The Undercover Bridesmaid

by Montpetit, Kimberley

  Granny Zaida wobbled to her feet. “What time is it? I’ve lost track. I don’t use a cane yet, but this is one time I wish I had one to lean on.”

  “Granny, I’ll help you,” Celine said. Chloe heard her cousin add, “I am so done with this and we still have all day tomorrow. Who knew weddings were such a production? If I ever get married, I’m eloping to Vegas.”

  “Your granddad and I got married before the judge more than fifty years ago. That was back during the war when young people didn’t want to wait or plan a big wedding. Or wait until their love never returned from Vietnam.”

  “Oh, Granny,” Celine murmured. “That’s depressing.”

  “Fact of life, my dear. Goodness, these old bones are creaking up a storm tonight. Can you make sure I have my Bengay unpacked? I’m sure I brought it.”

  “Families, huh?” said a male voice in Chloe’s ear. She turned to see Brett, who was eavesdropping on all the various little conversations.

  “Families are adorable,” Chloe replied, suddenly nostalgic. This was the first family wedding she’d ever been a bridesmaid for. “I see a lot of quirky families in my line of—while I’ve been a bridesmaid.”

  Brett gave a laugh. “How many times have you been a bridesmaid?”

  “Oh, about seventeen—I mean seven. Feels like seventeen,” she added quickly.

  “You’re joking.”

  She shook her head. “Nope.”

  “You sure have a lot of friends.”

  Chloe laughed, too. “I guess I do.”

  “Should I call you the maid of honor if I’m the best man?”

  “Call me anything you’d like,” Chloe said, feeling reckless. “What would you like, Best Man?”

  From the corner of her eye she caught Liam watching. The scowl on his face took her aback. She had no idea Liam was the jealous type. He was so self-assured and confident. So utterly self-contained.

  “Dance with me,” Brett suggested, catching her hand to bring her close. Chloe’s breath caught. “I like a good ballad and two-step, and the DJ hasn’t closed up shop yet.”

  “The family’s busy eating leftovers.”

  It was true. Mark and Mercedes, Aunt Aurelia and Uncle Max, Mark’s parents, the Westerfields, Carter and Julia, as well as her own parents were sitting around one of the tables closest to the house, yacking away while sipping wine. Eating chips and salsa. She could see Celine and Granny Zaida making their way up the patio steps to the back door. Interior house lights glowed softly. It was a cozy, intimate sight, as if all was right in the world.

  Chloe turned to Brett, raising a flirtatious eyebrow. She felt daring, ready to throw her hat in the ring. “You’re lucky, Best Man. After all these weddings I’ve attended, I’ve become a pretty good dancer.”

  “I took lessons once a long time ago. Briefly. But it gets me by so I don’t step on a girl’s toes or drop my partner.”

  “Not dropping your partner is good. Very good.”

  Brett Sorenson pulled her in tighter, pressing her hand against his chest and resting his cheek against hers in a romantic dance pose. They swayed to the music while moving along the stone pavings of the wide patio, circling sofas and patio chairs.

  While Brett hummed to the music, Chloe closed her eyes, enjoying the moment—and tried to block out Liam. She wished he’d give up and go back to his hotel.

  Slitting her eyes, she saw that he’d finally sat down next to her brother Carter with a plate of snacks. At last he’d stopped staring at her. Every single instance their eyes locked together, Chloe swore she was going to stop breathing. He’d cursed her somehow.

  She wished she could put a magic spell on her brain to erase him from her memories. She wanted to stop feeling confused, excited, resentful, and allured by the man she wanted to continue hating.

  Brett twirled her under his arm and Chloe threw her head back, enjoying the languid feeling of her body, her hand knitted tight with Brett’s while they whirled around the patio.

  Just when Chloe thought Brett would pull her back in close to murmur sweet nothings into her ear, the lights of the entire Romano mansion and grounds suddenly shut off.

  The yard was a blaze of lights one moment, pitch black the next. Even the moon had disappeared behind a bank of clouds.

  Thrown off balance by the unexpected darkness, Chloe tried to hold on to Brett, but a female voice shrieked in fright, startling her further.

  Chloe’s fingers slipped through Brett’s, and instantly she was stumbling backward on the edge of the patio, falling—and falling—despite her toes trying to grip the wobbly stiletto high heels against the rough brick walkway, but nothing worked. She was going down.

  She was going to crack her head on the sidewalk. She was going to get a concussion.

  Chloe’s arms flailed through empty air in horror, her legs sliding out from under her—and unable to see a single thing in the pitch black darkness of the surrounding world. Now she was the one screaming.

  An instant later, she fell backwards into the swimming pool with the biggest splash she’d made since her last cannonball at eleven years old.

  Chapter 15

  The echoing sound of the splash was muffled in her own ears, because Chloe dropped to the bottom of the swimming pool. Like a stone.

  Falling in the deep end of the swimming pool while it was pitch black was terrifying. She didn’t know which direction was up or down. She hadn’t taken any extra breath before she fell since she hadn’t realized they’d been dancing so close to the swimming pool. She’d been expecting to fall on the pavings or the lawn, or crash into the chairs

  Chloe’s hands clawed at her dress which was floating upward, sticking to her face, and even getting sucked into her mouth. The evening gown was so heavy, her panic level soared. When her backside hit the bottom of the pool, Chloe pulled her arms down to try to push herself back toward the surface.

  Where were the freaking house lights? Why hadn’t the power come back on?

  Her throat burned. Her nose was on fire. She was out of air. Strange dots floated in front of her eyes. She was drowning right in front of a backyard full of her own family. Where was everybody?

  Suddenly she heard splashes. At last, someone was coming to help her claw her way through the yards of material that was impeding her ability to kick to the top of the pool. All air was gone, but she tried not to panic.

  The surface of the pool should have been only five or six feet above, but she kept kicking her feet and flailing her arms, and getting nowhere.

  Great waves of dense, heavy water moved around her. Someone was coming. Maybe several someones, but she couldn’t hear anything that she could discern specifically. It was like she’d gone deaf.

  A hand reached out to hers and she clawed at it in desperation. Just as quickly, the hand pushed her back down and she hit the bottom again, her toes grazing off the slippery decorative pool tile. Chloe cursed and took in a mouthful of water. What were they doing? Rescuing her or trying to drown her?

  Chloe could feel herself passing out, her eyes bulging, her throat constricting.

  The feeling of going unconscious had happened once during her FBI training when she was in a headlock practicing fighting moves. It was the most unpleasant experience of her life. That suffocating panicky feeling. Powerless to remain conscious.

  For what felt like an eternity of silence and darkness, Chloe couldn’t move or swim. As though she’d lost all control of her own body. Weighted down by her dress, lack of air, and most of all lack of any strength.

  Just before unconsciousness hit, strong arms were suddenly yanking her upward, pushing her higher, and her face finally broke the pool’s surface. She heard herself choking, as if her windpipe had been cut off from the oxygen surrounding her.

  “I’ve got you,” a male voice said, but her ears were so plugged with water she couldn’t tell who it was. “I’ve got you.”

  Was it Brett? He would have been the closest to rescue her. Chloe closed her eyes. They
were burning horribly, and she couldn’t see properly. She pressed her face against Brett’s chest, so grateful for air. For life.

  Those biceps she’d been admiring carried her up the pool steps and then gently laid her on the patio. “Get towels!” he shouted. “Get an ambulance!”

  Chloe tried to speak, but nothing came out. She tried to open her eyes, but she couldn’t. It was the strangest thing. She could hear her mother crying, her brother speaking urgently into a phone. Commotion everywhere in the backyard.

  It was so dark. So very dark. Chloe just wanted to go to sleep. She didn’t even feel cold any longer, although she should have been freezing lying flat on her back on an October night in a waterlogged evening dress.

  All of a sudden, someone started to kiss her, placing soft, warm lips around hers. No, they weren’t kissing her. The person was breathing into her mouth. Then they were rolling her onto her side and pounding her back. That hurt.

  Water dribbled out of her mouth. Oh, dear Lord in heaven, she was going to vomit. Everything hurt. Her chest, her stomach, her throat, even her eyes burned as if they were on fire.

  Chloe’s eyes fluttered. She wanted to see the light. She wanted to see Brett and thank him for saving her. She wanted to hug her mother. She wanted to tell her father how much she loved him. She didn’t want to die.

  When Chloe finally became coherent, the lights were back on in the yard. The silhouettes of a dozen people surrounded her. “Mom?” she croaked.

  “Oh, darling, you’re alive!” her mother murmured, kissing her forehead, smoothing slimy strands of her hair away from her face. “We thought—oh, Chloe, when we saw you at the bottom of the pool, my heart split into pieces.”

  “I hurt,” Chloe managed to say past her raw throat. Who knew that a benign substance like water could hurt so badly?

  The strong-armed male who had carried her out of the pool and let her choke all over him bent closer, taking her pulse, examining her neck. His head blocked out the bright beam of a flashlight. Maybe the house lights weren’t back on like she had first assumed.

  Wait, the man who was looking down at her was Liam Esposito. Liam? No, it had to be Brett. She’d been dancing with him.

  She tried to shake her head, to speak, but Liam whispered, “Shush, shush, don’t try to talk. An ambulance is on its way.”

  Chloe flopped an arm over, trying to push herself up into a sitting position. Her limbs felt like jelly, almost spongy. It was the strangest feeling. “Where’s—” she tried to ask, but her thoughts were incoherent. Her eyes finally focused on Liam. “How did you get here?”

  “I’ve been here all the time,” he said softly. “Where do you hurt?”

  Chloe’s eyes watered up again. “I feel—really awful.”

  She began to cough, and Liam helped her onto her side so she wouldn’t choke. Her mother wiped her mouth and face with a clean cloth.

  Sirens began to wail in the distance. “I don’t need an ambulance.”

  “You’re going to get checked out,” Liam told her. “No arguing with me.”

  “Don’t boss me around,” she said weakly. “You’re not even a true Italian—so there.” It was one of those saucy taunts they used to fling at each other during their flirting days at Quantico when they were trying to outdo each other on the shooting range.

  “What you’re saying is that nothing has changed even though I saved you from certain death. Us Sicilians are still lower-class?” he asked with a grin.

  “Don’t you know your history?” she croaked like a toad.

  Liam glanced up at Governor Romano. “I think she’s coming back to us.”

  “Chloe was always my little spitfire,” her dad said. He squeezed her hand between his big warm ones while her mother lay a blanket over her.

  Chloe’s voice was hoarse. Breathing was hard, too. Her chest was on fire. She tried to sit up again, but her hands fell limply to her sides. The weakness alarmed her. Tentatively, she touched Liam’s arm. He was drenched, too.

  “A few of us jumped in after you,” he said softly.

  That made Chloe think of her dancing partner. The memory of twirling around the patio returned, and then the mansion power blackout and falling into the pool. “Brett?”

  “I’m right here, Chloe,” he said from somewhere behind her.

  A second later, Brett came into view under the light of the flashlights that her mother and aunt were holding.

  Liam said, “Brett jumped in and your brother, too.”

  “Carter won swimming medals in high school,” Chloe said, even though it was completely irrelevant. Her brain wires were crossed. She wasn’t making any sense.

  With gentle fingers, Liam brushed a soft hand against her face. “Your temperature is a little low, but that may just be the cool night coupled with wet clothes. Boy, you’re heavy when you’re wet,” he added impertinently.

  Chloe wanted to punch him in the shoulder, but she had no strength.

  “We were dancing,” she said to Brett, trying to make sense of what had happened.

  “The blackout was so sudden,” he said. “Before I knew it, you had slipped out of my grasp. All I heard was a splash but I couldn’t see where you were. Your uncle ran for flashlights, but it took a few minutes to get them here. We kept screaming your name, and that’s when we realized you must be under the water, and the guys started jumping in after you.”

  Chloe squeezed her eyes shut, reliving the panic, her lungs closing in on her. Moments away from drowning. She wouldn’t wish that desperate, horrible feeling on her worst enemy. “I was fighting so hard—somebody pushed me back down—”

  “You were unconscious when we found you, Chloe,” Liam said. “Limp on the bottom of the pool.”

  She shook her head. “No, I remember fighting so hard …” Tears leaked from her eyes and Liam wiped them away with his fingers. Why was he being so attentive when she’d told him so often that she hated him?

  Brett was the one she’d been brazenly flirting with all during dinner before going off to dance by themselves.

  “You’re going to be fine, but the doctors will want to make sure you don’t have a concussion, that your lungs don’t have water in them, and your temperature returns to normal.”

  “You sound like a doctor,” she told Liam in her scratchy voice.

  Worry flickered across his eyes. “You’re shaking like a leaf. Maybe hypothermic.”

  “You’re in shock,” her brother spoke up, looming behind her father. “You scared the living daylights out of us. Don’t ever do that again.”

  “Aye, aye,” she said, trying to smile, but the whole experience was overwhelming her.

  A moment later, the paramedics were there. Male and female voices taking her vitals, making sure she had no broken bones. They lifted her onto a stretcher and before Chloe knew it, she was being loaded into the ambulance, the red lights whirling bright and hard in the darkness.

  “Where are the blasted lights?” she heard Uncle Max say to her father. “I’ve got Mr. Vincent and my head gardener in the garage with the breaker box. Already called the power company, and they say that it’s just our house. The problem isn’t from the local power pole, but they’re sending a truck anyway to check it out.”

  The ambulance doors slammed shut, and Chloe closed her eyes. For the first time since she was a kid, she wanted her mother.

  Chapter 16

  The hospital was lit up like a Christmas tree. After the frightening darkness of the Romano property, it was a relief to feel part of civilization again, even as she was being zoomed straight to the Emergency Entrance.

  “I’m taking this one straight back,” her paramedic said, a woman wearing the name of Betsy on her name-tag. One of the hospital nurses asked for Chloe’s status, and Betsy said, “Drowning. Family pool. She’s conscious now, had a trained male in CPR in attendance. Temperature a little low, but rising.”

  “She’s lucky,” the nurse said. Chloe tried to catch her name-tag, but her eyes were
blurry. “We’ll need X-rays, perhaps a CT scan.”

  Chloe was transferred to a gurney and taken to a booth, where the nurse stripped off her evening gown and quickly dressed her in a cotton hospital gown, then piled heated blankets on top of her. “Chloe, I’m Serena, and I’m going to be your nurse tonight. Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, watching another nurse prepare an IV, opening sterile packages of needles and gauze, a frown of concentration on her face.

  “How are you feeling?” Serena asked.

  “Woozy. Cold. My throat hurts.”

  “That’s to be expected, honey, but you’re in great shape for being under the water for so long. The paramedic driver radioed in that you were coming in and said that you were under the water for nearly three minutes.”

  “I used to practice holding my breath.”

  “We’re guessing you were unconscious for possibly up to a minute or so.”

  “I threw up a couple of times.” For some reason, Chloe’s responses sounded like she was a kid again.

  “The water coming up naturally is a good sign. As long as you didn’t choke.”

  “Liam made sure I didn’t. Choke, that is. He turned me over. I think he gave me mouth-to mouth.” Chloe felt herself blushing. “That sort of hurt, too.”

  Serena smiled. “That’s what everybody says—if they remember it at all. You were probably coming back to consciousness at the time.”

  “I don’t remember being unconscious.”

  Serena stuck three pillows under Chloe’s head to raise her to a better sitting position in case she choked again on any water remaining in her stomach. Then she took her temperature. “Ninety-seven degrees, not too bad. A little low, perhaps. The blankets good? Are you warm enough?”

  Chloe nodded. The warm blankets felt wonderful, like she was sitting by a toasty fire. The nurse on her right finished attaching the IV while Chloe looked away. She could never watch needles piercing her skin.

  After hooking the IV bag on the drip stand, Serena put her stethoscope to Chloe’s chest, listening with focused concentration. “Can you try to cough so I can hear if there’s still water in your lungs?”