“Yeah, well, I thought I had you pegged.”
He arched a brow. “Is this you admitting that you were wrong?”
“I didn’t say that,” I said quickly. A flash of James struck me so hard I held my next breath for a moment.
He had been just as charming as Vince, just as surprising. He’d made me laugh, made me hot with desire, made me feel safe.
And then he’d broken my fucking heart.
“But…” I added, almost regretful in my admission. “You’re definitely testing my beliefs.”
“How so?”
He settled in at the wheel then, and I lost myself watching him mold the wet clay with his fingertips.
“I dated a guy like you once.”
That made him pause, and the clay warped before he cursed and started over again.
“Rich, I mean,” I clarified. “An athlete. Someone cocksure and popular with the whole world in his hands. And let’s just say he and his entire family showed me that I don’t belong in their world.”
Vince was quiet for a moment, focusing on the clay. I thought I saw the muscle in his jaw tense. “What did he do?”
I sighed. “Well, we were in love. Like… stupid in love. And he made me feel like it didn’t matter that my family was poor and always had been, or that his had more money than God. He lit up when I shared stories about my past with him. He loved introducing me to things I’d never experienced, like fine dining or spending a day on a boat bigger than every house I’ve ever lived in put together. And when he met my parents? He charmed them. He had that power, the ability to make any and everyone fall in love with him.”
For a long pause, I just watched Vince shape the clay, watched him work to get the perfect thickness on all sides.
“He gave me a promise ring.” My voice cracked a bit with that. “It was… stupidly expensive for a promise ring. And gorgeous. And it meant something to me. I was living inside the fairytale where Cinderella gets the prince.” I chuffed out a laugh. “Until I went to his brother’s wedding.
I was… completely out of place,” I said, the memory making my skin burn with a mixture of embarrassment and rage. “Wearing a dress I’d found on the rack at Goodwill while everyone else had on ballgowns and tuxes. From that season, of course, because wearing anything from a line released the year before would have been atrocious. I hadn’t graduated from college yet, didn’t have a job where I could afford even the modest clothes I have now. I was living on loans and scholarships.
James assured me it was fine, but he broke up with me not even a week later. And his parents then called me to explain why,” I said, laughing again. “As if I couldn’t already piece it together.” I straightened my back, mimicking his mother’s voice that was so prim and proper. “You’re a sweet girl, Maven, but this just isn’t the world for you. You have to understand that James has a very promising life ahead of him. He needs someone who understands that, and what their role in his life will entail.”
Vince was quiet, but his nostrils flared, his hands working a little too aggressively. The clay folded in on itself and he had to start over again.
“And I know it’s not fair,” I said before Vince could speak. “But I listened to his stories about his family, and I watched them with their friends. I heard everyone at that wedding talk about how charitable they were, how much they gave to this organization or that one. Meanwhile, they had no idea what it was like to be someone like my parents, to sacrifice time and money and truly give to others.” I shook my head. “It’s hard not to have a sour taste in my mouth when I was so close to both sides. Add in the fact that James was able to so easily lie to me, to be with me for years and give me a fucking ring and then just… change his mind, all because…”
I couldn’t finish that sentence, but the words I didn’t say hung in the space between us.
Because I was poor. Because I wasn’t good enough. Because I didn’t fit in.
Vince finally looked at me, his eyes flicking between mine like he wanted to say something as his hands paused over the wheel.
“What?” I asked.
He opened his mouth, then shut it again. Then, swallowed and asked, “What’s his last name?”
“Why?”
“Just think I should know his last name before I wipe him from the face of the planet.”
I blinked at him, and then I laughed, tilting my head back and letting it bark out of my chest. “Shut up.”
Vince smirked in victory, like his only goal was to lighten my mood and make me laugh about a situation that had so permanently marked me.
He went back to molding the clay, and with his eyes on his hands, he said, “All jokes aside, he’s an idiot. And I’m sorry his family made you feel that way.”
“It’s fine.”
“You should meet mine,” he added, and I was thankful he wasn’t looking at me when my eyes bulged out of my skull. “I think we could change your mind.”
I offered a pathetic smile, but didn’t respond. I didn’t want to tell him I was pretty sure that was impossible. Part of my job was researching who Vince Tanev was, and I knew he came from a family maybe even more affluent than the one that had dismissed me. His parents had a mansion in East Grand Rapids, a cabin in the Rockies, a beach house here in Tampa, and a yacht on Lake Michigan that they were known for hosting private parties on. They both came from wealthy parents who had wealthy parents, too.
Maybe they weren’t exactly like the Long Island and Hamptons crew James was a part of, but they were one in the same.
“What about you,” I asked, eager to change the subject. “You ever have anyone break your heart?”
He blew out a breath. “Oh, boy. Did I just walk into an interrogation?”
“You don’t have to answer, if you don’t want to.”
Vince smirked, shaking his head a bit as he worked the clay. “I guess you can’t really have your heart broken if you’ve never dated anyone seriously.”
I snorted internally.
I was not the least bit surprised.
“It’s not because I don’t want to,” he said, glancing at me like he knew the assumptions I was making about him. “I just haven’t found the right person yet.”
“Interesting, because from the many photos I’ve seen posted of you online, you seem to find multiple right ones pretty frequently.”
“To warm my bed,” he clipped, his eyes finding mine. I shrank a bit under his gaze. “That’s different.”
“Meaning you couldn’t take those women home to Mom?”
His eyebrows jumped up a bit, as if to say, “Your words, not mine… but yes.”
I held in my unsurprised laugh. That alone told me his mom was just like the one who had told me I didn’t belong with her son, that I didn’t measure up. Moms like that, who had money and an athletic son with prospects, had high expectations for who their daughter-in-law would be.
Glancing down at my unpolished nails, I swallowed past the knot in my throat when I said, “It’s good to have standards.”
“I guess,” he said. “I just want someone who challenges me, who fires me up and makes me want more. Someone who makes my life better.” He swallowed then. “Not someone who just wants me because of what I do, of who I am, of what they think they can get from me.”