Her heart clenched with bittersweet desire. It didn’t unclench even a smidgen when a waitress in a very short skirt approached him with a very friendly smile. He smiled back and his eyes swept down her long legs, lingering on the spike heels as he spoke. Then he used his foot to scoot an off-kilter barstool out of her path before she could trip.
In that small moment, Chloe became seriously worried about her heart. It had been broken not a month before—or maybe only bruised?—but now it was swelling with frightening tenderness. The perfect dichotomy of the man fascinated her. His beach bum looks and charming smile gave no hint of the tortured soul beneath.
The waitress brought his beer in record time, and he rewarded her with a wink that, literally, made the woman’s eyelashes flutter before she made her way back behind the bar to wait for Chloe’s piña colada.
My God, that man worked hard.
“Oh, my word!” a woman’s voice crowed from a few feet away. Chloe barely registered it.
“I can’t believe it!”
She glanced idly toward her right, then did a double take when she realized that the grandmotherly woman was staring right at her. “Pardon?”
“You’re Chloe Turner! Oh, my God, my friends are never going to believe this!”
Chloe had been so removed from the circus that it took a moment for her brain to decipher the words.
She’d forgotten about the life she’d left behind. So when the awful warning behind the words finally sank in, the force of it hit her like a giant fist. “No,” she managed.
“Hold on a sec. Let me get a picture for proof.”
Pure panic speared down her body like lightning. “No! I’m not that person.”
The woman’s delighted smile hung on. “You are though, right?”
“No. My name’s Jenn. Not…who did you say?”
The smile snapped to a frown as the prospect of a lost story reared its ugly head. “Chloe Turner. The Bridezilla.”
Chloe shrugged, trying to keep her eye from twitching.
“The one whose fiancé crashed his plane on purpose!”
“Ooh. Right. No, that’s definitely not me. I’m from Florida.”
“Florida?” The woman’s hand finally emerged from her purse with cell phone in grasp. “Why would someone from Florida come out to a Virginia island?”
“Oh…” Chloe’s eyes rolled wildly as she tried to think of a plausible lie. Her gaze landed on Max, propped against the bar, eyes locked on a car race on the television. “You know…an illicit affair.”
The woman’s eyes slid toward Max and widened. “Oh!”
“Yeah.” She cleared her throat and shifted with the need to jump up and sprint from the building.
“Well, you look just like her. Maybe a little thinner.”
Nice. Chloe forced a smile as she shrugged and searched out the nearest exit, just in case. But as her gaze shifted, she noted that Max was no longer at his place at the bar and snapped her eyes back to where he’d been. He was halfway back to the table, beer in one hand and piña colada in the other.
Chloe jumped about a foot and spun toward the stranger. “Okay, go on now. This is a secret affair. If he thinks someone knows about it, he’ll bolt. Go on!”
The woman’s overplucked brown eyebrows fell to a hard frown, but she headed back toward her table in a huff.
Chloe swung toward Max with a smile that felt as if it might shatter at any moment. “Hey!”
“Hey, yourself. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing! Why? What?” She snatched the glass from his hand with a strangled giggle.
His eyes slid to the side. “Who’s that woman?”