by Megan Crane
He could see her reflection in the window before him, and that was enough. For the moment. The velvet dress she was wearing left her arms bare, and he couldn’t seem to avert his gaze from the expanse of her shoulders that he’d touched and tasted more times than he could count. He felt as if it should be scandalous, exposing her arms like that in public when he knew all the right ways to make her writhe—but no one else seemed to know how edible she was.
And he was lapsing into pure insanity. Vaughn could feel it wash through him like a long pull of the kind of moonshine he knew better than to drink. The kind of moonshine that made a man act more like a wolf.
He didn’t need to add alcohol when he was already stupid drunk on Devyn.
“Funny you should ask,” Devyn was saying, her attention on the drink she was making for herself. Too much ice. Coke that kept foaming over the sides. Almost as if she wasn’t really paying attention to what she was doing. “Melody decided last night that Christmas Eve would be the perfect time to trim her Christmas tree, which sounds like a euphemism, but is not one.”
“Did you say last night?”
“In case you’re wondering, all of those ornaments were on that tree already,” Devyn said in the same bright, possibly murderous voice.
She stopped messing around with her drink and scooped it up, stepping out of the way of a man with a set expression who nodded curtly at her as he all but dove for the vodka.
“That’s Alexis,” she told Vaughn in a whisper when they’d found a little space off to the side. “He somehow missed the fact that all the exes were invited to Christmas and the birthday party, not just him. He’s trying to roll with it, but you know, he’s not a big roller. Alexis was one of her quietly secure phases.”
“Like my dad,” Vaughn said, when he knew better.
When he’d been avoiding saying something like that since his plane had landed.
Devyn’s electric blue gaze moved to his and held, and Vaughn wished a lot of things, then. That he hadn’t started down this road. That he hadn’t agreed to be her dirty little secret. That he’d thought to prepare himself for something like this—like her.
But he hadn’t.
And it was Christmas Eve and he wanted this woman in ways he wasn’t sure he really wanted to understand.
“Devyn,” he began, as if he could tell her any of that. When he knew he couldn’t.
He wasn’t even sure what he would say if he could. If this was the right time and place, which it wasn’t.
If she could even hear him, which he didn’t think she could.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve learned a lot of things about my mom in the past few days, and one of them is that she chose a man every time she changed her mind. Oh, of course I knew that already.” She shrugged. “But there’s understanding something in the abstract, like while living through it, and there’s knowing it this way. When they’re all lined up and impossible to ignore.”
“My dad always said she was looking for herself every time she fell in love, but only found herself when she fell out of love again,” Vaughn heard himself say.
He expected Devyn to take offense at that. But instead, she smiled.
Not her phony party smile. This one was all his, he could tell. Bittersweet and a little bit broken, and it took every bit of willpower he had not to kiss it off her mouth.
“He’s not wrong,” she said when the smile faded. “My dad said he was the one thing she couldn’t control. I think he’s right too. And I think she stayed with each of these guys until she reached a point where she’d have to give up control if she wanted it to keep going, and she couldn’t do that.”
“She didn’t want to do it.” Vaughn nodded at the room, packed full of the hearts Melody had broken. And would break again, if his father was any example. “And I don’t think she wants to do it now, either.”
Devyn looked out at the party too. “You know, I’ve thought a lot about the mess of this. All of this. The circus. The show. And what it is I like about it.”
“It’s fun?” He shrugged, finding Melody in the crowd. Gleaming. Bright. As pretty as she was a problem. “That’s the thing about your mother, Devyn. Whatever else she is and however it ends, she’s fun.”
“Trying to broker peace between two of my mother’s ex-boyfriends in the middle of a skating rink is not fun,” Devyn retorted. She looked down at her drink as if she thought it was a magic eight ball. “I’m not sure I like the circus. But I guess I do like to be needed. Does that make me pathetic?”
“It makes you a person.” He nudged her with his arm. “Hey. What makes you think you get to be uncomplicated? No one else is. You can love your mother just as much as you find her a trial. You can hate the spectacle of all this as much as you secretly find it a little bit fun. You can love controlling every aspect of your regular life just as much as you love throwing yourself into your mother’s orbit when you have to. You don’t have to choose between the things you love. You don’t have to create a hierarchy. You can just love what you love.”
Devyn’s eyes were too full and for a moment he thought she might cry, or something equally heartbreaking, but she only gazed up at him until the intense emotion seemed to lose its grip on her a little.
“I think my mother would tell you that’s what she does,” she said softly. “That’s what this is all about.”
“Love isn’t free and easy.” Vaughn didn’t know where these words were coming from. He felt the way he did sometimes when the music was right and the words came, and the notes seemed to make their own songs, as if he was nothing more than an observer. He couldn’t touch her here. But he felt like he had his hands on her anyway. “It’s not a game. It’s naked and real. It’s holding on tight without letting go. And it’s letting go without holding on too tight. It’s like trying to hold water in your hands. And it’s as easy as floating. It’s not these games. This test. It’s not a competition.”
“You’re an expert on love now?” she asked, but her voice was as scratchy as his and there was too much in her gaze.
Things he wanted to see, desperately. Things he couldn’t believe.
But he knew nothing in his life was ever going to be the same.
The crazy thing was, that didn’t mess with his head. Quite the opposite. He liked it.
He more than liked it.
“Not at all,” he said, his mouth curving. “I’m terrible at it.”
“Awful,” she said, as if she was agreeing. “Like everything else.”
“I’m as bad at love as I am with you, darlin’,” he told her, smiling down at her as if they were alone.
Those pretty eyes of hers shined bright. “That’s pretty dire, then.”
“I’m nothing if not a disappointment, Devyn.”
“That’s why I like you.” She smiled up at him, and he could see that she was standing too close. That everyone could see it if they looked, and he had to assume they were. Her family. Her mother. His own father, who would probably not be hugely excited by this turn of events. But he didn’t step back. He was only a man, after all, and she was looking at him as if he held the whole big, wild, western sky on his shoulders. What was he supposed to do with that? “You don’t pretend to be anything you’re not. You don’t play any games. You’re just you. For better or for worse, you’re just...Vaughn.”
He felt that big sky tilt on his shoulders. “Devyn...”
“The truth is, I don’t believe in secrets, dirty or otherwise.” Devyn put her drink down on a nearby windowsill, which was a good thing, since it looked like a bad night waiting to happen. “I think the truth is that I’m the mess here. I’m the circus. Maybe I have been all along.”
“Everybody loves the circus.”
“I missed you last night,” she said, and he could tell that she knew she was crossing lines. Saying the things people didn’t say after a couple of days. A taxi ride, two nights, a sleigh ride, and a skating party. Why did that feel like more than it was? “Is that wei
rd?”
“I don’t know.” He couldn’t seem to smile anymore. But he felt the heat in his own gaze. “Maybe it is weird. But I missed you too.”
She reached over then, and Vaughn knew she had to be aware that she was standing there in front of her extended family, a significant portion of her mother’s exes, maybe even her own father, too.
“I’m on the verge of outing myself as just another disappointing Grey,” she told him solemnly. “As cursed and messy as the rest. Right here in the same room as my grandmother, who will be certain to comment on that. At length. She already told me that men don’t like funny girls and that’s why I’m single.”
But she laced her fingers through his anyway.
And for a moment, they were the only people in the room.
It was like they were skating again, Vaughn thought. Sweet and easy, flying free.
Or better still, like that glorious moment when he slid deep inside of her, and made them one.
“I don’t know if men like funny girls or not,” he managed to say. “But I like you.”
And he thought the way she smiled at him would stay etched on his heart like that forever.
“I knew I recognized you,” came a voice, yanking him back to earth.
He looked down to find one of Devyn’s cousins standing there—but she was looking at him, not Devyn.
And he understood what was about to happen, then. He saw the gleam of recognition in the blonde woman’s eyes.
“Devyn,” he started.
“You’re Vaughn Taylor,” the blonde cousin said, and the worst part was that she didn’t sound or look particularly avaricious. Her smile was wide and she looked...happy.
“You know he’s Vaughn Taylor, Rayanne,” Devyn said, and Vaughn didn’t know which part he liked least. That tightness in her voice or the fact she tugged her hand from his.
As if she knew, too.
“I don’t know how I never realized he was that Vaughn Taylor,” Rayanne said. “Just...standing here in Aunt Melody’s house at a Christmas party.”
“I’m guilty of being Vaughn Taylor, yes,” he said, but he was already using that other voice. And his practiced, professional smile. And he could see that Devyn could tell the difference. “Though which Vaughn Taylor, I’m not sure I can say. I imagine there are a few of us out there.”
He was hyper aware of Devyn next to him, and every tiny shift in her body language. The way her gaze moved over him, then back to Rayanne. And how, every time it did, she stood stiffer. Further away.
“I can’t believe you’re almost part of the family,” Rayanne was saying, breezy and friendly, and he might have enjoyed this conversation at another time because she seemed genuine. How had it taken a trip to Jackson Hole for him to realize how rare that was? “I love your work. Love. I’m not at all surprised that ‘A Night Like This’ won that Grammy. It’s the best song I’ve heard in years.”
“You won a Grammy?” Devyn asked softly. And not in a particularly admiring way, Vaughn was aware. But as if she couldn’t make sense of it. “An actual Grammy Award?”
She looked at him as if he’d betrayed her. As if the fact she didn’t know the details of the life he had deliberately not shared with her was something he’d done to her. Was doing to her, right here and now.
As if he’d set her up.
“Devyn—” he tried again.
“Don’t tell me you don’t know what he does for a living,” Rayanne said, laughing. “He’s the best songwriter in Nashville. Pick your top five country songs over the past five years and I guarantee you, Vaughn had something to do with them.”
“Wow,” Devyn said, and maybe Vaughn was the only one who could see how hard she was trying not to break apart. “That’s amazing. The two of you should work together.” She even rustled up a smile. “My cousin is also in Nashville.”
Rayanne wrinkled up her nose. “That would be punching way above my weight. I’ll settle for telling everyone I know that you were almost my step-cousin, once upon a time.”
“Don’t be silly,” Vaughn said, but he was distracted. He was trying to read the expression on Devyn’s face, not pander to her cousin. “I’ll give you the friends and almost family discount.”
“Excuse me,” Devyn said then, and her smile looked like it was frozen on her mouth, and she didn’t wait for a response. She dove into the crowd.
Leaving Vaughn alone with her cousin.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Rayanne said after a moment. “Or expose you. I thought she knew.”
“There was nothing to expose,” Vaughn said. Maybe through his teeth. “A simple internet search and there I am, very clearly me.”
“Well,” Rayanne said after an awkward moment. “I know I’ve probably met you before, but it’s a highlight to meet you again. As you. I really am such a fan.”
“Thank you.” He aimed his professional smile at her. “That’s always nice to hear.”
Rayanne nodded in the direction Devyn had gone.
“She won’t actually leave,” she said quietly. “She’s much too well behaved for an outright rebellion. I’d look for her in the sun-room, if I were you.”
Vaughn supposed he should have reacted to that. Denied he was going after Devyn, maybe. Argued. Tried to create a little misdirection, or something—but he didn’t have it in him.
He nodded at Rayanne, a bit stiffly, as if he was already a very old man, and then he stopped pretending he cared about anything but finding Devyn.
He made his way through the crowd, wishing it wasn’t so cold outside. Wishing it wasn’t Christmas Eve, of all nights, so he could get outside. Get some fresh air. Get his head on straight.
And maybe figure out what the tectonic shifts inside him meant. He wanted to find Devyn. He wanted to get his hands on her.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t pissed that she’d run away from him in the first place, when she’d been the one who hadn’t wanted to know who he was or what he did, way back a thousand years ago when he’d recognized her in the airport.
Or that she hadn’t done the very simple search online that he’d mentioned to Rayanne that would have showed Devyn exactly what he’d been up to since their parents had lived together. She’d preferred to imagine him roaming the streets of Nashville, begging for change. That was what she thought of him.
He was over here losing his crap, as had been more than evident all day, but she...wasn’t.
He found her in the sun-room that jutted off from the far side of the kitchen, colder and quieter than the rest of the house. She was standing with her palms on the windows, facing out.
And he had to stop and take a breath, because the sight of her like that, lonely and alone, made him...furious.
“You thought I was homeless,” he gritted out.
She didn’t turn around. Or even stiffen, and it took him a minute to realize she could see him in the window’s reflection. “I’m guessing if you win Grammys in your spare time, you’re probably not.”
“You’re acting like I lied to you.”
She turned then, and looked at him.
As if he’d done something to her. It made him feel scraped raw and hollow inside, and that only made him that much more pissed, because it was unfair.
“You could have told me who you were on Friday night. We were talking about songwriting. You were sitting there, doing your actual job, and you let me think...” She broke off, shaking her head. “Why would you hide it?”
“This is not about my career.” His voice was harder than he wanted, but he couldn’t seem to stop it. He didn’t want to stop it. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you wanted to keep me secret. Then you didn’t. You grabbed my hand in front of your whole family like you were about to make announcements. So you must have been beside yourself with gratitude that your cousin rolled up with another reason you could pretend this isn’t happening.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Of course not
. Devyn Voss doesn’t do messy, no matter what pretty speeches she makes when overcome with Christmas cheer. Do you really think I don’t know what this is about?”
Her chin lifted. “Why don’t you tell me, since you’re such an expert on me and everything else around here, suddenly.”
He was more than happy to tell her. He moved toward her, liking the way her eyes darkened when he drew close, because it meant this was all getting to her. Maybe it was wrecking her the way it was him. A man could only hope.
“You don’t like anything that colors outside your lines, Devyn. Or you don’t want to like it, anyway. I think we both know that there’s one part of you that likes it a little too much.”
Bringing up sex was a low blow, but that appeared to be all he had in him tonight.
And he hated himself for it when she flinched as if he really had hit her.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, because he couldn’t stand hurting her, not even when he was mad at her.
“Do you know why I liked you?” Devyn asked him, her voice shaking and a determined sort of look on her face that Vaughn really didn’t like. “It’s because you seemed to get me. I don’t have to explain my family to you. You know them already. You know my mom. My cousins. And you know how different I am from all of them. And how similar. It felt like such a relief.”
“Is that how you run off your usual boyfriends?” he demanded. “You refuse to let them in. You don’t tell them the truth about you. And then, let me guess, you blame them when parts of you they never knew were there come on out and they don’t love it.”
She let out a laugh, though he didn’t think she thought any of this was funny. “Meanwhile, this was...what? A game for you? You thought you could spend a long weekend incognito? A little anonymity game because you’re bored of being famous?”
“I’m not bored. And this hasn’t been a game to me.”
“And yet you know everything there is to know about me while you stayed shrouded in mystery.”
