Centuria Books · Man Advantage 2
Man Advantage 2 — Read the First Chapter
The firefighter was afraid of the tree. The billionaire hockey player was not.
Chapter 1
Paige Holleran
The firefighter looked up at the kitten and said, “I’m scared of that tree.”
He did not whisper it. He stood in the blue pulse of the engine lights with his helmet under one arm. Above him, a black split ran down the old sycamore as it leaned over the museum courtyard, while wind worried its bare limbs against the fourth-floor windows.
Eight feet above the split, a smoke-gray kitten clung to a branch no thicker than Paige Holleran’s wrist.
“Good,” the fire lieutenant said. “Fear keeps you off things that want to kill you.”
The younger firefighter rubbed his mouth. “What about the cat?”
The kitten answered with a thin, ruined cry.
Paige Holleran pressed both hands against the iron barricade. She had been nineteen for five weeks, old enough to sign her own museum forms. She could also borrow more money than any sensible country would lend her. Yet six trained adults had decided a half-pound animal was beyond reasonable courage. Still, no one listened when she said, “The branch is moving.”
The lieutenant glanced at her. “Ma’am, back up.”
“If it moves toward the trunk, the split widens.”
“Back up.”
The crowd had gathered quickly. Donors in dinner clothes watched from the museum steps while students lifted phones above their heads. A little girl in a red coat cried into her father’s hip as the kitten flattened itself against bark polished silver by the courtyard lamps.
Paige Holleran had left the preparation room ten minutes earlier. Paste marked her cuff, and vending-machine cocoa cooled in her stomach. October wind cut through her coat. It was too thin. She had planned to cross the courtyard and eat noodles in her dorm. Then she would call her mother before the nightly text became a nightly accusation.
Now she could see the kitten’s white back paw slipping.
“Can you get a ladder from the east walk?” she asked.
“No angle,” the lieutenant said. He pointed without looking away from the tree. “Truck can’t clear the arch.” His finger traced the danger. “A ground ladder would sit under the split. We put weight there, the whole crown can come down.”
“A rope?”
“From what anchor?”
Paige Holleran looked at the museum roofline, but it stood too far away. The windows over the courtyard did not open. The nearest balcony ended twelve feet from the branch.
The kitten cried again.
Paige Holleran knew that register. Lonely, undignified, and still calling after the reasonable world had answered no.
She had arrived at Hollowell University with two suitcases and a scholarship letter, sure a new city would make her new in return, but five weeks later she knew the museum’s freight elevator better than her residence hall. She ate dinner from vending machines on late lab nights and could pass three hundred students between class and the dorm without one person asking where she had been.
Anya Dempsey asked. Sometimes.
Her mother asked. Information was how worry disguised itself as management.
No one waited for her.
The kitten’s back paw slipped. Again. Four pale scratches marked the wet bark.
“How long until animal control?” Paige Holleran asked.
The lieutenant checked with the woman holding the radio. “Fifteen minutes if traffic clears.”
The branch would not wait fifteen minutes. Wind flexed it downward, released it, and caught it again. The split widened by the width of a fingernail.
Paige Holleran measured the distance to the first limb. It stood too high, and the wet bark would defeat the heel of her sensible shoe. She could still feel her body preparing to try.
The lieutenant saw the calculation. “Do not.”
“I have not moved.”
“Your face moved.”
“My face is not under your authority.”
“The rest of you stays behind the barrier.”
For the moment, it did.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” someone said behind her.
The voice carried through wind and engine idle. It cut through fifty people pretending not to enjoy a disaster.
Paige Holleran turned.
The man crossing the courtyard belonged inside the donor benefit. His black wool coat fell open over a dinner jacket. No hat or scarf softened the hard line of his shoulders or the pale, unsmiling face above them.
She knew him, as most people in the city did. Still, she had never watched a full hockey game without a book open in her lap.
Vaughn Whitcomb guarded Hartford Hounds’s net. He had inherited a shipping fortune and made it larger through deals no one explained without calling him ruthless. Once, he stared down an opposing forward until the man skated backward into an official. Sports pages loved his saves; society pages preferred the old family name attached to his new money totals.
In person, the numbers mattered less. His size mattered more.
He had been in the museum for forty-three minutes. Paige Holleran knew because the donor office had changed temperature when he arrived. Curators who argued over six-figure acquisitions watched him cross the marble lobby, while a trustee laughed too loudly at something he did not say. Three women in evening silk had arranged themselves between him and the coatroom with the casual precision of a trap.
He had passed them all, and at the benefit his old family name appeared beside a conservation grant large enough to pay Paige Holleran’s tuition several times. No plaque named the modern logistics company or the property funds. None named the quiet holdings reporters treated like weather systems. Money moved around him without visible effort.
Now he stood in wet leaves while siren light dragged blue across his face, and all that wealth looked like another weapon he had not yet chosen to use.
The team roster listed him at six feet seven. The number failed to explain his width beneath tailored wool or the crowd opening before he reached it. Nor did it explain why the lieutenant set down his helmet, as if both hands might become necessary.
Vaughn Whitcomb stopped beside Paige Holleran. He looked from the tree to the kitten until his face became still.
“We’re handling it,” the lieutenant said.
Vaughn Whitcomb removed his coat.
He did it without haste. One sleeve, then the other. He folded several thousand dollars of black wool over the barricade as though the world had never stolen from him.
Underneath, the dinner jacket fit close across his back. His white shirt stood open at the throat without a tie.
The little girl stopped crying.
Paige Holleran forgot the cold.
“No,” the lieutenant said.
Vaughn Whitcomb unbuttoned his cuffs.
“Mr. Vaughn Whitcomb, that trunk is split through the heartwood.”
“I heard you.”
“Then hear this part. Nobody climbs.”
Vaughn Whitcomb rolled one white sleeve to his elbow. A watch flashed at his wrist, black face, no visible logo. His forearm looked built to close around men wearing pads.
“You afraid?” he asked.
The lieutenant’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”
“Good.”
Vaughn Whitcomb passed beneath the barricade.
The movement released the crowd. Voices rose, phones tilted, and a firefighter reached for him. Vaughn Whitcomb gave the man one flat glance and kept walking.
Paige Holleran understood the glance. It said that hands would be tolerated only if someone meant to fight him.
No one did.
“The split runs under the left side,” she called.
Vaughn Whitcomb stopped at the trunk and looked back.
His eyes were lighter than they appeared on television. Not blue. Gray stripped of warmth, like ice under an arena before the lights came on.
The lieutenant said, “Ma’am, do not encourage him.”
“I’m not encouraging him. I’m keeping him off the weak side.”
Vaughn Whitcomb’s gaze traveled over her face, paste-stained cuff, cheap coat, and sensible shoes. It took long enough to become rude.
Then he put both hands on the tree.
The first branch started seven feet above the courtyard stone, and he reached it without jumping. His fingers closed around wet bark while one polished shoe found a knot and the other pressed against the trunk.
He climbed.
He did not climb like a man trained for trees. He climbed as if the body built for ice could bully wood into cooperation.
Bark tore under his shoes. His dinner jacket pulled tight across his shoulders. The sycamore gave a small wooden complaint.
The firefighters moved beneath him despite their orders. The lieutenant cleared the inner courtyard. He sent two people for rescue cushions that would arrive too late to matter.
Paige Holleran watched the split.
“Right foot higher,” she called. “There’s a sound patch above your knee.”
He found it.
“Don’t pull left.”
He pulled right.
The branch holding the kitten dipped with the next gust. The tiny white paw slid. Claws scraped bark with a sound Paige Holleran heard through everything.
Vaughn Whitcomb looked down at her.
She pointed. “It moved toward the trunk.”
“I can see that.”
“Then stop looking at me.”
A laugh broke from somewhere behind the barricade. It died when Vaughn Whitcomb looked toward it.
He climbed another three feet.
The trunk narrowed. The split did not. One side opened enough to show pale wood inside.
“That’s it,” the lieutenant shouted. “Come down now.”
Vaughn Whitcomb reached for the kitten.
It spat at him.
He took the insult without comment. His hand moved slowly, palm down, fingers curled away. The same hand caught hundred-mile-an-hour pucks. Now it waited in the cold while a starving animal chose whether to trust it.
The kitten’s body loosened by one fraction.
Vaughn Whitcomb murmured something Paige Holleran could not hear.
The kitten stepped onto his wrist.
The branch cracked.
The sound split the courtyard.
The kitten bolted up Vaughn Whitcomb’s arm. He crushed it against his chest with one hand while the other caught the trunk. His right shoe slipped free.
For one breathless second, two hundred and fifty pounds of man hung from wet bark above stone.
Paige Holleran ran under the barricade.
The lieutenant caught her around the waist. “Absolutely not.”
“The right side,” she shouted. “Put your foot right. There is a cut branch below you.”
Vaughn Whitcomb’s shoe struck once, twice, then found the old cut.
His body slammed into the trunk. The kitten disappeared inside his jacket, claws working through his shirt. His face did not change.
He looked down at Paige Holleran.
This time the stare carried heat.
Not gratitude. He looked furious that she had moved toward him and seen the slip. Perhaps most of all, he hated that her voice had become the thing he obeyed while hanging above a courtyard.
“Come down,” she said.
His mouth tightened.
“Now.”
The lieutenant’s arm remained locked around her middle. She felt absurdly small and had never been more aware that Vaughn Whitcomb could see exactly how small.
He descended one-handed.
The journey took longer because he tested each hold while the kitten shifted under his jacket. It made a small mound over his heart. At the lowest branch, a firefighter offered both hands.
Vaughn Whitcomb ignored them and dropped the final distance.
His shoes struck stone, and his knees bent. Then he rose to full height with bark in his hair and blood running from one palm.
The crowd cheered.
He hated that, and Paige Holleran saw it before the first phone flash lit his face. His shoulders locked. His good hand went inside his jacket to shield the kitten from light and noise.
The lieutenant released Paige Holleran and ordered everyone back.
Vaughn Whitcomb came toward her.
People moved, but Paige Holleran stayed where she was. It might have been courage if her legs had offered another option.
He stopped close enough for her to smell wet bark, expensive soap, cold air, and the metal edge of his blood.
Up close, the scratch along his jaw looked bright, and a leaf clung to one shoulder. The dinner jacket had split beneath one arm over his ruined shirt.
He was still the most beautiful threat she had ever seen.
“Open your coat,” he said.
Not please. Not can you.
Paige Holleran opened it.
His eyes dropped to the movement. The look touched her throat, breasts, waist, then returned to her face with no apology for the route.
Her nipples tightened beneath her sweater.
That was inconvenient. Also humiliating. Also the most awake she had felt since arriving at Hollowell University.
Vaughn Whitcomb reached inside his ruined jacket. The kitten had fastened all four feet into his shirt. He loosened each claw with careful fingers. Blood ran over his wrist.
“Easy,” he murmured.
The word sounded wrong in his mouth, too gentle and too private.
He placed the kitten against Paige Holleran’s sweater. Then he folded her coat around it himself. His knuckles brushed the underside of her breast. He had room to avoid her.
He did not.
The kitten shook between them.
Paige Holleran held it tighter. “You need your hand looked at.”
He stared down at her.
“That was not a suggestion,” she added.
His gaze hardened until the noise around them lost shape. Firefighters moved. Donors pressed forward. Somewhere, the little girl laughed because the kitten was safe.
Vaughn Whitcomb looked only at Paige Holleran.
The glower should have sent her backward. It carried every warning her mother had tried to package into curfews and respectable boyfriends. This man was too old for her, too rich, and too used to being obeyed. He was angry about something neither of them understood.
Paige Holleran tightened her arms around the kitten and lifted her chin.
His eyes dropped to her mouth.
The first heat between her legs came hard enough to make her shift her weight.
He noticed.
Of course he noticed.
His expression did not soften. It became worse.
He knew, and not in the uncertain way a man might hope he had affected a woman. His eyes held the satisfaction of a predator who found a gate open from the inside. He had watched her body answer him and put the knowledge somewhere permanent.
Paige Holleran resented him for having it and resented herself less. The heat did not make him safe, kind, or entitled. It meant her body had excellent taste in disasters.
“Do not look pleased,” she said.
“I am not pleased.”
“What are you?”
His gaze moved over her again, slower now that they both knew what the first look had done. “Interested.”
The word carried more threat than a compliment would have.
“Ambulance can clean that hand,” the lieutenant said behind him.
Vaughn Whitcomb did not turn. “The animal goes to emergency care.”
“Animal control is on the way.”
“No.”
The single word silenced the lieutenant.
Paige Holleran managed, “It isn’t your kitten.”
Vaughn Whitcomb reached past her. For one startled second she thought he meant to touch her face.
He took his coat from the barricade and settled it over her shoulders. Cashmere wrapped around her, the kitten, and his own blood.
The weight almost swallowed her.
“It is now,” he said.
Then he put one broad hand at the back of her neck and guided her toward a waiting black car. The kitten, the coat, and Paige Holleran had all entered the same category.
Chapter 2
Vaughn Whitcomb
Vaughn Whitcomb had climbed the tree for the kitten.
He repeated that fact while Paige Holleran sat beneath the veterinary hospital’s white lights wearing his coat.
The kitten slept against her chest. A technician wrapped the scraped paw and checked the animal’s temperature. Twice, she carried it away. Both times, Paige Holleran watched the swinging door until the kitten returned.
Vaughn Whitcomb watched her, and that was the error the car ride should have corrected.
Paige Holleran had refused to enter until the driver gave his full name. She also made him show the company ID on his phone. Then she photographed the plate. She sent it, the hospital address, and Vaughn Whitcomb’s name to someone listed as Anya Dempsey. Finally, she opened the rear door herself and checked the lock from inside.
Vaughn Whitcomb had watched each act with growing irritation.
When the car pulled away, Vaughn Whitcomb had said, “If I meant to abduct you, the license plate would not help.”
Paige Holleran had replied, “If you meant to abduct me, your face would make subtlety ambitious.”
The kitten trembled inside his coat between them. Paige Holleran kept one hand around it and the other on the door handle.
Vaughn Whitcomb had told her, “You could be afraid.”
She had looked up. “I am.”
The answer found him unprepared. Fear usually made people hide, flatter, or leave. Hers sat in the car with him. It checked the locks and held eye contact. Worse, her pulse leaped when he leaned close to check the animal’s breathing.
Fear and desire had reached him as separate currents in the same warm body. He wanted both.
At the hospital, she chose the clinic entrance before the driver reached her door. She carried the kitten inside without waiting for Vaughn Whitcomb. The intake went under her own name. She refused to list him as the animal’s owner.
None of that corrected his attention. It taught him what shape it needed to take if he intended to keep hers.
Women had always occupied rooms without entering his desire. They sat on boards and ran companies. They fought his family, married his teammates, and filled every charity event he disliked. He saw faces and heard voices. He remembered names when names mattered.
He had never wanted to put his hand between a woman’s thighs or wondered what one would sound like beneath him.
Paige Holleran shifted inside his coat, and the lapels parted around her throat.
His torn palm closed until pain cut cleanly. Good. He preferred it.
“Stop doing that,” she said.
He looked at his fist, where blood had soaked through the gauze a paramedic wrapped around it.
“You will open it again.”
“It is already open.”
“That is generally what ‘again’ means.”
Her voice carried dry edges he had not expected from the soft face. She was not beautiful in the polished manner of the women his mother placed at dinner tables. Her hair had suffered the wind. A streak of museum paste had dried near her wrist. The coat made her look stolen.
He liked that more than he should have liked anything.
The front doors opened. Callum Savard entered with his gear bag over one shoulder. He wore black team sweats and a knit cap. His expression said he had judged everyone between the parking lot and this room.
His eyes found Vaughn Whitcomb first, as they always did. Six years together had not made that less satisfying. Callum Savard crossed the waiting room. He caught Vaughn Whitcomb by the jaw and kissed him hard enough to pull at the scratch along his skin.
Vaughn Whitcomb opened his mouth. Callum Savard tasted cold air and the mint gum he used after practice. His fingers pressed into the back of Vaughn Whitcomb’s neck. The touch carried familiar strength and demand. It came from the one body in the world Vaughn Whitcomb trusted behind him.
When Callum Savard drew away, his pupils stood wide in the white clinic light.
Callum Savard said, “I was told my billionaire idiot climbed a dead tree in formalwear.”
Vaughn Whitcomb replied, “It was not dead.”
Callum Savard said, “Excellent. That protects the jacket.”
Vaughn Whitcomb said, “The jacket is on her.”
Callum Savard followed his gaze.
Paige Holleran had gone very still.
Recognition crossed her face in stages. First came the kiss, then Callum Savard’s face from screens and ads. Last came the relationship she had not known while Vaughn Whitcomb put her in his car.
Her arms tightened around the kitten.
Callum Savard looked at her for three quiet seconds. Interest sharpened his mouth. Vaughn Whitcomb disliked the reaction at once. He also wanted more of it.
“You are Paige Holleran,” Callum Savard said.
She looked from him to Vaughn Whitcomb. “Apparently everyone knows that except me.”
Callum Savard said, “He called from the car.”
Paige Holleran replied, “He said six words from the car.”
Callum Savard said, “Seven. I counted the swear.”
Vaughn Whitcomb had said: Vet. Museum girl. Kitten. Tree. Come now. Fuck.
He did not correct either of them.
Callum Savard set down his bag. At six feet four, he was shorter than Vaughn Whitcomb. He was also broader through the chest. Years ago, newspapers called him pretty. Then he broke a defender’s nose during a legal check. He smiled at the penalty box camera with blood on his teeth. The adjective changed.
Paige Holleran knew that story. He saw it in the way her eyes touched Callum Savard’s mouth.
Callum Savard saw it too. His gaze moved over her more slowly than Vaughn Whitcomb’s had. It was less angry and more willing to enjoy what it found.
Color entered Paige Holleran’s cheeks. Her response hit Vaughn Whitcomb’s groin with humiliating force.
He turned toward the reception desk before the shape became visible.
“Balance,” he said.
The receptionist blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“What remains?”
The receptionist said, “The estimate is open. We still need the viral panel. If the doctor finds—”
Vaughn Whitcomb cut in. “Charge it.”
He gave her the black card from his wallet.
Behind him, Paige Holleran said, “No.”
The receptionist stopped with two fingers on the card.
Vaughn Whitcomb looked back.
Paige Holleran stood. His coat fell to her calves. The kitten made a soft complaint. It tucked its nose beneath her chin.
“I can pay the deposit,” she said.
Vaughn Whitcomb replied, “You did not.”
Paige Holleran said, “Because you put your card down while I filled out the intake form.”
Vaughn Whitcomb said, “Then the problem is solved.”
Paige Holleran replied, “For you.”
Callum Savard folded his arms. “I like her.”
Vaughn Whitcomb looked at him and found amusement and challenge. Then a third thing turned his anger colder: curiosity.
They did not become curious about women.
Vaughn Whitcomb stepped toward Paige Holleran.
He expected her to retreat. Most people did when he moved without warning. She stood inside his coat with her chin raised. She forced him to stop close or strike her with his body.
He stopped close.
The kitten lay between them like a warm, trembling heart.
“How much can you pay?” he asked.
Her eyes narrowed. “That is none of your business.”
“You made it my business in the courtyard.”
“You climbed a tree. I did not send you an invoice.”
“You told me where to put my feet.”
“You were about to fall.”
“I did not.”
“Because you listened to me.”
He leaned down.
Her scent reached him beneath antiseptic and animal fear. Cocoa and paper dust mixed with cold skin warming inside his coat.
His body reacted with a bluntness that made argument useless. Paige Holleran’s pupils widened.
Perhaps she smelled him too. Blood and sweat had dried after danger. Beneath them lay the expensive soap Callum Savard kept buying because it stayed on Vaughn Whitcomb’s skin after games.
The kitten shifted. Vaughn Whitcomb put one hand beneath the small body before he decided to move.
His knuckles touched Paige Holleran’s breast through the sweater.
She inhaled, and neither stepped away.
Callum Savard came up beside him, not behind. They never stood behind each other when they faced something together.
His shoulder touched Vaughn Whitcomb’s arm, making the wrong desire worse instead of correcting it.
Callum Savard studied Paige Holleran. “How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
The answer should have helped.
It did not.
Adult. Young enough to sharpen every bad instinct in the room. Old enough that none of them could call the problem illegal. None of them could walk away clean.
“First year?” Callum Savard asked.
“Yes.”
“At Hollowell University.”
She gave Vaughn Whitcomb a pointed look. “I assume he told you that too.”
“He told me nothing useful,” Callum Savard said. He smiled. “He did not know he wanted useful information yet.”
Vaughn Whitcomb did now.
Home address, dorm floor, and class hours. Men who believed they could walk her home. Parents and debt. The museum job that left her crossing an empty courtyard after dark in a coat that could not stop the wind. The facts arranged themselves into needs he could control.
Relief followed, and he hated it. The hatred did not make the urge smaller; it made it exact.
His family had turned information into leverage for generations. School choices, board votes, and marriages became pressure points. Mistakes were recorded before the person understood their future price. Vaughn Whitcomb had spent his adult life pretending he was different. His acquisitions came with lawyers and market values.
Now a young woman stood three inches from him, and his mind had already built a private index.
He wanted her safe because he wanted access. The thought of another man receiving it made violence feel practical. He could give her warmth, transport, and money. He could give her doors that locked correctly. He could give her the animal she had looked at as if saving it might prove the city had not consumed every tender thing.
He could also turn each gift into a corridor leading back to him.
The knowledge should have stopped him, but instead it made him want rules sturdy enough to survive what he was.
Paige Holleran watched his face. “What?”
Vaughn Whitcomb said, “Nothing.”
Paige Holleran replied, “That did not look like nothing.”
Callum Savard laughed once. “No. That was his acquisition face.”
Vaughn Whitcomb turned his head.
Callum Savard kissed the corner of his mouth, casual and proprietary. “Do not buy the university.”
Paige Holleran stared at them.
Vaughn Whitcomb said, “I was not considering the university.”
He had been considering the building that housed the dorm.
The receptionist cleared her throat while she still held his card.
Paige Holleran looked at the kitten. Its ears had relaxed. One white back paw rested over her wrist beneath a clean bandage.
Paige Holleran said, “If I accept, it is a gift to the kitten. Not me.”
Vaughn Whitcomb replied, “Fine.”
Paige Holleran said, “No conditions.”
Vaughn Whitcomb considered all the conditions he wanted.
“None attached to the payment,” he said.
Her eyes sharpened at the distinction.
Good. He preferred her when she caught him.
The receptionist ran the card.
Callum Savard moved to Paige Holleran’s other side. He reached one finger toward the kitten. After a suspicious sniff, he scratched beneath its chin.
His hand was larger than the animal’s whole body. Paige Holleran watched it with the same fixed attention she had given Vaughn Whitcomb in the tree. Vaughn Whitcomb understood the look now. She liked dangerous hands doing gentle work, not heroes.
The truth went through both men. Callum Savard’s finger stopped. His eyes lifted to Vaughn Whitcomb.
Six years of private language passed between them.
You see it?
Yes.
You too?
Vaughn Whitcomb did not want to answer.
Callum Savard’s mouth curved without humor.
He had his answer.
The technician returned with discharge papers. The kitten was chilled, dehydrated, hungry, and female. No bone was broken. The scraped paw needed care. The clinic would notify animal services, then begin the required stray hold with its foster partner.
Paige Holleran’s face fell at the word hold.
Paige Holleran asked, “She cannot come with me?”
“Not tonight,” the technician said. “If no owner comes forward, you can apply.” She tapped the form. “We will need housing approval and references.”
Vaughn Whitcomb watched another set of needs form. Housing and references. Transport and fees. Control settled through him like clean ice.
Callum Savard caught his gaze. “Do not.”
Vaughn Whitcomb said, “I have not done anything.”
Callum Savard replied, “Your silence has a body count.”
Paige Holleran looked between them. “Are you always like this?”
“No,” Callum Savard said.
Vaughn Whitcomb took her phone from the chair beside her.
She made a startled sound. “Excuse me?”
The screen was unlocked with a map still open from the drive. He entered his number and called himself. Then he ended the call and added Callum Savard beneath it.
Paige Holleran watched his thumb move.
Paige Holleran said, “Give that back.”
He returned the phone.
“Text when the foster confirms where they take her,” he said.
Paige Holleran said, “You could have asked.”
Vaughn Whitcomb replied, “You could delete us.”
Her thumb hovered over the screen.
Callum Savard said, “He will come to the museum if you do.”
“That sounds like a warning.”
“It is a description.”
Vaughn Whitcomb took his coat from her shoulders.
Cold air touched Paige Holleran through the thin fabric underneath. She shivered once. His hands wanted to close the coat around her again. They wanted to keep closing until nothing outside it could reach her.
Instead, he put it on with her warmth caught in the lining. Her scent struck him as he settled the collar. Callum Savard saw that too. Of course he did.
Vaughn Whitcomb faced Paige Holleran. Without the coat between them, she looked even smaller. Five feet four, perhaps. The narrow span from throat to breastbone was small enough for his palm to cover.
She did not know him well enough to fear every thought his face concealed, but she feared enough.
He saw fear in the tight corners of her mouth. Something lived beneath it. Something that did not belong near fear and could not be mistaken for innocence.
Vaughn Whitcomb stepped into her space one last time.
“Text,” he said.
“Or?”
He looked down at her until color climbed her throat.
“I will find out without you.”
Callum Savard exhaled through his nose. Not disapproval. Hunger answering hunger.
Paige Holleran should have deleted both numbers while they watched.
Her screen displayed his number beneath one letter: H. Callum Savard’s sat beneath it as H2.
Callum Savard looked over her shoulder. “That is insulting.”