In all honesty he wasn’t the kind of man Vaughn respected very much, but he liked him even so. Oliver was charming and he was a loyal friend. He was the only person who had visited him in Hartwell, the only one who seemed to still give a damn now that Vaughn had apparently turned his back on the Manhattan social circle.

Plus, Oliver knew everyone. He was a useful man to be friends with because he made networking with the right people so much easier on Vaughn. In fact if it weren’t for Spence, Vaughn probably wouldn’t have considered buying the hotel on Hart’s Boardwalk. For years the Spences had a mansion in the neighborhood where Vaughn now owned a home. They sold it a number of years ago but Oliver, who had spent a considerable number of summers as a young man in Hartwell, got wind of the sale of the boardwalk hotel and had suggested it might be a lucrative business opportunity for Vaughn. Once Vaughn had arrived in Hartwell to look into the property, that was it. Something about the town had hooked him immediately. It was the exact opposite of his life in Manhattan. It was earthy, it was vibrant yet low-key, and there was something incredibly soothing about the boardwalk atmosphere.

He had Oliver to thank for the birth of Paradise Sands. Mostly, however, he liked his friend because he didn’t make issue of Vaughn’s lack of interest in relationships. Where Vaughn was a serial bachelor, Oliver was a serial monogamist. He’d been engaged at least five times that Vaughn could remember, falling in love easily, and falling out just as easily.

When he was single he was a good wingman to have around.

A good distraction.

“I heard you were back. Rumors are flying about this place.” Oliver grinned at him.

Vaughn gritted his teeth. One thing he didn’t admire about Oliver: his enjoyment of gossip. “Oh?”

“Something about the ship on the brink of sinking until its good captain came to its rescue.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you don’t. Anyway”—he stared around the office with distaste and boredom—“I’ve come to rescue you.”

And at that moment Vaughn was not averse to being rescued. “What did you have in mind?”

His smile was wicked. “I’m dating a ballet dancer. Vaughn . . . Fuck me, what that girl can do in bed. And she has a friend.”

Something tight, ugly, gripped his chest at the thought of screwing a stranger.

Vaughn pushed through the constriction, needing something, anything, to break him from his infatuation. “What color is her hair?”

“The friend?” Oliver frowned. “Blond, I think. Why does it matter?”

“No reason,” he muttered, switching his laptop off and pushing back from the desk. “Just no redheads.”

“Why not?”

Ignoring his friend’s curious, calculating gaze, Vaughn shrugged. “I’ve gone off them.”

Oliver laughed, throwing his arm around his shoulders. “Fine. Wait until you meet Tatiana, Tremaine. Fucking goddess in the sack. I didn’t know you could fuck a woman in that many positions and believe me I’ve done active research over the years . . .”

His friend continued on, regaling him with the benefits of sleeping with a world-class ballerina, but Vaughn was no longer hearing him. He couldn’t over the pounding of the blood rushing in his ears.

His heart was in protest.

How could he touch another woman when he felt like this about Bailey?

You sound like a pussy.

And that was exactly why tonight he was going to lose himself inside a fucking ballerina and forget about a certain princess.

Bailey

It turned out Stu’s attack kicked off a week of crap. The day after the girls found out about my “liaison” with Tremaine, Emery showed up at the inn with what I would soon discover was sympathy coffee.

What is a sympathy coffee, you may ask.

A sympathy coffee is one that is delivered with an empathetic expression and, “I wanted it to be a friend to tell you that Vaughn has left for Manhattan.”

The words made me numb and while my reply had been “Oh” while I accepted said coffee, and not the sympathy, inside I was calling that man insulting names I didn’t even know were in my vocabulary.

At my non-outward reaction, Emery had given me these big puppy dog eyes.

The puppy dog eyes, even on someone so cute, were annoying. “I don’t care,” I’d snapped.

She didn’t look like she believed me. “If you need someone to talk to, just let me know.”

And maybe because it was Emery and she was less demanding and intrusive than, say, me, I found myself calling out to her as she was leaving, “Is it permanent? Tremaine. Has he gone for good?”

My friend had given me a sad smile. “I don’t know. But the staff at Paradise seem to think he’ll be gone awhile.”

I’d shrugged, nonchalant. “Okay.”

Emery wasn’t buying my nonchalance but like I knew she wouldn’t, she didn’t push me. Instead she’d left me to sip at my sympathy (I was kind of accepting it now) coffee while I pondered the idea of a Hartwell-less Tremaine.

“A heartless Tremaine, you mean,” I’d huffed to myself, horrified at the sound of those words catching on my tears. The tears were forced down with my swallows of coffee but the pain, the hurt of his defection, gripped at my entire body.

I walked in on Tom having sex with another woman and I hadn’t felt this kind of pain.

It was so typical of me to impulsively give a piece of myself to a man part of me didn’t even like. To see something in him that was worth loving.