by Megan Crane
By the time Vaughn found a taxi out—in the late afternoon that was already edged with dusk—and bundled both him and Devyn into it, the irritable mood he’d been nursing all the way from Nashville to this snowy mountain resort town in Wyoming had pretty much disappeared.
He opted not to question why that was.
But he knew. It was Devyn.
He told himself it was the fact that Devyn hadn’t seemed to recognize him. Oh, she knew who he was—even if she’d pretended otherwise for a minute—but when she looked at him, she saw Vaughn, the guy she’d almost had to call brother a million years ago. She didn’t see Vaughn Taylor, current backstage country sensation, thanks to all the hit songs he wrote and watched the best and brightest country stars sing to great acclaim.
Vaughn could tell the difference. There was a certain way that people looked at him when they knew what he did for a living. A certain slyness in the way they glanced at him, then away, like they thought he wouldn’t notice the uptick in intensity. And then, one way or another, they always brought up the latest single he’d worked on within the first few minutes, without fail.
Just like back in the day, however, when Devyn looked at him all she saw was how he and his father might potentially mess up her life.
He wasn’t sure what it said about him that he found it kind of refreshing. Or maybe it was that her eyes were still that impossible blue, brighter than the Wyoming winter sky against all that snow, especially when her hair was nearly black. They’d messed with him when she’d been a teenager—and very nearly his stepsister. They weren’t any less potent now.
Vaughn told himself that it was a good thing that they’d run into each other again as adults, because he could simply appreciate the fact that she was pretty. He didn’t have to make it a whole thing.
He congratulated himself on what a goddamned adult he was as the taxi driver aimed his four-wheel drive out of the airport parking lot, and headed toward the little resort town of Jackson.
“What are you up to these days?” Vaughn asked in his most genial manner, the one he used on managers and country pop princesses alike. They all melted before him like butter.
Devyn, of course, frowned as if he’d insulted her.
“I run an office in Chicago,” she replied from beside him, where she’d managed to put more space between them than should have been possible, there in the back seat of the hardy little SUV. “It’s a small software company. I do the books and keep things running smoothly. And yes, before you ask, I’m very happy.”
He could have taken that at face value. Instead, he lounged back against his seat and grinned at her because he couldn’t come up with a good reason to keep from poking at her. Not that he tried all that hard. “Is that like when people tell you they’re nice?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Oh, you know. One thing you can be sure of is that when someone tells you how nice and sweet they are? They’re mean as a pit of snakes and twice as likely to bite you. Guaranteed.”
Devyn let out the exasperated sigh he remembered too well. Vaughn had made a career out of music and still, that sound was the best little song he’d ever heard.
“People think nobody could possibly be happy unless they’re doing something flashy and overwrought.” Devyn rolled her eyes. “We’re all supposed to traipse around with bucket lists in our back pockets. But the truth is, not everybody dreams of running off to Nashville to become a country star. Some people dream of stability. A home that’s all theirs, that no one can take away on a whim. Things they can depend on.”
“You think I ran off to Nashville to become a country star?” Vaughn asked, laughing.
Because he hadn’t run, exactly. It had been more of a focused sidle.
“Wasn’t that a guitar that you put in the trunk? Or do you have a really oddly shaped pair of skis with you?”
“I’ve always liked to play a little guitar, darlin’. That doesn’t mean I think I’m the second coming of Sam Hunt.”
“So that’s a yes, you did run off to Nashville to become a country star.” Devyn smiled sweetly, which was about as convincing as her supposed happiness. And should have rolled right off his back, yet...didn’t. “It’s okay. Everybody dreams different things. That’s all I’m saying.”
It had been a long time since Vaughn had thought too much about the dreams he’d had back when he’d been a brand-new college graduate with zero interest in the paths available to him with his political science degree and too many loans. Of course he’d wanted to be a star when he’d moved to Nashville. Who didn’t? He’d even tried his hand at it, putting together a band, playing shows, touring around.
It turned out he’d hated it. Every second of it.
He hated band politics. He hated the necessary schmoozing with skeptical bar owners. He hated trying to win over crowds of drunks who just wanted the band to go away so they could turn up the Kenny Chesney on the jukebox. He hated touring, it turned out. The precious little payoff that he got from standing up on a stage in some bar somewhere when the sound worked right and the crowd was actually listening for two minutes didn’t outweigh all that schlepping around from venue to venue, not for him. And Vaughn had understood that if he couldn’t find a way to love the thing that was likely to comprise the better part of any halfway decent career in music, he wasn’t cut out for it.
It had been a lowering realization.
But then he’d realized that there was more than one way to love music, and he was more than welcome to indulge his love in any way he could. What he loved was playing around on his guitar, putting melodies together, and messing around with them in the studio. That didn’t require any touring.
He’d sold his first song not long after his single attempt at a tour, and he’d never looked back.
And Vaughn figured there was some part of him that should have been offended by Devyn Voss’s half-hearted attempt to be generous about his supposed failures, when he was one of the most sought-after hit makers in the business these days.
But the damnedest thing was, he thought it was cute.
Entirely too cute, if he was honest.
“I know how you grew up,” he told her, sounding gruff and unlike himself. Or too much like his real self, instead of the easy, unbothered hit maker persona he used like a second skin these days, which was...more than a little disconcerting. “I’m not surprised that you made yourself a life you can control.”
He expected her to bristle at that. Because the old Devyn would have found sympathy far more unacceptable than a little sniping. And the old Vaughn would have acquiesced, happily, because he hadn’t cared which was which. It had all been Devyn and those blue eyes and that soft mouth of hers he didn’t think she knew showed her vulnerability.
And here, in this car as the winter sun dripped toward the mountains, Vaughn couldn’t seem to remember why they’d both gone to such trouble to keep distance and spite and good old-fashioned dislike between them.
“People say ‘control freak’ like it’s a bad thing,” Devyn said, and he could tell she meant that to be funny. Light and airy, maybe. But instead it fell heavy between them, like all that history he couldn’t seem to view in quite the same way he always had before. Not tonight, when everyone was a little too grown up.
“People say a lot of things,” he agreed. Still too gruff. Too quiet. And much too intimate, surely. “I don’t know why you’d listen to them.”
He felt something shift then, in that thick space between them. He didn’t think he could put a name on it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to ruin it by naming it.
Devyn clearly noticed it too, because she pulled away. She folded herself more tightly against the window, and Vaughn decided to take that as a compliment.
Because however much she was getting to him, he was obviously returning that favor. He shifted in his seat before his body announced his impure intentions a little too heartily.
“So my mom really isn’t playing with this ghost o
f Christmas past thing,” Devyn said, a kind of bright determination in her voice. She even frowned as she stared out the window at all the snow and mountains, as if all her focus was on her mother’s madness and none at all was in this vehicle, with him. Vaughn doubted it. “She’s invited every single ex she can. Including my father.”
That threw him. It got him thinking less about all the many ways they could celebrate the fact they were both adults now and more about the fun facts about Melody Grey and her life choices that he’d thought he’d never need to pull up again.
“Isn’t your father...?”
“The president of an outlaw biker club out in California? Yes. Yes, he sure is.” Devyn’s smile looked tighter. “He’ll have to drive here, I guess. I don’t think he’s allowed to board planes.”
Vaughn shook his head. “I always forget that.”
Devyn cracked out a laugh. “Because you spend so much time thinking about my parents? Why would you remember anything about him at all?”
There was no reason that should scratch at Vaughn. He actually hadn’t thought about her parents at all since the last time he’d seen her. As she’d said, why would he? But there was something about the way she’d said that. As if no one cared, and he was just part and parcel of that big passel of no one.
He found he really didn’t like that.
Though he couldn’t have said why.
“I can’t actually believe he’s coming,” Devyn continued, and there was something about the way she said it that also got to Vaughn. As if she didn’t expect a response. As if she was used to simply not getting them from the people around her. “I was kind of under the impression that he never wanted to lay eyes on my mother again.” She seemed to remember where she was. She threw a look at Vaughn, then back out the window at the sunset. “But I would have said that was true of pretty much all her boyfriends and fiancés, and yet most of them are coming. Isn’t that crazy?”
“I think we have to take this seriously.” Vaughn shifted, turning so he was facing her in the back seat of the taxi. “Do you think your mother is really looking to settle down with someone?”
Devyn considered. “Yes. Believe it or not, that’s always been her goal.”
Vaughn believed it. But that didn’t mean Melody was any good at trying.
“Do you think she’s planning to choose someone from her guest list?”
“The reality is that she could choose a waiter from one of the restaurants she goes to one of these nights.” Devyn shrugged. “That’s just how she is. But I do think it’s her very real intention to revisit all her old loves and choose from among them.”
“Regardless of what the men in question want.”
Devyn’s brows rose at that. “I’m guessing that if they don’t have any interest in my mother, they wouldn’t come. I’m going to have to assume that anyone who shows up to take part in this circus is declaring their interest.”
Vaughn thought of his father and had to repress a wince. “Fair enough.”
“Your father is obviously one of the ones making that declaration.” Devyn’s smile looked a little more forced, if possible. “Or you wouldn’t be here, would you?”
“You know, all I wanted was for him to find someone. He took my mom’s death really hard. I never thought he’d settle down again with anyone, but then he met your mother.” Vaughn shrugged. “And I thought, well, why not give it a shot?”
“That’s not how I remember it at all. You were actively opposed to them being together, if memory serves.”
“If they were happy, I was happy.”
“Again, not the way I remember it.”
“That’s how I remember it, Devyn.”
“Maybe, Vaughn, you shouldn’t go around revising history when you’re sitting with someone who lived it. And remembers what actually happened.”
Vaughn eyed her. “At the end of the day they weren’t happy. Whether I liked it or didn’t like it.”
He thought she might jump all over that, too, but she looked something like contemplative instead. She ducked her head a bit so she could keep her chin in her scarf, and he found himself a little too taken with the way the sunset played over her nearly black hair. She’d worn it long all those years ago, but now it was in one of those cute little pixie cuts that only made her eyes look bigger. It should have been unfair.
“I don’t actually know if my mother has ever been happy,” Devyn said after a moment, in that same quiet, too-intimate way that Vaughn knew was only going to get them into trouble. “Isn’t that sad? I’ve seen her excited. She gets excited pretty easily, actually. But happy?”
“Is anyone happy?” Vaughn asked, and smiled when Devin’s gaze slid to his, in case she thought that was somehow revealing. “I think people have moments of happiness, sure. But maybe that’s all you get.”
Her eyes were much too blue and he didn’t know why it felt like she could see straight through him. It wasn’t like they’d been close ten years ago. It wasn’t like she knew anything about his life. She should have been a stranger, nothing more.
But she looked at him as if she knew him. “So things aren’t going well for you? Is that what this is?”
Vaughn felt...disarmed. And he didn’t know what to do about it. He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt anything like it in his life. Certainly not since he’d made his name in Nashville. He knew music too well. He knew hooks and bridges. He knew what a chord could do and how to work a chorus.
But he had no idea what to do with the way Devyn Voss looked at him, as if she could see all the places he’d ever let himself down, and forgave him each and every one. His chest felt tight.
“I don’t suffer from a lot of self-doubt, darlin’,” he told her, still smiling, though he was beginning to wonder if that was desperation rather than his usual defense. “Should I?”
“I don’t know how to answer that, Vaughn.”
And Vaughn would have said he was kidding. About all of this. He would have said he was happy. He would have meant it, an hour ago. The only negative thing on his radar had been this ridiculous party of Melody Grey’s, and how annoyed he was that it had given his father some false hope about building bridges with the woman who had broken his widowed heart ten years ago.
Maybe ‘annoyed’ wasn’t the right word.
But now he was sitting in the back seat of a taxi with the only girl in all the world who hadn’t been impressed with him when he was nothing but a college student and certainly wasn’t any more impressed with him now, and he wasn’t sure what he felt about anything.
Maybe this was why he was so adamant that his father stay the hell away from Melody Grey, because this nonsense clearly ran in the family. And it couldn’t be healthy to be churned up like this. It couldn’t end well.
It hadn’t.
And you’re definitely worried about your father, not yourself, a dark little voice inside him chimed in. You’re really convincing.
Luckily, Vaughn’s entire life was making decisions. And he was more right than he was wrong, or huge country stars wouldn’t come to him when they wanted a new, brilliant single to sweep the charts.
Why did he need to remind himself of that?
“I think the only reasonable course of action is for you and me to decide, right now, who’s going to win this little game,” he said, every inch of him the man who’d flatly refused to do the bidding of the last country queen who’d wanted to work with him. My way or the highway, ma’am, he’d told her, to her face, when he’d been well aware no one had dared cross her in years. She’d cursed him. Then she’d done what he’d told her, and she’d been at number one on the country chart for three months. He turned all of that on Devyn, and told himself it was as much for her own good as his. “Then do everything in our power to make sure that happens.”
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that. It’s not up to us.”
“You just said your mother would be happy to marry a waiter. We can always pick the waiter, if that’s wha
t she wants. Just so long as we point her in the right direction.”
Unlike certain queens of country music, Devyn looked singularly unimpressed with him.
“My mother is a problem to you, Vaughn. I get that. But she’s still my mother. I love her.” He thought her shrug looked helpless, but she kept going. “And you might not believe in happiness, but I do. And I want her to have it, even if I think she’s going about it in a catastrophic way.”
“You don’t know if she’s capable of happiness.”
“I don’t have to like her choices to know that she should get to make them, all on her own.” She laughed a little, but not as if she thought anything was funny. “And believe me, she doesn’t need anyone’s permission to do exactly that.”
“She makes my father miserable,” Vaughn said baldly. “That’s what I care about. That’s why I’m here. I don’t want him to have to go through that again.”
“Maybe she made your father miserable, many years ago,” Devyn corrected him. “Though I’m not really sure children are the best judges of what’s happening in their parents’ relationships.”
“You were a teenager. I wasn’t. I remember.”
“Oh, come on.” Devyn turned to face him, and she looked...almost pitying, which couldn’t be right. “You think you really know what went down between them? How could you?”
“I know that my dad wasn’t solid going into it, and he was even worse when it ended. I have no reason to think that changed.”
She didn’t quite roll her eyes, but he felt as if she had. “For all you know, they’ll take one look at each other and drift off into a sea of near-marital bliss, never to be seen again.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”
“You don’t know what’s going to happen,” Devyn retorted, sitting back in her seat. “And here’s what I know about my mother, Vaughn. Any attempt to control her backfires. Spectacularly. A lesson I never seem to learn myself.”
Vaughn had the craziest urge to reach over and get his hands on Devyn, then, since they were talking about spectacular backfiring and other such mistakes. There was something about the electricity crackling around between them. Heat, hunger. It all seemed like the same thing, wrapped up in the last of the light over the mountains and the thick, dark night rushing in. When he knew it couldn’t be anything like that because this was Devyn Voss.