SNACK SIZE STORIES: Greyson and Chloe

Chapter 3: Once Your Divorce Is Final

A chauffeur holding a sign with my name on it met me as I walked into the public part of one of the LAX terminals, a duffel bag over my shoulder and a little, wheeled suitcase rolling along beside me. He was wearing a formal black suit and tie, and looked to be in his late fifties.

I smiled at him and he insisted on taking over my duffel and my suitcase. "That was the first time I've ever flown first class," I gushed to him, then immediately felt stupid.

I hadn't booked my ticket; Greyson Whitlock's PA had handled it and had sent me my check-in information. It was only when I'd seen on my boarding pass what group I boarded with that I realized I'd been booked first-class.

"It was so nice," I said, realizing I was babbling at this stranger despite feeling stupid because I was that excited about the experience I'd never expected to have.

Give yourself some grace, I told myself for the thousandth time since I'd walked in on Joseph and Ricki in the kitchen a little over a week ago.

And since I'd discovered my sister was pregnant by Joseph.

And my mother and the family had known before I did.

Today, Joseph was being served with divorce papers, but Lorraine was waiting until I was in the air before serving him.

"That way, weasel-dick can't get at you since you'll be in California," she said. Joseph had been texting and calling relentlessly for the last week and I hadn't responded to one of his attempts to reach out to me. Knowing him, I'm sure he was frustrated and getting angry. He didn't know where I was because I had put the hotel on the credit card I used for my work. 

As a medical transcriptionist, I worked from home for a virtual company, occasionally meeting with potential clients in my area to win new accounts. My two bosses, Ella and Genny, were awesome and told me to take whatever time I needed to get through this divorce. They also might have been a little star struck that I was going to be on Greyson Whitlock's late-night talk show.

"That man looks like he could be a brother in my husband's MC," Genny had told me. It was true. Part of Greyson's enormous popularity was that he looked like a bad boy. He never wore a suit on the show or in any way looked like a typical clean-cut talk-show host; instead, he wore tight T-shirts with his tats on full display, jeans that fit his bubble-ass like a dream and heavy biker boots. The pictures of him on his Harley caused women's ovaries to explode worldwide.

Greyson had begun his media career at a small radio station, then progressed to a local TV morning show...and his unique, unapologetic bad-boy look was an immediate hit with fans. Men and women responded to him, his ratings went sky high, and bigger markets pursued him. He was rough and charming, smooth and devilish and no one could come close to his ratings.

I didn't even feel guilty having a teeny-tiny crush on the man. I was still processing my shock and my pain over what my husband and sister had done to me, but...I had always been a person, who, if you betrayed me in a serious way, that would be the death knell of my feelings for you. I could forgive a lot, but I wasn't going to waste my time mourning a man who had impregnated my sister. He didn't deserve my time. My sister didn't either, and I was pretty much through with my mom, too.

The calls I did accept that week were from Greyson. He'd called me a couple of times throughout the week, ostensibly to get background on me for the show, but those talks had evolved into mini-therapy sessions where I'd talked through some of my shock and grief with him. He listened, mostly, but at the end, he'd say, "You're a beautiful woman, Chloe, and I'll be pissed if you let an asshole like him bring you down."

The bright California sun wrenched me out of my musings, and the chauffeur walked me to a limo, parked in a loading zone, but no one seemed to care. He opened the door for me...and I saw Greyson Whitlock in the back of the limo. Greyson Whitlock was in the back of my limo.