss with whoever left them on her otherwise unblemished skin.
It was one of the qualities that tended to come up when I had liquid courage running through my veins.
“I’ll be sure to speak kindly of you when I tell my grandchildren about my first husband,” she offered with a roll of her eyes in the mirror over the sleek, shining dresser.
I couldn’t get a read on her. Most women would fall over themselves kissing my ass, doing everything short of offering to suck my dick if it meant warming me toward them.
It finally hit me. “You don’t know who I am, do you?” I asked while she went about the business of finding her shoes and purse. We had stripped down and fallen asleep in a hurry after drunkenly stumbling in. An entire narrative existed in the debris strewn around the room.
My question stopped her dead. She slowly turned, her eyebrows practically leaving her forehead, they were arched so dramatically. “Did you seriously just ask me that? Next thing I know, you’ll tell me you’re a really big deal.” The sarcasm leaving her lips was real.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I scoffed. “What I meant was—”
She held up a hand. Unfortunately, it was the hand where I’d placed a cheap ring overnight.
I had to look at it while she almost growled, “Let me stop you there, Mr. Whoever You Are. No, I don’t have the first idea who you are, and that has nothing to do with whatever actually happened last night.
To be honest, I am not interested in who you are or how much money you have. ”
“Oh, no?” I asked, skeptical.
“No. The fact is, I’ve spent the past two years studying at Oxford University. Ever heard of it?”
“Yeah, we do hear about things like that in a little town like Las Vegas,” I retorted. “And now you sound exactly the way you accused me of sounding a minute ago.”
“The point is…” she continued, ice dripping from every word, “… I have not been back in the country long, and since your face is unfamiliar, I’m guessing you only came into your fame while I was gone.
So, whoever you are or whoever you think you are, it makes no difference to me. That’s all I meant.”
“Then allow me to educate you,” I offered. “I am not a man who can get away with scandals like the one we might have started last night. I need your word you aren’t going to turn this into news.”
“You have a very high opinion of yourself, don’t you? But don’t worry,” she continued before I could react. “Nobody needs to know. We can handle the whole thing quietly and quickly, Mr. Whoever You Are.”
Yeah, that needed to stop. “Vaughn Eastman.”
That got her. She could give me the cool-girl act all she wanted, but she knew the name. “As in Eastman Casino?”
With a smirk, I observed, “So you aren’t too high above the rest of us, after all.”
“You don’t need to worry, Eastman Casino,” she assured me while stepping into the bathroom.
The water ran in the sink while she continued, “I’m not interested in blackmailing you or dragging your name through the mud.
Like you said, this can be done quickly and quietly.
I won’t rake you over the coals or take you for everything you’ve got. ” Why did she still sound so combative?
When she stepped back into the room, she was using a towel to pat her cheeks dry.
Gone was the smudged makeup, leaving her fresh-faced, younger-looking.
She said she went to Oxford, right? Two years.
Graduate work? Practically a baby, eight years younger than me.
“Thank you for all the fun last night,” she announced.
“Really, I had a good time… at least, from what I remember.”
I wanted it over but on my terms. She was already halfway across the large room before I thought to ask, “Can I at least have your number, Oxford? It would help if we knew how to contact each other.”
“It’s Nova,” she reminded me in a dry voice, rattling off her number once I found my phone in the back pocket of my dress pants. By the time I finished programming it as a contact, her hand was on the door knob.