True. But did that excuse his yukking it up with friends? Nick wanted an update. Would Dylan give him one? Would she become the grown-up equivalent of locker-room talk? She’d considered Nick a friend once, or at least a friendly acquaintance. Then again, he’d dated Candy Beemis, hung out with a lot of the same popular kids who’d sneered at her and called her Klutzy Chloe. Were they all laughing again? She knew she’d screwed up, but she hated that instead of just calling her a liar, Dylan had turned her into the butt of an old joke that hadn’t been funny ten years ago and wasn’t now.
The difference was, she was no longer a mild-mannered seventeen-year-old who lacked the backbone to stand up for herself. She was furious.
Looking around the kitchen with the strategic gaze of a woman scorned, she glimpsed the business card they’d picked up from the decorating warehouse, where Dylan had introduced her as his decorator. The card was pressed to the fridge with a magnet from a local Chinese delivery place. She retrieved it, staring at the promise that they provided the essentials for every design taste and philosophy. With an idea beginning to take shape in her mind, she slid the card into her purse-which also contained the uncashed check she’d planned to return as a symbolic gesture once she’d told him who she wasn’t.
Chloe scanned her mental library of everything she’d read about feng shui. She’d promised to help Dylan use the guidelines for more positive energy, after all, and she’d always excelled at book learning. Now she was going to take a bunch of suggestions and get Dylan Echols all the good chi he deserved.
IF GRADY MEDLOCK HAD made one smart-ass comment about how goodwill events didn’t involve being abrupt with the public…well, he would have been absolutely right. Dylan tried to tamp down his impatience, but he was dying to get out of there. It had nothing to do with being in this stadium, where he’d once played and hadn’t been able to imagine anything more thrilling than the roar of the crowd and the certainty that came with the perfect pitch that the batter would miss. Instead, it was all about the woman he’d kissed goodbye that morning. Although she’d snored through that, he recalled, grinning inwardly.
When he’d first awakened, a naked Chloe in his arms, he’d entertained calling in sick. But if his interview with the school board went well, he was about to spit in the faces of those who had pulled strings and lobbied for him to have the Channel Six job. The very least he could do was honor his final commitments.
Then he would be free to go home to Mistletoe, to baseball and to Chloe.
The day passed in an eternity of small talk and autographs. He stole a fifteen-minute break for a late lunch and tried Chloe’s cell number, but there was no answer. Since all the words that came to mind seemed inadequate, he didn’t bother with a message. Finally, he was free to go…and sit in Atlanta traffic. He glared at the cars moving so slowly they might as well be parked. What sadistic fan of irony had deemed this “rush” hour?
When he got home, he raced up the stairs two at a time, knowing even as he did so that it was foolish. There was a good chance she wouldn’t even be there. It had been a gift that she’d shown up last night, but he couldn’t expect her to put her life on hold and sit around waiting for him all day. It was a sweet fantasy, though, the idea that he would come home to find Chloe.
Maybe even in bed? He had dyslexia and a bum rotator cuff. A naked Chloe reclining on his mattress would be the perfect way for karma to make it all up to him.
“Hello?” He was calling out even before he had the door fully open. “Is any-”
What in the name of all that was holy and good had happened to his apartment?
His gaze was bouncing around like a caffeinated preschooler, moving so quickly that he couldn’t really process everything he was seeing. Such as that one section of the room where there was so much purple and gold that it looked like Mardi Gras had thrown up in the corner.
He stomped through the apartment. Was this her idea of a prank? Her way of saying she hadn’t found last night as satisfying as he had? In the kitchen, next to his spice rack, now hung a freakishly ugly still life of fruit in a bowl. It looked like it had been painted by a toddler with anger-management issues. Right after he noticed the gilded mirror she’d somehow affixed over top his stove, he realized that the business card from his fridge was missing. Surely she wouldn’t…
With a sinking feeling low in his belly, he wondered if he would still be getting that delivery from the warehouse tomorrow with the new odds and ends they’d picked out or if a certain
He hurried to the phone, not sure yet if he intended to call the warehouse first or Chloe, to demand an explanation and offer the chance to grovel for forgiveness. This wasn’t bad taste-her own home might not have been a bastion of high design, but it hadn’t been Roy’s House of Tacky, either-this was deliberate. He remembered how he’d told her he didn’t want anything too effeminate or busy. Her exact words had been
Like a jackass, he had. Repeatedly.
It wasn’t until he reached for the receiver that the blinking red light on the answering machine finally cut through his murderous preoccupation. He stabbed the button, hoping to hear Chloe’s voice tell him that it was all a belated April Fool’s joke. Instead Nick Zeth’s voice boomed out. Dylan was about to hit the stop button, his potential job in Mistletoe currently the last thing on his mind, but froze when he heard his friend ask “What happened with Chloe?”
Oh, hell.
She’d heard the call. It was the only reason-besides her being psychotic, and possibly color-blind-for her going nuts like this after what had been one of the best nights of his life. For a millisecond, he was tempted to blame Nick for this fiasco, but Dylan wasn’t a moron. How could he fault Nick when he was the only person in this entire mess who’d been entirely honest?
Still, Chloe had a lot of nerve saddling up a high horse under the circumstances. He glared at the blinking lights that now hung from his bedroom ceiling but stopped when he started to develop a headache.
No time like the present. He turned off the lights and left in such a hurry that he nearly forgot to lock the door. Of course, he reminded himself, anyone stealing from his apartment in its current condition would be doing him a favor.
ALTHOUGH SHE’D FELT grimly satisfied when she’d left Dylan’s apartment, impressed with her own speedy efforts, Chloe couldn’t sustain the feeling all the way back to Mistletoe. Had she stood up for herself, or merely thrown a peevish tantrum involving gilt light fixtures and cheap fabrics? Had she only made a bad situation worse?
She wished she hadn’t fallen in love. She wished she hadn’t lied. She wished she’d never even gone to that stupid reunion.
By the time she got home, she was sniffling back a torrent of tears. She’d called Natalie earlier, but her friend had a consultation with a bride today and had sworn to come by the house as soon as humanly possible. Chloe kicked off her shoes and went straight for her freezer, wondering if it was possible to literally drown your troubles in ice cream.
When the frantic pounding came at her front door, she was relieved. She put down the spoon she’d been using to eat straight from the carton.
She swung open the door, and all the ice cream she’d downed threatened to come back up. “Oh, crap.”
“Nice to see you, too.” Dylan raised his eyebrows, taking a step forward so that she had no choice but to retreat, letting him inside. “Chloe Malcolm, I presume?”
