This book contains subject matter which may be sensitive or triggering to some and is intended for mature audiences.
While you don’t need to read the previous book in the series, as this is a standalone novel featuring a unique romance, it is highly recommended. Red Door is a series of interconnected standalone novels. All of the main characters reappear and some storylines connect throughout each book. For the best experience, read the series in order.
If you are following the series, this book overlaps, in parts, with Serenity.
For my parents, Arthur and Josephine, who instilled in me a lifelong love for the written word.
You are loved and missed each and every day.
Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
Ecclesiastes 4:12
Chloe looked around the frilly pink bedroom.
Where to start?
What do you take with you and what parts of your girlhood do you leave behind? She wasn’t sure. She didn’t feel any different today than she did yesterday, but today was different.
Today her life as a real adult began. She had her acceptance letter into the marketing and graphic design program at the college she wanted. In the city. She had a little apartment just waiting for her to move into. She only had to pack up her life and go.
Armed with empty boxes and tape, Chloe sifted through drawers and emptied her closet. She was surprised at the lack of nostalgia as she sorted her things. She had expected to feel some. She didn’t. Her fingertips rubbed at a spot on the bright-pink satin comforter where she sat upon the white canopy bed, memorizing the familiar feel of it, as she scanned the posters and pictures that adorned the walls.
She smiled.
Taylor Kerrigan smiled back at her. Well, sort of. It was more like a smirk. A smoldering bad-boy smirk. He had long lustrous black hair with caramel highlights that flowed over broad shoulders. His bare chest was chiseled and a myriad of tattoos accentuated his perfect olive skin. How could any man be that beautiful?
Photoshop, that’s how.
The lead guitarist of Venery had been her fantasy man, her celebrity crush, ever since their first album came out. He was there when she cried her eyes out over that douchebag Danny Damiani when he broke up with her just a week before junior prom last year. She’d wiped the tears from her eyes and there was Taylor with that sexy grin. If that asshole quarterback thought she was going to miss her prom because of him, he’d best think again. Danny took Brittany McCall instead, who apparently drank one too many glasses of spiked punch and yakked up the contents of her stomach in front of the entire junior class in the middle of the dancefloor. Chloe had gone stag with her friends, had a blast and giggled at the sight of Mr. Popular futilely attempting to clean off the vomit that dripped down his tux.
Karma’s such a bitch, isn’t she?
Chloe carefully removed the poster from the wall and thought of the many nights she’d lain beneath the canopy and touched herself fantasizing it was him, imagining what his guitar-callused fingers would feel like on her petal-soft skin. She thought of all the times he’d watched over her while her father was away on business yet again. He traveled and left her alone a lot. She was used to it.
It was time to throw away her schoolgirl fantasies. Chloe was all grown up now and real life adventures awaited her in the city. Secretly, she still wished that one day she would meet her rock-star crush. He’d fall hopelessly in love with her and she’d be the envy of every girl at school when they saw her face gracing the covers of magazines in the grocery store check-out line on the arm of Taylor Kerrigan.
She scoffed to herself. Yeah, right. Like that could ever really happen.
The sound of the squeaky hinges on the front door brought her back to her ordinary reality. “Chloe, are you about finished up there?”
“Yeah, Dad. Five minutes.”
He sounded impatient. He was probably in a hurry to get her to the city so he could take off again and not feel so guilty about it.
Hmm. Keep him or toss him?
“Chloe, honey.” Michael Bennett stepped inside his only child’s bedroom. “I’m going to start taking these boxes down. I’ve got the U-Haul in the driveway.”
She decided to keep him. What was the harm in wishing? Chloe rolled up the poster of the smoldering bad boy and snatched the bright-pink satin blanket from her bed. “I’ve got everything I need. I’m ready.”
And she was. She was ready for whatever awaited her in the big beautiful city—for the people she’d meet, the new friends she’d make. For her real life to start.
They do say be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.
If only she had known.
“So, have you figured it out yet?” Chloe asked Linnea while they waited at the bar for Jesse to fill their drink orders.
Linnea was her bestie, her sister from another mister. Both of them had moved to the city at the same time and took classes at the same university, but it was here at Charley’s, where they worked, that they met when it opened almost three years ago.
As much as they had those things in common, they were opposites in many ways. While Linnea was warm and friendly once she got to know you, she was still rather quiet and guarded. Chloe, on the other hand, was anything but quiet.
“Figured out what?” Linnea said.
“Who your fuckboy is, that’s what.” Chloe looked pointedly at Linnea and giggled. She wished someone, okay a certain someone, had left a note for her like the one her friend found at her door. She couldn’t imagine Jesse ever doing anything quite so wickedly intriguing as that, though after working alongside him for as long as she had he was still somewhat of a mystery to her.
“For chrissakes, Chloe!” Linnea’s gaze darted around the bar. “Someone might hear you!”
I’m going to fuck you.
Yeah, she’d been wishing for that on a daily basis ever since she’d first laid eyes on him. Jesse Thomas Nolan. Former NFL wide receiver. Charley’s was just one of the businesses he co-owned with his cousins. He was six and half feet of solid muscle with striking baby-blue eyes and sexy-as-fuck long russet hair that had these natural blond streaks in it. She thought they were natural anyway. It was usually up in a man bun when he was behind the bar—he reminded her of Brock O’Hurn, only better. Linnea had no clue who he even was when she told her that.
For chrissakes, Linnie, the man practically invented the man bun!
She looked up at the ductwork on the exposed ceiling and tapped her pen on the bar as she pondered. Chloe couldn’t figure Jesse out any more than she could figure out who Linnea’s fuckboy might be. She found that her gaze wandered to the object of her unrequited desire. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. They talked and texted and flirted an awful lot. She could tell when a guy was interested, and she was almost certain he was interested, but every time she thought he was going to finally make a move…nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
Maybe he really was gay. There were rumors, not that she believed them. She’d never seen him with anyone, male or female, in the entire three years she’d known him. Besides, gay men didn’t flirt with women like he did, did they? He was good at it too. The sexy banter… She had a feeling he was a really dirty boy, and dammit, she wanted to know for sure. She wanted him. She hadn’t wanted anyone like that in a long time.