“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.
I finally started to relax after the men got called off to fight in the Civil War. The moment had come and gone and it looked like he wouldn’t tease or remind me about it. I hadn’t chosen this movie to bring up the costume ball. It really was just my favorite movie. I hoped he didn’t think there was some hidden double meaning.
We finished off most of the snacks with Dante doing the bulk of the work, and we somehow managed to scoot closer to each other so that by the end, my side was pressed to his. This was both exhilarating and nerve-racking. He was playing with the ends of my hair as I pressed “Stop.” The movie screen went blank.
“Well, what did you think?”
“I liked it.” His voice was a murmur. He didn’t have to speak very loudly, because we were so close together. “Why is it your favorite?”
“Well, the South, Atlanta. But I love Scarlett. I know I should like Melanie better. Scarlett is selfish, immature, and unaware of the damage she causes, while Melanie is good, kind, and forgiving. But I so wanted to be Scarlett when I grew up! I’m not sure what that says about me.”
“She was also brave, loyal, hardworking, and determined like you.”
He would never know the thrill he gave me when he compared our strengths. “But she has terrible taste in men. Another thing we have in common.”
“Hey!” he yelped, looking insulted. I laughed.
“She just chose the wrong guy,” Dante said. “She should have loved Rhett from the beginning. Ashley was all wrong for her. She would have frustrated him and he would have bored her. They would have been miserable.”
There was something there, something he wasn’t saying. I felt it. It was too deep and too serious for the moment. “From the beginning, huh? Don’t tell me you believe in love at first sight.”
He raised both of his eyebrows in response.
“You do! How can you of all people believe in that?”
“The men of our family fall hard and fall fast. There is a legend—my great-grandfather was kind to a group of traveling Romani. He granted them safe passage through Monterra and welcomed them to stay for as long as they wished.”
I must have looked confused, because he clarified. “People also call them gypsies, and it was at a time when many others were being cruel and enslaving them. And as a thank-you, the leader of the group granted him the desire of his heart—he had several possibilities for a queen and wasn’t sure which one to pick. The leader said that he and all the sons born in his line would know the very moment they met their true loves. And it happened. My great-grandfather met my great-grandmother at a ball, proposed later that night, and they were very much in love their entire lives.”
“That’s sweet. I still can’t believe that you believe in this sort of thing.”
“I didn’t. Until . . .” He trailed off. He did have a real-life example of it, though.
“Until Nico and Kat?” I tried to finish off his sentence.
He stayed still for a moment, and that feeling returned. The one that said something important was happening and that I better pay attention. The one that made all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. He looked at me. “No, I didn’t believe it until the first time I held you in my arms. Comforting you after Kat’s accident. That’s when I knew it was true.”
; He couldn’t be serious. He couldn’t. I waited for a wink, or one of those flirtatious smiles that would let me know it was all a joke. Ha-ha, so funny. Because I knew him, and this boy was so slick he could steal the sweet from sugar without touching a grain.
I waited. And I waited.
It didn’t happen.
I finally expelled a deep breath that I hadn’t even been aware of holding. This was too much. I became painfully aware of how fast my heart was beating, and of the camera crew standing ten feet away.
This was not real. Nothing that had happened since I’d been drafted into this situation had been real. Maybe the show had told him to manufacture a romance with me, too. If they had, I wished he had warned me first.
Because he was a little too convincing.
Despite what he’d said to me about wanting to get married, I wanted to laugh at the idea of it. The day that happened I would have to start ice-skating home from work because hell would have frozen over. It was that ridiculous.
So why was he doing this? Tormenting me? Had I actually hurt his feelings? It was probably more like a bruised ego.
“Say something,” he said, holding me with his gaze.
“I can’t do this with you. I just can’t.”
I got up and stormed off toward the house. I didn’t appreciate being toyed with, or how it would look on the show.
It wasn’t hard for him to catch up with me. He grabbed my upper arm, turning me around. Even when I was angry and hurt by him, his touch still managed to make my knees go floppy. “Just tell me this one thing. Is it like this with him? Does he make you laugh?”
I stared up at him, my eyes glassy and full of unshed tears. “Maybe not. But at least he doesn’t make me cry.”
He looked stricken when he let me go, and I walked inside without looking back.
Chapter 14
I think once we have our first fight we should definitely kiss and make up.
Dante found me at breakfast and asked to speak with me. I couldn’t say no because every other girl was gaping at us, and two camera crews stood nearby, capturing every word.
Royal Chase (The Royals of Monterra) Page 13