by Megan Crane
“It might not be about Melody,” Skylar said instead of answering the rhetorical question. “Is Uncle Jason ever supportive of anything? Ever?”
“He’s just mad that when he storms around Wyoming all surly and mad at the world, people will only think he’s surly and mad at the world. They won’t excuse it because he’s built up that Marietta mystique of being Jason Grey of Grey’s Saloon,” Devyn said, making her voice growly and Uncle Jason-ish on that last part.
“Are any of his mysterious daughters deigning to show up?” Skylar asked when they’d all stopped laughing at the idea of Uncle Jason as a fish out of water here, in a town where there were too many tourists and too much snow for his legend to precede him.
“Only the less mysterious ones,” Devyn said. “Rayanne and Joey are coming. Lorelai, as ever, remains at large.”
Scottie shook her head. “At this point I think she’s staying away because there’s no way whatever she’s doing, wherever she’s doing it, could hold a candle to the drama of her disappearance.”
“I think she’s in witness protection,” Devyn offered. “Desperate to reconnect, but unable to, thanks to the terrible things she saw...somewhere.”
Skylar considered. “Or she’s currently working under cover as a spy, like Jennifer Garner in Alias. Which you should binge watch from the beginning, by the way, because it’s still amazing.”
Uncle Jason’s wife Annabel had left him while his three girls were small, though the rumor was they’d never divorced. And though his middle daughter Rayanne had been trying to do that Nashville thing for years and his youngest daughter Joey was another attorney in New York, his oldest daughter—and the oldest of the cousins—Lorelai had left in a temper after college in Bozeman and had never returned. She was supposedly in Los Angeles chasing an acting dream, but no one in the family had ever seen her onscreen.
The three of them settled in, ordered more coffee and a couple of pastries to help the caffeine along. And by the time they were finished, they’d discussed every member of their family, all known issues and theories and rumors, and had considered any potential theatrics that could be expected in the coming days. As usual, Grey Family Gossip sessions made Devyn feel giggly and young again, as if they were all snuggled together in their sleeping bags out somewhere on her grandparents’ land beneath that endless Montana sky with nothing but endless summer days stretching out ahead of them.
Having her cousins around would keep her sane through this craziness, which was more than she could say for, say, the winter in Seattle. And if Devyn was sane, there was a much higher probability that she could usher her mother through this with some semblance of sanity too.
That was what she was telling herself anyway, self-congratulatory and a little bit smug, as she walked with her cousins back toward the lobby.
Only to come face-to-face with Vaughn as he stepped off the elevator.
Her sins in the flesh.
And what a flesh it was, she couldn’t help but think, especially because she knew how he tasted now. Everywhere.
His dark gaze met hers, scorching her. She was sure everyone could see. That everyone would know, in an instant, every last thing she’d done to this man. And with him. And where. And how.
And how much she wanted to do it all over again.
His mouth curved a little, as if he could read her every thought. She was more than a little paranoid that he actually could.
“Is that...?” Devyn heard Scottie ask.
“You remember Vaughn,” Devyn said with as much forced cheer as she could cram into her voice at one time without strangling herself on it. “Melody almost married his father.”
“Almost, but not quite,” Vaughn said, that grin of his lighting up his unfairly chiseled face. He reached out and shook her cousins’ hands, while Devyn stood there and felt...obvious. As if last night was written all over them, flashing neon, as impossible to ignore as the Christmas carols piping in from somewhere.
“I’m headed to the airport to pick up my father right now,” Vaughn said, and he sounded perfectly cheerful. Even looked cheerful. But Devyn knew better. There was something in the way he looked at her, not quite lazily, that made her skin prickle.
As if he had plans for her and was letting her know it.
“Vaughn’s father was—is—Frederick,” Devyn informed her cousins. So friendly it hurt. “Melody lived with him for two years in Alabama. So did I, as a matter of fact. For a hot little minute we were all like the Brady Bunch.”
“Am I the only one who found the Brady Bunch creepy?” Scottie asked, her too-smart gaze moving from Vaughn to Devyn and then back.
Vaughn’s grin deepened. “You are not.”
“Anyway,” Devyn said, concentrating on the friendliness and forced cheer as if it would save her, “as you can see, the exes are already arriving in droves.”
“My father is not a drove and he will be marrying Devyn’s mother over my dead body,” Vaughn replied, all wide grin and that Tennessee drawl, and how was she the only one who could plainly see all that menace beneath it? She could feel it, wrapping around her bones and pulling tight.
She snuck a look at her cousins, but both Skylar and Scottie were gazing at Vaughn as if he was the most entertaining thing they’d ever laid eyes on in all their lives. Devyn supposed she couldn’t blame them. After all, his dark hair was still damp, he smelled like soap, and there was no getting around the fact that he was beautiful. Full-on, one-hundred-proof male beauty, the kind that was a little intoxicating to be around. He was a bit rugged, sculpted from what appeared to be steel and Tennessee whiskey in equal measure, and entirely too...magnetic.
“You keep telling yourself that,” Devyn said, and rolled her eyes, well aware that she was performing the part of the unaffected almost-stepsister for her cousins’ benefit. She could see from that glint in Vaughn’s dark gaze that he knew exactly what she was doing too, and why—but she didn’t let that stop her. “But you must know Melody is only going to see that kind of thing as a challenge. And one thing I’ve learned is never, ever to challenge my mother. Because it’s not if she’s going to do something stupid, it’s when. And how hard. And then all that’s left to worry about is the collateral damage.”
She’d met that to be funny. A little dose of hilarity at Melody’s expense that Devyn certainly thought was warranted.
But instead, both of her cousins were looking at her with more than a little speculation all over their faces. Or was it something more like pity? And worse, Vaughn was treating her to more of that steely glint in his dark eyes that she had the distinct impression was not going to bode well for her.
In fact, she felt shivery, imagining the things he might say, and do, when they didn’t have an audience.
Which was a good reason to make sure she was never alone with him again, she told herself primly. Much less in a bar with him. Or a hotel suite.
“Nice to see you all again,” Vaughn said, every inch of him the perfect southern gentleman Devyn was perfectly aware he was not. Not entirely. Not when he was naked, anyway, and her breath caught a little at that. “I’m sure I’ll see you around. My understanding is that there are a lot of shows in this circus.”
Devin didn’t think she was the only one who watched him a little too closely as he sauntered out the door and into the cold, bright morning. A glance to the side proved that while her cousins were both happily coupled up these days, they remained fully functional females. In possession of the eyes in their heads.
“I can’t believe he was almost your brother,” Skylar said softly, her voice a little too close to a sigh.
“He was never anything close to my brother.” Devyn heard how flat her voice was and rustled up a quick smile to cover it. She wasn’t sure she was fooling anybody, but she didn’t let that get in her way. “We were almost very unhappily stepsiblings, but it didn’t take.”
“And hallelujah to that,” Scottie said, laughter in her voice. “Maybe you didn’t notice this, D
evyn, but your stepbrother is hot.”
“Is he?” Devyn asked, making her eyes wide to show she was joking, because all of this ought to have been funny. And yet really wasn’t. Not to her. “I don’t get that from him at all.”
They all laughed. Then Skylar excused herself to go back upstairs to her bull rider and his iced knees. Devyn zipped up her coat and went outside, and Scottie followed, wrapping herself in a big wide scarf and a puffy coat to wait in the chilly morning for a taxi.
“I’ll come help your mom with whatever,” she said, pressing her shoulder to Devyn’s. “Maybe I can take the pressure off a little.”
“Or bear witness to the horror of my parents’ morning after,” Devyn said darkly. “Better prepare yourself now.”
They both made gagging noises, but Scottie didn’t back away. She glanced at Devyn, then back into the snowy street, with hard-packed trails for the four-wheel drive cars to use and big snow plow drifts on all the curbs.
“Was the stepbrother who wasn’t actually a Brady what you were doing in this hotel so early in the morning?” Scottie asked, and Devyn froze solid to match the freezing cold Wyoming air all around. “This isn’t a deposition, of course. You don’t have to tell me anything.”
Devyn cleared her throat and realized she’d forgotten to keep the coughing thing going. Oops. “That sounds like a conspiracy theory.”
“And that sounds like a confession.”
Devyn just laughed. She slung her arm around Scottie and hugged her cousin, hard.
And then breathed a big, deep sigh of relief when they got into their taxi and Scottie had to take a call from the office, which meant that the interrogation ended for the time being.
Thank God, Devyn thought, fervently.
And spent the rest of her ride back to her mother’s house trying to figure out a way to get herself under control, so no one else could possibly guess what had happened between her and Vaughn—because he might be beautiful. He might be extraordinary in that bed of his.
But what had happened between them should never have happened at all, and especially not in a pressure-cooker situation like this one. It was begging for a big mess and the kind of drama that Devyn had deliberately avoided all her life, right there in the full glare of her entire family. That wasn’t her.
That wasn’t what Devyn wanted. Ever.
She wanted quiet and controlled circumstances. She wanted nice. She never wanted to feel the way she had last night, outside herself and out of control and unable to do anything but surrender, again and again, to passion.
Devyn was the result of passion. Her whole life had been spent following her mother’s mercurial passions around. Maybe on some level she’d be glad she’d tasted it for herself, for once, but she didn’t want it in her life.
She’d done something stupid with Vaughn exactly one time and she’d already lied to her cousins about it. What was next? Biker boyfriends and theatrical geographic changes on the spur of the moment?
She’d lived that life. She’d hated that life.
Devyn was here to clean up after her mother and then go home, not make her own life a mess.
Seeing her parents together had thrown her. She’d done something inarguably dumb. But that was behind her now. She assured herself that if this was the only Melody moment she’d had in twenty-seven years, she was doing all right. Especially if it was her last.
Which it had to be. It had to be.
Devyn vowed to herself—as the taxi navigated its way through the snow toward whatever disaster her parents had cooked up last night that she’d have to fix, one way or another, because that was what she always did—that she wasn’t going to forget herself again.
Because the truth was, if she wasn’t the good one, the dependable one, the always-in-control one, Devyn had no idea who the hell she was.
Chapter Eight
It took two more days for Vaughn to find himself more than a little bit cranky about...everything.
If not over the whole Jackson Hole experience altogether.
Anonymity blew, he decided. People-watching was great, sure, but the truth was that he hadn’t missed the life where he was known only as Frederick Taylor’s son. He preferred the life he’d built, where his opinion was sought out and treasured and treated a whole lot like gospel, not dismissed out of hand because his dad wasn’t interested in what Vaughn had to say about Melody Grey or her endless birthday exercise.
Not to mention, it was cold in Wyoming. Cold and snowy, with a forecast of more of the same forever, except possibly even more extreme. The skiers were jubilant while Vaughn couldn’t tell what was an actual blizzard warning and what was just business as usual for the Rockies at this time of year. What he did know was that he was already sick of wrapping himself in endless layers, from base layers under his clothes to scarves and gloves and boots, and then having to trudge through all that damned snow in said layers to do anything.
He was planning to sing a few hosannas to Nashville’s mild winters when he got home, and he never planned to take his native Tennessee for granted again.
Meanwhile, he was stuck in Jackson—probably quite literally, with all the snow. And other things he found he was sick of as the days dragged by included: his father’s refusal to have a frank conversation about what he was doing here and what his hopes were, all things involving Melody Grey and what Vaughn was convinced had to be her certifiable madness, and the enduring problem that was Devyn.
He shouldn’t have touched Devyn. Of course he shouldn’t have.
But he’d gone ahead and done it anyway, and the joke was on him. Because while Devyn had managed to make herself scarce, off doing whatever it was she did to facilitate her mother’s craziness with her cousins in tow like a convenient barrier, Vaughn found himself completely unable to lock away the night they shared together in the vaults of his memory where it belonged, and move on.
He didn’t actually want to move at all. In fact, he spent a lot of time trudging around the slippery, snowy square in the center of pretty little Jackson, staring at the arches made of antlers and decked out in Christmas lights that all the tourists took pictures of, wondering what the hell was wrong with him that he couldn’t let it go. That he wanted more.
A lot more.
Wanting Devyn made him crazy. He was very much afraid it also made him a hypocrite. It certainly made him want to be the exact opposite of who he kept telling his father he ought to be.
Vaughn needed to get a grip. Badly.
Instead, he found himself waiting for a freaking sleigh ride on Friday afternoon, like he was auditioning to be in one of the Hallmark Christmas movies he would deny he’d been watching on the television in his room if anyone asked.
Not that anyone was likely to ask.
“This is a terrible idea,” he growled at his father. Again.
But Frederick Taylor had been selectively ignoring his only child since the moment his airplane had landed at the Jackson Hole airport. He was unmoved by Vaughn’s arguments on all levels. He didn’t care what Vaughn thought about Melody overall. He wasn’t going to be led into a conversation about what had gone wrong with his engagement to Melody ten years ago. And he certainly wasn’t interested in Vaughn’s thoughts on this little game that Melody was playing in the run-up to her birthday party on Tuesday, or any opinions Vaughn might want to share about any of those topics alone or altogether.
He had hugged his son, clapped him on the back, and told him to mind his own business.
“If you don’t want to go on a sleigh ride, no one’s forcing you,” Frederick said now, amiably enough.
Vaughn gritted his teeth. His father’s refusal to fight back was enraging. It always had been, no matter who Frederick was refusing to fight at any given moment.
He studied his father as they stood around in the lodge of a hotel out near the famous ski resort where the sleigh rides left from. Frederick wasn’t as tall as Vaughn, though he wasn’t short, either. He clocked in at around six two,
and he was built solid. Square and sturdy, even as time crept on, which was as good a description of his father as Vaughn had ever heard. Frederick Taylor was a measured man. He took his time. He was patient and usually quiet. He never fought—hell, Vaughn couldn’t recall him ever raising his voice, not even during Vaughn’s tricky teenage years, when Vaughn had been nothing but an overgrown jackass trying to cope with a growth spurt and an attitude problem.
But all of that was exactly why Vaughn thought Frederick needed help in a situation like this one. Vaughn wasn’t concerned about the fact his father didn’t fight so much as he was concerned that his father wouldn’t fight back. Because God knew what a woman like Melody could make a man like Frederick do, without even trying that hard.
Like propose marriage on the first date, the way he had last time.
These were things Vaughn felt a little too keenly the past couple of days, which he told himself had nothing to do with the fact he still had the marks from Devyn’s fingernails all over his back.
“You might try looking like this isn’t your own execution, son,” Frederick said in the same calm, mild way he said everything. “Someone might think you choked on your hot cocoa if you keep scowling like that.”
Vaughn kept himself from rolling his eyes with the sheer force of will. And he didn’t cross his arms the way he wanted to, because that would only feed into his father’s current opinion that he was acting like a spoiled brat.
He was not.
Spoiled brat was definitely not how he felt when he let himself look at the rest of the assembled group—or if he was honest, straight through them, because Devyn was there. And because she was, he couldn’t really see anything else.
She was working overtime to avoid looking directly at him, he was well aware. She’d breezed in with her mother, late as always, because Melody had never been on time for a single thing in the course of her life, as far as Vaughn could tell. Melody had immediately assumed her position at center stage, ready and willing to bask in everyone’s adoration. And Devyn was bright and twinkling there in her mother’s orbit, moving around from person to person, saying hello and making sure everybody was happy.
