Finding Serenity

by Eden Butler

  “What are you doing here?” she asks him, opening the door and holding a hand over the mouthpiece of her cell.

  She doesn’t like how wide his smile is, how that smug smile is the only expression he carries on his face. “Tell your Dad I’m here.”

  Mollie feels the thick wad of alarm bunch down her breath. “What?”

  Vaughn steps across the threshold and shuts the door behind him. “Tell Malone his package has arrived.”

  Mollie Malone’s temper is a fuse slowly burning before the impending explosion. Vaughn can see it in the way her eyes have narrowed so small that minute wrinkles have formed at the corners. Her temper has become a powder keg and each look he gives her only fuels the fire.

  “I know I should have told you sooner,” he manages, but before he can finish his explanation, Mollie throws her cell phone at him.

  “Of all the sneaky, slimy piece of shit moves, Vaughn Winchester. Ugh.”

  He dodges the cell, catches it, but isn’t quick enough to miss the television remote that dings him across his jaw. “Dammit, Mollie, calm down.” When she takes a swing at him, he easily catches her fist. “Stop it.” She’s wiry, squirms against him, but she is strong, Vaughn knew that from the day out on the rugby pitch. He just manages to keep her fist from flying yet again before he turns her around, chest to her back, arms circling her. “You have every reason to be pissed off at me, but please know it was all to protect you.” She jerks against him and Vaughn closes his eyes, breathing in to distract himself from the feel of her small body rubbing against his. “I wanted to tell you. I did. But your father didn’t want me screwing with your life.” Another breath, this one moving Mollie’s thick hair onto her shoulder. “He knew how pissed you’d be.”

  “And did he know you’d kissed me?” She straightens her back, trying to move out of his grip. “Because I promise you, that wouldn’t be part of what he would have wanted.” A look over her shoulder and Vaughn can tell she’s still ready to throttle him. That gaze is full of venom.

  He lets her go, working his fingers through his hair before he slumps onto her sofa. “No. That wasn’t part of the plan.”

  Mollie moves slowly, eyes never leaving his, venom in that expression only growing more poisonous before she sits on the sofa, nearly on top of the armrest away from him. “What was the plan? Get into my delicates to protect me?” Those last two words are animated by air quotes.

  “I didn’t want in your delicates.” When she cocks an eyebrow at him, Vaughn looks away. “Not at first.” This comes under his breath and he hopes she doesn’t hear it.

  “All this time, all these months. It was all an act? You giving me your hoodie? You being worried about the burglary? All of that was because of the mission? She throws a pillow at him when he continues to look away from her. “Was it?”

  Vaughn doesn’t want to answer her. For some reason he can’t fully comprehend, he doesn’t want her knowing what he thought about her when they first met. But she deserves answers. “I thought you were gonna be some spoiled little brat.” Mollie’s low gasp, an instant insult, has her tossing another pillow at him, which he deflects, expecting her anger. “What the hell was I supposed to think? You lived with your mom in an exclusive area; Cavanagh is a private university.”

  “Yep that screams, ‘spoiled rotten.’ That’s her money, not mine and I promise you my sister saw more of it than I did.”

  “I was wrong,” he tells her, rubbing his fingers along the soft fabric of the pillow. “You surprised me.”

  “Because I wasn’t a little shit?”

  Vaughn laughs, remembers her attitude when he called her dad a squid. “No, you were still a little shit.” He easily repels the smack she attempts against his shoulder. “You surprised me because you weren’t anything like I expected. I didn’t think I’d like you so much.”

  She doesn’t respond and Vaughn can tell that her anger at being tricked and her stubbornness was keeping a reaction off her face. But then her eyes slip toward him, reach his gaze and hold it, and Mollie softens, moves her hand toward his, holds it and Vaughn lets himself enjoy the way her hand disappears under his palm.

  He wants to kiss her, just now. The urge is there, a nagging little compulsion that he finds hard to push back every time he’s around Mollie. A quick glance at her, and Vaughn wants to repeat the flux of heat, of desire she worked in him with just one, slight kiss in the ER waiting room. Mollie leans back against the sofa, moves her face to stare at him and he knows what she wants, what she needs. But then he remembers the threat that lingers, remembers that he is a disaster at relationships and he sits up, running the list of details in his mind: Someone had always watched her, Mojo Malone’s MC brothers, but Viv had told him, those brothers couldn’t keep their noses clean, another casualty in the drug trade that Mojo wanted his club out of and Vaughn had to insert himself in Mollie’s life to keep her father happy. He was the dependable replacement who needed a job, or at least, a purpose beyond getting his clients into competition shape. He wasn’t expecting the experience to be pleasant. He wasn’t expecting to like her so damn much.

  Vaughn tries to relax, rests against the sofa, slips his arm out along the back of it. The job, the mission he tells himself, catching the disappointment in her frown when he takes his hand away from her.

  “Listen, we’re stuck with each other. I’ve got a job to do and your dad wants you protected. I know not telling you why I was hanging around was shitty, but that really wasn’t my call.” He leans his elbow on his knees, holding his head in his hands. “But things got sticky and the more I hung around you, the more I realized you needed to know.” Vaughn glances at her, not liking how Mollie has returned to the other side of the sofa. “The time was never right and my sister has been working—”

  She interrupts him with a flick of her hand, silencing him immediately before she heads for the small stereo near a bookcase to his left. With one push of a button, the walls rattle with some loud dubstep monstrosity that has Vaughn’s ears pounding. Then Mollie settles next to him on the sofa, leaning so close that he can feel the press of her breast on his bicep.

  “If Autumn stopped some asshole trying to get in my place,” she whispers, “and we were gone a while at the hospital, then maybe the same asshole had time to come back here.”

  She smells like vanilla again, and Vaughn has to work to push the thought of pulling her onto his lap and kissing her out of his mind. He turns his head, bringing his lips to her ear. “You think you got some bugs?”

  She nods and Vaughn likes the way her soft hair feels against his face. “It wouldn’t be the first time. Normally I check, but I haven’t had time. Daddy gave me some equipment for my sixteenth birthday.” When Vaughn pulls back, looks at her like she’s a little bit crazy, Mollie shrugs. “We had a weird home life.”

  Vaughn squirms on the sofa, the sweet, delicious scent of her skin, of her hair wafting in his nose. Just a job almost rumbles in his head, but he knows it’s a lie now. Vaughn can’t deny what he wants, how much he wants her, but he has a mission to carry out. They needed to get this situation handled so he gets to the day where he has no hesitation kissing her; where her on his lap, his hands all over her won’t piss anyone off. Well, except her father.

  He stands, pulls her up with him. He doesn’t hang on to her hand for too long, and they retreat outside, into the lobby and out of the building to sit on the front steps.

  Vaughn has to admit that Cavanagh is beautiful. The summer breeze is cool and the scent of honeysuckle hangs in the air like a floating feather. He likes this place, likes how the mountains are so much more visible here than in Maryville. He likes how the town is small, intimate; how kids ride their bikes up and down the sidewalk, how the residents stop in the middle of the park to talk to each other. No one seems to be a stranger.

  Mollie flops onto the last step, hugging her legs. “Sit down and tell me what’s going on.”

  He reclines next to her, but manages to put at leas
t two feet of space between them. “I can’t tell you.” He glances at her once, but is surprised that she doesn’t seem angry. The next thought, he feels terrible that she seems indifferent, as though she could guess he would tell her that.

  “I figured.” Mollie moves the hair from the back of her neck and plays with the ends. “He’s working a deal with your sister, I guess.” A glance to him and he nods, which she mimics. “It must be bad.”

  “What?”

  Finally, the distracted stare she’s had, vanishes and she looks at him. “Daddy hates a rat. Always has. There have been a few guys over the years who have tried infiltrating the Compound, but my dad is very careful.” A small dent in her cheek, a slight pull of the corner of her lips and Vaughn guesses Mollie is recalling something that she either finds funny or pathetic. “If he’s working a deal, it’s not against the club. Has to be the cartel.”

  “Mollie, you need to be careful. I don’t know anything.” He inches toward her. “I can’t know. Viv, my sister, told me as little as she could because that’s the way these things have to work. No one can know the details.” Vaughn clears his throat, pulling Mollie’s distracted attention back to him. “No. One.”

  With the stare she gives him, Vaughn knows that she’s working out his meaning. She blinks twice before her eyes widen. “I can’t tell my friends.” He shakes his head. “I can’t tell them anything?”

  “Nothing. From what Viv told me, this is a huge case. That’s really all I know, except that the details have been kept very tight. Not even her assistants know. Your dad and Viv and Viv’s boss are the only ones who know what they’re working on.” Vaughn swallows, not eager to disclose all the stipulations of his job to her. He knows she won’t take it well. “Layla, Autumn, all your friends, even Declan, they can’t know I’m protecting you. I could be easily traced back to Viv.”

  “If you’re here, then they’ll want to know why. Especially Declan.”

  “Why? What’s this got to do with him?”

  Mollie smiles, a distracted, amused gesture. “Because he doesn’t trust you.” A kid on a red bicycle weaves around a light pole, then a street sign and Mollie watches him. “Guess his instincts are better than I thought.”

  “Declan is nosy. He’s got some weird hero complex and thinks it’s his responsibility to take care of you girls.” When Mollie laughs, a hearty, loud sound of amusement, Vaughn frowns, getting the distinct feeling that she’s mocking him. “What?”

  “You’re not so different from him, you know. He’s not a Marine, but yeah, he thinks it’s his place to take care of us. You, on the other hand, I thought had a really solid hero complex. It’s not surprising given your history.”

  “Just because I was in the Corps doesn’t mean I have a hero complex.” She doesn’t correct him, but rolls her eyes and he knows she doesn’t believe him. “I—I don’t like how Declan looks at you.”

  At this, Mollie’s humor amplifies and she leans back against the step laughing hard. “Oh God, you’re dumb.”

  “What?”

  Composing herself, Mollie sits up, holding her stomach. “Declan and Autumn are stupid for each other. Like, ridiculously stupid for each other. My God, he proposed to her after four months.” When Vaughn’s mouth opens, surprised, Mollie’s smile only widens. He hates how much he likes it. “Declan doesn’t want anyone but Autumn. To him, she is family. To her, we are, and Declan protects his family. All of his family. It’s very important to him.” She stretches out her legs, not looking at him. She still wears an amused grin and Vaughn doesn’t know why he’s offended that she thinks he’s some sort of idiot.

  “Well, he won’t have to worry about you, not while I’m here.”

  At this, Mollie’s head snaps toward him. “You’re staying with me?” Vaughn nods. “Like, twenty-four-seven?” Another nod and he smiles with the dip of her mouth, amused that the temper is starting to resurface.

  “Your dad thinks we should stay with your mother. We should go and see her.”

  The frown that started wrinkling her face has now worsened and if Vaughn didn’t know better, he’d think there was real fear marring Mollie’s pretty features. “What?”

  “I know that’s what Daddy wants, but Vaughn, it’s such a bad idea.”

  “She has to know what’s going on. She has to be aware that she and your sister could be in danger.”

  “How did you…” he knows she’s going to ask for details, but when he looks away from her and her shoulders lower, Mollie seems to understand. “You read a file on me, I’m guessing.”

  “It’s part of the job.” Mollie moves her legs and leans her folded arms on them before she moves away from Vaughn. “As far as your mother goes…”

  She shakes her head. “She’s not a nice woman and the fact that all of this will lead back to my dad will only piss her off.”

  “You’re her daughter.”

  Mollie doesn’t look at him when she shakes her head. Instead, she watches the kid on the bike return up the sidewalk, but he doesn’t believe she sees him. There is something running through her mind, some distant memory that he’s sure she’d never share with him.

  “Don’t say that to her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” she says, moving her gaze back up to him, “my mother really wishes I wasn’t.”

  Mollie hates her mother’s home. She isn’t stupid, she isn’t bitter. She knows that the home is grand, that her mother’s many failed marriages have been financially beneficial for her. There was the second husband, an eighty-year-old heart surgeon with no children and a large bank account who died just five years after they married. Numbers three and four both had a lot of cash as well—a judge and a psychologist—each of whom left her for younger versions of herself.

  The home is the last on the left along a two mile lane in the gated community of Whispering Meadows. There is a security guard who always looks down his nose at Mollie when she gives him her name; something she always has to do despite the fact that she’d lived there since she was thirteen.

  It is red brick, nearly five thousand square feet, and is surrounded by a cast iron gate with ivy neatly weaving between each bar. Aesthetically, Mollie knows it is beautiful. There are lush evergreens hugging around the ground-level front porch and flanking the paver walkway. Large Bradford Pear trees, full with delicate white flowers, sit at the front corners of the lot and wide, cedar columns secure the slate roof near the front door.

  Mollie should love it here. She should feel safe, secure, but as they enter—while Lisa, the maid that her mother doesn’t seem able to do without, holds the door open for her and Vaughn—Mollie gets the same feeling she’s had since she was thirteen and her mother pulled her through the massive oak door nearly kicking and screaming: she was a stranger, a nuisance that her mother had to deal with. That feeling hasn’t changed in the three years that Mollie has been living on her own.

  “Nice place.” Vaughn’s low voice whispers in her ear and Mollie represses a shiver. He isn’t speaking softly because he doesn’t want to be heard. She knows it’s the house, the elegant, stuffy decorations that make each room feel like a museum. Her mother has built a shrine to the opulent; a ridiculous mimic of an English estate with rich Persian rugs covering the marble floors and ostentatious, antique wood carved Victorian sofas that look too expensive to sit on.

  “If you say so.” Mollie leads Vaughn through the front room, the “sitting room” as her mother calls it, and into the den where Lisa waves a hand toward Mollie’s mother.

  Today, her mother’s hair is settled into a tight bun at the back of her head. The strands are blonde, professionally colored and styled, but Mollie notices that the texture has grown brittle again, that it is no longer shiny or soft. She is reading a newspaper, looking through a pair of black, oval-shaped glasses that rest precariously close to the end of her nose.

  When Mollie and Vaughn enter the room, only her mother’s eyes move up, to stare over the frames at them. />
  They stand next to her sitting in her plush, red chair, and she waits a full minute, presumably to finish her article, before she exhales and neatly folds the newspaper on her lap.

  “Mollie.” The tone is forced as though uttering her daughter’s name is thick, filthy on her tongue.

  “Mother, this is Vaughn Winchester.” She nods to Vaughn who instantly extends his hand.

  She takes it, her fingers limp in his massive palm, before she quickly withdraws. “Elizabeth Chamberlain,” she says, as though Vaughn should recognize the importance behind the name. Mollie wants to tell Vaughn she’s only been ‘Elizabeth’ since she left her father and she knows that Mojo would roll his eyes at her mother’s insistence that no one refer to her as ‘Lizzie’ anymore. Pompous bitch. “And your visit today pertains to what, may I ask?” This she says to Mollie, as though a greeting to Vaughn is beneath her.

  “Can we sit?” Mollie points to the small, uncomfortable sofa next to the glass table that separates the furniture. Her mother frowns and Mollie amends. “May we sit?” At her mother’s nod, the pair settles down and Mollie can’t help but straighten her back and fold her hands in her lap. It’s training that immediately returns any time she’s in her mother’s presence.

  “May I offer you some tea?” she asks Vaughn, but again, the tone is clipped and her frown challenges him to agree.

  “Thank you, no.”

  “Very well.” Her mother adjusts her skirt, smoothing down the fine, blue fabric over her knees before she looks back at the couple. Then, quite suddenly, with little fanfare or warning, she asks Mollie, “Have you gotten yourself pregnant?”

  “What?” Next to her, Vaughn chokes back a cough. “No, Mother, I’m not pregnant. Vaughn and I aren’t even—”

  “What should I expect, Mollie? I don’t see you for six months and you come to my home unannounced with this… this man whom I have never seen before in my life. Why else would you be here if not to give me devastating news or to ask a favor?”