Dreams did come true.
People had always told Chloe Allen that, but she hadn’t quite believed it until the lights in the tent went down, the music rose and she had the world of New York fashion at her feet. If they loved her designs, Chloe would get absolutely everything she ever wanted.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” she whispered to her cousin and first assistant, Robbie, who’d been hovering by her side the whole morning. Her business manager and accountant, Addie, who she claimed as a sister, was in the back somewhere, as was Robbie’s twin, Connie, her second assistant. This was truly a family business.
“You can throw up later,” Robbie said. “Right now, you have to do one last check of the models and start the show, before something happens.”
“What do you mean, something happens? Something bad?”
Because Chloe felt it. Even standing in the dark, surrounded by the models in all her beautiful dresses ready to walk that runway, she felt like something bad was coming.
Robbie gave her a little shove to the spot by the entrance to the runway, thrusting her into the spotlight, and from there it was all a blur until it was time to send the last dress down the runway. Eloise, the snottiest model of all, stood before Chloe, pouting that usual model pout, except it always seemed extra-pouty when aimed at Chloe. She took off, doing that odd, abrupt model strut, the dress in ecru-colored silk charmeuse swishing and swaying beautifully as she walked down the runway.
The crowd was on its feet, cheering madly.
Chloe started to cry, couldn’t help it.
She’d done it!
The models lined up and took one more turn around the runway, all together. Chloe fell into step behind Eloise and her pretend groom, who as Chloe understood it was actually Eloise’s boyfriend of the moment.
They got to the spot where Chloe’s fiancé, Bryce, a fashion photographer, stood covering the show, and their friends in the audience started calling for Bryce to join Chloe on the runway. He jumped up there, lean and fashionable in black jeans and a plain black T-shirt, smiling that dazzling Bryce smile, giving Chloe a kiss on the cheek. They stood at the end of the runway with Eloise and her model groom/boyfriend, cameras flashing from all directions.
Chloe finally started to breathe, to let it all sink in. The show had gone off without a hitch, the audience applauding wildly!
Then she felt Eloise fidgeting, heard a quiet hiss of sharp words. Chloe shot her a glance that said, Surely this can wait until we’re off the runway! Eloise’s boyfriend whispered back furiously, Bryce, too. People started to notice, falling silent and then whispering themselves.
Not now. Not now. Not now! Chloe chanted to herself.
“You bastard!” Eloise screamed, but not at her boyfriend. At Bryce? “You just couldn’t keep your hands to yourself, could you?”
Chloe whimpered, all the breath going out of her in a rush.
Her fiancé was involved with her top model?
It was such a cliché, especially finding out while standing here at the end of the runway, like making it all the way down the aisle of a church to the altar only to find disaster. This was supposed to be Chloe’s day. Didn’t they understand? She was the real bride here!
Eloise shook a long, pointy finger in Bryce’s face. “I told you to stay away. I told you I wouldn’t stand for this anymore.”
Bryce looked pale and defeated. Chloe’s mind had gone foggy and sluggish. Eloise was telling Bryce to stay away? So, Bryce was like … annoying Eloise? Stalking her?
Laughter trickled in, getting louder and louder, and then the camera flashes became positively blinding. Chloe stood frozen in the midst of it.
Then she realized that Eloise didn’t seem to be trying to keep Bryce away from her. She’d planted herself between Bryce and her model boyfriend/groom, shrieking, “He’s mine!”
That couldn’t be right.
Bryce was sexy as could be, and somehow he’d become Chloe’s. He wanted her, despite spending his days photographing some of the most beautiful women in the world, unreal and yet gorgeous in that odd, perfect way of theirs.
Chloe caught a look passing not between Bryce and Eloise, but Bryce and the male model. The ridiculously toned, tanned, good-looking male model.
An intimate, knowing, regretful look.
Which meant …
“Oh, no,” Chloe whispered, fighting with all she had in her not to cry. Not here. Not now.
Chloe, wannabe wedding dress designer extraordinaire, part of the big machine that made little girls’ wedding dreams come true, had a fiancé who was sleeping with another man!
James Elliott IV did not in any way keep up with fashion news.
His idea of fashion was—when he was feeling really daring—to forego his traditional white dress shirt in favor of one in pale yellow or perhaps blue.
But one fine September morning, as he walked from his apartment in Tribeca to his office in the financial district and stopped to buy his Wall Street Journal at his favorite newsstand, it was impossible to miss the fashion news. It was plastered across the front pages of the tabloids for all to see.
Some crazy model in a huge, billowing wedding dress jumping a guy on a runway, looking like she was about to claw his eyes out in the next instant.
Waiting for his turn to pay, James decided the model did indeed look crazy, but then most of them were, he suspected. Starvation made women mean and at least a little bit crazy. The photo showed that she had literally jumped on the guy, had her legs wrapped around his waist and her fingernails poised and ready to strike, the guy twisting to get out of the way.
In the background was a model in a tux, looking like he wanted to jump in, but didn’t have the balls to do it. And down at the bottom, in the foreground … it looked like …
“Chloe?”
She was his ex.
The ex, if he let himself admit it. The one who’d really gotten to him, endearing herself to him like no one else, infuriating him, baffling him, hurting him, until they’d finally gone their separate ways.
What the hell had happened to Chloe?
The headline on the tabloid read Taking Bridezilla to a Whole New Level: Bloodshed at Fashion Week as Eloise Goes on a Rampage!
Bridezilla?
And who was Eloise?
The next tabloid blared Wedding Dress Designer Chloe and Model Eloise’s Man-on-Man Nightmare! Their Men Cheating … With Each Other!
James
