Royal Chase (25 page)

She was right.

“I don’t want to get hurt.”

Kat stifled a yawn. “He won’t hurt you. I won’t let him. I will be the first one to kick him where it counts, even if he is going to be my brother-in-law.”

“But what if he does hurt me?”

“What if he doesn’t? This could be the greatest thing that has ever happened to you. Tell him. Now.”

I could do this. I would tell him too, and then go home and break up with Sterling, and after the show ended I would be in Monterra to work for his family and we could real-life date. This would work.

“And just think about the publicity if we had a double wedding,” she said.

Whoa. “Nobody’s saying anything about getting married.”

“Dante has been since he met you. What was it you said to me about marrying him? Oh yeah, that it was as likely as rain falling upward.”

I glared, even though she couldn’t see me. “You’re not funny.”

“I’m hilarious and owed some payback for the lack of sleep. Call me tomorrow after eleven o’clock my time and tell me how it went. You know I’m a mess if I don’t get at least twelve hours of sleep.”

I told her good-bye and looked at my reflection again. I was doing this.

I was going to tell Dante everything.

Chapter 25

I heard you should doubt your doubts. Does that mean you should lie to your lies?

I entered the mansion through the front door and grabbed the first passing PA. “Have you seen Dante?”

“I think he was out back,” he said.

Right. The gazebo. I’d been so excited I’d forgotten he’d already told me where he’d be. I ran through the foyer and into the family room. Abigail lounged on the couch, reading one of the old magazines. Her eyes flicked up to me. “Have you seen . . . ?”

“He went upstairs.” She didn’t let me finish and sounded extremely bored. I was so happy I considered actually hugging her for a moment. Love really did make you crazy.

Turning, I headed for the staircase. I heard a loud commotion behind me, and it sounded like it was coming from the production room. People were yelling, but I didn’t care about whatever technical issue they were having. I needed to see him. I didn’t want to wait.

I got to the third floor, and I knocked on the door before throwing it open. “Dante, I wanted to tell you . . .”

The words died in my mouth.

Dante was shirtless, sitting on his bed with Genesis. And they were making out. They broke apart when they saw me.

A weight pressed down on my chest, suffocating me. My stomach felt like it had been hollowed out. I was raw. Empty.

I didn’t know this kind of pain was possible. Like getting hit by a bus, having my limbs ripped off by wild dogs, or being cut a million times by tiny sharp knives kind of pain.

“This is not . . . you can’t be . . . not happening,” was all I could say, as I tried to drag air into my lungs. The edges of my vision blurred and my knees buckled. I had to lean against the door to stay upright.

“Lemon?” He had the nerve to sound surprised. Like he hadn’t set this whole thing up just to humiliate me.

Now I was breathing hard, volcanic rage surging through me. Blood pounded in my ears, and the anger gave me strength. I grabbed a nearby vase and threw it at his head. He ducked and I missed, making the vase shatter against the wall.

“You filthy, no good, lying, cheating, miserable . . .” I probably could have gone all night, but now he yelled at me.

“What are you doing?”

“What am
I
doing? What are
you
doing? I guess I don’t have to ask. You’re doing Genesis. I can’t believe you! ‘Haven’t noticed another woman since we met?’ You may not have noticed her, but you’re not having any problems sticking your tongue down her throat!”

He looked at Genesis, then back at me. “Wait, I think . . .”

“And you!” I pointed at her. “You were my friend. How could you?” If I’d been even a little bit rational, I would have realized that I’d never told her that I was in love with him. But in that moment, I didn’t care. To think I’d been so worried about her feelings, and she betrayed me! She looked stricken, and that was at least somewhat satisfying. But not enough.

He walked toward me, holding his hands out in a placating position, like I was a rabid animal. “Let me explain . . .”

“Explain?” I scoffed. “No, you can’t. There is no explanation other than I am so stupid. So,
so
stupid. I can’t believe I trusted you.”

I couldn’t stand there for another minute. I didn’t want to hear his lies. I was going home. I never wanted to see stupid Dante and his stupid lying face ever again.

Running down the stairs, I went into my room and grabbed my half-full suitcase and threw it on the bed. I picked up my purse and strapped it across my chest. I started throwing my clothes and shoes into my case. Of all the stupid things I had ever done, this was by far the stupidest. I knew the right choice to make. To marry Sterling and live happily ever after. Dante had promised he wouldn’t hurt me. Promised he’d keep my heart safe. Then he arranged that lovely little scene for me to find.

Why? Why would he work so hard to make me fall in love with him just to throw it back in my face? Was this some kind of revenge? Because I wouldn’t sleep with him in Monterra? I was probably the only woman who had ever told him no. So what, this had just been some elaborate scheme this entire time to break my heart in the worst way imaginable and punish me for bruising his ego?

I flashed back to our first night on the show. He had told me then that he planned on paying me back. Had this been it?

My brain whirled with furious thoughts, not able to concentrate or make sense of anything.

“Lemon, I’m Rafe.”

He stood in my doorway. Like I hadn’t heard a million stories about
all the times they’d switched places to fool people. Did he really think I was dumb enough to fall for it? It wasn’t me, it was my evil twin? Not likely.

“Where are your glasses,
Rafe
?”

“I’m wearing contacts. Look! I can prove it to you.” I kept packing while he fished around in his eye.

He let out a groan of frustration. “I dropped it.”

Of course. I let out a laugh of disbelief. “I’m not going to stay here and listen to any more lies from a cheater.”

Taylor came running into the room, shoving past Dante. “You can’t leave,” she said with big eyes. “The finale is in three days. You heard Matthew, you have to stay. You know what he’ll do.”

Not even that gave me pause. I would go into another line of work before I’d spend another minute in this house. I didn’t care about the contract, the job opportunities, or the ruination of my career. None of it mattered. Nothing mattered.

Let him do his worst. “Tell him to stick it where the sun don’t shine.”

“Lemon, you don’t know . . .”

Dante interrupted her. “Make her stay here. I’ll be right back.” He turned to me. “I will prove it to you.” He ran off down the hallway. What was he going to do, go and get changed into his suit to keep up the façade? They had tricked so many people over the years, and I wasn’t about to be added to that list.

I was so, so done. I started for the door, but Taylor grabbed my suitcase out of my hand. “You need to calm down and . . .”

“Shut up!” I told her through clenched teeth. My hand balled up into a fist, and I only just stopped myself from punching her. “I don’t have to do anything but get out of this house.”

Screw the clothes and shoes. She could keep them. I had my purse, and that was all I needed to get home.

I ran out into the hall and down the stairs. A cameraman got right up in my face, and I shoved the lens away. The car Dante had reserved for me was still sitting in the driveway, and the driver was texting on his phone.

I came around to his window and knocked. He rolled it down. “I will
give you five hundred dollars if you drive me to the airport right now.”

“Done!” he said. I got into the back, and just as he pulled out, I heard the muffled sound of Dante calling my name.

I didn’t look back. I got played like a grand piano, and it would never happen again.

Ever.

I found the first flight out, which was headed to Salt Lake City. It was scheduled to depart about twenty minutes after I arrived, and from there I would get a flight back to Atlanta. I just had to leave Los Angeles. I couldn’t be sitting in the airport waiting for a plane when he showed up with a camera crew to tell me more lies. Because the TSA would probably arrest me after I killed him.

The plane was somewhere over the Dakotas when my anger finally subsided. Then there was just an overwhelming sadness and a pain so acute that it hurt to breathe or to move. My heart physically ached. Like, really, seriously ached. I shivered and started to cry, curled up in a ball in my seat. I had the row to myself, and I turned sideways to pull my legs up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them.

I cried the whole way back to Georgia. When we landed, I had a taxi take me to a nearby hotel. I didn’t want to wake my parents up. I would explain everything to them in the morning. I looked through my purse for my cell phone and realized it was another thing I had left in California, along with my dignity and my heart.

The crying didn’t stop, no matter how often I told myself that it was dumb to be crying over a man who obviously cared so little for me. It was hours before I finally fell asleep.

My constant crying had apparently exhausted me, and when I finally woke up, the sun was setting. I had been asleep for hours, and the hotel charged me for an extra day since I’d missed checkout. They called a cab to take me home.

When I pulled up to the house, I had expected to see camera crews and Dante waiting for me. But it was quiet, normal.

I went inside and called out for my parents. No answer.

The day passed with me in a fugue state, numb with shock, crying all the time. A haze of misery covered everything. Poor Droopy and Snoopy kept whining at me, nudging me with their noses, and trying to cuddle. They wanted to make it better. They couldn’t.

I didn’t watch sad movies or listen to breakup songs. I couldn’t do any of the things I normally did when this happened. Because this was different.

The suffocating despair made me wonder if I’d ever be happy again. I probably should have eaten, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to. I stood in front of the liquor cabinet and wanted to get smashed. At least then I could forget for a few hours. Problem was, once I sobered up, I’d still be just as depressed, only then I’d have a hangover, too. I decided against adding to my suffering.

My parents hadn’t returned by the time I fell asleep. I probably should have called them, but I couldn’t bear telling them what had happened. It would be too humiliating. I wasn’t ready to talk about it to anyone. Not even Kat.

The last thought I had before I drifted off was that every moment of the day, I expected Dante to show up. To try and fix things.

He didn’t come. If that wasn’t an admission of guilt, I didn’t know what was.

I spent the next morning in my bed, well into the afternoon. I catnapped most of the day, and the image I saw whenever I would close my eyes was him with Genesis. Like it had been seared into my brain, and I would never be able to think about him again without remembering what I had seen.

My parents returned. I recalled my mother mentioning that they had a corporate function in downtown Atlanta, just before my wedding. They had probably chosen to stay in a hotel overnight instead of driving back home. It was something they did all the time, especially if they had both been drinking.

“Lemon?” My mother came up the stairs. “What on earth are you still doing in bed? Your rehearsal dinner is in two hours. The caterers will be here any minute. You need to start getting ready! Oh, and don’t forget that Miss Lydia is bringing your dress by in the morning to do any last-minute alterations before the wedding. Get a move on, darlin’!”

She left before I could respond. I wanted to tell her what had happened and crawl into her lap like when I was a little girl so she could fix everything.

But there was no fixing this.

I got up and started to get ready, because if I stayed in bed, if I started crying, then I would have to explain everything. I had at least a week or so before the end of the show would air, and that would give me some time to pull myself together so that I could tell them what had happened.

And hopefully get through the evening without sobbing hysterically.

One of the thoughts that had occurred to me on my plane ride home was, “Thank heavens I still have Sterling. I can still get married.”

Only that didn’t seem fair. To him or to me. I couldn’t treat Sterling like some kind of back-up husband. He deserved to be with a woman who loved him the way that I had loved Dante, before he had taken my heart and thrown it in a blender.

I didn’t want to settle. Not for a lying, cheating prince, and not for a man I didn’t really love.

Even if I wasn’t going to be with Dante, I wasn’t going to marry Sterling. It was over.

My timing sucked, and it made me feel sicker than a dog with tick fever. It was terrible of me to be doing this, but I would get through this dinner, and at some point tonight I would pull him aside and tell him that we wouldn’t be getting married tomorrow.