скачать книгу бесплатно
The Bride Blog: News of all things bridal.
Bridal Brawl Breaks Out at NY Fashion Week!
Talk about a Bridal Nightmare!
Forget the bridesmaids! It’s the other men modern-day brides have to worry about, as we saw in the amazing brawl that broke out at New York Fashion Week.
Wedding dress designer Chloe Allen, plucked from obscurity mere months ago when gorgeous pop star Jaden Lawrence got married in a Chloe gown, was having her first showing at Fashion Week when everything suddenly went horribly wrong.
It seems Chloe’s fiancе, veteran fashion photographer Bryce Gorman, just couldn’t keep his hands off the male model posing as the groom to model extraordinaire Eloise’s bride at what was to be the climax of the show.
And what a climax it turned out to be!
One doesn’t think of models like the beautiful Eloise as the kind to ever worry about losing a man to anyone, but lose him she did, and she clearly put the blame on Bryce Gorman.
Eloise jumped him—literally—designer wedding gown and all. She wrapped those incredibly long legs around his waist and held on tight, her long, pale pink fingernails clawing at his face, supposedly drawing blood.
Bryce swung around trying to dislodge her, as her long train and veil floated around them in an odd mеlange of satin, lace and bridal horror that will not soon be forgotten.
So far the only video clips of the scene have been particularly unsatisfying. (A free bridal bouquet to the first person who sends a good video of the bridal brawl to this blog.)
Meanwhile, traumatized brides, especially the ones closest to their big day, have been writing to the Bride Blog like mad to say they’re keeping a close eye on those groomsmen and any close friends of their grooms.
It seems that old nightmare of standing at the altar, surrounded by friends and family, and finding out at the last minute that the groom had a little fling with one of the bridesmaids has been replaced with the modern-day equivalent.
The groom doing another man!
Chloe woke from her post-apocalyptic haze the day after the show, praying it had all been a horrible nightmare and that she could do it all over again. Even for her—a woman who liked to think of herself as highly creative—the previous day had been outlandishly bad.
She looked up and there was Addie, whom Chloe claimed as a half sister, although no one had ever done the paternity tests to be sure. Chloe’s father had slept with Addie’s mother at about the right time, and that was enough for the two of them, who found each other much more reliable than their father.
“Tell me it didn’t really happen,” Chloe begged.
“Oh, honey. I wish I could.” Addie sat down on the bed, her back against the headboard, offering Chloe a shoulder if she needed it.
Chloe leaned her head on Addie’s shoulder and thought this had to be the absolute worst day of her life. Yesterday had been horrible, but her family had closed in around her, gotten her out of the tent and then poured drinks down her throat until everything became a blur.
Today, she didn’t have the luxury of alcohol or denial. “I thought he was the one,” she cried.
“I know, sweetie.”
Addie, kindly, did not point out that Chloe always believed every new man in her life was the one. She wasn’t stupid, just ever hopeful. At least that’s what Chloe tried to tell herself. Although after being engaged three times and never making it to the altar, it was getting harder and harder to believe.
Her family loved weddings. They married over and over again. And the wedding was always the high point. All their relationships went downhill from there. Chloe thought she was breaking the pattern thus far by not marrying, but even that hadn’t protected her from her own unique wedding curse.
There was Fiancе No. 1, her high school sweetheart. Chloe liked to think they’d merely been too young to know what they wanted, no giant failure there or any kind of sign.
Bryce, No. 3, was sexy, fun, confident and in the business, someone who understood exactly what it took to be a success. He had come along at the perfect time.
When Chloe was just getting over No. 2.
Addie said that timing was the only reason Chloe ever gave Bryce the time of day, but Chloe truly didn’t think so. She wouldn’t fall for one man to the point of becoming engaged to him—all just to get over another man, would she?
No. 2—although he would absolutely hate being thought of as second in anything—was James Elliott IV, one of the most eligible bachelors in New York, according to several magazine lists. Chloe didn’t talk about No. 2.
“Wait a minute,” Addie said, pouncing on her. “You’re not even thinking about Bryce. You’re thinking about … the other one!”
“Am not,” Chloe claimed.
“You are so!”
“Well, now I am! Why did you have to say that?”
“Because you got that look. That look you only get when you’re thinking about him! About—”
“Don’t say it! Don’t you dare say his name!”
“About good old No. 2,” Addie said, looking quite smug about it.
“Haven’t I been through enough humiliation already?” Chloe asked. “Without going into my long list of failures with men?”
“True,” Addie agreed. “Sorry.”
Chloe frowned. She hadn’t even gotten out of bed yet, and already the day looked bleak. While her personal life might be truly disastrous, she’d always been so much better at managing her professional life. The fact that the two had now become entwined, her personal life mess spilling over into a huge career mess, was more than a little unsettling.
“Okay, how bad is it this morning?” Chloe asked. “Everyone saw … everything yesterday?”
“And got pictures, I’m afraid,” Addie admitted.
Chloe groaned, seeing the explosion of camera flashes in her face once again.
“There are people who claim all publicity is good publicity,” Addie tried.
“You’ve never been one of those people,” Chloe reminded her.
“I could have been wrong about that all this time.”
Not likely, but Chloe loved her for saying so.
“Okay, here it is.” Addie spilled the ugly truth: “You’re front-page news in all the tabloids today.”
Chloe winced.
“A feat normally achieved only by celebrities and politicians in the midst of major sex scandals,” she added.
“And here I never set that as one of my career goals.”
“On the bright side, your name is out there once again.”
“Except now I’ve designed a dress for a wedding nightmare—”
Addie looked horrified. “Don’t say that! Don’t you ever say that! Women get a little crazy about their weddings. A little … weird and controlling and fanatical and superstitious. You know that! They’re all worried some disaster will strike.”
“Exactly. And when they think of getting married in a Chloe original, they’ll think disaster, guaranteed!”
“Chloe, I swear, never, ever say that again. Do you hear me? It’s like tempting the Wedding Gremlins to attack.”
“They already attacked! I mean, my fiancе was doing the groom. What else could possibly happen?”
“Oh, my God!” Addie crossed herself in horror. “Never, ever, ever, ever say that! The moment women start to believe your dresses are bad luck, you’re dead as a wedding dress designer. We are happy people who sell wedding dreams. We believe in love, fairy tales, happily-ever-afters and all that crap.”
“Okay!” Chloe said obediently. She could always count on Addie for a pep talk. “Sorry. I just had a bad moment, but I’m done now.”
“Fine, but it can’t go out of this room.”
“Of course not,” Chloe said, then had a flash of her sobbing, drinking and talking to someone. She had that same really icky feeling she’d had before the runway show, when she just knew something would go wrong.
Had she done something last night? Other than have a little too much to drink and cry a bit? She didn’t think so, but she really couldn’t remember.
Must have been a bad dream, she decided.
After all, her fiancе was sleeping with the groom.
What could possibly top that?
Addie left, and Chloe lay there in her bed a moment longer, working up the courage to face the day. Weariness weighed her down. She let her eyes drift shut and her mind float into that never-never land between real sleep and a groggy kind of wakefulness.
She was at the bar, last night but not really last night. She’d laughed, cried, gone over her entire, dreary history with men, and then, just when things seemed their bleakest, she’d looked to the end of the bar, and he’d been there.
Not Bryce.
James.
Chloe groaned, half in pain and half in longing, knowing she was crazy even for dreaming of him.
He looked so good. But then, James always had.
He could have been a model himself, although he hated to hear it. In fact, they’d met when Chloe had mistaken him for a model late for one of her shows. He had that rare quality of being an absolutely beautiful man, but still looking unmistakably masculine, as so few models did.
In the bar, he walked over to her, looking at her with the kind of understanding and concern that made her ache. Then he reached out with one of those perfect hands of his and wiped away her tears. And in the kindest move of all, put his beautiful body between her and the rest of the room, creating a tiny, safe space for her when she was so miserable she just wanted to curl up into a little ball and disappear.
He smelled so good, the way he always did. He’d admitted with a reluctance that bordered on pain that he still thought about her, that he missed her and that he just had to come see for himself that she was all right.
It was ridiculous.
Even in her dream, she realized that.
James Elliott was too proud, too stubborn and too independent to ever admit he missed anyone. But it was a lovely dream, bittersweet and achingly real.
Then she woke up once again, not twenty minutes later, in her bed, yet still very much inside her very own nightmare as fashion runway roadkill.
James fought the impulse all day, but nightfall found him standing on the corner across the street from the big, old Victorian near Prospect Park in Brooklyn that Chloe shared with her various relatives, who all worked for her in the first-floor showroom.
He stared up at the window of the small attic she’d turned into a tiny apartment for herself, where she had some measure of privacy. This after fighting with himself all day about coming anywhere near here.
It felt weirdly stalkerish to be there, just looking up at her window, and he was a man who did not stalk women. He just needed to know she was okay.
Which he couldn’t tell from simply staring at her house.
Still, he felt a little better, just being this close to her.
He waited until the last light went out in her little attic, saw the slightest impression of her, he thought, ghostlike against the sheer curtains, as she walked across the room. He imagined her climbing into bed, her toes cold, letting her warm them on his, his hands hot against her cool, pale skin, tangling in her glorious hair.
So many nights they’d spent that way, together in that room.
He couldn’t have her back, he told himself.
He’d made her crazy, and she’d done the same to him. He was as logical a man as there was on earth, and he knew without a doubt that no one needed to be hurt like that a second time.
So once the light was out, and he knew she was safe in her bed, at least for the night, he turned around and went home, swearing to himself that he wouldn’t be back.
Chapter Two
The next morning, James faced the newsstand, hoping to see the usual mix of tabloid headlines screaming about drunken celebrities, corrupt politicians, alien sightings and baseball players on steroids.
No such luck.
That crazy model, Eloise, was back on the covers, in handcuffs, still wearing the wedding dress, her hair going every which way, mascara-streaked tears on her cheek, maybe a few drops of blood on the gown? The bridezilla label had been picked up by every tabloid he saw, now in this humongous font with letters the color of blood.
James winced as he stood there. Bridezilla? Had someone climbed a skyscraper in a bloody wedding gown and swatted at things? He didn’t think so.
What about Chloe? He scanned the news. Supposedly in a fit of rage, she’d destroyed every gown in her showroom with a huge pair of scissors. No way James believed that. She loved the clothes she made too much to ever destroy them, and Chloe didn’t do fits of rage. She just didn’t.
James got to the front of the line to hand over his money for his Wall Street Journal, and Vince said, “Your girl is back.”
“Yeah, I see that.”
“One of my customers just told me about this great video of the whole runway brawl,” Vince confided. “YouTube, that thing the kids like on the computer? Type in ‘Runway Brawl,’ and it’s supposed to come right up.”
James nodded. He wouldn’t be able to help himself. “I’ll do that, Vince.”
When he got to the office, he glared at Marcy, then gave a curt nod for her to follow him into his office. “People are online watching a video of the brawl at Chloe’s show?”
“More than a hundred thousand people so far,” Marcy said.
James grimaced. A hundred thousand? “Someone’s keeping a count?”
“Of course. At the rate the video’s being downloaded, it could go viral at any time.”
