Crazy for Love

by Victoria Dahl

  Once she’d found her sea legs again, Chloe slung her arm around Jenn’s shoulders and they faced the dock together. “So what’s wrong? Why were you crying?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been feeling stressed and I’m having trouble sleeping. And I hadn’t been with a man in a long time. I don’t know. It was all too much.”

  Chloe gave her shoulders a squeeze. Like Jenn, she had no idea what she was feeling.

  She’d stepped onto the ferry feeling equal parts relief, dread and heartache. And still, the heartache had nothing to do with Thomas. Her heart ached for Max, a man she’d known only a few days.

  They’d said their goodbyes that morning. He’d held her tight, and kissed her hard, but in the end, Max had let her go. Of course he had. He had no obligation to her and no say over what she did. It had been a quick fling, nothing more.

  Yet her heart hurt around the edges every time it beat.

  He’d let her go. Or she’d run away.

  Still, she could’ve sworn she’d seen weary relief in his eyes. But how could she begrudge him that? Given even the briefest opportunity, Chloe would happily wave goodbye to the mess of her life. Heck, she was relieved just to get away from the photographers on the island for a few hours. They’d be back soon enough.

  Maybe sooner than she’d expected. As the ferry drew closer to the dock, Jenn stiffened beside her at the exact moment that Chloe spotted the four men standing on the dock sporting cameras and bored expressions. “Oh, shit.”

  “The guys on the island must have put out the word you’d gotten away.”

  “Damn it.” Her throat burned with hot tears of frustration and fear.

  “Come stay with me,” Jenn urged, glaring toward the men as they perked up and walked farther out onto the dock.

  “No, they’ll just follow me there and ruin your life, too.”

  “I don’t care.”

  The ferry engine roared as it slowed, easing up against the bumpers. “Come on,” Chloe said softly. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Walking through a crowd of paparazzi—and Chloe would argue that even four photographers was a crowd—was a strange experience. She’d been raised in Virginia, where men opened doors for you and carried your bags, even if you told them you didn’t need help. But the paparazzi were like a scrum of hungry animals. They didn’t want to ease her way. They didn’t want to step aside or open doors or take her bags. They wanted to hold her back so they could get a few more pictures. They wanted to block doors so she couldn’t escape. And if they pushed her into losing her temper, all the better. Cruel bastards.

  Chloe carried her bags and kept her head down as she stepped off the ramp.

  “Chloe!” they shouted, their voices climbing over one another, trying to get her attention. “Chloe, over here!”

  She pushed on, ignoring the jostling of their bodies against hers. Her skin crawled with the need to run, to flee the danger of men crowding around her, shouting, bumping into her. It was worse at the DA’s office, when there were dozens of them. It was suffocation and horror. But this was enough.

  “Chloe! Chloe! Tell us about your new boyfriend!”

  “Chloe, does Mr. Sullivan know what you are?”

  She frowned at her feet and pushed on.

  “How long have you been sleeping with him? Did you know him before the plane crash?”

  “Is it true that you hate your cousin?”

  “Chloe, why wouldn’t you let her be in the wedding?”

  She was almost to the car. Almost there. During the occasional silence between camera clicks, she could hear the wheels of Jenn’s rolling bag just behind her.

  “Chloe, who’s Thomas’s other woman?”

  What? She almost paused. Almost stopped and turned around, but she managed to override that impulse and rush the last few yards to Jenn’s car.

  The sharp clang of car keys hitting the ground made her groan, but then she heard Jenn scoop them up and the car beeped a friendly welcome. Chloe reached for the trunk Jenn had popped open, threw her bags inside and leaped into the passenger’s seat just as another question hit her ears. “Is it true that he was cheating? Were you both cheating?”

  Jenn slammed her door and started the car with what would’ve been a roar if not for the tiny four-cylinder engine.

  “What was that about?” Chloe asked.

  Her friend shrugged.

  “Are there rumors that Thomas was cheating?”

  “You know the cops are trying to figure out if someone helped him pull it off. That’s all.”

  “Yeah…”

  “It’s that same old story. They assume there must have been a woman.”

  “Maybe there was.” It made sense. Max had theorized that Thomas wasn’t running away from Chloe, he was running from his mother. But maybe he was running to someone instead. Her heart beat harder. “You know what? I think they’re right. I think he was cheating.”

  “You can’t listen to them. Think of all the ridiculous things they’ve said about you.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense otherwise. I wasn’t really that bad. I wasn’t! So if he wasn’t running from me, he must’ve been running to something. Someone.”

  Jenn’s hands clutched the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles showed like bones with no skin drawn over them.

  “Is this what you didn’t want to tell me?”

  Jenn’s head jerked up half an inch, but she didn’t look at Chloe. “What?”

  “That there are rumors he was cheating?”

  “These people will say anything, print anything!”

  Chloe crossed her arms and slipped down in her seat to spoil any photographs the paparazzi would try to take from behind. “It feels right, though. I wonder how long he was cheating. That fucking asshole.”

  “Chloe, don’t. The simplest explanation is usually the truth, right? Thomas spent his whole life under his mother’s thumb. He started dating you because he liked you, but then I think he took you to meet his mother and it exploded in his face. You said you were the first girlfriend of his that she ever liked, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, he was stuck then, wasn’t he? She liked you. She wanted him to marry you. Hell, I’ll bet she even helped him pick out the ring.”

  Chloe squirmed. “She may have mentioned something about that.”

  “Thomas got swept up. Maybe he kind of wanted to marry you, but he felt like he was being pushed along by an unstoppable force.”

  That hurt a little, but hadn’t she felt that herself? Not so much because of his mother, though her enthusiastic approval of the match had been a kind of pressure. Mostly Chloe had felt swept along by her own plans for life. She’d wanted to get married and have kids. She’d wanted to get away from her cramped, quiet apartment and move into a nice house with a nice man. Thomas had seemed good enough. So she’d moved in with him, and then it had been time to get married, hadn’t it?

  Jesus. She’d thought he was good enough. What kind of love was that?

  “Thomas panicked,” Jenn said. “He freaked out and did something stupid.”

  “How could I have been so blind? It couldn’t have been spur of the moment. It took some planning. Our life was a lie. Did I ever know anything about him? Was he even a decent guy?”

  Jenn sighed, her shoulders slumping a bit. “He was funny. And thoughtful. He wasn’t a monster and you weren’t blind.”

  “I was a little blind.”

  “Okay, a little. But he didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Wow,” Chloe huffed. “Your standards for my love life are pretty low, Jenn.”

  “I just mean… He was desperate to get away, but all the flight experts agree that he deliberately crashed the plane into a completely unpopulated area. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. Not even you, really. He just wanted to disappear.”

  Chloe nodded. There were holes in that theory, but it felt true. He’d thought he was sparing her some sort of shame. Boy, had that backfired.
<
br />   Jenn flashed an anxious look in the rearview mirror. No doubt they were leading a caravan down the narrow road that led out of the swampy coast and into the heart of Virginia Beach.

  Chloe watched a beautiful old mansion slide by her window. Dark brown waterways cut the estate into a green island of manicured lawn. A sign ahead said “No Fishing from the Bridge,” but three men stood next to it, poles cutting lazy lines through the air.

  “It’s weird. When Mrs. DeLorn called and left messages, I thought she was going to apologize for her son. I thought she and I were close. I mean, if what we’re saying is true, she may have been the whole reason for the marriage in the first place.

  “At first I expected her to try to patch things up, try to explain, maybe even try to get us back together. But she was calling to remind me of all the times she’d helped Thomas financially. I didn’t know what she was talking about. What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

  “That is weird. Maybe she feels guilty and she had no idea what to say.”

  “Oh, Jesus, it doesn’t matter. Whatever the hell is going on, he was right. We shouldn’t have been getting married.”

  In her peripheral vision, she saw the flash of Jenn’s blond hair as Jenn snapped her head around to look at Chloe. “You think that’s true?”

  “Yeah. Look at me. I don’t even miss him, do I? I miss the house, and I miss my old, normal life. But I just had a fling with a big, hot treasure hunter, and damned if I didn’t love it.”

  “Well, sure, but—”

  “If I’d really loved Thomas, wouldn’t I be a little more devastated?”

  “You’re still in shock.”

  “I don’t feel like I’m in shock. I feel like I’m alive.” Her cell phone rang, cutting through her introspective mood. Chloe dug it out of her purse and looked at the display. “Reporter. Shit, I guess I’ve got more than one bar again.” A push of a button silenced the ringer, and she flipped idly through the missed calls. There were a lot of them. “Anna called last week.”

  Jenn coughed loudly, then patted herself on the chest to clear her throat. “She was probably calling to check on you.”

  “I’ll call her soon. Let’s do something fun when this is over. We’ll all go out to dinner and flirt with guys.”

  “Oh, yeah. But I don’t know. She’s been so busy…”

  “Then we’ll go to D.C. and stay at her hotel! She offered to get us a day at the spa one time, right? Let’s plan it. I’ll call her and set it up for two weeks from now. It’ll be just what we all need.”

  “No! I mean… I’ll call her. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m not going to let you pay for anything else.”

  “Okay, I’ll just… Damn it, Chloe. You’ve got enough on your hands. Don’t call Anna. I’ll talk to her, all right?”

  Chloe looked over at Jenn’s white knuckles and nodded. “Okay, okay. Calm down. You’re such a mother hen sometimes.”

  Jenn’s laugh held as much tension as her hands, so Chloe dropped the subject and huddled down in her seat. It was going to be a long drive.

  THE AFTERNOON FISHING TRIP had been a complete disaster. Oh, he and Elliott had caught lots of fish. Apparently, depressed silence was an excellent tool in luring fish close to a boat. And the weather had been great. Sunny and still. Perfect for women who liked to lounge in the sun in bikinis.

  Max looked up as Elliott walked out of his room, toweling off his wet hair. No bikinis here, just a couple of moping, pitiful men.

  “You think I should’ve gone with her,” Max grumbled.

  “What?” Elliott asked, slinging the towel over the shoulder of his gray T-shirt, about as depressing a color as you could wear.

  “You think I should’ve tried to help instead of letting her go.”

  “Who, Chloe?”

  “Yes, Chloe!”

  Elliott shrugged and fell onto the couch, propping his feet up on the arm as he lay down. “I have no idea.”

  “So why are you avoiding me?”

  “I’m not avoiding you. We’ve been on a boat together all day.”

  Max stalked to the fridge and popped the top off a Corona. “You know what I mean. What the fuck’s wrong with you if you aren’t pissed at me?” Silence.

  He glared at the back of the couch. “Elliott.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Standing a little straighter, Max narrowed his eyes at the brown tweed. “Wait a minute, does this have something to do with Jenn?”

  “Crap,” his brother muttered.

  Max settled into a chair at the kitchen table, the weight of his guilt easing off a bit as he turned his mind to something else. “What happened? A fight?”

  “No. No fight. Kind of the opposite.”

  “Oh? Oh! I see. What the hell are you so depressed about then?”

  “I told you I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Since his brother couldn’t see him, Max didn’t bother hiding his sudden grin. “Don’t worry, man. I hear it happens to every guy at some point.”

  “Fuck off. That was definitely not the problem. Again, just the opposite.”

  Well, that was interesting, if a bit disturbing. “Did you take a Viagra or something?” A mud-colored pillow came sailing over the couch and hit Max square in the face. “Good aim. Now what happened?”

  “Jesus Christ.” Elliott’s dark voice indicated he wasn’t going to tell the story, but then the words came, as rough as if they were being forcibly dragged from his throat. “Everything was going great until she started crying.”

  He set the beer down with a clunk. “Crying?”

  “Yes. Sobbing.”

  “Er. Some women do that when they come. Did she come?”

  Elliott gave a muffled-sounding growl. Max could hear the scraping sound of hands rubbing over an unshaven jaw. “I don’t know. She was pretty quiet about it all. Then she said it was ‘nice.’”

  “Oh. I see.” He cringed in sympathetic embarrassment. “So…”

  “Yeah. So.”

  “Well, welcome to my world of dating crazy women. How do you like it? Pretty interesting, huh?”

  “I don’t think this is the kind of crazy you normally date.”

  “Oh, you’re wrong about that. You think none of my girlfriends have ever cried during sex? Instability isn’t always the best bed partner. Speaking of which… On the off chance that Jenn is off her rocker, did you use protection?”

  Elliott’s feet disappeared and he sat up to glare at Max. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Why?” Max’s blood pressure leaped to a frantic pace at the thought that his brother had done something stupid. “You didn’t?”

  “You started stuffing condoms into my wallet the day I turned fourteen.”

  He cleared his throat, worried that Elliott was finally going to figure out that Max had a little problem with anxiety.

  “Every single time you put a rubber in there, I took it out and threw it away, and the next morning, there’d be a new one. Then you started buying me a fresh box of condoms every month. Remember? Apparently, you thought I was using them all.”

  “Er…”

  “I was too damn embarrassed to tell you that your expectations were a little premature. I wasn’t quite the ladies’ man you were. But you did start a good habit for me. I never leave home without one, so I guess I should thank you for that psychosis.”

  Max inhaled, the air cool and delicious when combined with the relief rising up in his chest. Elliott thought Max’s motivation had been sexual precociousness. “Good,” he said with a forcibly arrogant smile. “Glad to know I passed something useful on to my little brother.”

  Elliott lay back down without a word.

  “So. Do you think I should’ve tried to help Chloe out?”

  “What, exactly, could you do for her?”

  Well, that was a stupid question. He could be there to stop her from doing something foolish. Anything foolish. Like getting engag
ed to a mama’s boy who was too much of a pussy to break up with his fiancée in a normal way. Okay, the danger may have already passed on that one, but she clearly wasn’t a genius at making life decisions. “I don’t know. Anything.”

  “I think you should get back to being your normal self. Worrying doesn’t suit you. You’re not even being logical about it. I don’t know why Chloe’s got you so tied up in knots, but she’s gone now. Let it go.”

  “I could say the same thing to you,” Max snapped.

  “When the hell was I ever carefree?” his brother shot back, and then they were at an impasse, because Max refused to reveal the truth.

  I’ve never been carefree, either.

  In the end, talking to Elliot was only making him feel worse. He hunched over his beer, miserable.

  Still, he couldn’t help sneaking a few looks toward his bedroom as he finished his beer. He’d given Chloe his number before she’d left. Working on the ship, he wasn’t in the habit of keeping his phone close by. Satellite phones weren’t exactly cheap, so he had to keep it clear of the water. But now he was wondering where a guy could get one of those dorky phone clips to keep it on his person at all times. He wandered casually into his bedroom to pick it up.

  The voice-mail icon on the display may as well have been made of pure, uncontained electricity, because it sent a painful shock through his body. Had something happened? Did she need him? Shit, he should never have let her sail away without him.

  He fumbled with the buttons, briefly forgetting his password even though it was his birth date.

  Finally, he pressed the phone to his ear and held his breath…then let it out on a great rush of disappointment when he heard his captain’s voice.

  “Hey, Max!” he said in his thick Greek accent. “Listen, you know how much I respect you, and I know how you feel about Randy Martin.”

  “Aw, shit,” Max muttered.

  “I don’t know what went down between you two, and I don’t need to know. You wanted him off the ship and so he went. But he called me up. Wants to come back. He promises not to cause trouble this time, and he’s a great diver, Max. One of the best young guys out there right now. Think about it, okay?”