Finding Serenity Read online

  “That’s not going to work. Viv’s boss would never go for it.”

  “Why?”

  He won’t answer, doesn’t want the annoyance to resurface. If he tells her the truth, how suspect every one of her father’s brothers are, how Viv has done background checks on each of them, then Mollie’s ire will swell quickly. That much he is certain of. Mollie is perceptive, Vaughn knows that. With eyes shifting to small slits as she watches him, he knows she catches his meaning.

  “They aren’t trust worthy, right?”

  “Mollie, they’re criminals.” He steps closer, whispering. “They’re felons and they can’t know about the case.”

  “They won’t. They’re family, Vaughn. If my dad tells them to protect me, they will. They’ve done it since I was a kid. Besides, you don’t know anything about the case and here you are, shadowing me.”

  With a slow shake of his head, the honest, vulnerable Mollie from seconds ago disappears. He understands. He knows that she is frustrated, that him touching her, leading her on for months has begun to break her down. It’s been brewing for two days and the entire time she hasn’t smiled once. More than anything, he hates that. He misses that smile.

  Mollie disappears into the bathroom and Vaughn tries not to rub his palms into his eyes, doesn’t want her gawking friends to know that they have argued. Instead he turns, gives the table a wave and waits for her.

  Maybe getting Vaughn drunk will keep his eyes off her. No, Mollie thinks, staring into her empty glass, that would probably only keep him more paranoid.

  She hasn’t felt so stifled, so confined since she left her mother’s home. No matter what she does—joking with Autumn and Sayo, reminiscing about their two a.m. naked skinny dip they managed in the university lake sophomore year, plotting with Layla about her next evil plan to humiliate Donovan, Vaughn’s eyes follow her.

  A month ago, she would have loved his gaze on her; wanted it desperately. But since that night on the sofa, since he called out his ex-wife’s name, Mollie has felt uncomfortable in her own skin. It isn’t him, not exactly. It isn’t’ the way he smells or how he won’t let her be more than ten feet from him that has her desperate to get away. It is the idea that all this time, all these months, she has held a ridiculous torch lit by an artificial flame. It isn’t real, not any of it; not the attention he paid her at the Dash, not how eager he’d been to give her his number at the match before regionals, not even his willingness to find out details about her burglary. It was all part of some larger scheme, a plan that had her father sleeping with one eye open and made her a direct target of his enemies.

  Vaughn’s rejection stung the sharpest. He had felt too good, tasted too right, hovering over her, the thick planes of his body and the musky tang of his skin moving over her like a drug, making her reason flee. Now he watches her and though she knows it is his job, though she knows that it is done to protect her, Mollie’s greatest swell of disappointment comes in the knowledge that he’d never allow himself to see her as more than a mission.

  So she wants to escape, like she had when her mother tried convincing her that a convent might suit her. She misses her freedom, she misses relaxing in her apartment with no one’s judgments filling her ears if she ate Rocky Road at two a.m. or stayed up until five to catch the latest “Doctor Who” episode.

  “What’s going on between you two?” Layla’s voice is low and her best friend is subtle, stretching around so that Vaughn’s hawk-like eyes can’t make out her question.

  “We’re just hanging out.” She downs the rest of Layla’s forgotten, warm beer.

  “I call bullshit.”

  “Ditto,” Sayo says, bumping Layla’s knee to squat between Mollie and Layla. “This thing?” She nods at Mollie and then at Vaughn who chats with Declan and Autumn at the other end of the table. “That is so not someone you’re into.”

  “Whatever. I’m just a little stressed out by all the shit that’s being going on.” Mollie looks between her friends’ disbelieving expressions. “I am. I don’t know if all of this has anything to do with my dad or if it’s all a coincidence.”

  “Sweetie, don’t be stupid. Of course it’s not a coincidence.” Layla rolls up the corner of a napkin into a ball and flings it at Donovan. She smiles when it lands on the top of his head and he doesn’t notice.

  “How you’re acting now? That is not how you were when you met him.” Sayo hands Layla another napkin ball and they all watch it descend onto Donovan’s crown.

  “Yeah, well, I know him a little better.” Mollie doesn’t like not telling her friends the truth; the deception burns in her stomach like a bad burrito.

  “Uh huh. Right.” When Layla’s third napkin ball flings against Donovan’s neck and he whips around to glare at her, the blonde’s gaze swings to Sayo, still crouched between them. “All I’m saying is that something is up.”

  That burn increases and Mollie wants desperately to give her friends something—a small morsel that will ease the pain festering in her gut. A quick glance over her shoulder and she spots Vaughn and Autumn, who is sitting on Declan’s lap, deep into conversation.

  “Pinkies?” Mollie’s finger extends and her friends immediately copy her. They grip fingers, shake once and she takes a breath. “I can’t say what’s going on, but my dad hired him.” She gives her head a small tilt in Vaughn’s direction and her friends nod, understanding.

  “Wait. How long ago?” Sayo asks, her voice lowering.

  “From the beginning.” Mollie sighs at her friends’ immediate, horrified reactions. “Yeah. He’s not interested. Not… not really.”

  Layla’s eyes slip to her left and she pulls Sayo up, grabs Mollie by the elbow. “Who wants another round?” she asks the table, dragging both her friends toward the bar before anyone can answer. “He was watching us,” she tells Mollie as they recline against the wooden counter. She waves her hand to the harried-looking barmaid before she and Sayo stand in front of Mollie, blocking Vaughn’s view of her. “Now. What do you mean, ‘not really’?”

  Mollie has no desire to recount the quick, sleep-induced grinding she and Vaughn participated in the other night, but her friends are staring, they are expecting, and she knows she has to tell them something. “He kissed me, but he didn’t mean it.”

  “What do… oh, sorry,” Layla says, bumping into a guy at the end of the bar. “What do you mean he didn’t mean it?”

  Mollie shrugs, reaches into her pocket to pull out some cash, only to have Layla slide her credit card toward the barmaid. “He was having a nightmare. He… he thought I was someone else.”

  “What the hell…”

  “Sayo, please.” She feels her face flame and moves aside when Layla grabs the pitcher of beer. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Layla and Sayo exchange a look, make a poor effort in hiding that look from Mollie, but neither one of them pry any further.

  “Distract him, will you? I need a break.”

  She doesn’t have to see their reactions to know they have agreed. She doesn’t have to watch them descend on Vaughn at the table, concealing her at the bar as they bombard him with questions. It’s something the four girls have always done for each other and she knows she’ll have at least ten minutes to herself thanks to how chatty her friends are.

  “You trying to ditch someone?” Mollie hears, turning toward a tall guy with brown hair nursing a Budweiser.

  She is about to brush him off, ignore him completely, but when she looks at his face, sees the rugged set of his nose—broken at least once—and his full bottom lip, Mollie’s intended rudeness is forgotten.

  “Something like that.”

  The guy moves next to her, rests his back against the counter before extending his hand to her. “Jimmy.” His handshake is firm, a bit on the aggressive side, but Mollie isn’t put off by him. In fact, she is drawn to his strength, latent in his hands.

  “Nice to meet you.” She might be attracted to this guy, to his strength, but Mollie isn’t stu
pid. He is a stranger. No way is he getting her name.

  Jimmy nods toward the table and smiles when Layla’s laugh carries over the noise of the crowd. “Your girls are pros, yeah?”

  Mollie nods. “We’ve been doing this a long time.”

  “Can I buy you a drink?” His eyes are hazel with small flecks of green around the edges and Mollie likes how easy his smile is, how he seems so comfortable in his own skin. She thinks about saying yes. She thinks that it would be easy to take this guy up on any offers he may serve her, but then her gaze wanders to Vaughn’s hard scowl and the way he holds his hands in fists on top of the table.

  She doesn’t want to see this; knows that if she lingers too long on his fierce expression, she’ll be tempted to further ignite his temper. Jimmy would just be a pawn in that game and Mollie doesn’t like playing with anyone. Especially not cute, friendly guys with stunning hazel eyes.

  “I’m good.” She nods to the barmaid wanting something a bit stronger than a beer and next to her Jimmy motions for a shot as well.

  “To pissing off assholes.” Jimmy taps his small glass to Mollie’s and they both down the shot. It burns, all the way down, but she likes the sting, likes that for just a second it distracts her from the complications of her life.

  “Have another one,” Jimmy says, motioning again to the barmaid, but before her glass is refilled she smells a familiar tang of musky soap and closes her eyes, knowing that what happens next will not be pleasant.

  “No, I think she’s done for the night.”

  From the corner of her eye, Mollie sees Jimmy’s smile; the gesture is pleased, and she gets the feeling that he expected Vaughn’s possessive reaction. He turns slowly, that full bottom lip stretching with his grin. “You her daddy or something?” Jimmy asks Vaughn, stepping up, nose to nose to him.

  “Nope, but I do spank her every once in a while.”

  Mollie cringes at Vaughn’s lie and she notices Jimmy’s smile falters, only slightly. Behind Vaughn’s wide shoulders, Declan and Donovan approach with her friends trailing behind them.

  “Yeah?” Jimmy says, not flinching in the least when Vaughn stretches his neck, pops it twice. “Not tonight you won’t.”

  “You think so, asshole?” Vaughn squeezes Jimmy’s collar between his fingers, jerking him once. “You think some scrawny fucker like you is gonna take off with her?”

  “I’m not the one she was avoiding, jackass.” Jimmy pushes Vaughn, but the Marine’s body doesn’t move an inch.

  “Take it outside,” they hear, Mollie assumes it’s from the manager stepping out of his office behind the bar.

  “We’re cool.” Jimmy’s hands fly up, and Declan manages to pull Vaughn back. Before he steps away, Jimmy nods to Mollie, that smile still present, still wide and tempting. “You sure I can’t give you a ride, darlin’? I’d be more than happy to.”

  Mollie swallows, knows her face is bright red when Jimmy licks that fat bottom lip, his intention evident in the low slink of his eyes down her body.

  “Fuck off,” Vaughn tells him, tugging Mollie behind him. And the guy leaves, laughing as he weaves around the staring crowd.

  “Alright then, mate?” Declan asks Vaughn, tapping him once on the shoulder.

  “Yeah.” But he doesn’t look alright. Vaughn doesn’t look anything but lethal and Mollie steps back, away from his hard glare, away from the quick pulse of his neck as Autumn grabs her elbow and steers her back toward the table.

  “You want another drink?” Autumn lifts the pitcher, grabs an empty cup, but stops short when Vaughn grips Mollie’s hand.

  “Sorry, but we’re gone.” He offers her friends a stare, once again adopting that professional, Marine bearing she’s come to recognize. “Thanks for the beer,” he tells Declan when the Irishman approaches as though he might stop him.

  “I don’t want—”

  “We’re gone.” Vaughn reiterates his insistence by pulling Mollie away from the table and the confused expressions on her friends’ faces.

  Mollie doesn’t like silence. She doesn’t like the eerie quiet that usually means trouble. When she was a kid, that silence usually followed the crunch of boots, the kicking in of doors, cops crashing doors to disturb what passed for normalcy in her life.

  The ride back to the hotel has been that sort of quiet—the awkward air of anger wafting thick between them, the heady ache of humiliation she felt when her friends watched Vaughn pulling her away, as though she was a disobedient child. Right now, she hates Vaughn Winchester. She hates the way he has assumed so much about her, right from their first meeting. He thinks he knows her. He likes to assume. And tonight, he thought she had been talking to some random as a means to make him jealous. She’d seen it in the hard glare he gave them both, in the possessive way he antagonized Jimmy.

  The silence follows them like a shadow, out of the parking lot and into the hotel. The ride in the elevator seems to last forever and Mollie is tempted to say something to him; comment on how he won’t look at her, how the tension in his face has not relaxed once since they left the pub. But then an older couple gets in and Vaughn stands in front of her, his shirt pulled tight over his shoulders as he crosses his arms.

  They make it to the room, still speechless, and Vaughn doesn’t hold the door open for her, something he’s always done. She stands in the den, watching him stare out of the French doors. Cavanagh looms beyond, the soft light from the tourist strip muted behind the full moon and the beautiful haze that circles the mountains in the distance. Mollie wants to be there, free to run, worry left in the wake of each step she takes. It’s something she’s done before, when a club and spinning tracks could not bring her calm. She and her friends would run trails up the mountains, burning their lungs with the clear, crisp air. The thought of them distracts Mollie from the view beyond the room. She can’t believe she let Vaughn drag her away. She’s angry with herself, with him at creating this ridiculous situation.

  “What kind of caveman bullshit was that?” She tries to keep her voice calm. She tries very hard not to recall the shocked expressions on her friends’ faces as Vaughn tugged her out of the pub. But when he doesn’t reply, doesn’t do more than uncross his large arms and rest his hands on his hips, Mollie feels the forced calm in her chest fracture.

  He is motionless, but the white-knuckle grip on his hips tells Mollie he is not happy. “Are you stupid?” When he turns, arms again over his chest as though he is trying to keep from lashing out at her. “Seriously, I need to know. Did you adopt some of your dad’s lack of sense?”

  Sense, logic, calm, all race from her like the lash of a whip, replaced with a blind rage. She doesn’t see the man who she wanted all those months ago. She doesn’t see the man who called her a badass, who looked at her with raw amazement when she kneed his shoulder back into place. This moment, he is an assault on her family, the heavy fist that ruptures her brittle composure.

  “Fuck you!”

  A small twitch below his eye quivers and then Vaughn exhales. “That’s mature.”

  “Don’t start in on me about being a kid, you asshole. You’re the one who humiliated me in front of my friends.” He isn’t the least bit repentant. He looks, in fact, utterly exasperated. Vaughn scrubs his face, a little tick she’s noticed he does a lot, and growls, low and deep into his hands. Mollie doesn’t care if he’s frustrated. Right now, she only wants to claw his eyes out. “But that’s what you like to do, isn’t it? See how far you can push me?”

  “I didn’t do anything I wasn’t supposed to.”

  “Bullshit. What the hell was that, telling that guy you spank me? You do not.” She steps forward, pushes him and he lets her. “You never will, you prick.”

  When she pushes him again, hoping for a reaction, wishing he would tell her what really made him so angry, Vaughn holds her hand still against his chest. She tries pulling free from him, but he is stronger than her, larger, more commanding. There are only a few inches of space separating them; a small distance tha
t could change everything with one subtle movement. But then Vaughn’s grip loosens and he backs away from her challenge, keeps her at a distance, veiling his thoughts once again.

  Mollie’s shout is loud, angry and she doesn’t bother to answer him when he calls her, decides instead to make for the bedroom, to give Vaughn the space he clearly wants. But before she can slam the door closed, he is behind her, kicking against the door.

  “Have you lost your freaking mind?” she asks him when the door slams back against the wall.

  “Oh, I’ve lost it alright. You don’t think, do you? That guy was marking you. He was tailing you.” She blows this off, rolling her eyes at his paranoia and Vaughn follows her as she retreats further into the bedroom, moving her by the shoulders to face him. She doesn’t know what to make of his expression. It isn’t angry, not simply anger. There is worry there in his eyes, she can tell, and the thin hint of confusion. But his touch is demanding, like everything Vaughn is. It hurts and she thinks all those twisted emotions that run through him now come out in his touch, bearing down through his fingers and onto her shoulders.

  “Get your fucking hands off me.” Instinct niggles at her, has her slipping her fingers into her jeans to feel the comfortable coolness of her pocketknife. Vaughn’s gaze lowers, right to her hand and when he looks back at her, the wrinkle above his eyes tells Mollie he understands what she’s doing. Hands up, he jerks away from her.

  “You didn’t even bother to get a good look at him, did you?”

  “What?”

  “The tattoos, Mollie. On his neck.” Vaughn steps back, sags against the dresser. “Just like the ones Mannie described.” He watches Mollie and she isn’t sure what he’s looking for. There is realization, annoyance, but it isn’t directed at Vaughn.