by Rose Wulf
Angela swallowed the sarcastic, biting response that wanted so badly to roll off her tongue, and replied, “Thank you.” She didn’t think she could manage to return his actual greeting with a straight face, so instead, she offered a more sincere, “I hope your flight was easy.”
“Easy, yes,” Daniel said with a tired chuckle. “But a little longer than I’d have liked. Although it’s nothing compared to the flight from Paris to Texas!”
Right, Paris. She’d almost forgotten that was where he’d flown in from originally. He’d been making fairly regular visits to her Uncle Nicholas, who lived in Texas. Daniel apparently lived in a smaller community outside of Paris, and somehow the idea of him living a life of luxury in Europe while they suffered only frustrated Angela more.
“Have you called your family yet?” Lillian asked as they all moved toward the living room. “You should check in and let them know your plane landed safely.”
“I did, I did,” Daniel assured her. “They say ‘hi,’ of course. I’m hoping to fly them all out here for Christmas this year, actually. You know my youngest hasn’t even been to America?”
Gee, I wonder why.
“That would be lovely,” Lillian replied. “We’ve got plenty of room here for all of you. We’ll have two new additions this Christmas, too. I’d love it if you could all come.”
“Ah, that’s right!” Daniel exclaimed as he settled into one of the armchairs. “You’re expecting another baby in the family soon, right?”
“Madison’s due in June,” Lillian replied warmly.
Angela did her best not to tune out the surface conversation, painfully struck by how sad it was that they were having the conversation at all. She really needed to get over the fact that this man, who was genetically related to her, wasn’t nearly as close as family was supposed to be. It would help, she mused, if her mother wasn’t pushing her to call him “uncle.”
“Blake and Brooke should be here in time for dinner,” Lillian was saying when Angela finally realized that, in her effort not to tune out the conversation, that was exactly what she’d done. Something specific had pulled her out of her thoughts, she was sure.
Her phone was ringing in her pocket. The conversation lulled and all eyes shifted toward her. Fumbling to extract the apparently offensive device, Angela stood and mumbled, “Sorry, sorry, I’ll just take this outside.”
Christopher was the first to speak again as Angela stepped through the sliding doors, simultaneously putting the phone to her ear. She hadn’t even bothered to check the Caller ID. But it was already too late, so she had to hope it wasn’t someone she might have wanted to ignore. “Hello?”
“Okay, baby, you’ve made your point,” Geoff declared on the other end of the line.
Angela came up short, her eyes widening. Geoff? Really? After over a week, her stupid, cheating ex-boyfriend chose now to reach out to her? The gratitude she’d started to feel toward her mystery caller vanished as if it had never been. “Funny, I thought my point involved never talking to you again,” she replied, turning and leaning back against the railing. “Why are you calling me?” And why am I not hanging up?
“I figured I’d given you enough time to cool down,” Geoff explained. “Besides, I took the opportunity to think about how that argument went, and I can see why you got so upset. I swear that wasn’t my intention.”
He can’t be serious. Angela sighed. “Are you saying you called to apologize? It’s been nearly two weeks, Geoff, what’s the point?”
“I’d think the point is pretty obvious,” Geoff replied. “C’mon, baby, let’s not have this conversation over the phone. Come home and let’s work it out.”
Angela froze, incredulity flooding her system as she finally figured out his angle. He wasn’t just calling in some weird attempt to clear his conscience. He was actually under the impression their relationship was salvageable. She couldn’t entirely even believe it.
“Angie?” Geoff pushed when she didn’t respond immediately.
Pulling in a breath, Angela straightened and spun, putting her back to the living room on the other side of the glass. “Listen to me very carefully, Geoff,” she bit out, deliberately keeping her voice low. “You and I are completely done. Finished. Over. History. There’s no conversation left to be had. You’re free to take however many willing women to bed as you want. Do. Not. Call. Me. Again.” She jerked the phone from her ear before he could say anything, stabbed the bright red button, and held her breath as she waited for the need to scream to pass her by.
She glanced at the clock on the screen, fervently hoping it was time to go get Vaughn, and the need got a little stronger when she saw she still had at least an hour to go. An hour. An entire hour where she would be stuck sitting and smiling in a room with a stranger, now having to simultaneously deal with the awkwardness of his presence and her renewed fury over the situation with Geoff. It would never work.
“Angela?” Lillian called gently from behind her.
Dragging in a breath, Angela turned, already opening her mouth to lie through her teeth about some last-minute obligation that would get her out of the house.
Lillian didn’t give her the chance. “We’re going to go over some of the records. I thought we should get to it before you left to pick up Vaughn. Come back inside.” It was said like a request, as though she assumed she’d done her daughter a favor, but Angela suspected the tone would get much more commanding if she tried to escape.
Returning her phone to her pocket, Angela sighed again and started forward. There would be no escape, so there was no use struggling. If she just pasted a smile on her face, focused on the history she was about to learn, and spoke only when spoken to, she would probably survive the hour.
She hoped.
It still felt like a miracle when she finally got out of the house.
“So, basically,” Angela summarized as she drove, “my family has exhausted themselves just to learn this all started like a bad movie.” It was possible, in a day or two, she’d be more interested in the tragic-love-story-turned-bloody-war that was, apparently, her family’s history. It was also possible she was just feeling a little edgy and hadn’t yet had the opportunity to release any of her pent-up frustration. She was fighting just to keep her tone from being unnecessarily bitchy because Vaughn didn’t deserve to take the brunt of her bad mood.
“You already suspected that, though, didn’t you?” Vaughn asked as he shoved his required nametag into his pants pockets.
“Yeah,” she acknowledged. “It’s just messier than that. It looks like one of us—one of the brothers—fell in love with one of them, but she had a brother who disapproved. They got engaged and her brother turned right around and killed him in broad daylight.”
“That’s harsh. Doesn’t sound too complicated, though. What’s the catch?”
Angela turned onto Vaughn’s street and slowed on reflex. “The families got involved, obviously. There’s a paragraph that suggests the weather-controller’s family was outraged over the murder, even willing to see him punished for the crime. But the elemental sister—their me, I guess—got in the middle and somehow got herself killed. After that, all hell broke loose.”
Vaughn was silent for a long second, even after Angela cut the engine. She looked over at him curiously. His seatbelt slid away from him as he met her gaze and quietly said, “You know, there’s a reason some things are as cliché as they are. Like that story. It doesn’t sound incredibly original, but I can see how it would happen, and even how it might blow out of proportion like it did.” He paused, but he was clearly not done. He reached for the door release. “So do me a favor, will you? Don’t die on me.”
When he climbed out of the car, Angela felt like he took all the air with him. She couldn’t do anything other than stare after him, watching as he jogged up to his condo and let himself in. He didn’t wait for her, because it was the plan that she’d just wait in the car while he changed into more comfortable clothes before they headed to
his mother’s for dinner. As a result, Angela suddenly had time to kill. Time, specifically, to spend thinking over what Vaughn had just said.
“Don’t die on me.”
His parting words echoed in the car, bouncing around the interior of the Mercedes like a boomerang. There hadn’t been anything even remotely light or teasing in what he’d said or the way he’d said it. There was no way she could brush the comment off as any kind of misplaced joke. He’d been completely serious. What had prompted him to say that? Was it the story? She really had no way to be sure, but she definitely wanted to know. She wanted to know why he’d said that and why it hit her so powerfully.
What was going on with them, anyway? It occurred to her, as she sat in her car and debated the way he’d made his exit, that she didn’t truly know how to define them anymore. They were certainly still friends, but they weren’t quite as limited as they’d been the day before. On the other hand, they hadn’t talked about anything like dating and they hadn’t done more than kiss. All of which left her thoroughly confused.
Okay, so maybe I should start with figuring out what I want us to be. That seemed like a rational concept. Far less daunting. If she were being honest with herself—or if she just listened to her best friend—she knew what she wanted. She’d had feelings for him for years, and if the incident in the forest the day before had taught her anything, it was that those feelings had grown. She was a little afraid to examine them any closer, but she knew she cared about Vaughn. She cared quite a lot about Vaughn. Still, there was something oddly intimidating about adding any kind of a label. Did she want to be his girlfriend? Was she ready to start dating again? I don’t really have the greatest track record with boyfriends.
That was exactly where that thought process spiraled.
“You know,” Vaughn said as he ducked into the passenger’s seat once more, startling her back to reality, “you should probably have locked the doors behind me.”
Angela jumped, immediately kicking herself, and laughed awkwardly. “That was fast!” she exclaimed before she could think better of the comment.
Vaughn tugged his door shut and shifted enough to arch an eyebrow over at her. “Angie, is everything all right?”
She pulled in a breath, smiled, and nodded. “Of course, you just startled me is all.”
His frown told her he saw past her surface-truth. He was frighteningly good at that. “What is it?” he asked, re-buckling his seatbelt and skipping right over the part where they argued about whether or not everything really was fine. The cheater.
“I was just thinking, really,” she insisted anyway, still too scared to start that conversation. Instead, she turned the engine over, checked her mirrors, and eased out of the parking space his Audi usually occupied. It occurred to her to check the parking lot for Riley’s Porsche, but she saw no Porsche at all. “Is Riley not home?”
“Didn’t look like it,” Vaughn replied. He paused barely a beat before adding, “You’ve been lost in thought a lot lately.” He didn’t phrase it like a question or bother repeating himself. The question was fairly obvious.
Chewing on her lip for a second, Angela countered, “I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.” That much was completely true, thank goodness. And it reminded her of a perfect distraction. “For example, when do I get to learn about what happened to you on Friday?” Probably not during the drive to his mother’s, but it was worth asking.
Vaughn sighed. “The short version is, I confronted Eric on the street and he shot me with lightning. It hurt at the moment, but it barely left a mark. I probably didn’t even need the burn cream I put on when I got home.”
Angela nearly swung her entire torso toward him in shock as she exclaimed, “What?”
“Maybe I should’ve warned you,” Vaughn said pointedly as Angela straightened the car. He’d braced himself in the passenger seat and Angela couldn’t help but wonder if she’d looked similar on the dirt road the day before.
“Forget warnings,” Angela replied as she turned onto the residential street their families lived on. “What do you mean it barely left a mark? How direct of a hit was it?”
“He had both hands on my chest. But it was like I’d only held a hot pan to my skin for a few seconds.”
Angela eased to a stop in the driveway, her head spinning. “That’s impossible,” she mumbled. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Vaughn agreed, his voice almost irritatingly calm. “And I figured it’d just upset you, which was why I hadn’t told you about it yet.”
“Of course, it upsets me! You could’ve died!” And she didn’t want him to die on her, either, but she refused to think about why. Why was scary.
Vaughn’s hand landed on her shoulder, catching her attention and magically forcing a deep breath into her lungs. “I’m sorry, Angie. I just figured the other part was worth mentioning, given what happened yesterday.”
“It’s all worth mentioning,” Angela said with a pointed, inelegant sniffle. “Oh, God.” A tear rolled down her cheek and she reached up, wiping it away. “Now I’m a mess. I can’t go in like this.”
The hand on her shoulder slid back, tangling in her hair as he tugged her forward, and then Vaughn’s lips were over hers again. He kissed her deeply, his tongue reuniting with hers and stroking fire into her blood. Everything else in her head disappeared, as if her senses became engulfed by him. The subtle strength of his grip, the heat of his presence, the taste of his kiss.
“You look beautiful to me,” he whispered when he pulled back, a faint smirk tipping his lips for the second he held her gaze.
He was halfway around the car before she finally gathered herself enough to scramble to her feet, catching up with him at the start of the curved walkway that led to the front door. It was day one of whatever they were becoming and already he was wreaking havoc with her emotions—and her hormones—like a pro. It was exciting and terrifying at the same time.
****
“Thank you so much for dinner, Mrs. Prescott,” Angela said politely as she and Vaughn followed his mother into the living room. Their dishes were piled in the sink in the kitchen, where Vanessa had insisted they leave them, claiming it would give her something to do later. So far, the visit had been good, but she’d yet to broach the subject of his car, so Vaughn knew that was about to change. It was only a matter of time and, with his mother, he suspected time was about up.
“Please, Angela,” Vanessa said with an honest smile, “you don’t need to thank me. I love having you over.” Everyone sat, Vanessa claiming a corner of the loveseat and leaving the large, curved sofa for them. The conversation lapsed only long enough for them to settle before she said, “So, tell me about this car accident. What really happened?”
Even though he knew Angela was looking at the floor, Vaughn swore he felt her studying him as if waiting for a sign about how he wanted to answer the question. He wouldn’t have been able to blame her. She knew his parents knew her family’s secret. She also knew he tried not to get too into the details. He didn’t see any point in upsetting them unnecessarily. It wasn’t until that moment he realized he seemed to fall back on that argument a lot. Maybe I’ll try to work on that. Eventually. When he could afford to prioritize something so ridiculous.
Vaughn replied, “We were driving down a dirt road north of town and Eric followed us.”
“Eric?” Vanessa’s sharp blue gaze slid to Angela as she asked, “That boy you were dating when we moved to town? The one who was using you?”
Vaughn scowled and aimed his glare at the coffee table in front of him.
“Yeah,” Angela confirmed. She apparently decided to take over explaining the incident, because she added, “He rammed into us a few times in his Bentley before we … got away.” Vaughn noticed her hesitation, and though he was grateful for it, he was sure his mother had noticed it, too.
Vanessa’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “How did you manage to get away? Those roads are narrow.”
“W
e had help,” Vaughn offered calmly.
Sighing and sitting back against the cushions, Vanessa said, “It’s a shame those sociopaths aren’t in prison.”
“Tell me about it,” Angela mumbled.
Vaughn’s phone went off half a heartbeat later and he knew, without reason, it wasn’t good news. He couldn’t think of a call he should be expecting and when he saw Riley’s number on the screen, his stomach clenched. She knew he was in his mother’s company. “Hello?” he greeted.
“I swear it wasn’t my fault,” Riley said quickly.
Vaughn stood, the pit in his stomach deepening, and crossed the room for no other reason than to walk off some energy. “What happened?”
“It’s your condo,” Riley hedged. He could barely hear her over a veritable cacophony of background noise. Then he wasn’t so sure he even needed to. “It’s sort of … on fire.”
Reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose, Vaughn asked, “What do you mean ‘sort of’? Please tell me you’ve called the fire department.”
“I didn’t,” Riley replied. She seemed to realize how terrible a response that was, because she hurried to add, “They were here already when I got back, I mean! See, I wasn’t even here when it happened! And, well, I mean ‘sort of’ as in ‘it is,’ as in it really is on fire. You should probably come home. Or, well, back, anyway … we’ll definitely need somewhere to stay for the night. For a lot of nights. Hey! If I find a place nearby, you can crash with me. It’ll be like returning the favor!”
Vaughn sighed and dragged his free hand through his hair. “I’ll be there. Thanks for calling.”
“Wait!” Riley cried before he could disconnect. She was speaking by the time he’d returned the phone to his ear. “Will Nessy be coming with you?”
“Probably.” And it would be good if you forgot that nickname when you see her. His mother, of course, absolutely despised the nickname Riley had given her. Riley, it seemed, had a thing for unlikable nicknames.