Crazy for Love

“So maybe he wasn’t trying to escape you. Maybe he was escaping his mother.”

Hope jumped inside her like an unleashed spring. Maybe it hadn’t been her. Maybe she’d just been caught in the crossfire of an Oedipal war. “It’s possible.”

“Once he was arrested, he couldn’t very well point the finger at Mommy, right? She’s the one who’s going to get him out of this mess.”

Chloe was so shocked by the logic of his words that she rocked back in her seat. “Maybe you’re right. I never thought of it that way. How did you come up with that so fast?”

“I’m removed from the situation. It’s easy for me. Plus I’m something of an expert at crisis management.”

“Oh. Right. You take care of people.”

“I do.” He smiled as if that were a comforting thought, but Chloe felt a flash of sympathy for all the charity cases that had come before her. Sadly, she was one of them now.

But…beggars couldn’t be choosers. “So I’ll leave tomorrow, and there’ll be an arraignment, and hopefully it will all go away. Maybe in a month or two I’ll be able to get my life back together.”

He nodded and wrapped his hand around hers, which made her next words easier.

“So I thought… I hoped that even though you’r

e mad and shocked and all that… I hoped maybe you’d stay.”

“Stay?”

“Tonight. Just tonight.”

His fingers, still laced between hers, twitched. Good twitch or bad twitch?

“I understand if you don’t want to.”

“Of course I want to.”

“But?”

His chest expanded on a silent draw of breath. “But nothing. I’m not going anywhere.”

The words loosened some tight coil in her chest, and the relief rose up, up, up until it reached her eyes. Blinking hard, she tried not to let the tears fall. “Okay.”

“Okay,” he whispered, his gaze on her wet lashes.

Shit. She didn’t want to cry. Didn’t want to be another project for him to fix. But in the end, he fixed her problem, too, because when he leaned in to kiss her, crying was the last thing on her mind.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

JENN WALKED DOWN THE BEACH as fast as she could. The damp sand, packed nearly as hard as cement by the retreating tide, aided her frantic pace.

Everything was falling apart.

She pushed Chloe not to read the news about the case because it wasn’t good for her. All the speculation, the vicious rumors… Chloe didn’t need to see that. But lately she’d been pushing Chloe away from the Internet for purely selfish reasons: Details of the investigation were starting to come out, and some of them were uncomfortably accurate.

Jenn was getting better at lying, and she hated that. She knew when she’d need to censor the latest stories, so she hesitated over details she didn’t mind revealing, just so she could offer those in place of the rumors she didn’t want to tell. Rumors that someone had taken pity on the poor, beleaguered bridegroom and agreed to help him escape his wedding. Rumors that this woman had fallen in love with him. Rumors that she’d planned to run away with him.

Jenn was fighting a losing battle, but she couldn’t make her hands loosen their grip. Rumors were just rumors, and there was every chance the police wouldn’t discover the truth. Thomas had good reason to keep up his little song and dance. Right now, the press had cast him as a pitiful but sympathetic figure. A hapless, henpecked, harmless chap, just wanting to steal a little joy for his sad life. But if they found out the truth about him, Thomas would be recast as a cheating coward.

Jenn would’ve preferred that the more truthful version come out, if only it wouldn’t hurt Chloe so much. If only it wouldn’t ruin ten years of friendship.

Jenn had never had a sister. She had a brother, who was just as arrogant and dismissive as their father. Her mom and dad were both still alive, but Dad had married a young Chinese woman a few years ago and lived in Beijing with his new family. And Jenn’s mother… Jenn dutifully went to visit her once a month down in Raleigh, but never for more than a day. Seeing her was like visiting a defeated, pressed-down version of herself. As if she were looking into her future, after the weight of anxiety and self-defeat had squished her into something softer and smaller.

She didn’t want to end up the way her mother had. Better never to marry at all than to marry someone who left you mute with the fear of saying something foolish. Something mockable and silly.