he would absolutely hate being thought of as second in anything—was James Elliott IV, one of the most eligible bachelors in New York, according to several magazine lists. Chloe didn’t talk about No. 2.
“Wait a minute,” Addie said, pouncing on her. “You’re not even thinking about Bryce. You’re thinking about … the other one!”
“Am not,” Chloe claimed.
“You are so!”
“Well, now I am! Why did you have to say that?”
“Because you got that look. That look you only get when you’re thinking about him! About—”
“Don’t say it! Don’t you dare say his name!”
“About good old No. 2,” Addie said, looking quite smug about it.
“Haven’t I been through enough humiliation already?” Chloe asked. “Without going into my long list of failures with men?”
“True,” Addie agreed. “Sorry.”
Chloe frowned. She hadn’t even gotten out of bed yet, and already the day looked bleak. While her personal life might be truly disastrous, she’d always been so much better at managing her professional life. The fact that the two had now become entwined, her personal life mess spilling over into a huge career mess, was more than a little unsettling.
“Okay, how bad is it this morning?” Chloe asked. “Everyone saw … everything yesterday?”
“And got pictures, I’m afraid,” Addie admitted.
Chloe groaned, seeing the explosion of camera flashes in her face once again.
“There are people who claim all publicity is good publicity,” Addie tried.
“You’ve never been one of those people,” Chloe reminded her.
“I could have been wrong about that all this time.”
Not likely, but Chloe loved her for saying so.
“Okay, here it is.” Addie spilled the ugly truth: “You’re front-page news in all the tabloids today.”
Chloe winced.
“A feat normally achieved only by celebrities and politicians in the midst of major sex scandals,” she added.
“And here I never set that as one of my career goals.”
“On the bright side, your name is out there once again.”
“Except now I’ve designed a dress for a wedding nightmare—”
Addie looked horrified. “Don’t say that! Don’t you ever say that! Women get a little crazy about their weddings. A little … weird and controlling and fanatical and superstitious. You know that! They’re all worried some disaster will strike.”
“Exactly. And when they think of getting married in a Chloe original, they’ll think disaster, guaranteed!”
“Chloe, I swear, never, ever say that again. Do you hear me? It’s like tempting the Wedding Gremlins to attack.”
“They already attacked! I mean, my fiancé was doing the groom. What else could possibly happen?”
“Oh, my God!” Addie crossed herself in horror. “Never, ever, ever, ever say that! The moment women start to believe your dresses are bad luck, you’re dead as a wedding dress designer. We are happy people who sell wedding dreams. We believe in love, fairy tales, happily-ever-afters and all that crap.”
“Okay!” Chloe said obediently. She could always count on Addie for a pep talk. “Sorry. I just had a bad moment, but I’m done now.”
“Fine, but it can’t go out of this room.”
“Of course not,” Chloe said, then had a flash of her sobbing, drinking and talking to someone. She had that same really icky feeling she’d had before the runway show, when she just knew something would go wrong.
Had she done something last night? Other than have a little too much to drink and cry a bit? She didn’t think so, but she really couldn’t remember.
Must have been a bad dream, she decided.
After all, her fiancé was sleeping with the groom.
What could possibly top that?
Addie left, and Chloe lay there in her bed a moment longer, working up the courage to face the day. Weariness weighed her down. She let her eyes drift shut and her mind float into that never-never land between real sleep and a groggy kind of wakefulness.
She was at the bar, last night but not really last night. She’d laughed, cried, gone over her entire, dreary history with men, and then, just when things seemed their bleakest, she’d looked to the end of the bar, and he’d been there.
Not Bryce.
James.
Chloe groaned, half in pain and half in longing, knowing she was crazy even for dreaming of him.
He looked so good. But then, James always had.
He could have been a model himself, although he hated to hear it. In fact, they’d met when Chloe had mistaken him for a model late for one of her shows. He had that rare quality of being an absolutely beautiful man, but still looking unmistakably masculine, as so few models did.
In the bar, he walked over to her, looking at her with the kind of understanding and concern that made her ache. Then he reached out with one of those perfect hands of his and wiped away her tears. And in the kindest move of all, put his beautiful body between her and the rest of the room, creating a tiny, safe space for her when she was so miserable she just wanted to curl up into a little ball and disappear.
He smelled so good, the way he always did. He’d admitted with a reluctance that bordered on pain that he still thought about her, that he missed her and that he just had to come see for himself that she was all right.
It was ridiculous.
Even in her dream, she realized that.
James Elliott was too proud, too stubborn and too independent to ever admit he missed anyone. But it was a lovely dream, bittersweet and achingly real.
Then she woke up once again, not twenty minutes later, in her bed, yet still very much inside her very own nightmare as fashion runway roadkill.
James fought the impulse all day, but nightfall found him standing on the corner across the street from the big, old Victorian near Prospect Park in Brooklyn that Chloe shared with her various relatives, who all worked for her in the first-floor showroom.
He stared up at the window of the small attic she’d turned into a tiny apartment for herself, where she had some measure of privacy. This after fighting with himself all day about coming anywhere near here.
It felt weirdly stalkerish to be there, just looking up at her window, and he was a man who did not stalk women. He just needed to know she was okay.
Which he couldn’t tell from simply staring at her house.
Still, he felt a little better, just being this close to her.
He waited until the last light went out in her little attic, saw the slightest impression of her, he thought, ghostlike against the sheer curtains, as she walked across the room. He imagined her climbing into bed, her toes cold, letting her warm them on his, his hands hot against her cool, pale skin, tangling in her glorious hair.
So many nights they’d spent that way, together in that room.
He couldn’t have her back, he told himself.
He’d made her crazy, and she’d done the same to him. He was as logical a man as there was on earth, and he knew without a doubt that no one needed to be hurt like that a second time.
So once the light was out, and he knew