“Right.”
“That Chloe girl…I heard she’s totally nuts. Is that true?”
Max picked up his glass of Scotch and knocked back the contents like a college guy doing shots.
The bartender leaned closer. “I’ve heard those psycho girls are real awesome in the sack. If—”
Max dropped the tumbler to the bar and grabbed the front of the guy’s shirt. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”
Too late, he registered the flash of a camera out of the corner of his eye. He whipped his head around and found a smug-faced man lowering a very expensive-looking camera. The entire herd of paparazzi had followed Chloe back to Richmond, but apparently this guy had wised up and come back to the island to follow up on the “Bridezilla’s lover” angle.
Max shoved the bartender back with a muttered warning, then tacked on an order for another Scotch. But fuck if he was going to leave a tip. Resolutely ignoring
the reporter, he tipped his face back up to watch the coverage of Chloe. It was the same video that had been playing all day. First, her holding up a hand as she got into the passenger seat of a car and sped away from the docking area of the ferry. Then a shot of the back of that car, driven by Jenn. Then pictures of her ex-fiancé heading into a courthouse. Charges Expected To Be Filed Against Runaway Groom On Monday, the crawl said.
Fascinated and furious at the same time, Max squinted at the shaky video of the guy. He looked…normal, Max supposed. Objectively decent-looking. But surely the thin line of his mouth hinted at smarminess. Surely his jaw was a little weak. And Max knew full well that the guy’s healthy tan was a result of the week he’d spent on the beach in hiding, but it was unseemly for him to look like he’d just gotten back from vacation.
“Dickhead,” Max bit out as he grabbed the new glass of Scotch and made himself sip slowly.
The last video clip was a new one. Chloe, head down, the hood of a sweatshirt pulled over her hair, walked through a parking lot somewhere. Something caught her attention and she glanced toward the camera for a split second. Max’s heart lurched, throwing itself against his ribs. Her sweet hazel eyes didn’t look warm anymore. They were sad and…wild. As if she were about to curl into a ball and scream.
Pulse thumping hard through his entire body, Max stared at the television long after the anchor had moved on to another story, as if Chloe were trapped in that rectangle on the wall.
“She looks okay,” Elliott said, the tone more a question than a statement.
“No, she doesn’t.”
His brother cleared his throat. “I guess. Whatever these bastards are saying, she didn’t seem crazy to me.”
She hadn’t seemed crazy to Max, either, not until the paparazzi had shown up. Guilt gnawed at him like a Rottweiler with a bone.
Max nudged him with his elbow. “Ready to go?”
He was probably asking about tonight, about the bar, but Max’s muscles tightened with the need to leave, to get to Chloe and protect her from the hordes of paparazzi.
He knew it was ridiculous to want to save her. What the hell was he supposed to do? Magically make it all disappear? The hearing was coming up on Monday, for God’s sake.
He couldn’t do it. Getting involved with Chloe was exactly the kind of entanglement he could no longer handle.
Celibacy. He should’ve stuck with the celibacy.
“Yeah,” he finally answered, pushing up from the bar stool.
“You must be Elliott,” a man said from behind him. Max swung around to find the photographer holding out a hand.
“What the fuck do you want?”
“I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m Chaz Sorenson.”
“Chaz, huh?” Max sneered. “Well, have a nice night, Chaz.”
“I wondered if you’d be interested in answering a few questions.”
“No.” He pushed past him and followed Elliott toward the door.
“Did you know she was engaged when you slept with her?”
“She’s not engaged.”