by Megan Crane
Everyone but Vaughn, that was, whose happiness was clearly not a factor. Devyn had even come over to his father, right there beside him, and given Frederick a hug. So happy. So bright and shining.
So curiously incapable of looking Vaughn in the eye.
And so full of shit, Vaughn thought, that it might have seriously pissed him off if he hadn’t been impressed despite himself at the lengths she was willing to go to avoid eye contact with him. Even when he was literally standing an inch in front of her.
He let her do it. He didn’t cause a scene. He kept his mouth shut, because he had a feeling that when he opened it next, he was going to say a whole host of things that were better kept private and there was no need to share those things with an entire ski lodge full of people. Many of them related to Devyn.
He felt like a born-again grinch. Jackson Hole had delivered the snow outside all morning, only letting up to a few picturesque flurries in the past hour. Inside the lodge’s vast, comfortable lobby, Christmas music played from somewhere up above and everything was dressed in evergreens and shiny things. Devyn was obviously working her butt off to turn the whole excursion into some kind of Christmas fantasyland, and he could admit that Melody brought her own, festive atmosphere with her wherever she went.
Vaughn wasn’t buying any of it, of course. No festive fantasy, no Hallmark movie. But no one cared what he was or wasn’t buying, so he locked that away, too.
Or tried.
“I’ve always enjoyed Melody’s family,” his father said from beside him. “Good people.”
That might have been true, but Vaughn was not in the mood to stand around thinking warm and fuzzy thoughts about Devyn’s extended family. Particularly since so many of them seemed to be distressingly on board with Melody’s nonsense. He noticed that the cousins Devyn had been with the other morning weren’t in attendance, and Vaughn wondered how they’d managed to escape this activity.
Maybe they’d been a whole lot smarter than he was and had simply refused to take part.
There were a handful of men in the group, smiling awkwardly and as uninterested in the Grey family members as Vaughn was as they vied for Melody’s attention—but none who looked the way Vaughn thought a lifetime biker would. First of all, unless he missed his guess, he couldn’t really imagine that kind of man vying for anything, much less a woman’s attention.
And second, why was he looking for Devyn’s father anyway?
“All right, everyone.” Devyn’s voice was so bright and so perky it actually made Vaughn laugh. And she heard him, he could see, because she threw a dirty look in his direction. She corrected it with a blink in the next second, but not before he saw it. His curse was that he saw everything she did. Devyn Voss was burned on his brain as if he’d branded himself with her the other night and that was the trouble. He was pretty sure he had. “The sleighs are here and we’re ready to go! If everyone could just file on out and choose a sleigh, we’ll get underway so we can make it back before dark.”
Vaughn hung back as the rest of the group made its way outside into the cold and then piled into three horse-drawn sleighs, as promised, sitting out there in the snow like a freaking Christmas card.
And when his father moved, exhibiting a little more speed and agility than Vaughn would have said the old man had in him to hustle himself into Melody’s six-person sleigh, Vaughn didn’t say a word.
Because he couldn’t do anything about his father’s suspect choices at a time like this, when there were five other men vying for Melody’s attention. What he could do instead was treat Devyn to a little taste of his own thoughts and conclusions about the past few days and the night they’d shared.
He hooked his hand around her elbow as she tried to move toward a different sleigh, filled with some of her relatives and Melody’s friends. He banked on the fact she wouldn’t make a scene, and he was right. She shot him another, much dirtier look as he steered her towards the last sleigh in the line.
“Oh, look at that,” he murmured, for her ears only. “You can look at me directly after all.”
“I can, yes. That doesn’t mean I want to.”
“Life is all about tough choices, darlin’.”
But he knew Devyn had no choice at the moment but to climb up into the last sleigh. She did, if quicker than Vaughn thought she might have if he hadn’t been right behind her to enjoy the view. Once inside, she had to wrap herself up in a blanket next to him on the bench seat. It was that or rearrange her relatives as they sat on the bench opposite, which would likely require an explanation.
Vaughn was sure he could hear her irritation, spiking through the afternoon like the bells on the horses. It was possibly the finest music he’d ever heard.
He smiled blandly at the collection of Grey relatives across from him, and made sure his thigh was pressed up close to Devyn’s beneath the blanket.
“Does everyone know Vaughn Taylor?” she asked brightly. And didn’t wait for a response. “His father Frederick is over there with my mom. You might remember him from the couple of years we spent down in Alabama. Vaughn here lives in Tennessee now, doing God only knows what.” She aimed her smile at him, then back at the rest of her family, like the kind of blunt-force weapon it was obviously meant to be. “Vaughn, this is my uncle Billy, his wife Angelique, and their two daughters, Lacey and Layla.”
The two little girls trilled out their hellos, though they were entranced by the horses. Vaughn eyed the woman he’d thought was one of Devyn’s cousins, then slid his gaze to her uncle, who was significantly older than his wife and gazing straight back at Vaughn as if he was daring him to say something. Or to keep staring at Angelique, who was, in any objective sense, an incredibly beautiful woman.
Normally, Vaughn would have more of a reaction to a woman like Angelique, because he was alive and male. But something had happened the past few days. It was as if every other woman in the world was on a dimmer and Devyn alone was switched on bright.
“A pleasure to meet you,” Vaughn drawled as politely as he could. “On a one-horse open sleigh and all.”
One of the little girls was sitting on Devyn’s other side, but as soon as the horses started to move, the sleigh jolted a bit and she hurtled herself across the narrow aisle to wedge herself in between her parents.
Devyn took the opportunity to put a little space between her and Vaughn. An opportunity he had no intention of letting her take, so he slid right after her until they were in the middle of the bench seat, and once again, she had a choice. She could keep sliding away from him, flattening herself to the edge of the sleigh the way she had in the car on the way from the airport. It might do what she wanted, but it would also announce to her uncle and his family that there was a situation with Vaughn. One of her mother’s ex’s sons.
Or she could stay where she was, and suffer.
Vaughn was delighted when she did exactly what he thought she would. And stayed put.
“See?” he asked under his breath. “It won’t kill you.”
“I admire your optimism.”
“I promise,” he said, and he didn’t mean to turn as he said it. But he did, and Devyn was looking straight at him, and he got caught in that.
And in the words he’d said that suddenly felt like a vow.
She looked away again, but not before he saw the heat in her blue eyes and the flush that turned her cheeks pink.
And suddenly, it occurred to him that he wasn’t angry or pissed or annoyed or any of the things he’d been telling himself he was. That he’d been raw since he’d walked out of the shower to find her gone, that was all.
Raw straight through.
Raw and messed up and a little turned around inside, that was all.
But not now. Not now that her leg was warm next to his and her eyes were still so impossibly blue and her marzipan scent all around him made him feel almost tipsy.
Not now.
They were out in some big, wide field, beautiful mountains arrayed all around them in th
e afternoon light like some kind of natural cathedral, but all Vaughn could concentrate on was Devyn.
She was wrapped up tight beside him with a striped hat on her head, and a thick cream-colored scarf wrapped tight around her neck. She wore big, pink mittens, and the fact that he wanted to get back inside her more than he wanted his next breath didn’t prevent him from noticing how adorable she was. Pink and stripes and a fake fur, hooded coat against the cold, and all of her so bright it should have hurt.
Maybe it did. Vaughn wasn’t sure he could tell the difference, not where she was concerned.
And a sleigh ride wasn’t what he wanted. His leg against hers, beneath layers and a heavy blanket and her uncle’s nose, wasn’t what he needed from her.
But it was something.
He wouldn’t call it enough, but it was something.
And for a moment, Vaughn let himself enjoy it. Her. The sensation of being out in all this open space, so crisp and so cold, gliding across the snow while the little girls sang Christmas carols and clapped their hands in time to the horses’ hooves. It felt old and new, familiar and strange at once. It was someone else’s Christmas dream, but it was as if it had lived in Vaughn too, all these years, without his knowing it.
The way Devyn had, too.
He felt exhilarated and alive, and lit up from the inside out.
Though maybe that was the girl, not the sleigh.
“Is your dad one of the men up ahead?” he asked when the light and the snow and the singing had worked their magic, mellowing him whether he liked it or not. He’d forgotten what a bad mood he was in out here, with Devyn beside him smelling sweet and edible like she was a Christmas cookie herself.
“Derrick Voss? On a sleigh ride?” She laughed. “Certainly not. I think he would literally rather die.”
“Real men take sleigh rides, darlin’. It’s a thing.”
“Yeah, that argument didn’t work on him. He doesn’t really react to pressure. He does what he wants, the end.”
She nodded toward the sleigh up ahead, where Melody was holding court. Five men who should have known better, including Vaughn’s father, clustered around her and hung on every word she said.
Vaughn knew he should have been disgusted, but the truth was more complicated than that—like everything out here in Wyoming, it seemed. Because he was capable of seeing that Melody was a beautiful woman. There was something infectious about the way she smiled. She laughed the way her daughter did, big and full and loud, as if she was daring the mountains all around not to laugh with her. He wasn’t sure he’d understood it when he was younger, the kind of hold a woman that unfettered could have on a man.
He didn’t have to like it now, but he got it.
“There’s your dad, of course,” Devyn was saying. “Next to him is another member of the Winners’ Circle.”
“The Winners’ Circle?”
“That’s what Sydney and I called the chosen few who actually proposed, but didn’t go through with the wedding. The one next to your father is Astral. Not his birth name. Maybe you can tell from the dingy gray dreadlocks, but Astral is a hippie of the first order. He communes with bees in North Carolina. And I mean that literally. He lives on a commune. With bees. And many, many others wearing mostly hemp and patchouli, which is a stereotype because it’s true.”
“That’s the stereotype? Not the old white man with ancient dreads?”
“That’s hip in the commune. Also practical, because there’s no running water.”
“There is nothing hip about anything you just said. Particularly your use of the word ‘hip.’”
“It could be worse,” Devyn said dryly. “Those dreadlocks used to be red.”
Vaughn muttered something unfit for the ears of nearby small girls shouting out the words to “Jingle Bells,” and Devyn laughed.
“Next to Astral is Brody, who is a boyfriend from more recent times. A local, originally from Vermont and a ski instructor, though my mother doesn’t ski. She prefers the après-ski life, lounging in lodges all warm and cozy and with access to fires and beverages and usually some shopping.”
“There’s nothing wrong with a good ski lodge.”
“Indeed. Across from them is the one and only Melody Grey, in her element, but I’m sure you recognize her. On either side of her are the Tomachevsky brothers.”
“Brothers?”
“Twins.”
“I don’t know how to respond to that.”
“A common response to the Tomachevkys, you might be surprised to learn. But don’t worry, Bradley and Rob are nice enough, for accountants. If tragically attracted to the same women.”
“Were they... Did they all...?”
Devyn turned and met Vaughn’s gaze. “I learned a long time ago never to ask my mother a question I didn’t want to know the answer to, because she will always err on the side of exhaustive detail. And that question qualifies as something I never, ever want to know the answer to.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“I hope she’s having fun,” Devyn said then, almost too softly for Vaughn to hear. Almost. “Although maybe fun isn’t what she’s after. I just hope that whatever this is, she gets what she wants from it.”
There was something about the press of the cold. It wasn’t snowing at the moment, which meant the afternoon was cut like glass all around them. Sharp. Clean, somehow.
Maybe that was why Vaughn couldn’t quite react to that the way he thought he ought to have done. He could have lashed out at Devyn. He could have reminded her that Melody’s idea of fun was playing with other people’s lives, his father’s chief among them.
But there was something about the gentle motion of the sleigh beneath them. There was something about the feel of her leg next to his, there beneath the blanket, where it couldn’t be anything sexual. Not out in the open like this, in these temperatures. Not in front of her uncle. And maybe because of that, it felt...intimate. Better, somehow, than being alone, because Vaughn knew without a shadow of a doubt that if they were alone together, talking was unlikely to be the first thing on his agenda.
But out here, as the winter afternoon edged into twilight, it was like a confessional.
“What do you think she wants out of this?” he asked, his voice hushed. “You already said you didn’t think she could be happy.”
“I’m not sure she can be happy in the way that most people think of happiness, but maybe she can figure it out her own way.” Devyn shook her head. “I don’t know. All I know is that she wanted a sleigh ride, so I made it happen. Maybe there’s nothing more to it than that.”
Something about that seemed to grip Vaughn around the chest like a kind of cold, metal hook. It was the futility, maybe. Threaded in Devyn’s voice and wrapped all around her, much like the blanket that covered them both.
“It’s not up to you to take care of your mother, you know,” he heard himself say. His voice as gruff as it was hushed. “It’s one thing to help her because you want to, but you don’t owe her anything.”
“Are you sure?” She tipped her head closer to his, and he couldn’t tell if she was deliberately narrowing the space between them or she was simply making certain that her family couldn’t overhear. And he didn’t care why she was doing it. He liked her closer. “Because it seems to me that you came all the way out here to Wyoming to take care of your father. Maybe it’s not as easy to let parents do their own thing as we’d like to imagine.”
“My dad—”
“Don’t tell me your dad is different,” Devyn said, her voice quiet but her gaze direct. “My mom is who she is and she always has been. She might be a handful but she’s never a liar. She tells the absolute truth, no matter what; it’s just that that truth might change moment to moment. But it’s not like she hides it. So you have to ask yourself, who’s the guy who wants to marry all that?”
At another time or in another place Vaughn might have gotten angry about that. He knew he would have. He would have jumped to his father’
s defense. He would have taken exception to anyone hinting that his father made his own problems—even though he agreed. But not today.
“I’ve been thinking about that myself, as it happens,” he said, and he was still speaking in that same tone of voice. Low. Intimate. Like they were in church, though the last thing he felt at the moment was holy. “There are some women a man just doesn’t get over, I guess. No matter what.”
Devyn’s lips parted slightly, as if she had to breathe through that one. And Vaughn could understand the feeling. He felt it himself. Somewhere inside of him, some sense of self-preservation—or hell, his long-lost game that he’d apparently abandoned when he’d gotten off the plane here—was clawing at him, demanding he rethink what he was doing. Ordering him to stop making an ass of himself.
He wasn’t a man who made declarations when he could write a song instead and let someone else sing it. Yet that seemed to be all he could do around Devyn.
He could see her breath in the air, coming faster. More frantic.
Just like his own heartbeat.
Vaughn knew how to want. But this was different. This was...more. Wanting her took so many different forms now. He hungered for her body, sure. He didn’t see that going away anytime soon and he hadn’t been ready for her to leave when she had. But it was more than that.
He liked...this. Sitting close to her. Listening to her. Waiting to hear what she might think to say next.
Separated by layers upon layers, blankets and family members, and still. He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt this close to a woman in all his life.
Maybe Melody wasn’t the only crazy person around this Christmas.
“Vaughn...” Devyn began. Then stopped herself. She glanced across at her uncle and his family, all of them singing and clapping, then back toward Vaughn. “I don’t... I mean we can’t...”
“Why not?”
It wasn’t an argument. He wasn’t mad. On the contrary, Vaughn had never felt quite so in tune with another person before, and while there was always the possibility that that was just him being delusional—because maybe the frostbite had taken over and he just didn’t know it—he didn’t think so. There was that flush on Devyn’s cheeks, for one thing, which could have been the cold.
