He left that to Jess and Dahlia, who had joined me for my first night out as a single woman. Unfortunately, we couldn’t coax Emery to join us just yet but I was working on it. One day she’d be sitting that cute butt of hers on a stool next to me.
Jess shared a look with Cooper. “Well, if you think you’re ready to start dating.”
Dahlia grinned. “Of course she’s ready. Internet dating is fun, FYI.”
“That’s not the whole story.” Jess smirked. “You have told us some pretty hairy tales of your online dating life, Dahlia McGuire.”
I chuckled as Dahlia shrugged, laughing. “Either you go out on a date and it’s fun, or you go out on a date that is so epically horrifying it becomes an entertaining story to tell your friends. Either way it’s a win-win.”
I laughed along with them, but I was a little nervous about the whole thing. Not just because Dahlia really had been on dates worthy of episodes of Sex and the City, but because I hadn’t dated in so long. Yeah, I was a pretty outgoing person and I had never suffered from shyness, but I was worried I was a little rusty.
Unlike Dahlia, I had no idea what the landscape was like out there now, and I didn’t want to end up going through hundreds of men.
Dahlia didn’t mind that aspect of it. In fact, she preferred it. If ever there was a woman who feared commitment more, I had yet to meet her. It surprised me because she was such a warm, protective, thoughtful, loving person. Any man would be lucky to have her, and I’d known men over the years who had tried and failed to pin her down, to make her theirs.
I didn’t see any guy succeeding in the future, either.
Well maybe one particular guy, but that was a long shot.
Like Jessica when she arrived in Hartwell, I’d recognized the emptiness in Dahlia—the sad loneliness inside of her that I was amazed no one else seemed to see. I’d tried to befriend her in her first week as the owner of the gift store her great-aunt had once owned, but Dahlia had wanted nothing to do with me. Then one night I’d been putting out the trash and I saw her stumbling down the beach with a bottle of gin in her hand. To my horror I’d watched as she dove right into the water for a swim. By the time I got to her she was drowning, but I was trained in first aid and managed to resuscitate her.
That night after a trip to the emergency room she’d told me her story, and my heart had broken for her. I’d made a vow to help her start fresh in Hartwell. And she did. She’d stopped drinking, she started seeing a therapist, and she eventually started dating. However, she’d never been in a relationship and she didn’t want one, to the despair of the men around us who drooled over her Marilyn Monroe figure, luscious thick dark hair, and gorgeous blue eyes.
What neither Jess nor Dahlia realized was how similar the pain they shared was. They hadn’t told one another their stories yet, and it wasn’t up to me to share. I was impatient for them to do so though, because I thought that maybe they could find solace in one another. A comfort that, try as I might, I was unable to give them.
“Where did you go?” Dahlia waved a hand in front of my face, yanking me from my musings. “You’re not really worried about online dating, are you?”
“A little,” I admitted. “I haven’t dated in a while.”
“Bailey.” She gave a huff of laughter. “You are the most sociable, confident, outgoing woman I know. You’ll be fine.”
“I’ll take you out,” Ollie, one of Cooper’s bar staff, called down the bar from where he was pouring a draft beer. He threw me a flirty smile, surprising the heck out of me. He’d worked for Cooper for a little over a year now and not once did he give the impression he found me attractive. Of course I was, more often than not, accompanied by Tom when I was in the bar.
“Excuse me?” I thought I’d misheard. Dahlia and Jess laughed beside me.
“You heard me.” He grinned and winked at me. “I know how to show a girl a good time, Bailey.”
If rumors were true then he wasn’t lying. But I wasn’t Dahlia looking for dinner and good sex. I was searching for the man I’d marry. “I have no doubt.” I grinned because as much as I didn’t want to have sex with Ollie, I was flattered he wanted to have sex with me. “However, I’m a woman, not a girl, and I’m looking for more than a tussle in the sheets. But thank you.”
“Oh,” he groaned, “that ‘I’m a woman, not a girl’ line just makes me want you more.”
We laughed as Cooper rolled his eyes at his employee. “Then you’ll just need to keep wanting,” he called down to him and then nodded at a waiting customer. “Stick to pouring drinks for now, Casanova.”
Ollie just laughed, winked at me, and returned to work.
I was smiling, my mood lifted by his flirtation, when I caught sight of Vaughn just a few stools down from us at the end of the bar. He was staring, expressionless, at Ollie. As if he felt my gaze, he flicked his to me.
It was a shock to see him in the bar. As far as I was aware he only ever went into Cooper’s before opening.
“How long have you been sitting there?” I drew Jess and Dahlia’s attention to him, too.
“Too long.” He spoke to Cooper. “The usual, please.”
“Surprised to see you here when the bar is actually open.” Coop poured expensive scotch into a tumbler with ice. “Everything okay?”
I studied the two men, wondering how a friendship had developed between people who were so vastly different.
“It’s been a long day.”
Vaughn looked worn out and I almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
“Coop, you going to let him sit in Old Archie’s stool?” Hug, one of the regulars, shouted from across the bar.
I tensed, as did my friends.
Old Archie had been a regular at Cooper’s for a long time. He was the most functional alcoholic I’d ever heard of, let alone met, but an alcoholic he was.
Until his partner, Anita, was diagnosed last year with cancer. Old Archie had pulled himself together to take care of her, and that included staying sober. Everyone was proud of him, and sorry for the hard journey he and Anita were currently sharing, and in reverence to that no one had sat in his stool since.
However, Vaughn, being unfamiliar with the tale of the stool, didn’t know that.
Cooper glowered over at Hug. “My customers can sit wherever they please.”
Vaughn looked over at Hug, too, saw the hostility in the big man’s face, and calmly got up to sit one stool down, and closer to us. “Better?” he asked flatly.
“Whatever,” Hug said.
Cooper continued to glare at the man, while he spoke to Vaughn. “You didn’t have to move.”
“I just want to drink in peace.” Vaughn waved him off. “Not worth the hassle.”
Cooper leaned into him and said something I couldn’t hear. Whatever it was it made Vaughn smile. A real, honest-to-goodness smile. Not a smirk or a sneer. A smile. And it was boyish and mischievous, and it caused a great big flip low in my belly. A sensation that almost knocked me off my stool.
“He’s a handsome son of a bitch, isn’t he?” Dahlia murmured.
“Who? Cooper? Yes, Jess is a very lucky woman.”
Jessica tutted. “Oh, you know who Dahlia meant.”
“No. I don’t.” I refused to acknowledge who they were talking about or why they were talking about him. It was like they’d sensed my belly flip.
So Vaughn Tremaine was good-looking and he liked and respected Cooper, a man I thought of as family. That didn’t erase the past three years of looking down his snotty nose at me.
“You are so full of it.” Dahlia chuckled.
My lips parted in shock. Seriously? “How am I full of it?” I hissed, not wanting Vaughn to be aware of our conversation. “Are you trying to say I’m attracted to the wolf in Armani?”
“You are awfully hostile to him,” Jess mused,
taking a sip of her Long Island.
I glanced between my two friends, recognizing the devilish laughter in their eyes. “Stop trying to wind me up. Don’t you know I’m in a delicate state right now?”
And as if the reference to our breakup conjured him, Tom walked into the bar.
A hush fell over the room.
This was another downside to living in a small town.
My ex visibly swallowed as he was bombarded with over two dozen glares. And then he paled when our eyes met across the bar. He gave me a taut nod and then marched across the room, ignoring Vaughn as he stood next to him at the counter. “I just came for that whiskey, Cooper.”
I remembered then that Cooper had offered to get Tom a special-label whiskey for his grandfather’s ninetieth birthday. Why on earth he thought it was smart to approach the bar during its busiest time I had no idea. Silly man.
Cooper shot me a look.
“It’s okay,” I said.
He nodded. “It’s in my office. I’ll be right back.”
My gaze locked with Tom’s. “How are you?” he asked.
“I’m good, thanks. How are you?”
“Getting there.” His voice was a little hoarse on that last word and I noted how exhausted he seemed.
That sensation of guilt twisted in my chest. Tom didn’t look like he was dealing well with the breakup. Not in comparison to me.
The silence was awkward and beyond uncomfortable as we waited for Cooper to return with the whiskey. When he did, Tom paid for it and thanked him, but he didn’t move to leave.
Instead he stared at me as if he wanted to say something more.
I began to worry that he was going to do something that would make me have to embarrass him in public, and I’d hate that. Not for me, because I couldn’t care less what people thought, but for him. I didn’t want to humiliate Tom.
“Maybe you should leave. Now.” Vaughn’s tone was harsh and authoritative. Surprised, we all looked at the stern businessman. He continued to sip his scotch as if he hadn’t said anything, but there was an air of something hard and threatening around him.
Tom seemed just as shocked by Vaughn’s interference, but he took the warning and walked out of the bar.
There was a moment’s continued silence and then the buzz of conversation started up again.
As for me I was staring at Vaughn like I’d never seen him before.
“Sticking up for me now, Tremaine?” I tried to bring some levity to the incident. “Will wonders never cease?”
I swore I saw amusement in his eyes. “It wasn’t for your benefit, Miss Hartwell. The man reeks of bourbon. I just wanted him out of my vicinity.”
“Bourbon?” Worry gripped me.
Vaughn gave me a mocking smirk. “Seems like the ex isn’t dealing with your breakup nearly as well as you are.”
“That’s not funny,” I snapped, concerned for Tom far more than I wanted to be. But as I’d discovered in the past, you couldn’t just switch off caring about someone.
“I didn’t say it was. I’m surprised you care . . . what with all the online dating you’re planning on doing.”
Forcing myself to ignore him, I opened my purse, pulled out some money, and slapped it on the counter.
“What are you doing?” Dahlia said.
“I’m going after him to make sure he’s okay.”
“Sweetie, that’s not your job anymore.” She was clearly unhappy with the idea. “That stopped being your job when he slept with someone else.”
“Dahlia’s right,” Jess added.
“He reeks of alcohol,” I insisted. “That’s not okay. And I’m not the kind of person who’ll just sit here and ignore that.” I swung off my stool and strode through the bar, ignoring Vaughn’s eyes following me, and ignoring my friends calling my name.
Vaughn
Vaughn stared at the door where Bailey had disappeared and cursed himself. Today had just been one bad decision after another. His quarterly stats were in and his hotel in New York was down in profits. Checking an online review site, he found disturbing guest reviews of the hotel. He’d blistered his management via video conferencing for over an hour, ending the meeting with a demand for monthly accounting and improvement upon the problems that were causing the bad reviews. If things didn’t pick up, he’d have to go back to the city for a while to get it back to where it should be and the thought of returning to Manhattan for an extended period made his blood run cold.
And then he’d seen Bailey strolling arm in arm down the boardwalk with Dahlia and he’d surmised they were heading to Cooper’s for drinks. Needing a drink himself he’d decided to follow them, refusing to acknowledge that he wanted to be near Bailey to check on her.
What he’d discovered was that Bailey Hartwell was stronger than he’d ever imagined, and that he’d made a mistake thinking she’d be anything like Camille. It only made him admire her more, and he was already unsettled enough by how much he admired the Princess of Hart’s Boardwalk.
Then he’d gotten pissed overhearing her talk about being ready to date and watching as that stupid kid behind the bar flirted and drooled over her.
When Tom arrived Vaughn was already irritated and trying so very hard not to get off his stool and punch the stupidity out of the moron. Instead he’d pretty much threatened to do it and then he’d had to cover up the reason for it by telling Bailey about the smell of bourbon pouring off him.
And in doing so he’d not only been a bastard but he’d sent her running back to her ex.
Which should have pleased him.
Instead he wanted to kick the shit out of something.
It was aggravating how this woman could reduce him to acting like a hormonal, brooding teenager.
SIX
Bailey
Tom was making slow progress in front of me down the quiet boardwalk, so I caught up with him just as he was passing Vaughn’s hotel.
I’d tried calling out his name but he’d just ignored me, so when I finally caught up to him he pretended like I wasn’t there.
A breeze blew up from the water and the scent of bourbon hit my nostrils.
Damn.
Vaughn hadn’t been lying.
“Tom. Stop.”
“Go home, Bailey. I wasn’t thinking going in there tonight.”
“I’m guessing because you’re drunk.”
“I’m not drunk. Do I sound drunk?”
He sounded quite in control, but he smelled like a distillery. It occurred to me he must have been drinking for a while to be in that kind of state.
“Despite what happened between us, I’m not going to ignore the fact that you stink of alcohol!”
That stopped him in his tracks and he whirled around to face me, his face contorted with pain. “Go back to Cooper’s, Bailey. Let me be!”
“No. You’re not okay, Tom.”
“And what? You think you’re the person to help?” he scoffed.
“Don’t be a dick. Again.”
At that he stumbled back against the boardwalk railing. He looked tired and mournful. “I got a suspension at work yesterday.”
“What? Why?”
He gave me a wary look before he proceeded. “Rex stayed with Erin. They were going to try to work it out. Evidently he couldn’t forgive her and they broke up. Yesterday he came into work and we got into a fight. A physical fight.” He turned his face and that’s when I saw the faint dark shadow of a bruise on his jaw. “I got suspended because . . .”
“You incited the fight by sleeping with your colleague’s girlfriend?”
Tom winced. “Exactly.”
“So you thought going on a bender would help?”
“My life is a mess, Bails,” he snapped.
Suddenly I didn’t feel so bad as I realized I was witnessing the self-pity of a man disco
vering actions had consequences. Instead of responding I stayed quiet, knowing that anything I said would be harsh and cutting.
Tom laughed because apparently my silence spoke volumes. “And I’m complaining to the woman I betrayed. Now I’ve really hit bottom.”
I was unwilling to give energy or time to his self-pity. “How long is the suspension for?”
“Two weeks.”
“That’s nothing. In the grand scheme of things that’s no time at all.”
“It’s not nothing! I’ve lost my credibility there. I’ve lost everyone’s trust. I’ve lost you!”
My patience snapped. “What the hell did you think would happen when you stuck your penis in someone else’s vagina?”
A giggle behind me made my shoulders hunch up around my neck.
Great.
We had a witness.
My tension increased when I recognized the giggler. Dana Kellerman. Cooper’s ex-wife. And she wasn’t alone. Her arm was threaded through Stu Devlin’s. Stu was Ian’s eldest son and just like his father he was a pain in this town’s ass.
I glowered at Dana, who was grinning at me, enjoying every minute of my distress. We had never liked one another mostly because I refused to kiss her ass like everyone else did just because she was so beautiful. Not that people kissed her ass anymore. She’d cheated on Cooper with Jack Devlin, the second youngest son. Worse still, Jack used to be the only Devlin I liked. We all thought he was a good guy. He’d grown up as Cooper’s best friend, and I’d crushed on both of them when I was younger.
But one day Jack quit working construction and began working for his father when everyone knew that Jack couldn’t stand his dad and his brothers. He’d only ever had time for his mother and little sister. No one could understand the decision, least of all Cooper.
And then Jack had gone and slept with Dana behind Cooper’s back.
Cooper lost his wife and his best friend in one fell swoop.
Now it looked like Dana was moving on to another Devlin. That wouldn’t make her very popular once word got out about it, but betraying Cooper hadn’t made her very popular anyway, and this town had a long memory.
Every Little Thing Page 7