EIGHT
Mollie Malone is like a drug. An annoying, addictive, impossible-to-ignore drug. Right now, Vaughn thinks that particular drug is being a brat. And by God is she damn good at doing that.
He tips his beer to his lips, watches her as her friends surround them. She barely manages to give him a second glance all night and it is starting to piss Vaughn off. He isn’t offended, but he knows if they are to be a convincing couple, then she needs to stop ignoring him.
The table is intimate, set back in the corner of this small pub on the university campus. His gut told him they should not be here, that he should not have let her convince him that attending this pre-semester dinner was in any way a good idea. But she was stubborn, glaring at him, whining about missing her friends and so he relented, would give her this chance to spend time with them. Besides, he reasoned, seeing Vaughn and Mollie together would only convince her friends, that suspicious Irishman, that they were a couple.
But she would not let him hold her hand—a necessary part of the cover—or even place his hand on the small of her back as he opened the door for her. He understood. He got why she is angry. Another sip of the cold lager helps to push back the memory of her under him, of the sleepy, nearly unconscious rutting against her he’d done two nights before. He feels his face heat, but ignores it, looks toward the door, eyes keen and narrow as he watches the other patrons in the bar. No one appears out of place. No one, in fact, is on their own. Kids from the university are scattered around the small pub, mixing with after-hours office workers and a few guys dressed in maintenance uniforms. To his left, Mollie’s best friend, Layla, he thinks her name is, laughs high and piercing, pulling his attention back to the table.
They seem like a nice group; though Vaughn can’t help feeling somewhat out of place. For all intents and purposes, he doesn’t fit in. All of Mollie’s friends are younger than him, except Declan, who is closer to his age. The girls are in college and they discuss the upcoming semester, the classes they will take—Mollie and Layla—and the ones they will teach—Autumn and Sayo. To his left, Declan and his friend Donovan discuss their chances at regionals and all of them act like Vaughn is a chaperone and not part of their small circle.
“Mollie said you own a Crossfit studio.” Donovan, the blonde who keeps exchanging glares with Layla, leans across the crowded table to get Vaughn’s attention.
“I do. In Maryville.” He adjusts his arms and rests his elbows on the table. “It’s only been open a few months, hell, almost six now that I think about it.”
Donovan’s nod is quick and Vaughn instantly understands that the guy is making conversation, probably not really interested in his business. “My cousin made it to the finals in the Crossfit Games last summer.” He shrugs as though that accomplishment was no big deal. Vaughn knows better.
“That’s hard to do.”
“Well, Jon has always been a big bastard, just not very quick.” Donovan dips a tortilla chip into the salsa in front of him and speaks with his mouth full. “It’s why he could never play rugby. No speed.”
“You weren’t bad, at the tournament,” Declan says. He hasn’t spoken much to Vaughn tonight; kept his replies and conversation to the one or two word variety. Vaughn has also noticed how Declan watches him and Mollie, how they move around each other, what they say.
“You mean before I got all those damn penalties?”
He wouldn’t goad Declan. Mollie swore his interest in her was regulated to some weird sense of obligation and from what Vaughn had noticed tonight—how the Irishman looked at his redheaded girlfriend, how when she spoke, he listened carefully, intently—he figured Mollie was right. This guy didn’t want Mollie, but that didn’t mean that Vaughn would relax around him. He was far too observant; not a good trait in someone who you are trying to keep out of the loop.
“Yeah, well, we all have to start somewhere.” Declan’s smile is slight, barely there. “A bit of work and you’d be a fair player. You’ve size enough.”
Vaughn tips his beer to the Irishman but doesn’t comment. Declan’s taken to watching him again, noticing his reactions, especially when Mollie leaves the table and moves toward the bathroom. Vaughn shifts a glance over his shoulder noticing that Declan is again watching him and then he leaves the table.
Vaughn catches up to Mollie before she disappears down the hall. “Hey.” She pauses, her back to him when he touches her elbow.
“I’m just going to pee, Semper Fi. I don’t need help with that.”
He knows her anger is justified, but he can’t have her running off without him. It’s bad enough that she convinced him to take her some place so public where anyone could attack.
“I figured that, but Mollie, you can’t be on your own.” She challenges him with a glare and he hopes that the silence, the curt responses she’s given him the past two days, will soon end. He hates her irritation, hates that he’s the cause of it. “Besides,” he says, shifting his gaze to the table they just left and finding five pairs of eyes watching them closely. “I thought women went to the bathroom together.”
“We aren’t like most women.”
“If you say so.” He slips back, rests against the wall and his hands disappear into his pockets. “Go do your business. I’ll wait for you.”
Mollie punches the bathroom door with a fist and begins to step through, but hesitates, whirling on him so that he stands up straight, immediately defensive.
“I can’t do this for very long.”
“Do what?” He isn’t sure if she means the silence and clipped tone or the way they move around each other ignoring the connection between them. The one they refuse to discuss.
“You following me around.” She steps closer, but then jerks back when Layla shouts “kiss him already” from across the pub. The little dig doesn’t seem to bother Mollie, but then he’s noticed not much does. Except maybe him. “I can’t live like this.”
“Listen, I know it’s hard. I know you’re uncomfortable around me and this whole situation sucks.”
“I’m not—” That she says so low Vaughn isn’t sure he heard her correctly.
“You’re not what?”
Just now, she seems not annoyed, not even hurt, but immensely tired and Vaughn’s chest squeezes tight. “I’m not uncomfortable around you. Not really.”
When she stands against the wall next to him, Vaughn notices how the AC vent above them moves her hair off her face; how it whispers against her neck. “Then will you stop being so pissed at me?” He faces her, resting with his shoulder on the wall. “I know I fucked up. I know I kissed you and touched you—”
“I touched you back.” Mollie watches her hands, not giving Vaughn the chance to measure her expression. “But it wasn’t me you wanted.” Her head comes up and the tightness in his chest only worsens when he sees that she is hurt, that she is allowing him to see the vulnerability she doesn’t show anyone. “Maybe you were right. Maybe you shouldn’t be the one watching me.” She straightens, steps back as though she’s just realized she’d dropped her ever-present guard. “I can call my dad. Have him send someone else in.”
“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 stupid. 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.