Broken Ex-Bully: Vacation Fling Romance

  Broken Ex-Bully

  Victoria Pinder

  Contents

  Series information

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Scottish Wedding Date Preview

  Also by Victoria Pinder

  About Victoria Pinder

  Series information

  DECADANT DAWES

  Broken Boss

  Broken CEO

  Broken Ex-Boyfriend

  Broken Daddy

  Broken Ex-Bully

  Broken Ex-Bully

  Chloe

  Seducing my high school bully is probably not the smartest move. But if he didn’t look so good, my knees wouldn’t go weak whenever I’m near him. I keep imagining those ripped muscles holding me tight. He doesn’t remember me. The weekend wedding we’re attending will end soon, and if I don’t follow through, I might miss finding out what happens when we’re alone.

  This time, I won’t just be Chloe, the ugly four-eyed porker.

  Renzo

  Something about Chloe winds me up, and I want to get her alone. Soon, we’ll ditch the wedding clothes and taste every inch of each other. My brother’s wife has warned me to stay away from Chloe, but I never follow rules. I need her now. But I won’t give her what I don’t have… a heart.

  1

  Chloe

  A five-day trip to Hawaii for a wedding wasn’t something I’d ever thought I would do. Mirabelle, the bride, had been my lab and study partner, but when I started working at a hospital and she became engaged to a billionaire, our lives diverged. I’d cringed when the invitation came, because I knew the last name of the groom very well.

  The memories were irksome. In school, I’d been the scholarship-winning fat girl with glasses who slipped on her French fries when confronted by Renzo, the groom’s brother. After graduating from high school, I’d flown to Arizona for the summer and headed straight to fat camp. When I came out of camp, I looked like a completely different person. I studied to be a nurse at community college and stayed a healthy weight.

  I was not that same four-eyed fat girl I’d been in high school, but when I stepped into the hotel in Hawaii, I glanced around, expecting someone from my past to throw soda at my head. My eyes landed on Mirabelle, who was greeting her wedding guests. When no soda or insults came my way, I walked over to the front desk, checked in, and waited my turn to say hello.

  “Thank you for flying me out,” I said, accepting her bejeweled hand.

  I quickly scanned the room. Renzo was nowhere in sight. If I could manage to stay away from him, this would be a dream vacation. I smiled and squeezed her hand.

  She said, “No problem, my friend. I’m glad you’re here.”

  A free trip to paradise would have been hard to turn down. I stepped back and tugged on the bottom of the purple day dress I’d traveled in. “I’m so happy for you.” I looked around the room again. My muscles felt tight.

  Mirabelle put her hand on her hip and gazed at me. “You seem nervous.”

  Damn. I didn’t want to upset the bride. My face heated, and I glanced down as I said in a low voice, “I don’t want to worry you on the day before your wedding.”

  She bounced on her toes. “With what?”

  I swallowed and rubbed the back of my head. High school was three years in the past, but it seemed like just yesterday that I’d sat in the bathroom to avoid the bully with dark-brown eyes. I sighed. I had to tell her the truth. “It’s nothing. I just knew Renzo when we were in high school. He was kind of a bully. Don’t worry about it—I’m just a little nervous about running into him. It’s nothing. I’m here to celebrate you and that ring, Mirabelle.”

  We giggled. She glanced at the elevators as they opened. A man slightly older than us stepped out. He looked just like Renzo.

  Mirabelle lit up like fireworks across the bay. “I understand. We’re having a welcome party at the beach. Join us.”

  I nodded and turned to the check-in line. “Let me slip on some beach clothes, and I’ll be right down.”

  My room was high and overlooked a vast beach, some greenery, and a beautiful sunny sky that almost melted into the endless ocean. I jumped into the shower and lathered on a coconut-vanilla body cream I’d found in the room. Then I shimmied into my purple bikini and put on my yellow cover that floated like a dress.

  As I finished, I glanced in the mirror and nodded at myself. I was beautiful, the opposite of the ugly four-eyed porker Renzo had known. I lifted my chin and headed out.

  The hotel was cream colored and trimmed in bamboo, with a huge roof that made the whole place seem breezy. It overwhelmed my senses. I headed outside and followed the signs for the Dawes wedding.

  Soon, I was standing near a white fountain overlooking the ocean, with canopies set all around for people to have some privacy. To my right was a buffet, but I wasn’t hungry. The blue of the ocean with the island surrounding a bay was gorgeous. These days, I was usually surrounded by white walls and patients in beds, so the marble fountain, tropical breezes, and outside palace were breathtakingly different.

  A tap on my shoulder sent a familiar awareness down my spine that was either fear or longing. I glanced behind me and lost the ability to breathe. Renzo had apparently spent the past three years working out, because he was all muscle. He was shirtless and damn near perfect, rippling in the sun. I swallowed and inhaled, reminding myself I was not the same fat girl he used to push around.

  He winked at me. “Hey, beautiful.”

  I glanced behind me and didn’t see another woman nearby. I held my hands to my chest. “Were you talking to me?”

  He traced my arm and smiled. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him happy before. “No one else here has your natural presence. What’s your name?”

  I cringed inwardly, and my teeth stuck together. I half wondered if this was some trick. Was he going to pretend to be nice and then dump out the trash can over my head so his friends could laugh at me when they jumped out from behind umbrellas and bushes?

  I let my hands fall to my sides. “Chloe. You’re…?”

  The warmth of his brown eyes captivated me. “Renzo. Do you want to get a drink?”

  Maybe it was a bad idea, but I nodded. “Sure.” We took a few steps toward the bartender, and my heart beat wildly as I asked, “So, Renzo, what do you do?”

  He motioned to the bartender, and I ordered a pinot grigio. He ordered himself a Coconut Hiwa Porter from the beer menu. Then he turned toward me. “I’m running a tech company that clones voices.”

  The bartender gave us our drinks, and Renzo sipped his beer. I could have sworn he was checking me out. “People lose their abilities. People want to record audio faster, or companies want their spokesperson to tweak something without recording a whole new commercial for one word. Stuff like that.”

  A hot feeling rushed through me, and it wasn’t hate. My lips tingled. I sipped my drink and hoped the sensation would go away. “Interesting and not what I expected of you.”

  He leaned on the bar behind us. “Expected? Did you make a fast assumption, sweetheart?”

  My pulse raced. Damn. I lowered my glass and stared at the water fountain to avoid his gaze. “I guess I did. I saw your muscles and thought you’d do something more… physical, like knocking a girl down.”

  Technically, he hadn’t hit me in high school. I’d slipped—but he was the reason. And then he’d pointed and laughed in my face. I’d run away as fast as I could.

 
Renzo tugged his ear, and I looked at him, waiting for him to recognize me. He stared at me and then held his beer to his mouth. “Chloe, I would never knock a girl down. That’s not who I am.”

  Right. I shrugged. It was time to go, so I patted his hard shoulder and pushed away the feeling that I wanted Renzo, the hottest man I’d ever seen, between my thighs. I could only imagine how that might feel. “I’ll leave you alone.”

  He grabbed my wrist. “Don’t go. Let’s get to know each other.”

  The words reverberated in my ears. There was no way the boy from my memory would ever have said that. I swallowed. “I feel like we already do.”

  He nodded and folded his hands in front of him as he stared at the ocean and then looked back at me. “Yeah, it does feel like that—like we’ve known each other before. But you’d remember me. I used to be an asshole. I owe some people apologies out there. If we’d met before, damn, I know I’d remember you. Enough about that. I want us to get back to the more pleasant discoveries of getting to know each other.”

  My chest tightened. He hadn’t realized I was the same Chloe. I’d never thought this would be how we would talk to each other. I put down my mostly full glass and decided to come clean.

  However, everyone started clapping just then, and I realized now wasn’t a good time—or maybe I was just a coward. I quickly said, “Seems like the bride and groom are coming. Tell you what, stud—we can talk later at tonight’s happy hour.”

  “Stud…” He winked at me. “I’ll be waiting.”

  I waved and headed off. I’d tour the beach and go back to my room. That night, I needed to shine if I was going to tell the boy who used to toss food at me that I wasn’t that girl anymore.

  We would never satisfy my itch to have him, though. I wasn’t that stupid.

  2

  Renzo

  I checked the balcony area twice for Chloe, but she’d disappeared from the party entirely. Her face seemed so familiar, like I’d seen her before. It was like she was a woman from one of my dreams. I wanted to find out everything about her.

  As the party ended, my older brother Damon stopped me and stood in my way. “Renzo, Mirabelle wants you to leave her friend Chloe alone.”

  My eyes narrowed. No one in my family had ever told me what to do before. “Why? She’s the hottest woman here.”

  He shrugged. “Mirabelle’s the bride, and that’s her friend.”

  “How do they know each other?”

  “Friends in college. Chloe’s a nurse.”

  Mirabelle had gone to a community college, but I didn’t know her college friends because I’d just moved back from USC. I patted my brother on the back. “Look, I won’t cause you any grief at your wedding. Don’t worry about me.”

  I would need to see her again and find out why she stirred something inside me. She’d flirted, and I wanted to fuck her brains out against the nearest wall, but there was more. I wasn’t sure what it was, though.

  I took extra time sprucing myself up and headed to the open-bar cocktail party the night before the wedding, though I refused to put on a tie. I’d become CEO of a new company, and our dress code was absolutely informal. But for my brother’s wedding the next day, I would have to sport a tie.

  I gazed at the bar. Most people weren’t early birds, so the crowd of guests was still thin. I circled the room and said hello to those who were there. Then I turned toward the door, and the room became fuzzy as I stared at the one woman I wanted. Her black dress clung to all the right areas. Her breasts swelled, and my hands ached to touch them.

  I closed the space between us. My heart beat faster, and I smelled the coconut-vanilla air. “I thought you were going to stand me up.”

  She shrugged. “Why? I said I’d be here, and I’m on time.”

  She pointed to the bar, and I walked over there with her. “I was commanded to leave you alone.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really?”

  My heart pounded as I realized she hadn’t asked the bride to do that. We ordered the same as earlier, white wine for her and a beer for me. Once we were alone again, I asked, “So how did you and the bride become friends?”

  “We both wanted an associate’s in nursing so we’d have a path for making our own way, though she ended up meeting and falling for your brother. Did you go to school?”

  Mirabelle was exactly my age, and Chloe probably was too. I glanced at her profile, and for one second, I remembered how in high school I’d had the same feelings for a girl my parents would never have wanted me to bring home. I could hear my mother telling me women were supposed to be arm candy for important men.

  I blinked the memory away. “I finished my accounting BA last month.”

  She inhaled and touched my elbow. “That was fast.”

  I don’t remember swapping IDs with her. I looked more closely at her. She resembled Chloe from high school, but she was taller and gorgeous. “How do you know?”

  Her face went as white as her drink. She took a sip. “You don’t seem that much older than me.”

  I wanted to find a corner and put my hand up that black dress of hers. “And you are…?”

  She lifted her chin. “Twenty-one.”

  I massaged the back of my head. She made me think about the hateful kid I used to be. “Me too. I graduated in three years. I wasn’t really into the college scene.”

  “Me either.” She clinked her glass to mine.

  We took sips as the music started. My cock was hard, and I wanted to touch her everywhere, so I asked, “Want to dance?”

  She looked down and shook her head. “I don’t know. Let’s finish our drinks this time.”

  Others hit the floor, and the music grew loud, but I stayed next to her. My skin buzzed, not from the sounds but from her nearness. “Fair enough. Maybe I’ll figure out why you’re such a puzzle to me.”

  We drank a little more, comfortably silent. But my dick hurt from wanting to take her over the bar and sink into her. I pushed down that desire.

  “Probably time to come clean with you,” she said.

  My eyes widened. I hoped she wanted the same thing I did. “Yeah?”

  Her face turned bright pink. “We knew each other in high school.”

  A small pool of dread spread through my gut. “What? No way.”

  “Yes way. I’m Chloe, the ugly four-eyed porker.”

  Chloe was the girl who’d sat behind me in half my classes, and she’d weighed more than me. She was the first girl I ever wanted to fuck, but I knew my mother would blow a gasket if she thought I liked a fat girl. I knew I could never do anything about liking her, so instead, I’d done the unspeakable—I’d picked on her so nobody would know that she affected me.

  My face burned. “No fucking way.”

  She inched away and reached over to pick up her drink. “Yeah. So we probably shouldn’t dance.”

  I placed my hand on her side and stared into her brown eyes. If she left, I’d never see her again, so I quickly said, “I’m sorry, Chloe.”

  She let out a sigh. The music changed to a salsa, but neither one of us moved. She asked, “Why did you torture me in high school?”

  Fucking fair question. I glanced at the chandelier and swallowed. I’d been an ass. My skin felt like it was squeezing me. “The truth?”

  She sipped her drink and nodded. “Yeah, that would be nice. You could have just ignored me like everyone else there.”

  I squeezed her arm. I needed to get her alone, away from the romantic beats of music that strummed parts of my heart I wasn’t supposed to have. “Because I noticed everything about you even then. Come, let’s take a walk and enjoy the resort.”

  She rocked up onto her toes, and I half expected her to slap me for how I’d acted. I wouldn’t have blamed her for disappearing, but then she said, “Okay. You’re on.”

  Maybe I would never know how it felt to be inside her. I didn’t deserve it, but at least I had a few more minutes near her. It would have to be enough to last a lifetime.


  3

  Chloe

  The moon was bright and big as we walked the boardwalk next to the empty beach. Earlier, when I’d ducked out of the meet and greet, I’d dipped into the ocean. The water had been warm as it lapped against my body. The air had smelled salty.

  Walking next to Renzo sent waves of pleasure and doubt through me. I half waited for him to transform into my childhood bully again. The other half of me ached to discover what his lips on mine might feel like.

  My stomach was in knots, so we stayed silent on the walk around the property. I finally broke and said, “The beach is nice.”

  He glanced at the moon and then at my side. “It is.”

  I sucked on my bottom lip. I wanted him more than anyone else ever. Maybe I wanted to know what I’d missed or if I believed him or maybe whether the song running through my head and encouraging me to judge a man based on his kiss might be right. Tense, I said, “Smells better than the hospital.”

  He pressed his hand to my lower back, and sparks rushed through me. Just as I started to accept that I was safe, he said, “I can imagine.” As we walked on, I could feel the tightness in his frame and energy bounding toward me from his strong body. “Listen, I’m really sorry that I was an ass to you. I’ve thought about the things I did so many times since then. The day you fell and I laughed and pointed at your face…” He turned to look away from me. “That day haunts me. I don’t know how I can make it up to you.”

  Damn. My stomach tightened, and for a second, I couldn’t breathe. Then I sighed. “That was when I decided to not even try for state school and instead spend my savings on getting healthy.”