Vaughn's Pride: California Cowboys

by Selena Laurence

  “I saw the painting you did,” she began.

  “And?” he asked softly.

  “It’s beautiful. Absolutely stunning.”

  “I had great inspiration,” he answered.

  Why did he have to be so damn charming?

  “I’ve realized something that I think is important if we’re going to try this—” She gestured between them. “I’m ashamed to say I’ve spent the last six years waiting for my seventeen-year-old boyfriend to come back.”

  He looked at her, his head tipped to one side as he tried to process what she meant.

  “And see, you’re never going to be that guy again, and I shouldn’t even want you to be. You’ve had six years of life, your parents died, you went to college, there’ve been friends, and…women…and experiences. You can’t be my old boyfriend.”

  He looked at her, and she saw flashes of so many things—panic, confusion, determination.

  “I’m not explaining this the best, but you’re not the only one who’s made mistakes. When I lost you, I never once considered the new you wasn’t damaged, just different. I kept grieving over having lost the old Vaughn, and I never bothered to look at the new Vaughn.”

  He nodded, and she could see him beginning to puzzle it out.

  “We’re not the same people we were at seventeen.”

  He gave her a sad smile then. “No, we’re not.”

  “But I think we keep trying to go back to them.”

  He took his cap off and ran a hand through his hair, leaning his elbows on his thighs as he looked at her.

  “This is a lot of deep for a guy, you know,” he joked.

  “Is it? See I don’t really know you at this point, so I have no idea what’s too deep and what isn’t.”

  “Come on, T. That’s not true, of course you know me. I know the last few years haven’t been what we would have liked, but we spent a ton of time together. Going out, working on your dad’s place, hanging around watching movies.”

  “Right. All those things that we did when we were teenagers, but without the sex.”

  He scratched his head again. “What do you want me to say here? You know me better than anyone else on this planet. But if there’s something you think you don’t know, just ask, baby. I’m an open book to you.”

  She growled in frustration. “I know about you. I don’t know you. You at twenty-four. You who’s been to college and lived away from home. You who paints pictures like that.” She looked at him with an ache in her heart. “I didn’t know you painted pictures like that, and I think there are a lot of other things I don’t know.”

  He watched her and finally nodded. When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse with emotion. “I’m not sure how to introduce you to that guy.”

  She moved closer, reaching out to wrap her fingers around his where they lay on his leg. She watched the shock of hair that fell over his eye and curbed the desire to brush it back. That was what the old T.J. did. New T.J. needed to figure out what she did for Vaughn. And what he did for her.

  “I think we need to get the hell out of here,” she told him. “We need to get away from where old T.J. and Vaughn have so much history we can’t see past it. We need a fresh start.”

  “You want to move?” He looked skeptical.

  “No. I want to go on a damn vacation.”

  The smile that spread across his face was slow and warm like syrup. And when it finally broke all the way, it was as though the sun had come out from behind the clouds—brilliant, sparkling, and hot.

  “A vacation? Just the two of us? That’s not slow.” He raised an eyebrow.

  “Agreed. I don’t think it was slow we need so much as fresh—different—new. We don’t need to find the old us. We need to create a new us.”

  Without warning, he reached over and lifted her by the waist, depositing her on his lap, her knees on either side of his thighs.

  His bare chest radiated heat, and she couldn’t help but run her fingertips down his pecs and onto his abs, her gaze following her touch.

  “Have I told you that I love the way you think?” he asked as he nuzzled her neck.

  “I think you love anything that might result in you getting laid,” she chided.

  “Theodora Jayne.” He kissed her on the nose. “You have so little faith in me.”

  “But I want to get more,” she answered. “I want to have faith in you—in us. I want to learn everything about the new you and grow to have faith in him. I have a feeling he might be a really great guy if I just give him a chance.”

  He ran his hands up and down her hips, and kissed her on the lips, firm, decisive, but gentle and forgiving too. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  “For?”

  “For giving me this chance. For believing in us enough to look for ways to make it work. For being you.”

  “Where should we go on our trip?”

  “How about wherever the wind takes us?”

  “I’ll get the time off arranged this afternoon.”

  “I’ll pack the truck. Can you leave in the morning?”

  She nodded, and they sealed it with a kiss.

  16

  “Vaughn? What are you doing out here all by yourself?” his mother asked as she looked into the barn stall where he was holed up with a sketchpad and a bad attitude.

  “Nothing,” he mumbled.

  “Didn’t T.J. come home with you?” she asked.

  “No.”

  She leaned her elbows on the edge of the gate and looked down at him where he slouched in a pile of hay, his head propped up against the side of the stall.

  “You guys in an argument?”

  He sighed. “No, she’s just been really…” He struggled to find a word that wouldn’t get him in trouble. “Cranky the last few days. It’s like anything I do or say is wrong, and she just keeps complaining she has a headache and she doesn’t want to hang out. Then today on the bus, she wouldn’t sit by me, and when we got to our stop, she got off and ran all the way to her driveway and just left me standing there.

  Vaughn’s mother nodded. “Headaches, huh?”

  “Yeah, and I’d swear she was crying when she got off the bus today too.”

  “Honey. You and T.J. are thirteen now, you know.”

  Vaughn looked at his mother with an expression that clearly said, Duh.

  She chuckled. “What I’m saying is that certain things happen to girls at this age.”

  Vaughn’s eyes widened in horror.

  “It sounds to me like T.J. might have started her period, and she’s not feeling so hot. Maybe even a little embarrassed or confused about how to handle it.”

  “Oh my God, Mom, stop!”

  “Honey, it’s a fact of life, and when you have friends who are girls, and eventually when you have girlfriends, you’re going to have to get used to it and learn the warning signs.”

  “I’m going to throw up,” Vaughn wailed as he rolled onto his side and buried his head in his hands.

  His mother laughed at him, obviously completely unsympathetic to the distress she was causing her youngest son.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll stop torturing you, but here’s my advice for how to handle T.J. right now—be sweet. Instead of asking her to cliff jump at the pond with you, ask her if she wants to go get ice cream downtown. And maybe a night or two of watching movies instead of camping in the fields. You’d be surprised what a difference it’ll make if you just go easy on her for a few days. Then everything will go back to normal.”

  Vaughn mumbled something into his arm, and his mother laughed again. “Okay, I think my work here is done. Now, why don’t you come inside and help me get dinner ready, then if you call T.J. and ask her to ice cream, I’ll drive you two downtown.”

  He stood and brushed off the hay stuck to his clothes and hair.

  “Ice cream?”

  “Ice cream.”

  He sighed. “All right. But I’d rather cliff jump.”

  His mom wrapped an arm around his shoulders
as he came out of the stall. “I know, but that’s why you have two older brothers. They’ll always cliff jump with you.”

  When Vaughn pulled up to T.J.’s house first thing on Thursday morning, he couldn’t help but think that his luck had taken a distinct turn for the better. An entire week alone with T.J. on the road. They could go anywhere, do anything. And he realized in that moment that even a few weeks earlier and he would have shunned the chance to do this with her because of his leg. But he’d been swimming a few times, and he’d brought the running blade along, in case they wanted to work with it. With short rests every hour or so, he could walk long distances, and he’d even taken to wearing shorts sometimes around town. No one seemed to pay him much attention when he did.

  Now he had the chance to spend his days and nights with the woman of his dreams, and he’d be damned if he’d let a missing limb keep him from it. Yes, things were looking up.

  He knocked on her front door and heard her yell to come on in.

  Inside her entryway, he found not one but two large suitcases.

  “T.?” he called.

  “Almost ready!” she answered from the back of the house where her bedroom was located.

  “You know we’re only going for a week,” he yelled as he lifted both bags, deciding that being balanced, even if it was by what felt like bags of bricks, was better than being lopsided.

  She was hollering something back when he walked out to the truck and loaded the bags in the backseat of his king cab. He turned to go back inside and there she was, standing on the porch in the tiniest pair of shorts he’d ever seen, a halter top that he was pretty sure didn’t include a bra underneath, and a smile.

  He grinned back at her as his cock began to rise to the occasion. Damn, she was beautiful.

  “Hi there,” he said, feeling like a lovesick teen. And he ought to know what that felt like, because he’d been one with this very woman.

  “Can you come get something down from the shelf in the closet for me?” she asked. “My mother has my stepladder, and I don’t feel like dragging a dining room chair into the closet.”

  “Anything you want, beautiful,” he said as he climbed the stairs and wound an arm around her waist.

  She pressed her palm to his scruffy cheek and kissed his lips. “I can’t wait to be alone together,” she whispered.

  “Truer words,” he murmured back. “Now ”—he smacked her on the ass making her squeal—“let’s get moving before I decide to have a staycation right here in your bed.”

  “We need to go over the ground rules,” T.J. said as they started driving north on Highway One. The day was a brilliant one, the morning fog having burned off early. The sun shone on the waves that crashed onto the shore below them, and Vaughn felt as though he were seeing it all for the first time. Or maybe it was simply that he was really looking for the first time in a long while.

  “You know I’m not very good at following rules,” he told her with a wink and squeeze to her knee.

  She squirmed but wouldn’t be deterred.

  “Only a couple, I promise.”

  “Lay ’em on me.”

  “No talking about what we used to do. No reminiscing or trying to recreate old habits.”

  He nodded. While he loved some of their traditions, he understood why she was making the rule. They needed to leave that part of themselves behind, and they wouldn’t be able to do it if they were constantly reminding each other of who and what they used to be.

  “All right, I solemnly swear no walks down memory lane.”

  “And second, we have to try something new every day.”

  “Does it have to be the same thing for both of us, or we can each have our own thing?”

  She thought on that for a moment as Vaughn’s mind spun through several different sexual positions that he was willing to bet T.J. had never tried and he’d be happy to introduce her to.

  “We can each have our own, but the other person needs to be involved somehow.”

  He grinned. “Deal.”

  “Why do I get a bad feeling from the way you said that?”

  He just smiled some more. “Don’t you worry a bit, baby. If you need suggestions for new things to try, I’m logging some suggestions for you. I want to make sure to be helpful.”

  She grunted, but he could see the barest hint of a smile trying to curl up the corners of her lips. Yes, this trip was going to be epic. A whole new beginning indeed.

  They stopped for lunch and a swim at a small town on the coast and then continued their drive north, ending up in San Francisco by the end of the day. T.J. was amazed at how comfortable Vaughn seemed when he changed out his prosthesis at the beach when they stopped to swim. He stuck close to her in the water, and the new adjustments to his aqua leg seemed to have fixed the fit.

  T.J. chose a small boutique hotel near Chinatown and they grabbed dinner in the pub on the main floor before heading up to their room.

  When they arrived at the room, Vaughn set their bags down inside the door and stood looking around. It was small. One bed, a dresser, closet, and bathroom. And suddenly, he realized that this was it. Not a quickie in a greenhouse fueled by beer and frustration, but a night together, what he hoped would be the first night of the rest of their lives.

  And just like that, he was so grateful that he nearly fell to his knees and thanked the universe. Because he realized that for seven long years, he had longed for this, craved it, missed it so fucking much he didn’t know how he’d managed to make it through all those days.

  He turned to face her as she stood just inside the door. She looked uncomfortable, and that was when he knew that this really was a fresh start for them, because Vaughn and T.J. didn’t do uncomfortable. Silly, angry, hurt, relaxed. They did all that because they’d been doing it for as long as either of them could remember. But they never did uncomfortable. Even after they’d broken up in twelfth grade there had been hurt and confusion, and anger, but they were never uncomfortable.

  No, uncomfortable was for people who were getting to know one another. Couples who had just started dating, who didn’t know how the other person was going to react.

  T.J. was uncomfortable, and Vaughn thought that might be the best thing he’d seen all week. This was their fresh start. This was his chance to show her that he was what she needed—not yesterday or last year, but tomorrow and a decade from now. He wasn’t only the boy of her past, he was the man of her future.

  “So,” he said, moving closer to her. “It’s been a long day.”

  She nodded. “But a good one.”

  That made him smile. He loved that she thought a day spent with him was good.

  “I bet you’d like to get all that salt water rinsed off. How about I run you a bath?”

  She blinked at him. “Um, okay?”

  “Good. I’ll get it all set up. Do you want the dresser drawers for your stuff?”

  “I just need one. You can have the other.”

  He nodded, then went into the bathroom. The hotel had been kind enough to leave a small bath bomb, and thanks to the addition of Cade’s girlfriend to their home, he knew what the hell the things were. He filled the tub with steamy water and dropped the lavender-scented ball in, watching it fizz and dissolve for a moment. Then he turned off the overhead light and left only the decorative one over the mirror on.

  “You ready?” he called out the door.

  She walked in and took a deep breath. “Is there lavender in there?”

  “Bath bomb. The hotel was equipped.”

  She smiled shyly at him, and his cock stiffened. She was wearing that halter top over her bikini top and a pair of cargo shorts she’d donned after swimming. Such ordinary clothes, but so very appealing on her.

  “Well, you just relax and let me know if you need anything,” he said, willing himself to get out of her way and be a gentleman when all he really wanted to do was strip her down and bathe her with his tongue.

  He was halfway out the door when she spoke.
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  “You must need to rinse off too,” she said.

  “I can grab a shower after you’re done.”

  She chewed on her lip for a moment. “Or you could join me?”

  His heart skipped a beat, and he cleared his throat. “You sure about that?”

  She nodded.

  “I…um…” How the hell did he handle this? He’d thought about it a lot—knew that at bedtime he’d have to face up to it, but under the cover of dark was a far cry from being in a bathtub together.

  “In case you hadn’t realized, I only have half a leg,” he tried to joke. “It’s not the prettiest thing in the world. You might not want that in the bathtub with you.”

  She gazed at him with big, serious eyes. “I’ve seen your leg. You changed from one prosthetic to another just today at the beach.”

  He scratched his head. “That wasn’t really up close and personal, though. I mean this bath’s not a huge space.”

  “Yeah. And we’ll be naked. That’s usually a plus for most guys.”

  “Oh, trust me, it’s definitely a plus in my book. I just wanted to make sure you’re all right with it.”

  “I wouldn’t have suggested it if I wasn’t.”

  He nodded. Okay, then. A bath. Together. His breathing kicked up a notch. The combination of arousal and anxiety was a strange mixture.

  “Come here,” she said softly. So he did.

  Once he reached her, she gazed at him, her face soft and open. And her eyes stayed on his as she reached down and lifted the hem of his T-shirt, slowly pulling it over his head. His cock hardened exponentially, and he moaned softly as her sweet hands skated over the skin of his chest and abs.

  Her head dipped, and she kissed across his pecs, her tongue slipping out to circle his nipples.

  “Fuck,” he hissed in pleasure.

  He dug his fingers into her hair and lifted her face to his before crushing their lips together. His tongue wound its way into her hot, seeking mouth, and fire spread through his veins.

  It was a marvel really, that in all the other times with all the other women, Vaughn had never felt this sense of urgency, this pounding need and overwhelming want. Touching T.J. was like touching a live wire, and she held him captive, just as an electrical current would. Sometimes he thought she might do as much damage as the current as well. But he was beyond caring anymore. Let her destroy him, let it burn him alive. As long as he got to touch her in the meantime, that was all that mattered.