When she heard the door click shut, she whirled on him. “Did I invite you in? I don’t think so.” She crossed her arms and glared, her breath coming fast and her face flushed.
“Are you going to tell me what you were doing with him?” Vaughn asked again, his voice soft but his heart heavy.
She looked away. Stubborn fucking woman. Beautiful. But stubborn.
He took another step closer and saw a flash of fear in her eyes. Good. God knew this thing between them scared him too, but there was no way he was going to let her avoid it anymore.
“T.J., I know we didn’t discuss it the other night, but I sort of assumed—”
“Well, you know what they say about assuming,” she snarked.
He reached her, and saw her bluster falter for a split second.
His voice was low and gritty as he ran the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip. “I’m not seeing anyone else, T. And I won’t. No matter how hard you push me away, no matter how fast you run, I won’t turn to anyone else. I’m done putting other people between us. It wasn’t fair to them or to you. I never cared about them. It was always only you. It will always be only you.”
Her angry veneer cracked. “My car wouldn’t start and he saw me in the parking lot of the bank. He just gave me a ride home.” She looked away, then said so softly he almost didn’t hear it, “I told him I can’t see him anymore.”
Triumph blossomed in Vaughn’s chest, and he knew he’d just taken one giant step on the long road back to where he belonged—next to T.J.
He couldn’t help the grin that spread over his face. “Oh, did you now?”
She squinted at him. “Stop it.”
He grinned wider. “Stop what?”
“Stop gloating. It wasn’t working with him anyway, it had nothing to do with us—you—” She flapped her hand in the air. “This. Whatever this is.”
“Sure,” he answered casually as he hooked his arm around her neck and pulled her into an embrace. He kissed the top of her head as she muttered things into his chest. “It had nothing to with us. It doesn’t mean a thing.”
“I’m still not sleeping with you,” she finally said, looking up at him with those beautiful big brown eyes.
“I know. But you are going to stop avoiding me.”
“I’m busy.”
“You’re scared.” His expression went from gloating to serious in a heartbeat. “And you have every right to be. But we’ll never fix this if we can’t spend time together. It can be pressure-free, but we need that time, baby.”
She sighed, leaning her head against his chest and wrapping her arms around his waist. Her soft, warm curves felt so divine, he had to swallow and count to fifty in Spanish to keep the erection at bay while she talked.
“I hate you,” she began. He held his breath and kept holding her, moving one hand to stroke her hair as he let her say what she needed to. “Drew was a really nice guy—polite, charming, a hard worker. And I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t keep seeing him. Even before ”—she sounded a little strangled —“what we did the other night, I knew I couldn’t keep seeing him.”
“Poor girl,” Vaughn said soothingly. “I’ve ruined you for anyone else.”
She pinched him on the side, making him yelp and squirm. After twenty years she knew all his tender spots, just as he knew hers.
They stood, wrapped around each other, listening to the birds outside and the horses nickering in the pasture behind the little cottage.
“Please don’t break me,” she whispered into his chest, right over his aching heart.
He felt the regret slam into him like a two-ton truck, and for a moment, all he could do was squeeze his eyes shut and let it flow through him. Then he cupped her head with both hands and tipped her face up so he could see her bright eyes.
“I swear on my parents’ graves, this is it. This is us. Forever, like we were meant to be. No more doubts. No more fears. Just you and me and the rest of our lives.”
She watched him, so serious, so cautious. Then she gave the tiniest nod of her head. “Okay. But slow?”
“Slow, baby. As slow as you want.”
“How about ‘we have leftover pizza and watch a movie’ slow?”
He leaned down and brushed a soft kiss over her lips. “Sounds like a perfect night.”
15
“So, your mom tells me you’ve made your best friend into your girlfriend,” Rex said as he worked alongside Vaughn in the barn one afternoon.
Vaughn felt his face flush. Fuck, his dad was going to give him the damn sex ed speech again like he had when Vaughn was twelve. So goddamn uncomfortable.
“Yeah, T.J. and I are dating.” He scraped a pile of manure into the shovel and tossed it into the cart outside the door.
His dad put down the pitchfork he was using to toss fresh hay into the stalls. “So how’d that come about?”
Vaughn fought the urge to run screaming from the barn and ducked his head so he didn’t have to look his old man in the eye.
“I don’t know, we just sorta realized that we’d rather date each other than anyone else.”
“Uh-huh.” Rex did that thing where he watched Vaughn without saying anything. It was like having lasers tracking your every movement.
Vaughn finally cracked. “Just get it over with, Dad. Tell me about waiting until we’re ready and wrapping it up and all that stuff so we can be done with this.”
Rex chuckled. “Well, now that you mention it, all that’s good advice too.”
Vaughn looked at him, questioning.
“You’re nearly eighteen, son. I think you know how condoms work, and I highly doubt me telling you to wait with the girl you’ve loved all your life is going to make any difference.”
Vaughn tried not to choke as he went back to shoveling shit and praying that a bolt of lightning would just take him out now.
“Vaughn.” His dad called to him, and Vaughn stopped shoveling and paid attention.
Rex walked over and put a heavy hand on Vaughn’s shoulder, squeezing ever so slightly.
“That girl is part of our family whether you date her for a day or a lifetime. You remember that, and you treat her with the respect and the care that you would any member of our family. You understand me, son?”
“Yes, sir,” Vaughn whispered, something making his throat feel full of cotton.
“You may not realize it, but you have the power to break her heart, and she has the power to break yours. She trusts you with everything now. Make sure you’re worthy of it.”
Janelle shook her head as T.J. walked into the office and set two cups of coffee down.
“That’s bribery in the form of caffeine,” Janelle said with a scowl.
T.J. sighed. “Drew talked to you.”
“Yeah well, when I saw him checking out of the inn this morning and made a joke about you being there with him, I found out. Now I know why you’ve been so absent the last few days.” Janelle paused, sipping the coffee T.J. had brought for her. “How is Mr. I Can’t Make Up My Mind, anyway?”
“Apparently, he’s made up his mind,” T.J. offered.
Janelle raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
T.J. flopped down in her desk chair. “He seems serious about it. He keeps hanging around, bringing me flowers, feeding me dinner.”
Janelle snorted. “He’s always done that stuff. He just did it, then slept with other women instead of you.”
T.J.’s face grew hot.
“Oh. My. God. You didn’t!”
“I might have?”
“Spill. This instant! Was it good? How did it happen? Were you sober? Was he?”
“It was…um, it happened the night of Boots and Brews—”
“So that’s why you left so early. I knew I didn’t believe that story about you not feeling well.”
T.J. narrowed her eyes at her friend. “You were so busy spying on Vaughn’s brother, you didn’t even notice I’d gone for nearly an hour.”
Janelle shrugged. “If you’d
seen the way Ty looked at that woman when she walked up to him, you’d have spied too. I’ve never known a Jenkins man to look so damn scared. It was like she was a ghost or a wicked witch or something.”
“I’ll have to ask Vaughn if he knows anything about it.”
Janelle pried the lid off her coffee and dumped in a packet of sweetener she found in the top drawer of her desk.
“You’re doing great at avoiding my question, by the way.”
“What question?” T.J. muttered into her coffee cup.
“The one about the sex you had with Vaughn.”
“It’s complicated.”
“It is. And I know how hard this is for you. I want it to work out, I really do. I just don’t trust him.”
T.J. nodded. “I don’t either. And I’m not sure if I ever can.”
Two hours later, T.J. arrived at the Big Sur Ranch to have the first session with Vaughn’s running blade. She went straight to the gym to put her things down, even though they’d be doing most of their session outside. As she reached for the door, she met up with Cade coming out.
“She’s back,” he said, a big smile on his face.
“She is. For now,” she added, not wanting to get anyone’s hopes up, least of all her own.
He winked at her. “Oh, I’m expecting her to be around for a very long time now.”
“Makes one of us,” she muttered to herself as Cade held the door open for her.
Once inside, he stayed with her. “How are you?” he asked as she went to the desk and put her bag down and stripped off her zip-up hoodie.
“I’m okay, thanks.”
“You know I mean more than in the generic sense,” he added, watching her carefully.
She leaned back against the desk, sitting her butt on the edge and thought about that for a moment. Was she okay? If being in a constant state of waiting for the other shoe to drop counted as okay, then she supposed she was.
“I’m okay, but I’m…cautious, I guess you could say.” Pessimistic. Discouraged even.
“And no one could blame you for that,” Cade said. “I have something to show you,” he added. “Come with me for a minute?”
She nodded and followed him out of the gym and next door to the barn complex where the Jenkinses had their office as well as the horses they personally used, and a sick animal quarantine area.
Cade led her to the section of the building that housed the office, but opened a door on the left-hand side of the hallway instead of the right.
It was a room T.J. had seen only once before, when she and Vaughn had been dating in high school. The twelve-by-twelve space had a window that covered one whole wall, looking toward the road that led to the house. The view was all Jenkins land and the big sky that hung over the ocean beyond.
Inside the room were canvases—dozens of them. Some blank, some filled or in progress, all of them Vaughn’s.
“You remember when Dad had this room set up for him?” Cade asked.
T.J. nodded. “He was really excited. Your dad was a good guy. I know he didn’t really understand the art, but if his kid loved it, then he was going to facilitate it.”
Cade’s smile was bittersweet. “Yeah, he was that guy all right. And the day they died, Vaughn quit using this room. He came and sat around in here once in a while, but I don’t think he ever painted. When they were alive, he’d spend a few hours every weekend in here, and if we were lucky, he’d end up with something he liked and the rest of us would get to see it.”
Cade walked over to a covered canvas on an easel. “Since he came home from college, he’s been all about the photography, and since it’s digital, we never got to see what he was doing. But I figured maybe he wasn’t going to paint anymore. Maybe that was just something that he associated with Mom and Dad so much, he’d never do it again. But yesterday, he showed me this.”
Cade removed the cover from the canvas, and there in living color was a big, bold painting of a woman on a surfboard, gliding over the water, long dark hair flying out behind her. It was impressionist in style, not too detailed, the colors of the ocean and the sky bleeding into oranges and yellows where a sun set in the background. Only a slight profile of the woman’s face was visible, but the hair alone was enough for T.J. to realize that it was her.
She walked silently closer, holding out a hand as if she was going to touch the brilliant, complex piece.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Cade asked, brotherly pride spilling out of him.
T.J. fought the tears that threatened, and nodded, caught speechless for a moment.
“It’s—” She cleared her throat before she continued. “It’s amazing. Different from the stuff he used to do.”
“He’s never done the art for show,” Cade said quietly. “It was always just something that he loved and did for himself. That’s why when he decided to major in it in college, I was really pleased. I know it’s important to him, and I hoped it would help him after Mom and Dad died.”
T.J. huffed out a breath. “Didn’t seem to.”
Cade turned and faced her, his brow furrowed. “That’s my fault. I want you to know that. I was so caught up in running the business and feeling sorry for myself, regretting all the things I did wrong with my parents—it didn’t leave me room to take care of Vaughn the way I should have. He was a kid, T.J. He needed a parent, and I wasn’t there for him.”
T.J.’s eyes filled again. So much regret and pain in these Jenkins men, sometimes she wondered if it was really in her own best interests to hang around with them.
Then Cade smiled. “But when he had the accident, it was my wake-up call. I won’t let him fail this time. And I can feel it in my bones—he’s getting there, and this painting? It’s one really big sign I’m right.”
She nodded, looking at the bright splashes of color and the way the brushstrokes so perfectly shaped and molded the forms in the scene. The way one thing flowed into another, curves, slopes, crests. It was a voluptuous composition, lush and full.
“I wanted you to see it,” Cade said, pulling the cover back over it, shutting it away in the dark again. “I asked him if I could, and he said yes. You know he doesn’t really show his stuff to people himself.”
She did know. But once upon a time, he had shown her his work. Little sketches on school notebooks, a painting of flowers for his mom on her birthday, and one very special portrait of T.J.’s dog that he gave to her after they had to put Candy down. But she couldn’t help but wonder if he would have shown her this one, this picture of her, if Cade hadn’t done it for him?
As they left the little art studio, she wondered if they’d ever rebuild the trust that had been missing between them for so long.
“He’s never going to be the same again, you know,” she told Cade.
He glanced at her as they walked through the hallway and back outside. They both stopped, and he faced her.
“None of us are. Life changes people. It’s just a fact. I’m not looking to get back seventeen-year-old Vaughn. I’m looking to have a brother who’s confident and happy. I’m looking to get the man Vaughn was becoming. I don’t expect him to be the same, just to be his best self. That’s something I think even he’d agree he hasn’t been for a very long time.”
T.J. smiled at him. “Thank you for showing me the painting.”
“Anytime.”
She turned to go back to the gym, Cade’s words ringing in her ears. Life changes people. I’m not looking to get back seventeen-year-old Vaughn. But was she? Was she waiting for that sweet, innocent, romantic boy to come back? Had she been for all these years? Well, of course she had. He’d disappeared overnight and taken her heart with him.
But a piece of her had disappeared that night too. She’d loved his parents almost like they were her own. And their deaths had frightened her. A seventeen-year-old suddenly slapped in the face with the realities of human mortality can’t be the same as she was the day before. Since then, she’d grown up, lived away from home, dated other men, go
ne to college. She wasn’t the same person she had been. She couldn’t expect him to be either.
And it would be the height of stupidity to expect them to love each other in the same way. In fact, she had to wonder if the new Vaughn and T.J. needed to figure out if they actually did love each other, or if they only loved the bygone versions?
By the time she walked into the gym, she was thoroughly convinced that they’d missed something important in all this, and if they didn’t figure that out, they’d never end up together.
Vaughn was already there going through his warm-ups. His face broke into a smile when he saw her, and he stopped what he was doing.
“Hey there,” he said, moving toward her.
“Stop!” She held out a hand in front of her like a school-crossing guard.
He froze, confusion all over his face.
“T.? What’s going on?”
She crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “We have to talk.”
“Okaaay. Am I allowed to move, or are we going to do this from across the room?”
She huffed out a breath and glared at him. That only made him grin. Heat washed over her. He’d worn gym shorts and no shirt. His skin had the faintest sheen of sweat on it and his hair was sticking out from under a backward baseball cap. She was a professional, she wasn’t supposed to be perving on her clients’ bodies, but Vaughn’s abs should be illegal. And those biceps. Did they get bigger every time she saw him? The tattoo he had of his parents’ names over his left pec was looking especially sublime today as well.
Focus, Theodora, focus.
“Yes, you can move. Let’s go for a walk.”
He nodded and followed her out of the gym.
They took the small trail that led toward the creek. The copse of trees that sat alongside the creek had always been a favorite place for them to play in the summers, and T.J. wondered if they could ever escape the ghosts of those two children they’d once been.
She took them to the fallen log that they’d used for a bench when they’d fished in the adjacent stream.
Vaughn stayed quiet, waiting for her to take the lead just as he’d been saying he would.
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