Crazy For Love. Victoria Dahl
she’d clearly had one too many beers.
Disgusted with herself, Jenn dried her hands and turned off the light. But on her trip back through the living room, she spotted a green light blinking from the coffee table, like a bomb about to go off. Heart sinking, she picked up her cell phone and stared at the little message icon. Crap.
News from the outside world, and there was no chance it was good. Jenn called up the message and told herself everything was fine as the beep sounded in her ear.
“Jenn,” a hushed female voice said. “It’s Anna.”
Crap. Jenn pressed a hand to her forehead.
“Things are getting crazy here. I really think the mature thing would be to tell Chloe the truth. The reporters and police… This isn’t just about you. Or her. She needs to know, and I think you’re making this worse by hiding it from her. Chloe is an adult. She’ll be fine. I know she will. Just… Call me back, all right? You may be able to live with this, but I can’t.”
Jenn hit a button to cut off the message then deleted it with a shaking hand.
She wasn’t going to tell Chloe a darn thing and she’d be damned if she’d let Anna anywhere near her with that kind of talk.
The e-mail icon blinked also, so Jenn took a deep breath and opened the folder. She let the breath out on a rush when she saw the in-box. Nothing from Anna. Just a link from Google Alerts.
Stupid of her, but she’d set up a Google Alert for Chloe’s name, and even though every hit drove her crazy, she couldn’t stop looking at them. This one linked to a slang dictionary site. She knew what it would say. She knew it would throw her into pained fury, and still she looked.
“To pull a Chloe,” the dictionary entry said. Jenn’s shoulders fell as she read the words that would forever define her best friend as the worst kind of lunatic bitch. “To become a Bridezilla so demented that the groom would rather jump from an airplane than jump into the marital bed. Based on Chloe Turner’s disastrous engagement to Thomas DeLorn.”
“Oh, God,” she whispered, pressing a hand to her aching head. The lying was killing her, but she could do it. She had to do it. Because the whole world had turned against Chloe.
Some people—people like Anna—believed those stupid clichés about the truth setting you free. What she didn’t know was that the truth sometimes beat you down and chewed you up and ruined your life.
Chloe didn’t deserve that. She’d been through enough. And Jenn wasn’t about to let the ugly truth ruin such an important friendship.
To be very sure that didn’t happen, Jenn turned on Chloe’s cell phone and checked the messages on that one, too. Sure enough, Anna had called and asked Chloe to call her back. Jenn deleted the message and blocked Anna’s number, her heart burning as she did, then she went back outside to have one last beer. She might not make it to Funtown tonight, but maybe she’d at least get some sleep.
“WHAT’S HE DOING?” Jenn asked as she brought her breakfast out to join Chloe on the porch.
Chloe watched Max Sullivan carefully, trying to puzzle him out, but also trying very hard to predict what each of the muscles of his chest would feel like beneath her fingers. “I think he’s…digging a hole?”
When Chloe had come out, two small boys had been playing on the beach, digging furiously at the sand as if they’d been commissioned to break through to China. A half hour later, only their necks and heads had been visible, and that’s when Max had jumped in to help them out.
What had his brother said? He likes to be in the middle of everything. Even digging a fort with two five-year-olds.
“Does he know them?” Jenn asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, I guess you shouldn’t be too flattered that he’s tagging along on our dive trip, huh?”
Chloe reached over and gave Jenn’s shoulder a halfhearted shove. “Meanie. So tell me about the other Sullivan brother. He’s a little reserved.”
“He’s sweet.”
“Really? I was going to guess stern.”
“No! He’s serious, yes, but really nice.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Chloe nodded sagely. “Nice enough to get it on with? Because you were looking at him last night like he was a big old hunk of man candy, darlin’.”
Jenn’s face blazed scarlet. “I was not! Oh, God, I was. He’s so sexy that I can’t even think when I’m looking at him.”
“You should— Wait.” Chloe tilted her head toward the open window behind her. “Is my phone ringing? I thought I’d turned it off.”
“Oh!” Jenn started to spring to her feet, but her plate was still on her lap and it tumbled down to the porch, misting her legs with powdered sugar.
“I got it.” Chloe stepped over her and walked inside. She didn’t know why she was looking for the phone in the first place when it was as likely to be a reporter as anyone else. But answering the phone was a Pavlovian response, she supposed.
She found it on the coffee table and glanced at the number, which sent an immediate shock through her system. DeLorn Limited. It was Thomas’s mother…or Thomas.
Stomach clenching into a ball of cement, Chloe pushed the button and croaked out a hello.
“Hello, Chloe,” the voice said. Though Mrs. DeLorn’s deep voice was nearly the same timbre as her son’s, her old-school Virginia accent immediately gave her away.
“Mrs. DeLorn,” she said a bit breathlessly. The woman ruled over her empire with an iron fist, but somehow Chloe had always liked her. And strangely enough, Mrs. DeLorn had liked Chloe. “You look a bit like my younger sister,” she’d said the first time they’d met. And because her sister had died as a teenager, Chloe had seemed to fill a place in the woman’s heart. They’d been close. Or so Chloe had thought. “It’s been a long time.”
“I’m sorry, my dear. This has all just been so tragic. You know I had to take to my bed when we first got the news about the crash and then…Well, my word. I don’t know what to say. I honestly don’t.”
Chloe could believe that. And she hadn’t exactly reached out to Mrs. DeLorn, either. Her heart softened a little. “I know you must be feeling pretty low.”
“Oh, you can’t imagine,” she said. “But how are you getting along, Chloe? I suppose the investigators have been hounding you day and night?”
“Um.” Was investigator some old-fashioned word for paparazzi? “The press has been giving me a hard time, yes.”
“Oh, the press. Yes, they are awful, awful people. They scurry around outside our office building like cockroaches. I wish I could squash them all under my shoe and be done with them.”
“Yuck. Well, I’m sorry to hear they’re bothering you, as well.”
Mrs. DeLorn abruptly changed the subject. “Do you remember that trip we took to the Cherry Blossom Festival this spring?”
“Oh, of course.”
“We had such a lovely time and the hotel suite was so nicely outfitted.”
“Yes.” Did she just want to stroll down memory lane? The trip had been nice, but not exactly the highlight of the year. Chloe had lobbied for returning to Richmond that night so she could sleep with her fiancé instead of in the bedroom next door to his.
“Well, I’m sure you remember…Thomas was going on and on about that all-terrain vehicle he wanted for this fall’s quail season and I gave him a little