Royal Chase (6 page)

He reached over and put his fingers on my chin, turning me to him. “I really think the woman I want to marry is here.”

His eyes were so intense, so honest. The world stopped. Time ceased to exist. The oceans had dried up for all I knew. There was only me, Dante, and that current that tugged me to him, begging me to kiss him.

Which I could never do again.

Letting out a shaky breath, I tried to joke. “Every other man is terrified of getting married, and I know the one guy who thinks it’s the best thing ever.”

I turned my face away for my own sanity. His fingers lingered for a second and then dropped.

“Does that mean you’ll help me?”

“Does a one-legged duck swim in a circle?”

He sounded adorably confused. “I don’t know.”

“It does. It means yes, I’ll help you. I’ll stay. For a little while. That’s what friends are for, right?”

I really, really hoped I wouldn’t live to regret it.

“So we are friends.”

“Of course we’re friends.”

“With benefits?” he asked hopefully.

I raise a scornful eyebrow at him. “Um, no. No benefits whatsoever. Benefitless.”

Then he laughed, and I suppressed the desire to laugh with him. Because every time I did, another one of my defenses fell down.

He took the backing off of the pin. “May I?”

All of the oxygen left the room. I was playing with fire again, and I was definitely going to get burned. But stupidly I said, “’Kay.”

He tugged my jersey lightly and pushed the pin through the fabric. He reached inside to attach the backing, and as his fingers brushed against my heated skin, I hoped that when I passed out I wouldn’t hit the edge of the counter on my way down.

Then he adjusted the pin, making sure the heart pointed the right direction. My actual heart beat so fast I anticipated a visit to a hospital in my near future.

He didn’t help the situation when he put his hand on top of mine. I could just imagine the doctors’ conversation. “She ended up here how again?”

“The prince touched her, apparently.”

“Thank you,
Limone
.” His voice sounded husky and full of emotion as he interrupted my ride on the crazy train. “It means the world to me that you would stay and sacrifice to help me.
Grazie
.”

Serious, emotional Dante again. He was making all my feminine parts overload.

“And if I get to surround myself with beautiful women in the process, what’s the harm?”

I let out a sigh of relief. This I understood and could deal with. “There’s the Dante I know and lo . . .” I trailed off in a panic, realizing what I’d nearly said.

“Love?” he finished playfully.

“The Dante I know and tolerate for a paycheck,” I responded, and he put both of his hands over his heart, as if I had wounded him, and whirled backward. It made me laugh.

“If you stay, will you have time to do your work and plan your wedding?”

His voice was this strange mixture of casual and friendly, tinged with what sounded like sadness. But that couldn’t be right. I did like that he cared about what I wanted.

“You haven’t met my mother yet, but I am superfluous to her planning. She could pull off something twice as elaborate in half the amount of time. And I’ll have to make some kind of arrangement so I can have access to my phone to check on Nico and Kat’s press tour, but I’d set aside this time to be your liaison. I suppose it doesn’t really matter whether I’m behind the camera or in front of it.”

“Well, if you’re on television, it might help you get some new clients. Everyone in America will know who you are.”

Now that idea had merit, and it hadn’t occurred to me. He was right. This might open doors for me to build my business. We just couldn’t tell anyone about our little scheme or else everyone on the show and across Internet message boards would be talking about how I wasn’t there for “the right reasons.”

Taylor entered the room, still looking panicked. I was pretty sure this job was going shave ten years off of her life expectancy. “Dante, Chris needs to interview you in the interview room.”

“Of course,” he said. He nodded at me before leaving, and I smiled back.

The anger had been sustaining me, and now that it was gone, I felt drained and exhausted. I was ready to find my room and go to sleep.
“Where am I staying?”

“Not yet,” Taylor said, not quite meeting my gaze. “Matthew Burdette
wants to talk to you.”

Chapter 6

I’d like your permission to slightly exaggerate our relationship.

“Why does he want to see me?” I asked, my heart in my throat. “What’s wrong? Where are we going?”

Taylor chose the last question to answer. “Everyone calls it the ‘Bat Cave.’ It’s the studio where the production team lives and obsesses over everything on the show.” She took me outside, and it was now light enough that I could see a small guest cottage positioned just south of the main house. I knew they had a room inside the mansion where the story producers would stay with monitor feeds, and that the garage served as their control room.

It seemed rather ominous to go somewhere called the Bat Cave. If this were a scary movie, the audience would be screaming at me not to be stupid enough to go in.

She opened the door and ushered me inside. I hesitated for a moment, and then went in. The house was dark, because someone had put blackout curtains on all the windows. It took my eyes a second to adjust, and I recognized Matthew Burdette before Taylor led me over to him.

He seemed very average—average height, average appearance, brown hair, brown eyes. Your eyes would skim over him in a crowd.

But the anger he radiated was not average, and was wholly intimidating. I instinctively realized that he was meaner than a wet panther, and I would be a fool to cross him.

“Tell me,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “What is the name of your company again?”

I felt the urge to lie to him in order to protect myself, but I was a terrible liar and it would be very easy for him to find out.

“Lemon Zest Communications, sir.”

I hadn’t meant to add the
sir
on the end. All my life I’d been raised to say “yes, ma’am” and “no, sir” to adults. I’d had a hard time dropping the habit in my college years as it had been so ingrained, and this man was bringing it back out in me. That abject fear that I’d endure something terrible if I didn’t show the proper respect.

“You’re filling in because of the girls we had to send home, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you didn’t want to fill in?”

“No, sir. I didn’t.” He was pee-your-pants scary.

“And you thought, what, you’d sabotage my entire show by dressing up like this and ignoring Dante?”

Ignoring him? I felt like I’d spent the whole evening doing nothing but talking to him. Well, I probably hadn’t talked to him that much, but I’d definitely spent the entire party thinking about him when I wasn’t talking to him.

Which was a disturbing realization.

“You thought you’d just disrespect my entire show and everything I’ve worked so hard to accomplish here?”

There were easily twenty people in the room with us, but not one made a sound. They were also all motionless, as if moving would draw his attention and his wrath. “I didn’t mean any disrespect to you, sir.”

He leaned forward, both of his hands clenched up like he was fixing to punch me next. “Then I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. Unless you want to be blackballed from this industry for the rest of your life, you will never pull another stunt like you did tonight, where you acted angry and put out. You will act like Dante hangs the moon and as if you can’t wait to be his wife. Do you understand me, or do I need to use smaller words?”

I could feel the sweat beads forming at my hairline. “No, sir. I mean, yes, sir, I understand you and you don’t need to use smaller words. Sir.”

Then he slammed his hands down hard on a nearby table, making everyone jump in fear. “And no more logos! Didn’t anyone explain that to her? No shirts with logos on them!”

I fought back the urge to cross my arms across my chest, like I could hide what he’d already seen.

“Now get out.”

He didn’t need to tell me twice. My heart pounded in my throat, and a silvery, metallic taste filled my mouth as I sprinted out the door and across the yard before anyone could catch up with me. I ran like a scalded haint.

The Monterran royals were my only clients. I’d been so busy with the engagement announcement and the show that I hadn’t had time to try and find anyone else. And no one else would ever even speak to me if I angered Matthew Burdette. How could I help a potential client if no talk show hosts would e-mail me back, or if no reporter would return my calls? I could never get anyone any publicity. I had no fallback plan if Burdette carried through on his threat to blackball me.

And if that happened, I would have to go home to Georgia, tail between my legs, proving everyone right. Like the bosses from my summer coffee-fetching internships, who immediately assumed I was nothing more than a dumb blonde and predicted that I wouldn’t be able to hack it in the real world, or my family, who thought I didn’t need a job.

I had worked so hard to prove myself. I couldn’t fail miserably. I reckoned I would do whatever I had to do to keep my company afloat.

Even pretending to be falling in love with Dante whenever a camera was pointed at us.

I headed straight for the kitchen and threw open the door of the stocked pantry. There was mostly quinoa, granola, and dried fruit, but I did manage to find a box of Keebler Mini Fudge Stripes in the one-hundred-calorie packs.

Ripping the box apart, I sat in the middle of the pantry and started hoovering up cookies as fast as I could get the packages open. I had always been a terrible stress eater, and I knew I’d be kicking myself tomorrow.

Or later today. After I got some sleep.

I didn’t feel tired anymore though. I was so wired. Like I was mainlining coffee.

My cheeks felt wet, and I realized that I was crying angrily. I wasn’t the type to run away from anything. My daddy used to say that in a fight between me and a grizzly bear, he’d put his money on me. And now I was cowering in a pantry. I hated that I’d been so weak in front of Matthew Burdette. But he held all the cards, and I had none. I never liked feeling powerless and out of control.

It was in this state that Dante found me. Sitting on a pantry floor,
streaks of black mascara running down my face, surrounded by crumpled-
up empty packages.

“
Limone
, what’s wrong? What happened?” He crouched down next to me, his expression of concern too much for me. It made me want to cry more.

Instead I sniffled, ordered myself to stop crying, and wiped the tears from my cheeks. I tried to calmly and dispassionately recap my run-in with Burdette. Dante sat down next to me and put his arm around me. It took all the willpower I possessed not to turn and cry on his very broad and very comforting shoulders.

“Do you want me to go and talk to him?”

“No!” I barked, startling him. “That’s the absolute last thing I want you to do. I’m a big girl and I don’t need you to protect me. I can do this on my own, even though nobody else thinks I can.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you how my parents and my grandma don’t want me to work. My momma wants me to come home, marry Sterling, and go volunteer at the Junior League with her. Sterling thinks it’s pointless for me to have a job since he can support us. But this is important to me. I want to work. I want to succeed on my own, on my own merits and talents, and not ride somebody else’s coattails or be somebody’s accessory.”

I was perilously close to crying again. I drew in a big breath and continued.

“This is important to me. I can’t mess it up. Does that make any sense?”

It was pathetic how desperately I wanted him to get it. Nobody else seemed to.

“It does,” he said, his arm tightening around me slightly.

Relief crashed into me, and I wanted to cry yet again. I blamed the lack of sleep.

“It’s a good thing these cookies come in these hundred-calorie packs, because now it’s easy to count the thousands of calories I just demolished.” I shook my head. “Such a mistake.”

“This is why you should spend more time with me. I don’t make mistakes.”

“Oh, really?”

“I thought I did once, but I was mistaken.”

It felt good to laugh.

Taylor wasn’t laughing, though, when she found us sitting on the floor. “Dante, we need you to get some rest before the group date later on today. They’ve set you up in the master suite. Lemon, I think you and I need to have a discussion.”

This time I let Dante help me to my feet, which turned out to be a mistake. Once I was upright, he tugged my hand and pulled me a little too close. “I’m glad we’re friends,” he said.

Friends. Yes. Friends. That was all we were, I told my prickly skin and racing heart.

I needed to remember that.

Despite being upset, Taylor was a woman with a pulse, and so she watched Dante until he left the room. “So you’re staying?”

“I’m staying.”

“I’m assuming you don’t have the right clothes.”

I ran my fingers through my short, blonde bob, certain I looked terrible. “Sure don’t.”

“Okay,” she said, taking out her phone and typing. “You’re going to need some dresses and shoes and accessories.”

“What about the stylist?” He had offered me dresses at the hotel.

“You only get him for the first Heart Celebration and the last one. Other than that you’re on your own.”

“For hair and makeup too?” I could do my own everyday makeup fine. My own evening makeup. Pageant makeup too. But I’d never done television makeup. I didn’t want to put on too much or too little.

She nodded.

“It’s fine. I’ll go out later and get some things.”

“You can’t. You can’t leave this house unless you’re on a date with Dante or we’re traveling to a different location. No shopping, no movies, no gyms, nothing. You have to stay here on the estate.”

“What?” I hadn’t realized that I’d basically be a prisoner. It was a gilded cage and all, but I wasn’t down for being locked up.

“Sorry. Look, I’ll go out and get your stuff today, okay?” Taylor and I were the same dress and shoe size and had often shared clothes in college.

Looked like I didn’t have much of a choice. “My things are back at the hotel. I’ll reimburse you when everything gets here.”

She nodded.

“And I have a condition.”

That made her look up. “What?”

“I am going to need access to my phone. I will need to call my fiancé and my family. I will also need to keep on top of Kat and Nico’s engagement press tour, so I can’t be completely cut off from civilization.” I could just imagine my poor little phone blowing up with incoming texts and e-mails. People were probably wondering why I’d fallen off the face of the earth.

“The problem is that this show relies on total lack of communication with the outside world. It changes things if the contestants know what’s happening when they’re not around.” She started chewing on one of her fingernails, a terrible habit she had when she was worried. An older sorority sister had once tried to cure her of it by adding cayenne pepper to her nail polish. It hadn’t worked.

“I understand, but this is nonnegotiable.”

“How about this? You can periodically check your phone, but not every day. And I have to be in the room when it happens to make sure no sensitive information is leaked. Either by you or to you.”

I sighed. The paranoia was ridiculous. But she was serious about her
job, and I had to respect that. “Fine. I agree. Now where can I go to sleep?”

“Follow me.”

She explained that the mansion had eight bedrooms and nine bathrooms. Which wouldn’t be fun at first since we’d all have to share, but would get better as time went on and people got sent home. Taylor explained that we would have to double up, and, in a couple of cases, triple up. She led me into a darkened room where I could see Genesis sleeping in one of the twin beds. “She claimed you as her roommate. Have a good nap.”

I nodded, so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. I heard the door close behind me as I kicked off my shoes, pulled my jersey and jeans off, and climbed into bed.

And prayed I wouldn’t have any dreams about Dante.

Genesis gently shook me awake. “Sorry, Lemon,” she said in a soft voice. “They want us to go outside to the pool because they’re announcing a group date for this afternoon.”