Royal Chase (27 page)

“Maybe we should all just start saying what we actually feel and not worry about what anyone else will think,” I said. My parents nodded in agreement. “And I will pay you back for whatever y’all have paid for already.”

My father shook his head. “Don’t you worry about that for one second. You and your happiness are what matters, not the money.”

Then he hugged me, and my mother joined him to hug us both, and the tears I thought I could no longer cry sprang up.

“You leave everything to us,” my mother added, as she wiped the tears away from my eye makeup with a Kleenex. “We’ll make all the calls and take care of everything.”

I nodded, grateful and touched beyond words.

“First, the Browns and I are going to have a discussion,” Daddy said as he walked out of the room quickly. I didn’t envy Sterling or his father to be on the other end of that.

My mother kissed me on my cheek and then rubbed her lipstick away. “I’m going to send everyone home. So now all you have to do is go find the man that you’re really in love with and tell him there’s not going to be a wedding and that you are a free woman.”

I couldn’t tell her that I had ruined everything with Dante. That he didn’t want to see me. The stabbing heart pain was back. “There’s something I have to do first,” I told her.

Chapter 27

Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?

Wherever my father was confronting the Browns, it wasn’t in the study. The room was empty when I went in for the DVD. I took it and my father’s laptop and went up to my room. I changed out of my clothes into jeans and a T-shirt, preparing myself for what I was about to see.

I really hoped Taylor hadn’t been lying to me again. I wasn’t sure I could take much more of the hope-and-despair carousel. I heard the front door opening and closing and the sound of cars driving off as guests left.

Sitting on my bed, I put the DVD into the laptop and pressed “Play” when a screen popped up asking what I wanted to do.

It was the entire season of the show, and there was no way to skip to the end. So I had to fast-forward instead.

Maybe I would watch it later, when some of the pain had subsided and it didn’t feel so fresh and terrible.

I slowed down during the horseback riding group date and watched as Dante and I had our race. I remembered that Genesis had gone to help one of the girls whose horse had wandered off, and she went down toward the stream. She got the girl back on track, and a rider emerged from the woods.

It had to be Rafe, because I knew for a fact that at that very moment Dante had been with me.

What about editing
?
What if they filmed it later?
There were times we had to do things over again because the lighting was wrong or the sound guy had stepped into the shot. Maybe they’d had Genesis go to the stream again later on, only this time Dante showed up. I watched some of the Genesis and Rafe scenes, thinking it still might be a scam.

But now there was no question. As I listened to him talk, watched him move, saw his smile, I knew, without a doubt, that it was Rafe.

Rafe had been there from the beginning, romancing half of the women on the show while Dante had the other half.

Only there hadn’t been any other half for Dante. There had been only me, and the show made very certain to show it. All of our dates, all of our conversations that I had thought had been private, out there for public consumption.

Kat had been right. I could see it on his face. Documented evidence that Dante had loved me. It made the breath catch in my throat to see what I’d had.

And what I had thrown away.

I fast-forwarded again, until a point when the footage was different. This hadn’t been edited yet. There was no music, no slick scene changes, no voiceovers from Harris. It was me finding Rafe. I didn’t watch that. I didn’t want to relive it. But then there was Rafe in the backyard, getting Dante, who was waiting for me. I didn’t hear want to hear what they said, because the look on Dante’s face tore me apart. The cameras only barely kept up with him.

He came running out front, trying to stop me. And I just drove off.

Then it was the finale, and Rafe went first. Genesis waited for him in a beautiful jade-green gown that shimmered in the light. She didn’t look happy as he approached, and he looked brokenhearted.

Before he could speak, she said, “I’m only here because I have to be. I’m not interested in hearing what you have to say.”

“Genesis, please, let me explain why I did what I did.”

“There’s nothing you can say or do to fix this,” she told him with a mixture of anger and sadness as she walked to the waiting limo.

I’d been so obsessed with my own feelings, that even after I’d realized that Rafe had been there, I hadn’t given a single thought to what Genesis had been going through. I would force Taylor to give me her number, and I would call her first thing in the morning to apologize. I had been totally out of line and had no right to speak to her the way that I did. She was suffering from the deception, too.

Then there was Dante with Abigail. She wore a tight black sheath, leaving no room for her to even breathe. She must have had ten pairs of Spanx on under that thing. She held her left hand out in front her, as if she expected there to be a ring on it soon.

She looked far too smug and tossed her Disney princess hair as Dante approached. He stood in front of her.

“I’m sorry to do it like this, but I’m not in love with you. I’m in love with Lemon, and have been for a long time. I just found out that she saw my twin brother with Genesis and thought it was me. So now I’m going to find her and think of some way to make sure that she’s mine forever.”

My heart pounded so fast I thought it might rupture. He walked away from her, and she started screaming at him, and I couldn’t understand what she was saying.

Because her real accent most definitely was not British. If I wasn’t mistaken, that was one thick Cajun accent spewing out of her mouth. But what about her “family” in England? Knowing her, she had probably just hired some actors to keep up the lie.

A small part of me enjoyed that revelation as I imagined how that clip would play nonstop on the Internet indefinitely. Karma truly existed. But this was filmed last night. Why hadn’t he come? I shut the laptop. It was late, but I needed to clear my head, and I felt like the walls were pressing in on me. I slipped on a pair of shoes and went downstairs.

My mother was in the kitchen, directing the cleanup. “Everyone’s left.”

“Thank you for handling everything. I’m going to go for a walk.”

“Take the dogs with you. I’m sure they’re dying to get out of the basement.”

I would not think about the last time I freed them from the basement. When Dante had asked me to consider being with him, and I already wanted to. Even then my heart knew what my head refused to accept.

Droopy and Snoopy came tumbling up the steps, and they got even more excited when I asked them if they wanted to go outside. I grabbed one of my old jackets, still hanging by the back door, and went out to wander around the ranch.

Fireflies winked their little lights off and on, and for the first time, they didn’t immediately remind me of Sterling and our first kiss. Which made me glad, because I had always loved fireflies and I didn’t want him to taint everything in my life.

I ended up in the orchard, and I let the dogs off of their leashes. They started to frolic around, sniffing everything in sight.

It mended my heart just a little to see their joyful exploration. A full
moon hung overhead, casting a mellow, soft light over everything. I found
the family lemon tree. A soft wind rustled the leaves overhead, and the faint scent of lemon blossoms surrounded me. There were initials carved
on it from the members of my family who had kissed their true loves here.

Something I might never have.

I sat down at the base of the tree, leaning my back against it. I had to find Dante. I had to explain. Kat would help me. She knew what this felt like. If I could just make him understand me, if I could find a way to make him see . . . but how could I? I’d ruined everything. Like in one of those romantic movies where you get so frustrated with the hero and heroine because if they would just talk and communicate, then everything would be fine. There wouldn’t be an obstacle. I had been that idiotic. I had been totally irrational and unreasonable and let all my issues and baggage cloud everything, and it had cost me one of the best men I had ever known.

Snoopy perked up his ears, and Droopy followed. They started to bark, which could only mean someone was approaching.

I got the shock of my life when I saw Dante in his wrinkled Armani suit, looking exhausted. The dogs ran over to him, circling his legs. He patted them briefly and walked until he stopped a few feet in front of me.

“Dante! You’re here.” I stood up and leaned against the tree for support. “I didn’t think you would come. I thought I had ruined everything and you’d never want . . .”

He held up his hand. “Are you still getting married?”

My tears made it hard to see. “No.”

He came so close. “Do you love me?”

“Yes, I love you—” He didn’t let me finish, and his mouth was on mine and everything exploded into flame. He grabbed me by the waist when my legs gave out. He literally took my breath away.

And whatever I’d thought about all the other kisses we’d ever shared, this one put them all to shame.

When he finally stopped, I felt like I had been drugged. He stroked the side of my face, my neck, my shoulders and arms. “My darling
Limone
, how could you ever think that I wouldn’t come for you? I love you.”

“Because I didn’t trust you when you asked me to. I thought the worst of you.”

He seemed to be considering this. “Maybe that should matter more to me. It doesn’t. At some point, when I have loved you for many years and been one hundred percent faithful to you, there will come a time when you will be nothing but absolutely secure. I can wait for that.”

I hugged him tight, and he rested his head on mine. Then I took him by the hand, tugging him to sit down next to me. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to keep standing if he kept kissing and holding me like that. He took off his suit jacket and laid it on the ground so we could sit on it. He pulled me to him, wrapping me up in his arms.

“About Rafe being on the show . . .”

“I thought you knew,” he interrupted me. “I would have told you if I’d known. But to be honest, I don’t know how you could have been confused. He’s clearly nowhere near as handsome as I am.”

I kissed him then, a soft sweet kiss, to show him how happy I was.

“I don’t think I mentioned it earlier, but you look unbelievably awful right now,” he said with such sweetness and love I wanted to melt.

“You look hideous, too,” I said. More kissing. Then he looked up. “Wait. Is this the famous lemon tree?”

“It is. But we didn’t get to share our first kiss here.”

“We did,” he said, kissing me on my temple. “It was our first kiss since you said that you loved me, and that’s just as good.” He played with the ends of my hair, and I leaned into his hand. “By the way, would you mind saying that again? I want to make sure I didn’t imagine it.”

“That again.”

I giggled when he rolled his eyes. “
Limone
!”

This time I held his face in my hands, making sure that he could see it in my eyes, and then I told him with my voice. “I love you.” Then I made sure to show him with my lips.

When that kiss ended, he again held me tightly, like he never wanted to let me go. “Why did it take you so long to get here?” I asked.

“There was a huge storm that grounded us, but first I had to deal with production issues. I wanted to come after you immediately, but Matthew Burdette started screaming about everything and threatening you and saying how he was going to ruin your company. I couldn’t let that happen. I told him I would stay and finish filming, and that I had proof of his affair with Abigail and that if he was smart he’d do whatever he had to do to keep you happy.”

“You blackmailed someone for me?”

He pulled my hand up to his lips and kissed it. “Technically it was a bluff, because I don’t have evidence, but he doesn’t know that. And I would blackmail the whole world for you. I think now I have finally completed my last quest by saving your company, and truly proven myself worthy, don’t you?”

I did. He really was my knight in shining Armani.

He put my hand back down and looked at me intently, seriously. “I would give you the world if I could. I would do anything for you. Because you’re going to be my wife.”

“What?” I was both elated and terrified. “Let’s not put the cart before the horse. I just put my parents through all this mess. I don’t think I should be discussing marriage to anybody right now.”

“But you will marry me.” He sounded so confident and sure.

“That doesn’t sound like asking.”

“I’m not asking. Every time I ask you for anything you say no. So now I’m telling. You will marry me, you will be my princess, we will have babies, and I will have my nightclub and you will have your PR firm and we will live happily ever after in our palace.”

I should have been mad. But he was right. We totally would.

“I know it’s scary for you, but if you do me the honor of giving me all of your trust and all of your love, I promise you will never regret that choice.”

Shaking my head, I stopped him. “You don’t have to say anything else or promise me anything else. This time it’s my turn to promise you. I promise to always believe in you. To always assume the best. To always trust you. To always, always love you.”

He had that mischievous glint in his eye. “Those sound a lot like marriage vows.”

“Hush,” I told him. Then I made sure he couldn’t talk.

Snoopy pounced on us, apparently tired of being left out of the affection. We petted him, but never took our eyes off each other. “I forgot to tell you that Rafe said he apologizes for anything that he might have done to upset you, and he promises to never do anything else that will make you angry ever again. He also said that if I cared at all about my own personal safety, I should be careful to never make you mad, either. So recognizing that I’m taking my life into my own hands here, I have something for you and I’m not sure how you will react.”