Chasing Chelsea (Masters of the Castle)

by Maren Smith

  “I meant, we have a bigger problem,” Hannah corrected.

  “What sort of—oh God!” Kaylee groaned. “Please don’t tell me guests are cavorting in the reception hall again. I keep telling people, we have to keep those doors closed!”

  “Oh!” Selena gave a small hop, clasping her hands together. “Is that where the commitment ceremony is going to be held? What kind of ‘cavorting’ are we talking about? Is it fun? Sexy? Oh! Are bodily fluids being exchanged?”

  Kaylee gave her a look. “Boy, are they ever.”

  “People are getting laid just thinking about my wedding.” Selena bounced on her heels, rubbing her hands gleefully. “I can’t wait to be one of them!”

  “You say that now,” Kaylee laughed, “but let’s see how enthusiastic you are when you have to help me re-sanitize all that equipment.”

  “It’s not the reception room,” Hannah interrupted. “It’s Sara.”

  “What happened?” Kaylee asked, sobering instantly.

  “I don’t know. I think she’s sick. One minute we were talking, and the next thing I know, she’s puking in a fern. She ran off in tears. I tried to catch her, but she locked herself in one of the medical rooms and now she won’t open the door.”

  “She puked in a fern?” Selena wrinkled her nose.

  “Oh, like you’ve never done that before,” Kaylee shot back. To Hannah, she asked, “Does Jackson know?”

  “She begged me not to tell anyone. Him, especially.” The women reacted to that the way normal people might have reacted to, ‘And then I shot him.’ Hannah wrung her hands again. “Yeah, I know.”

  Gathering her long skirts, Kaylee headed inside. “Which medical room is she in?”

  “I’ll take you.”

  Her manila envelope and Wal-Mart bag still clutched in her hand, Chelsea remained behind, watching as all three women hurried toward the massive double doors of the Castle. Wondering if she’d see any of them again during her stay (as big as this place was, highly unlikely), she was about to rejoin the nearly depleted guest lines when Selena noticed her absence.

  Running back, she grabbed Chelsea’s arm. “Come on, silly! We have to hurry; this could be serious.”

  “But—” Chelsea had just enough time to glance at the admission tables, with all those smiling attendants who were passing out forms and collecting manila envelopes. Most of the people they had ridden in on the buses with had taken their seats in the semi-circle of folding chairs around the empty podium, just waiting. No one even glanced her way, not even when Selena pulled her toward the Castle.

  “Don’t worry,” Selena scoffed. “You’re with me, and we’re practically the best of friends!”

  Chelsea had a few real friendships and not one of them had been made as fast as this. Yet, in spite of her misgivings (and boy, did she have them), when Selena tugged, Chelsea found herself following.

  At any minute she expected someone to stop them—one of the orientation attendants, maybe, or the incredibly tall woman who passed them on her way to the podium and then paused to stare after them as she and Selena hurried to catch up with Kaylee and Hannah. No one in that long line of butlers who side-stepped to avoid colliding with them at the entrance said one cross word or ordered them back out into the courtyard. Not one person that she saw in that grand entry-way—gilded so opulently with marble floors and pillars, the grand curving staircase leading up to the second floor, the trio of glittering chandeliers, the sparkling brass fixtures molded to look like couples in the throes of lovemaking—not one said anything at all to them. They were much too busy talking among themselves, laughing, pointing, hurrying around. Some even had maps. Chelsea understood the need for those in an instant; this place was huge!

  “Come on!” Selena pulled at her and together they dashed up the opulent staircase, down a veritable maze of hallways and corridors, through a wing crowded with very adult “boys and girls," maids and butlers, slave girls and…was that guy dressed as a pony? ...with plenty of security guards holding watch over the whole room. Each time anyone glanced her way, Chelsea’s stomach tightened with a little pang of dread, but no one asked a single question. No one even looked at them oddly. She’d done it. She had infiltrated the Castle with a ticket to a vacation she hadn’t paid for.

  Chelsea laughed, little more than a chuckle, one born of surprise rather than any real mirth, but it caught Selena’s attention and she looked back at Chelsea with a grin of her own. “Just you wait. You haven’t seen anything yet.”

  When Selena began giggling, Chelsea couldn’t help but giggle along with her. She felt as if she were getting away with something so much bigger and more important than ten free days in an expensive adult resort. She didn’t know exactly what that bigger or more important thing might be, but right now this was starting to feel like the adventure of a lifetime. For the first time in five long months, she couldn’t feel that tiny knot in the pit of her stomach that made her feel worried and scared. She forgot about the things she lacked—money, housing, a job. For the first time in a very long time, she actually felt happy.

  Straight ahead, Kaylee and Hannah were gaining ground. Apparently, they were more accustomed to dodging people than either she or Selena were, and here the crowd was so thick that all Chelsea could see of them now was a brief flash of Kaylee’s red skirt as she and Hannah veered off main hall, shooting through a set of closed double doors.

  “Hurry!” Selena laughed, tugging at her.

  Chelsea ran faster, but as they drew close enough to grab the door, it suddenly flew open and they very nearly crashed into it. Selena jerked up short, catching the flat edge before it hit her face-first, but Chelsea wasn’t that quick. She collided smack into the man who walked through. Tall as she was, and as fast as she’d been going, they hit with enough force to knock them both over. That they didn’t crash all the way to the red-carpeted floor was due only to the lightning-reflexes of the man who caught her, clutching her close as they crashed into the door, which crashed loudly into the hard stone wall.

  “Oh whoa!” Selena gasped.

  Chelsea couldn’t even do that much. “I-I-I—” It was right there at the tip of her tongue: “I’m so terribly sorry,” except none of those words would come any further than that.

  The man—no, not a man. No mere mortal looked anything like this—was nothing less than Greek god perfection wrapped in human form. He was dressed all in black—black trousers, black vest, with no shirt to obscure the hard-chiseled lines of his naked chest. His black, black hair was military buzz-cut short. His black, black eyes roved her, brightening first with appreciation and then amusement. And his mouth…oh, his mouth…so invitingly kissable that Chelsea couldn’t stop staring at it, not even when he noticed and those lips began to curl.

  He rumbled, a low chuckling breath of laughter that shivered all through her in the most toe-curling way. “Hello, Red.”

  “I-I—” she stammered, making no move to get off him. But then, he was making no move to let her go, either. His hands curled around her waist, if anything pulling her just a little bit closer. She blushed. She couldn’t help it. She was staring, and she couldn’t help that either. He had to be the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen in her life and his body heat was burning right through both their clothes and straight into her.

  “Excuse us,” Selena chirped, taking Chelsea by the arm. When she tentatively pulled, the Greek god pushed Chelsea up and set her back on her own two, clumsy feet. He was still smiling, still devouring her with his eyes—the eyes of a man very much interested in getting to know her better—and gestured for them to take the right of way through the narrow doorway into the hall beyond.

  “Ladies,” he said graciously, and damn if he didn’t sound as gorgeous as he looked.

  “Thanks,” Selena giggled, pulling Chelsea along behind her.

  Chelsea stumbled, bumped into the doorjamb and very nearly fell over her own feet because she kept staring back at him over her shoulder instead of watching whe
re she was going. His smile broadened, exposing perfect white teeth.

  “Who was that?” she finally gasped, but only after they’d turned the next corner and she could no longer see him anymore.

  “The big bad wolf,” Selena said, and then laughed. “The biggest, baddest wolf this Castle has ever known. Considering some of the men I’ve met here, trust me, that’s saying something.”

  The big bad wolf.

  Poor Little Red Riding Hood. She never had a chance.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Sara?” The shortest of the four women, the dark-haired slave girl, Hannah, knocked softly on the door just under the red and white “First Aid” sign. “Sara, Kaylee’s here.”

  On cue, Kaylee stepped up behind Hannah, leaning in to the door as she called, “Sara, honey, please open the door. We just want to talk.”

  Chelsea hovered as far out of the main group of women as Selena would let her go. She felt conspicuous now. She didn’t know these women. How likely would this Sara-person be to accept words of comfort from her friends with a stranger standing right here, listening in? She cringed a little when she heard the click of the door unlocking, and then it opened to reveal Hannah’s costume twin. Her long blonde curls had been gathered up in an elaborate coiffure on top of her head, with ringlets that dangled around her neck and shoulders, but which did little to hide the mottle of burn scars that crawled up the left side of her body. She was still beautiful, though, in spite of all those scars and her red-rimmed eyes and nose.

  She looked embarrassed, glancing from Hannah to Kaylee, to Selena, who she offered a wan smile, before her gaze ended on Chelsea.

  Feeling every bit as embarrassed as Sara looked, Chelsea waved. “Hi.”

  Looking down, Sara shook her head once and then, stepping back from the door, simply let them all inside.

  Chelsea hovered at the threshold long after everyone else had crossed it, painfully aware that the polite thing would be for her to just leave and let the others console their friend in privacy. And yet, there was Selena, beckoning her to follow as she crossed the threshold and circled behind the door, disappearing after the others. And so, rubbing her palms nervously against her legs, she did.

  Sara was perched on the side of a narrow medical bed, the only real furniture in the room aside from the examination table and a sink where the obvious reason for her tears were lined up along the counter—three pregnancy tests, lying side by side with their bright blue positive symbols standing out strong against the urine-discolored backgrounds.

  “Oh,” Kaylee said, staring at them. She wasn’t smiling now. Nobody was. “Oh, honey.”

  “We’ve been so careful,” Sara moaned, bending over to brace her elbows on her knees and buried her face in her hands. “We both use protection every single time…except for that once, out at the cabin when we just got so carried away. And don’t tell me that once is enough, because I’ve been thinking that very thing all morning!” Sniffing back a fresh new wave of tears, Sara pulled herself upright again. She reached for Kaylee, grabbing onto her hands and pulling her down to sit on the bed beside her. “What am I going to do?”

  “Does Jackson know?”

  Sara shook her head, a flash of panic crossing her features. “No. No, I can’t tell him. How can I tell him, Kaylee? We can’t have children here! What kind of parents would we be to raise children anywhere near this place? We’ve never talked about marriage or a family. I don’t know if he wants kids. I don’t know if I do!”

  Chelsea shifted, growing increasingly uncomfortable. Her stomach tightened in sympathy for the woman, even as she slipped a backwards step toward the door.

  “What am I going to do?” Sara wept, burying her face in her hands again. “What can I do?”

  “I don’t know, sweetie,” Kaylee said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “But I do know this isn’t something you can hide for very long. And if you try to hide it from Jackson…honey, he is not going to understand.”

  “No, he won’t,” Hannah said, sinking down to sit on the distraught woman’s other side. She also wrapped her arm around Sara’s shoulders. “Men are funny creatures. Doms who are also fathers are even funnier. You have to tell him.”

  Doms? Chelsea cocked her ear. What was a Dom? Images from The Godfather flashed through her mind. What kind of place was this again?

  This was all too strange and…and intimate. She felt like a peeping tom, watching from the back of the room while Sara the slave girl fell apart and her two friends tried their best to comfort her. Even Selena was somber. For some reason, that made it all that much worse. The door behind her was still wide open and, wondering if she should wave, say goodbye or just quietly disappear, Chelsea slid back a step toward it.

  It was Kaylee who stripped her of that choice. Noticing the movement, when Kaylee glanced up, so did Selena. When she came back to stand with her, Chelsea whispered, “I should go.”

  She half-expected Selena to argue, but she didn’t. Instead, they both stepped out of the room. Selena caught and squeezed her hand until they got enough distance between them and the open door so as not to disturb the others inside.

  “You have your room number?” Selena asked.

  “Yeah, I—” She looked at the manila envelope in her hands. She actually had no idea. It was paid for, right? Once she had a chance to really go through the papers she had, it made sense that she’d find a room number in there somewhere. If not, she could always go back to the admissions tables. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

  Selena clutched her hand in both of hers now. “You’re coming to my wedding tomorrow, right?”

  “Uh…” Never had anyone attached themselves to her so firmly or so quickly. “Yeah,” she said, hoping her hesitation didn’t show. She didn’t want to hurt Selena’s feelings. “Sure I will.”

  “You’ll be my bridesmaid?” Selena brightened, excitement beginning to edge back into her.

  “Bridesmaid?” Chelsea echoed, startled.

  Selena gave a muted squeal and threw her arms around her shoulders, hugging her fiercely. “I’m so happy! We’re practically sisters!”

  “Yay,” Chelsea said, a deer in the headlights all over again.

  Releasing her, Selena stood back, suddenly all serious. “Okay, the ceremony is tomorrow morning at ten o’clock in the main reception hall. It’s on your map.”

  She had a map? She hadn’t seen one when she’d first glanced through the envelope back in her car, but maybe she’d find it waiting for her in her room. “I’ll find it,” Chelsea assured her. “Ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Got it.”

  “Wardrobe first,” Selena said. “That’s very important. Go back out to the main hall, then it’s right, left, right, right.” She gave each direction, wiggling her hand like a swimming trout. “You can’t miss the giant double doors with ‘Wardrobe’ carved across the top. They’ll get you fixed up into any program you prefer. Will I see you in the dining hall later on?”

  “Oh uh…yeah.” Chelsea was still on the fish directions—right, left, right, right…left? Maybe she should go to her room first and get the map.

  “Six o’clock?” Selena grinned, wrinkling her nose. “We’re going to have so much fun! See you tonight, bridesmaid.”

  Chelsea managed a smile and when Selena waved before bouncing back into the medical room, she waved too. Neither the smile nor the wave lasted longer than it took the enthusiastic blonde to vanish from sight. What a strange girl. Happy, but strange.

  Digging into her envelope in search of a room number, Chelsea headed back down the hall the way they’d come. She was just about to turn her first corner and was halfway wondering if that gorgeous mortal incarnation of a Greek god would still be hanging around by the door when she heard Selena call out behind her, “Don’t forget your race let!”

  Chelsea looked back. “Race let?”

  Her head sticking out the medical room door, Selena pointed at her wrist. “Race let!”

  Chelsea checked her watch. What
the hell was a “race let”? She had no idea, but she pasted on another smile and waved a second time. “Got it!”

  Grinning, Selena disappeared again.

  Opening her packet, Chelsea shuffled through what few papers she had, but there was nothing on any of them about races. Not of any kind, “let” or otherwise. “Huh.” She pulled out the contents of her envelope, threading the two purple and single white bracelets over her thumb while she—

  “Oh!” Of course! Shaking her head at herself—“race lets”; what was she thinking?—she slipped all three carefully back into the envelope. As soon as she was settled in, she’d figure out what to do with those too. First things first, though.

  On her receipt, she found a room number of R221, but there was definitely no map. Not even printed on the back of the included brochure. At any other hotel, a two hundred designation would put her room on the second floor, which was exactly where Chelsea was. So, at least she was on the right level. All she had to do now was find the “R” wing. If she was lucky, she might stumble across a directory. Or, failing that, she could ask someone.

  She shuffled through her papers again. Damn. No room key. That would probably have been given to her at the admissions tables. Except that she hadn’t really checked in.

  “Okay,” she said, pushing through the door to the main hall. First things first—wardrobe (very important, Selena had said) and then she’d check in like she should have done in the first place. What were those directions again? “Right, left, right, left.”

  Except that her first right dead-ended her in front of a giant window that overlooked a hedge-maze garden. This was not good.

  Hoping Selena was only off by one direction, Chelsea turned left and made her way down the hall to the next intersection. Unfortunately, turning right there found her facing giant double doors, but the wood plaque above them did not read ‘Wardrobe’. It read ‘Nursery’ instead.