His Bride by Design

Chloe, wannabe wedding dress designer extraordinaire, part of the big machine that made little girls’ wedding dreams come true, had a fiancе who was sleeping with another man!

James Elliott IV did not in any way keep up with fashion news.

His idea of fashion was—when he was feeling really daring—to forego his traditional white dress shirt in favor of one in pale yellow or perhaps blue.

But one fine September morning, as he walked from his apartment in Tribeca to his office in the financial district and stopped to buy his Wall Street Journal at his favorite newsstand, it was impossible to miss the fashion news. It was plastered across the front pages of the tabloids for all to see.

Some crazy model in a huge, billowing wedding dress jumping a guy on a runway, looking like she was about to claw his eyes out in the next instant.

Waiting for his turn to pay, James decided the model did indeed look crazy, but then most of them were, he suspected. Starvation made women mean and at least a little bit crazy. The photo showed that she had literally jumped on the guy, had her legs wrapped around his waist and her fingernails poised and ready to strike, the guy twisting to get out of the way.

In the background was a model in a tux, looking like he wanted to jump in, but didn’t have the balls to do it. And down at the bottom, in the foreground … it looked like …

“Chloe?”

She was his ex.

The ex, if he let himself admit it. The one who’d really gotten to him, endearing herself to him like no one else, infuriating him, baffling him, hurting him, until they’d finally gone their separate ways.

What the hell had happened to Chloe?

The headline on the tabloid read Taking Bridezilla to a Whole New Level: Bloodshed at Fashion Week as Eloise Goes on a Rampage!

Bridezilla?

And who was Eloise?

The next tabloid blared Wedding Dress Designer Chloe and Model Eloise’s Man-on-Man Nightmare! Their Men Cheating … With Each Other!

James grimaced on Chloe’s behalf.

And the third said Designer Chloe’s Fashion Week Debut Every Woman’s Wedding Nightmare: The Groom-to-Be Prefers Men!

Now James felt really bad.

There’d been a time right after their breakup when he’d been mad enough to want Chloe’s heart broken, but this seemed unreasonably harsh. If it was even true. Most of the stuff in these rags wasn’t, after all.

“Mr. Elliott?” The puzzled voice of the newspaper vendor, Vince, interrupted him. “You want one of those tabloids today?”

“What?” He looked at the man who’d been selling him financial news for years. Nothing but financial news. “Of course not. I was just … waiting to pay.”

Vince shrugged like he didn’t believe a word of it, then said, “Hot story this morning. We usually don’t get anything good that normal people care about during Fashion Week. But a girl-on-girl brawl over two men … that’s hot!”

“Chloe and that model got into it?”

“Who?”

“The wedding dress designer.”

“Yeah.” Vince nodded enthusiastically. “Right there on the runway, I heard. Hope somebody got video. I could get into that. You know that girl? Chloe?”

“Used to,” he admitted. What the hell? It was Vince. They were morning newsstand buddies.

“She looks kind of mousy in most of the pictures,” Vince said. “Like that Eloise chick could tear her apart if she wanted to.”

James would never have said Chloe was mousy. She liked to pretend she was tough as nails and incredibly self-sufficient, especially when it came to her career. But when it came to her personal life, she could be sweet, gentle, vulnerable at times, fun, full of life, until she drove a man absolutely crazy. None of that equated to mousiness.

Although he had to admit, in the brawl photos, she looked tiny and sad standing there dejectedly on the sidelines. It looked like her show had been ruined, and she’d been working her whole life for a chance like that. She’d wanted it more than she’d wanted him, that was for sure. And it had just burned him up at the time.

“Sure you don’t want one of those?” Vince asked, pointing at the tabloids. “They’ve got more pictures inside.”

“No, thanks.” No way he was going to buy that on the street. He’d swipe his assistant’s copy.

Strolling into his office on the twenty-sixth floor, he greeted his secretary and his secretary’s secretary and then asked Marcy, his assistant, to come into his office, a large, starkly bare room with a massive, gleaming wooden desk, big, cushy leather chairs and an expansive view all the way down to New York Harbor and Battery Park.

He believed in order, discipline, control, hard work and the power of his own mind. People called him a financial genius, and he just smiled and went on with his work. While the current times were challenging, they certainly hadn’t caught him by surprise, and he was doing just fine while others around him floundered. Never believe the hype about anything—especially the economy—he always told people. The philosophy had served him well.

He wondered now if he’d hyped the whole idea of Chloe in his mind to an impossible level. He couldn’t have been as happy with her as he remembered or as miserable without her, he told himself.

And he wasn’t obsessing.

Just … curious.

“Mr. Elliott? Are you feeling all right?” Marcy asked.

“Of course,” he claimed, then couldn’t quite bring himself to ask for what he really wanted. He cleared his throat, adjusted his tie, frowned. “I just … I need … I want to see your copy of the New York Mirror.”

Marcy sputtered. Her eyes got all big and round and then her cheeks turned red. “But I don’t—”

“Oh, yes, you do. I know you have that thing, and I want it—”

“But why?”

“You know why. I’d bet a thousand dollars you know exactly why.”

She looked truly flustered then, but didn’t deny either having the damned thing or knowing why he wanted it. She’d come to work for him in the immediate post-Chloe era. He’d been in a truly ugly mood for weeks, and had ended up springing for unscheduled bonuses to her and a handful of other staff members forced to put up with him, as a way of saying he was sorry.

“Okay. I’ll go get it,” Marcy said, turning on her heel and heading out.

“And don’t you dare tell anyone!” he yelled as she opened the door, his secretary and his secretary’s secretary peering through, looking worried.

Great. Just great.

Marcy came back with the tabloid carefully rolled up tightly so no one could see what it was. At least she was embarrassed to have it. She scowled as she handed it to him, then reached over to type something into his computer.

“You’ll want the tabloid for the photos, but the best written account is here.” She pointed to a blog now up on his computer screen, then retreated from his office in an embarrassed huff.

James glanced through the tabloid photos, grimacing at what he saw, then turned to the blog.