Finding Serenity (20 page)

The silence follows them like a shadow, out of the parking lot and into the hotel. The ride in the elevator seems to last forever and Mollie is tempted to say something to him; comment on how he won’t look at her, how the tension in his face has not relaxed once since they left the pub. But then an older couple gets in and Vaughn stands in front of her, his shirt pulled tight over his shoulders as he crosses his arms.

They make it to the room, still speechless, and Vaughn doesn’t hold the door open for her, something he’s always done. She stands in the den, watching him stare out of the French doors. Cavanagh looms beyond, the soft light from the tourist strip muted behind the full moon and the beautiful haze that circles the mountains in the distance. Mollie wants to be there, free to run, worry left in the wake of each step she takes. It’s something she’s done before, when a club and spinning tracks could not bring her calm. She and her friends would run trails up the mountains, burning their lungs with the clear, crisp air. The thought of them distracts Mollie from the view beyond the room. She can’t believe she let Vaughn drag her away. She’s angry with herself, with him at creating this ridiculous situation.

“What kind of caveman bullshit was that?” She tries to keep her voice calm. She tries very hard not to recall the shocked expressions on her friends’ faces as Vaughn tugged her out of the pub. But when he doesn’t reply, doesn’t do more than uncross his large arms and rest his hands on his hips, Mollie feels the forced calm in her chest fracture.

He is motionless, but the white-knuckle grip on his hips tells Mollie he is not happy. “Are you stupid?” When he turns, arms again over his chest as though he is trying to keep from lashing out at her. “Seriously, I need to know. Did you adopt some of your dad’s lack of sense?”

Sense, logic, calm, all race from her like the lash of a whip, replaced with a blind rage. She doesn’t see the man who she wanted all those months ago. She doesn’t see the man who called her a badass, who looked at her with raw amazement when she kneed his shoulder back into place. This moment, he is an assault on her family, the heavy fist that ruptures her brittle composure.

“Fuck you!”

A small twitch below his eye quivers and then Vaughn exhales. “That’s mature.”

“Don’t start in on me about being a kid, you asshole. You’re the one who humiliated me in front of my friends.” He isn’t the least bit repentant. He looks, in fact, utterly exasperated. Vaughn scrubs his face, a little tick she’s noticed he does a lot, and growls, low and deep into his hands. Mollie doesn’t care if he’s frustrated. Right now, she only wants to claw his eyes out. “But that’s what you like to do, isn’t it? See how far you can push me?”

“I didn’t do anything I wasn’t supposed to.”

“Bullshit. What the hell was that, telling that guy you spank me? You do not.” She steps forward, pushes him and he lets her. “You never will, you prick.”

When she pushes him again, hoping for a reaction, wishing he would tell her what really made him so angry, Vaughn holds her hand still against his chest. She tries pulling free from him, but he is stronger than her, larger, more commanding. There are only a few inches of space separating them; a small distance that could change everything with one subtle movement. But then Vaughn’s grip loosens and he backs away from her challenge, keeps her at a distance, veiling his thoughts once again.

Mollie’s shout is loud, angry and she doesn’t bother to answer him when he calls her, decides instead to make for the bedroom, to give Vaughn the space he clearly wants. But before she can slam the door closed, he is behind her, kicking against the door.

“Have you lost your freaking mind?” she asks him when the door slams back against the wall.

“Oh, I’ve lost it alright. You don’t think, do you? That guy was marking you. He was tailing you.” She blows this off, rolling her eyes at his paranoia and Vaughn follows her as she retreats further into the bedroom, moving her by the shoulders to face him. She doesn’t know what to make of his expression. It isn’t angry, not simply anger. There is worry there in his eyes, she can tell, and the thin hint of confusion. But his touch is demanding, like everything Vaughn is. It hurts and she thinks all those twisted emotions that run through him now come out in his touch, bearing down through his fingers and onto her shoulders.

“Get your fucking hands off me.” Instinct niggles at her, has her slipping her fingers into her jeans to feel the comfortable coolness of her pocketknife. Vaughn’s gaze lowers, right to her hand and when he looks back at her, the wrinkle above his eyes tells Mollie he understands what she’s doing. Hands up, he jerks away from her.

“You didn’t even bother to get a good look at him, did you?”

“What?”

“The tattoos, Mollie. On his neck.” Vaughn steps back, sags against the dresser. “Just like the ones Mannie described.” He watches Mollie and she isn’t sure what he’s looking for. There is realization, annoyance, but it isn’t directed at Vaughn.

God, I’m a freaking idiot.

“You’re smarter than that. You had me pegged that day in the coffee shop, knew almost exactly what I’d done after I came home and yet you didn’t notice that the guy you just happened to meet tonight matches the description Mannie gave us.”

Some badass I am,
she thinks, falling to the bed. For all her rearing, for all the caution and warning her father had given her, Mollie let her frustration over her situation cloud her judgment. Thick knots collect and throb in her stomach, burning until she has to look away from him. She doesn’t want to confirm that he’s disappointed in her, that everything he thought about her was true.

“Maybe you are more of a kid than I thought you were after all.” The second he said the words, Mollie knows he wants them back. Vaughn scrubs his face again before he moves from the dresser, tries touching her shoulder, this time seeming uninterested in doing more than apologizing. “I didn’t mean…”

“I’m tired.” She doesn’t want to hear excuses. She doesn’t need them, she tells herself. Rejection was something she knew well. How often had it been directed at her over the years? Her mother, her sister, men who didn’t believe a girl would make much of a DJ; it had become a familiar sensation—little bits of her resolve eaten away by people who didn’t believe in her.

“Just go, Vaughn. Leave me alone.” She brushes away his hand as it inches closer to her shoulder.

“Mollie.”

“God, will you just go?” And this time, he listens to her. This time he doesn’t argue. The door closes with a click and Mollie finally lets the quiet become a refuge.

Vaughn doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s tried pushups. He’s tried distracting himself with something mindless on the television. He even dug in his duffle and got out his phone, hoping something loud and full of fury would keep his mind off of Mollie and the deflated, hopeless tone of her voice.

Nothing worked. Pushups only pumped his blood until he had to stick his head under the sink in the kitchenette. He didn’t care about some rich rednecks making duck calls, insulting each other on television and Slipknot only made him want to punch someone.

When the bathroom door clicks open, and Vaughn hears the racking sound of coughs, as if Mollie is choking on something, all his frustration, anxiousness dissipates, replaced with fear, with the quick thunder of his heart. It does not slow until he bursts into the room, but when he enters, sees Mollie, the jackhammer of his heart speeds for a different reason.

An instinctual wild flash of lust moves right through him. Mollie is bent over the bed, her suitcase emptied on the mattress and a water bottle on the floor. With her free hand she holds a towel against her breasts, but it is not large enough to conceal all of that skin or wipe dry the small drips of water from her back.

Her head whips in his direction and Vaughn tosses out a half-hearted excuse. “Sorry, I thought you were dressed. You were… um, coughing.”

So not sorry
, he thinks.

“Drank too fast.” Mollie’s hold on the towel tightens and she turns away to glare at Vaughn from the mirror on the other side of the room. He can’t help it. There is so much skin, too many lines of muscle, toned curves that keep his eyes on her. He is frozen by the round curl of her ass, barely covered by the towel. A small slip of that terry cloth that Vaughn doesn’t think is accidental and he steps behind her, gaze locked with hers in the mirror.

They watch each other and Vaughn doesn’t think that Mollie’s anger is still present. Not the way she’s looking at him. Not how she doesn’t tell him to leave. Not how her lips part and her breath accelerates. He’s been cruel, he knows that and if he is honest with himself, lashing out at her has as much to do with how that asshole stood too close to her as it does with her safety. He knows the look the guy gave her. He himself has looked at Mollie the same way more than once. Even more frustrating is how she has held on to her anger with him. He wants to see her smile again. Despite himself, despite everything that shouts at him to keep her at arm’s length, to keep things professional, Vaughn wants to put that smile back on Mollie’s face.

“I didn’t mean to embarrass you.” She blinks once when they continue to watch each other in mirror. Her skin calls to him like a song and he can’t help himself from reaching out to touch her when an errant drop of water slides down her neck. One touch, just a fingertip, and her skin is dry, then chills with a sprinkling of gooseflesh. He does that to her and the idea of him having any effect on her has him wanting to replace that finger with his mouth.

“What do you want?” she says, tone soft, low. It is a loaded question that Vaughn knows better than to answer.

“It doesn’t matter what I want.”

“Why?”

He can’t tell her the truth. Not if he doesn’t want her running off. Really, he is a pathetic excuse for a bodyguard. He couldn’t save Tony Williams in Afghanistan. He couldn’t save his father. He couldn’t save—Vaughn brushes the thought away, not wanting to let the past trip him up. Not now. Not with Mollie’s question hanging in the air.
Why?
Because he doesn’t deserve her. And the fear ran through him that perhaps he doesn’t deserve anyone, ever again.

“I can’t have what I want. I can never have what I want, Mollie.” Despite his words, he touches her, his hand resting on her shoulder again. He likes the softness of her skin and the way she has forgotten how hopeless, how tired, he makes her. His t-shirt dampens against his chest when Mollie leans back, her neck exposed and tempting. “I want a lot of things. I want to taste this skin.” He kisses her shoulder. “This neck,” he leans down, places a small kiss right over her throat. “I wanted to kill that asshole tonight just for looking at you.” He looks in the mirror at her, hands circling her waist, fingers gripping the seam of the towel. “I knew that look. It was familiar.”

“Does that surprise you?”

His eyes snap to hers, the honesty of her question and the context behind it startling him. “What?”

“Does it surprise you that someone could want me, Vaughn? You
called
me a kid. You
think
I’m a kid. Even after you saw I wasn’t, even after you said you were wrong, deep down, you still think that.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You do. No matter what you say, what you tell me, you still see me as not enough. Not near enough for you.” She turns around and he moves back, just a half step. She looks nothing like a kid now and reason begins to settle back in his mind. He needs to leave this room. He needs her to not move toward him the way she is. But he is paralyzed by the smell of her and the water dripping across her chest to disappear beneath the towel. “Even with all the times you told me how badass I was, you still think I’m untouchable, that I’m too young, too stupid for you.”

Is she crazy? Did she miss that part just seconds ago when he kissed her skin? “I never said that. If I did, I didn’t mean it.” Brilliant, yes. Beautiful, yes, but she’s not too young and she sure as hell isn’t stupid. But the mission, it was the mission that had him pulling away from her, that had him restraining.

This was a mistake, being here, watching her without guarding his expression. He knows she can see what he wanted. He knows she felt what he wanted just seconds ago when that round, supple ass was leaning against him. But he has a job to do. He has to protect her, to keep her safe. Everything hinges on her safety. If he can’t do that, then Mojo will pull out and all that Viv has worked for these past six months would be for nothing. “I don’t think that, but you’re right. You are untouchable.”

“Because I’m a kid?”

“Because you’re off limits.” That settles it. That should, he thinks, make her understand that no matter what he says or how badly he wants her, he can’t touch her again. Vaughn turns, the door just feet from him. He is almost there, just in reach of the space he needs to force between them. She has to see reason. She has to understand that the mission is what matters, not what either of them wants.

“Vaughn?” There is something in her voice that is different. Determination maybe? Certainty? Whatever it is, Mollie has never used that tone with him and he knows it would be a mistake to turn around. His gut tells him that turning around would disintegrate any hope of resistance. But her feet drag on the carpet and he can feel the soft wisp of her breath against his neck and he is helpless. He manages a glance, tells himself that is all he will allow her, but when he sees her face, sees how calm she is, how confidently she sets her shoulders, he moves, comes to face her fully. “I’m not a kid.” And then, she drops the towel.