Chloe finally started to breathe, to let it all sink in. The show had gone off without a hitch, the audience applauding wildly!

Then she felt Eloise fidgeting, heard a quiet hiss of sharp words. Chloe shot her a glance that said, Surely this can wait until we’re off the runway! Eloise’s boyfriend whispered back furiously, Bryce, too. People started to notice, falling silent and then whispering themselves.

Not now. Not now. Not now! Chloe chanted to herself.

“You bastard!” Eloise screamed, but not at her boyfriend. At Bryce? “You just couldn’t keep your hands to yourself, could you?”

Chloe whimpered, all the breath going out of her in a rush.

Her fianc'e was involved with her top model?

It was such a clich'e, especially finding out while standing here at the end of the runway, like making it all the way down the aisle of a church to the altar only to find disaster. This was supposed to be Chloe’s day. Didn’t they understand? She was the real bride here!

Eloise shook a long, pointy finger in Bryce’s face. “I told you to stay away. I told you I wouldn’t stand for this anymore.”

Bryce looked pale and defeated. Chloe’s mind had gone foggy and sluggish. Eloise was telling Bryce to stay away? So, Bryce was like … annoying Eloise? Stalking her?

Laughter trickled in, getting louder and louder, and then the camera flashes became positively blinding. Chloe stood frozen in the midst of it.

Then she realized that Eloise didn’t seem to be trying to keep Bryce away from her. She’d planted herself between Bryce and her model boyfriend/groom, shrieking, “He’s mine!”

That couldn’t be right.

Bryce was sexy as could be, and somehow he’d become Chloe’s. He wanted her, despite spending his days photographing some of the most beautiful women in the world, unreal and yet gorgeous in that odd, perfect way of theirs.

Chloe caught a look passing not between Bryce and Eloise, but Bryce and the male model. The ridiculously toned, tanned, good-looking male model.

An intimate, knowing, regretful look.

Which meant …

“Oh, no,” Chloe whispered, fighting with all she had in her not to cry. Not here. Not now.

Chloe, wannabe wedding dress designer extraordinaire, part of the big machine that made little girls’ wedding dreams come true, had a fianc'e 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.