Once inside, she played up the newlywed act well. Jordan didn’t say a lot to me, but the girls all gathered around her, and she played the blushing bride. I caught her insinuating that we’d never left the bedroom in the couple of days off Jordan gave us after the wedding, and I laughed. If only, I thought.
Still, even if it was fake, it was nice to see her pretend to be happy about being married to me. And it kept Jordan off my case. He mostly just focused on the work ahead and a couple of the bookkeeping items that needed to be caught up on since I had been out. I promised him I would take the work home and get it done, but he insisted that for the next couple of weeks, work stayed at work.
“Don’t let anything get between how happy you and she are right now,” Jordan said.
I sat with that for a long time in the kitchen, running it over and over in my mind while I chopped vegetables and got things ready for dinner service. My line cook was running late, so it meant I had a lot to do back there, but I just couldn’t get my head in the game. Chloe’s reactions and Jordan’s words seemed to paralyze me.
By the time my first break came up, I was ready to get the hell out of the kitchen and get some air. The line cook had gotten in and was handling things well enough that I dipped out without bothering to tell Jordan. As soon as I opened the door, the cooler air hit me, and I breathed deep. The door opened behind me, and I turned to see Chloe, joining me on the back porch with a smile on her face and two waters in her hand.
“Saw you go out and thought you could use a drink,” she said.
“Thanks. You taking a break, too?”
“Yeah. Figured it might look weird if we took separate ones, you know?”
“Good point,” I said. “If you see someone coming, tell me and we can start making out.”
She laughed, and I grinned. It was good to hear that laugh again.
“Busy night,” she said.
Ahh, back to small talk.
“It is,” I agreed. “That’s why I’ll try to make this short. What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, suddenly changing her demeanor to be a little stiffer, a little more stoic.
“You know what I mean,” I said. “Us.”
“It’s nothing, really.”
“Look, if this was a bad idea, you should tell me,” I said. “We never consummated the marriage, so we can just go get it annulled if you want.”
She turned to me, her mouth open to respond when her phone rang. It seemed to snap her thoughts out of whatever she was going to say when she looked down at the screen. Rolling her eyes in the back of her head, she swiped to open the call and hit the speaker button.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“What the hell do you think you are doing?” came the screaming voice on the other end of the line. “Who do you think you are? You stupid bitch, why would you do something like that? Do you have any idea, just any fucking clue how badly you have embarrassed yourself? How badly you embarrassed your parents? How badly you embarrassed me?”
“I only answered the phone so I could tell you to fuck off, Adam,” she said. “Now fuck off.”
“Don’t you dare hang up on me,” Adam growled. “You have made a huge mistake, Chloe. Absolutely huge. Your tiny little brain can’t possibly comprehend the mountain of shit you just got yourself into. You are too damn naive to handle the world out there, Chloe. You need to come home and let me fix this.”
“I would have done anything to not marry you,” Chloe said calmly. Then she laughed. “Why in the world would I want to marry you? You’re a complete prick, Adam.”
“You have ruined your family’s business, you know that?” Adam continued. “The relationship between our fathers… it will never be the same. Ever. That’s your fault, Chloe. You did that. You couldn’t just do the easiest fucking thing in the world and do what you were told. No. Christ. How stupid can you be?”
It took everything in me not to grab the phone out of her hand and tell that fucker exactly where he could go. But I had to let Chloe stand up for herself. She was doing a hell of a job so far. So as hard as it was, I did nothing.
“I didn’t hurt the family business,” she said. “Dad will be just fine. So will your dad. Oh, boo-hoo, they can’t merge their businesses by marrying me off like this is the fucking Dark Ages. I followed my heart. That’s what I did. I followed my heart.”