Mr Right There All Along

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Mr Right There All Along

Jackie Braun

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my husband, Mark.

We’ve had lots of reasons to cry. We’ve chosen to laugh instead. That—and you—have made all the difference in my life. I love you.

High School History 101

WHEN SHE SPIED the invitation amid the pile of bills and junk mail, Chloe McDaniels’s lips pulled back in a sneer. She’d been expecting it, but that didn’t make her reaction any less visceral.

Tillman High School’s Class of 2001 was set to celebrate its ten-year reunion.

Chloe did not have fond memories of her New Jersey high school. In fact, she’d spent her four years at Tillman ducking into bathroom stalls and janitors’ broom closets to avoid the unholy trinity of Natasha Bradford, Faith Ellerman and Tamara Kingsley.

She’d known the girls since grade school. They’d never been friends, but neither had they been enemies … until the start of their freshman year when, for reasons that had never been terribly clear to Chloe, she’d become their favorite target.

Literally.

Somehow on that first, already awkward day of high school, they managed to attach a “Kick Me” sign to the back of her shirt just before the start of first period. It was the last time Chloe ever accepted a friendly back slap without taking a gander over her shoulder afterward. As cruel pranks went, it wasn’t terribly original, but it was effective. She’d taken enough sneakers to the seat of her favorite jeans to feel like a soccer ball.

Then, between third period and lunch, Simon Ford had happened along.

“You might not want to wear this,” he’d said simply, removing the sign and handing it to Chloe. That was his way. Understated.

Good old Simon. He always had her back. Or backside, as the case had been. They’d been friends since his family had moved into her family’s apartment building at the start of third grade and their friendship continued to this day. Thinking of him now, Chloe picked up the phone before realizing the time. It was well after five on a Friday. He was probably out with his girlfriend.

Chloe realized she was sneering again. Well, it couldn’t be helped. She didn’t like Sara. The long-limbed and lithe blonde was too … too … perfect.

She glanced down at the invitation. Perfect Sara would never find herself in this position. Perfect Sara would have been the homecoming queen and the prom queen and the every other kind of queen at her high school. Unlike Chloe, whose only class recognition had come in the form of “curliest hair” and “most freckles.”

Yeah, that was what a girl wanted to be remembered for, all right.

Her gut told her to ball up the invitation in a wad, spit on it and, with expletives she knew in four languages, send it whizzing into the trash can. Her heart was a different matter. It was telling her to reach for a spoon and the pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream in her freezer.

Diet in mind, she went with her gut.

Sort of.

She lavished the invitation with every foreign epithet she could think of before heaving it in the trash. But, while she bypassed the ice cream, she booted up her computer and downloaded a recipe from her favorite cable cooking show, Susie Kay’s Comfort Foods. If it was all but guaranteed to clog the arteries and contribute to heart disease, Susie Kay made it.

Tonight’s dinner selection was a case in point. Macaroni and cheese with not one, but four kinds of cheese and enough butter and calories that Chloe swore her clothes fit tighter just reading the ingredients. Not good considering she was already wearing her fat pants.