And the more he thought about it, bad news for Jason. The last guy to get on the wrong side of Rich was Will himself. Will had paid for that by having his identity—and months of his life—stolen from him. Considering no one could reach Jason to speak with him personally, that didn’t bode well for him.
Vaughn also wanted to find some skilled help for Abigail to work on the sculpture so she didn’t exhaust herself during her pregnancy. He’d already asked Micah to meet them at her place in the morning. Abigail wanted to stop by her house before they continued to the hospital, and Vaughn figured Micah could either use the pickup to haul her extra wood pieces to the hospital, or he could help dig the ditch around her house to facilitate the alarm system she needed.
Actually, now that he thought about it, Micah better bring Brandon with him to get everything done. Vaughn scheduled a text to hit their phones tomorrow morning at six so they could plan their workday accordingly.
But if he wanted any sleep tonight for a full day ahead, he needed to retreat to his own room, behind a closed door. Sliding out of bed, Vaughn figured he would simply set an alarm to wake early and start breakfast. Maybe Abigail would never notice he’d left her side.
Calling softly to Ruby, he headed toward the door. He wasn’t going to scare a pregnant woman with the hell that played out behind his closed eyes on a nightly basis. Which already had him wondering, how long would she be content to spend time with a shell of a man who had so little of himself to give?
* * *
After she’d given a statement to police the next morning, Abigail rode in the passenger seat of Vaughn’s truck on the way to the hospital.
They were stopping at her house first, to pick up a few extra tools she needed and so she could change into something more work appropriate than the yoga pants and T-shirt she kept in her gym bag.
Despite the incredible night with Vaughn—a night she refused to regret—she had awoken alone. The sheets were cold on his side of the bed, too, so it wasn’t as though he’d been beside her recently. She’d smelled breakfast cooking, however, so that had been thoughtful of him. But the aftermath of their intimacy had been awkward. She felt him pulling back. And while she wasn’t surprised, given what she knew about him and his past, she couldn’t deny feeling the sting of his retreat.
Plucking at her shirt, she tried not to think about the events of the past day with Vaughn. The morning was already relentlessly hot, the humidity thick and heavy just outside the air-conditioning of his truck. Awareness of the man beside her—and the nerve-racking mess of her past—made her skin burn all the more.
“Officer Grant made it sound like I would be questioned again about the fight I witnessed, didn’t he?” She thought back to the early morning visit from Vaughn’s friend in the Royal Police Department, a higher-ranking police official who rode over to the ranch along with a uniformed officer.
“With the FBI involved, they must be looking at a lot of different facets of crimes committed,” Vaughn noted, his phone vibrating with incoming messages while they sat at a traffic light.
Her stomach cramped in visceral response to his words. How was it possible that she’d been involved with a man wanted for questioning by both of those federal agencies? Her life had turned strange and scary in the past few months, and she couldn’t deny that she felt grateful for Vaughn sitting beside her now. And this morning, too, while she gave her statement to his police-officer friend.
She knew she couldn’t depend on the handsome doc long-term, but for now, she distracted herself by glancing over at him. He wore a light gray button-down this morning along with gray dress pants and a pair of dark leather loafers with subtle stitch work on the toes that looked handmade.
She’d noticed that about his home, too. He must support private craftsmen with his purchases because he didn’t own the kind of expensive items that filled high-end stores. She’d looked over the Aztec blankets in her room this morning—when she’d awoken alone—and saw they were sewn by hand and not a machine. They were high quality, of course. But definitely crafted by artisans.
That was different from the way Will—that is, Rich Lowell—had thrown money around. He used it to show his status, flashing cash as if there was an unending supply. Vaughn, on the other hand, while clearly well-off through his family’s wealth above and beyond his thriving practice, seemed to understand that the culture was richer for spending money on the arts. Those funds supported people who wanted to beautify and better the world, people who protected the old ways of doing things so they wouldn’t be forgotten in the rush to mechanize and outsource everything.
“I think you’ll be telling the story again,” Vaughn agreed as they neared downtown. His shirt stretched around his broad shoulders and muscular upper arms. The cuffs were still rolled from when he’d made them breakfast—huevos rancheros with Tex-Mex flair. “If not to the FBI, then Will’s private investigator might want to hear it.”
She sighed. As nice as it had been to awaken to breakfast already made for her, she would have preferred to feel his arms around her instead.
“I just hope they find Rich soon.” She didn’t want these worries hanging over her head when her baby was born.
“They will.” He sounded so certain. “Investigators are throwing too much firepower at this for it to
