Royal Chase (13 page)

He let out a short laugh. “No, a nightclub.”

Wait, what? “A nightclub? When did this happen?”

Now he looked directly at me, all intensity and hotness, and I practically fell over. I blamed the dehydration.

“New Year’s Eve. When you talked about the kind of man that I was, I realized you were right about one thing. I hadn’t ever tried very hard at anything because I didn’t have to. I knew I’d never have to get a job, and there are a lot of responsibilities that come from being part of a royal family, so I figured, what was the point of doing something else?”

I had been so terrible to him that night. It was more about me than it was about him. I started to apologize, but he kept talking as he searched through the grass and pulled up a clover. “No one had ever spoken to me that way before, and it changed everything for me. I looked at what I was good at, what I enjoyed. I love putting together mixes, but there aren’t a lot of DJ princes.”

“There’s the Fresh Prince,” I said, stunned by what he was saying.

He smiled. “I don’t think he’s an actual prince. Anyway, I decided to open a nightclub in Monterra. I’m using some of my trust fund and money from investors. We’re hopeful that if it does well we can franchise it across Europe. I’m calling it ‘Inferno.’”

“I see what you did there. Dante’s Inferno. Literary humor. I like it.” I echoed his words back at him, and all the annoyance and animosity I had been feeling had somehow just dissipated as he laughed.

When his laughter subsided, he reached over and squeezed my hand. He said, “
Limone
, you were the first person to ever really challenge me. You made me want to be a better man. Thank you for that.”

What on earth was I supposed to say to that? My chest swelled up and I felt giddy and excited and amazed and touched and shocked and . . .

Won over.

It was one of the things that had always bothered me about him. I was from a rich family, but I wanted to work hard. I didn’t have much respect for people who didn’t care about doing their best and used their parents’ money to coast through life.

Now he was building his own nightclub. A possible franchise.

Had he done it for me?

My heartbeat was up in my throat. I was so glad he couldn’t read minds. I couldn’t settle on one thought or one feeling. My brain jumped like a frog on crack, too bewildered to make sense of his announcement.

It didn’t change everything.

But it did change some things.

“Any advice before I go ‘once more unto the breach’?” He was the only man I knew who quoted dead playwrights.

“With the girls? Go talk to them. Act like you’re really listening and interested in what they’re saying. Women love that.”

“And here I was wasting my time buying them jewels and flying them to Paris.”

I couldn’t help but laugh as he walked off and started a conversation with Emily F.

Genesis returned with our water and handed one to me. It was cold and perfect and I thanked her.

“That looked serious,” she said.

I didn’t really respond to what she’d observed. I didn’t want to explain. That moment had been between Dante and me, and wasn’t anyone else’s business. Even hers.

“Sorry about earlier. I was feeling a little depressed.”

“Know what helps with that?”

“If you say exercise, I will punch you.”

“I was going to say chocolate and Valium, but exercise really does help.”

Abigail chose that moment to slither past and stopped in front of us. “Do you mind if I join you?’’

I did, on so many different levels and at a staggering intensity.

But before I could tell her to get lost, Dante announced that he had set up a sundae bar for everyone. The table was loaded with all kinds of ice cream flavors, with whipped cream, fudge, caramel, bananas, nuts, anything and everything you could think of to make ice cream taste even better.

Finally, something besides Dante that made my mouth water. Nothing sounded better than ice cream on a hot and glisten-y day like this one.

He might as well have put out bowls of cyanide and arsenic, though, given the women’s reactions. He looked let down. I was sure he had thought this would be a sweet gesture and that the girls would enjoy it.

“Any woman with even a smidgen of self-respect would never put such poison in her body. It says she doesn’t care about herself,” Abigail announced loudly, projecting her voice so that everyone would hear.

I had a brief fantasy of force-feeding Abigail ice cream, one scoop at a time, before deciding to help myself. I grabbed a bowl and made a show of filling it up with chocolate marshmallow and cookies-and-cream flavored ice cream. I put some whipped cream on top and managed to spray some on my hand before I got it in my bowl. I licked the excess off of my fingers, and caught Dante’s gaze.

The way he looked at me made my heart stop.

“Have I ever said how much I adore a woman who isn’t constantly on a diet?”

It felt like he was talking just to me, but there was a mad rush to the table to pile up the ice cream and toppings.

Even poor Jessica R., who hadn’t consumed actual food the entire time we’d been in the house together, took delicate bites from her bowl.

“Lemon! Look!” Genesis came running up behind me, waving something in the air. “I got a one-on-one date!”

I should have been happy for her, but the ice cream in my mouth turned sour.

Chapter 13

Cat got your thumbs? #TooQuiet

Probably the worst part of being on this show was the thumb-twiddling boredom that led to too much time to contemplate what was happening when Dante was out with other women.

When Genesis showed me her date heart, I had been mind-numbingly jealous. Jealous, jealous, and then more jealous. I had to rein it in, calm down, and remind myself that we were friends.

I even helped her get ready for her date.

Yes, I thought it was awfully big of me, too.

Taylor grabbed me for an interview. At least it would make it so I could stop wondering what Dante and Genesis were doing. If he took her dancing and held her close. If they laughed while they scarfed down food. If he held her hand or kissed her or . . .

Augh
!

She indicated where I should sit, and then sat in a chair across from me. A camera was pointed directly at my face, and a green screen had been set up behind me.

“Has Sterling called or texted for me?”

“Not yet. I’m sure he will. When he stops being so busy with work.” I didn’t like that he hadn’t reached out yet and tried to apologize. Especially since he didn’t know how much his behavior was driving me away.

“Other than that whole situation, how are you doing?”

“I’m sore. I hurt everywhere. Dante made us play soccer yesterday, and I think I tore my everything. Is that thing on?” I gestured at the camera.

“Not yet. I wanted us to have a chance to chat before we got to what you should say on camera.”

What I should say? Taylor had her tablet in her lap, and she typed something and then pointed it at me. She had typed in big letters “MATTHEW IS WATCHING. DON’T LOOK.” She pointed up at a camera in the corner of the room behind her, which I could just see out of the corner of my eye.

I nodded slightly, and she put the tablet back in her lap. I would have to play along and say what they wanted to hear when the camera went on.

“How are you?”

“Finer than a frog’s hair split four ways.”

Her eyes lit up. “I wish we’d filmed that. That would have been a fantastic sound bite. Remember that one. I’ll probably ask you to say it again later. Now, before we start filming, tell me what you really think about Dante. And this is me, Taylor, talking. Not Taylor, field producer.”

I sighed. These days I couldn’t tell the difference between Friend Taylor and Producer Taylor. “Don’t get me wrong—in a lot of ways he is an amazing man. He has a lot of good qualities. And then there are some bad ones that I think are insurmountable.”

She slid her finger across the tablet screen. “So you don’t see a future with him?”

“To be honest, I don’t. You’ve seen him back there on your monitors. You know what he’s like. A total player. I bet he’s made out with every woman here.”

She looked up at me, pausing for a beat. “You’d be surprised.”

How would I be surprised? I knew how he was with girls.

She stopped for a minute, putting her hand over one ear. When she removed her hand, I realized she was wearing an earpiece. I wondered who was feeding her questions. “I wanted to let you know that the first show has premiered.”

Now that was unusual. I knew from my initial talks with the producers that they would spend weeks filming, edit it, and then release the show. “Why so soon?”

“Something about the show feeling more alive instead of being edited to death,” Taylor said under her breath. I could barely make it out. “How would you feel if I told you that you were the audience’s favorite? By a landslide?”

“Landslide?” I echoed, not sure where she was going with this.

“Almost every e-mail, tweet, and Facebook post we get is about you and how much they want Dante to pick you. The ratings are the highest they’ve ever been. I told you. Mad chemistry. What’s between you is real. All of America can see it.”

“But we’re just friends. I’m engaged.”

She tilted her head to one side in a sympathetic gesture. For some reason, it made me feel like I was getting played. “I know. But if Dante were different, if you knew he could commit and be faithful to you, would that change how you would feel?”

I started inhaling and exhaling a bit too quickly for my liking. “Off the record?”

“Of course.”

I gulped down the emotion in my throat. I couldn’t lie. Not about this. “Yes. It would change how I feel.”

I saw a brief triumphant smile, and then she was back to her sympathetic face. “Can I tell you what I think?”

“You’re in the driver’s seat. Have at it.”

“I think you’re in love with him.”

“I am not . . . not . . . there’s no way that I . . . You don’t know . . .” Had this room always been this hot? Why was I glistening so much?

“Sentence fragments? You can say you disagree, but your speech pattern proves otherwise.”

“It means that I’m so shocked by how wrong you are that I can’t even think of a dignified response,” I retorted.

She shrugged. “It was just an observation.”

Fan-freaking-tastic. Hooray for Taylor being so observant. Maybe I should just slap a dome on her head, give her a telescope, and call it good.

When had I become so moody? My feelings were more unpredictable than a twister in a trailer park. One second I was mooning over Alternate Reality Dante, the next I was ready to knock out my own sorority sister.

This place was literally making me crazy.

“Back to you being the clear favorite. Matthew is thrilled. We all are.”

As cynical as the producers on this show seemed, they all had one annoying and unbelievable trait in common—they really and honestly believed in true love. They wanted a couple to fall in love and get married and have babies. The fact that they had repeatedly failed at this attempt did not seem to deter them. Taylor had told me once that Matthew Burdette’s fondest wish for this show was that at the final Heart Celebration the couple would be so in love that they would ask for a justice of the peace right then and there. It hadn’t happened, but he kept trying.

They might be helped in that desire if the producer stopped deliberately making half the contestants crazy, and encouraging the other half to be evil.

“Which means what, exactly?”

She had that pity expression on her face again. “Which means you’re not going anywhere. I think the success of the show depends on you sticking around. I’m sorry.”

I felt my lungs deflate. I couldn’t even blame her or anyone else. This was my fault. Dante had offered to send me home, and I’d said no under the pretext of helping Genesis, who was doing just fine on her own, truth be told. Now I was stuck.

At first I had stayed because he asked me to. Then I stayed because some part of me wanted to. But now I would have to stay because Matthew Burdette wanted me to stay.

And what Matthew Burdette wanted, Matthew Burdette got.

More days passed, more girls were sent home. Heather, Cece, both Jessicas, and Emily F. all were gone. Dante spent almost all of his time on single dates as a chance to really get to know the women better. And true to our pact, nobody shared. I had no idea who he liked or which girl he was getting closer to.

There were still too many secretive and all-knowing smiles for my liking.

Harris announced a new series of theme dates called “Get to Know Me.” Each girl would be in charge of creating a date that would tell Dante something about herself. We had no budgetary restrictions and could travel if we wanted. One was going to take him to Las Vegas, another wanted to travel to Europe. Abigail decided to take him to the set of her soap opera and impress him with, and I quote, “how popular, talented, and amazing” she was.

I threw up. In my mouth. Twice.

I had been trying to figure out a way to keep my job and make the audience not root so hard for me. This date would be another chance to do that. While the other women went full-throttle, I would do something simple. Hopefully everyone would think I was boring.

Sterling had finally texted. Taylor showed it to me in passing. One word.

Sorry.

Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like enough. I didn’t ask to call him, and he certainly hadn’t tried to call me.

There needed to be a serious conversation in our future, or I didn’t see this wedding happening. Which I couldn’t bear to tell my mother, because she sent constant e-mails, which Taylor let me read (after she deleted anything that might influence my actions with regards to the show), and all my momma could talk about was the wedding and how excited she was that her in-laws were already her best friends.

I spent so much time not being the woman my parents wanted me to be, and I couldn’t bear to disappoint them in this too. Not yet, especially when I wasn’t sure what would happen.

Dante went on all his “Get to Know Me” dates without sending anyone home. I missed him because he was gone all day every day. The with-someone-else part bothered me as well, but I decided to put a pin in that crazy for another day.

I sent word to him through an assistant to dress casually and meet me in the backyard at eight thirty. I put on my favorite light blue sundress and a pair of open-toed wedges.

He waited for me, his black hair still slightly damp at the ends, and wearing a tight black T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans that made me want to pen a thank-you note to Their Royal Highnesses, King Dominic and Queen Aria, for passing along such fine genetic material.

I felt like I was thirteen years old again, standing there, giddy just to be in his presence.

He caught sight of me and walked across the lawn. “
Buonasera, Limone
.”

My pulse went wild from the way he looked at me. It didn’t help things that he had spoken Italian to me, either. That made me want to collapse into a puddle of Lemon. Then he greeted me hello as he had a million times before, a soft kiss to the left cheek, then one on the right.

Where he, again, lingered for a half a second longer than he should have, and I, again, enjoyed it much more than I should have.

He also didn’t move away, and stood entirely too close to me. “What have you planned?”

That was the question of the ages, wasn’t it? What did I have planned? For Dante, for Sterling, for my wedding?

But for tonight, I had something boring and easy. The show had brought in a giant outdoor movie screen and set the whole system up. All I had to do was press “Play.”

They had taken things a step further than what I’d asked for, surrounding the area with more lit candles. The team had also laid out a blanket and had beanbags, pillows, and throw blankets in case we got cold. Or, more likely, they’d added the blankets so they might give us some privacy if we decided to make out. Which made my blood start
heating up, just thinking about it.

I had to clear my throat. “This is my favorite movie ever.
Gone with the
Wind
. I figured you’d never seen it, and it’s important to me, so I thought
you could get to know me a little bit better by watching it with me.”

The movie was nearly four hours long. We would sit in silence and watch the adventures of Scarlett O’Hara and her idiotic life choices, along with her amazing ability to survive, and then the date would be over. We’d never even have to speak.

I wanted to pat myself on the back.

There were movie treats as well—Red Vine licorice, Junior Mints, M&Ms, massive cups of soda, and actual movie tubs of popcorn. Dante set up a little nesting area for us to sit together and watch. I debated. It would look more romantic for the producers if I sat there, but there might be some serious negative consequences if I did.

I decided to risk it.

It was only once the movie started that I realized what I had accidentally done. Scarlett started off the movie in the exact same costume I’d worn on New Year’s Eve. If it was possible to have a panic attack followed up by a heart-attack chaser at twenty-four, I would have been the prime candidate for it.

Dante didn’t say anything though. Or look at me. He just put his arm behind me on the pillows, like this was a real date, and watched.