Royal Chase (The Royals of Monterra)

by Sariah Wilson

  We all went into the dining room, and I got my old spot back between Rafe and Dante, and across from Kat.

  It was like nothing had changed.

  But everything had.

  After dinner, we went up to the family’s lounge and played board games and talked until Serafina started nodding off. We said our good-nights, and I could feel Dante watching me as I returned my mike pack to the crew, and Kat and I walked off arm in arm.

  I threw one last glance over my shoulder before we left the room, and he was still watching me with a smoldering look.

  It made all the air evaporate out of my lungs.

  Kat convinced me to change into my pajamas and come to her room to talk. The other girls would be flown out at the end of the evening, but because the family knew me and my job, the show had agreed to let me stay overnight.

  We had so much to say to each other that the hours really did just fly by. There was a knock at her bedroom door.

  “That’s for me!” she said as she ran over to open it. She came back with a tray. “My moonflowers and gelato,” she said. I smiled, loving that she had that daily romantic gift from Nico.

  There were two bowls this time, and I took the second. “Do you ever think it’s weird that the royal family just took us in and liked us?”

  “Why wouldn’t they?” she responded. “We’re awesome.”

  “Seriously.”

  She paused, holding her spoon in her mouth. She removed it and said, “I think with me it was because Nico just seemed to like me a lot right away, and that had never happened to him before. And I bonded with the girls. And I think part of what royals do is be nice and make everyone feel comfortable. So basically I suck at that part of trying to be royal, but I’m working on it.”

  I took another bite. “That still doesn’t explain why they’ve always been so kind to me. Because I’m your friend?”

  “Duh, because Dante’s in love with you.”

  I started choking.

  She reached around to hit me on the back. “You’re an important part of his life, which makes you an important part of their lives. You know how tight-knit they are.”

  I knew it was one of Kat’s favorite things about being in Monterra. She had pretty much raised herself, and she absolutely loved being an almost-daughter and sister to Nico’s family.

  Although I think she loved being his fiancée the most.

  “So tell me. Do you love Dante too?”

  Chapter 23

  If the truth is out there, I think it’s playing hard to get.

  “Dante told me this legend about his family,” I responded, and filled her in on the gypsy magic and promise, hoping I might distract her. I didn’t want to tell her the truth about Dante yet. Because if I told Kat, it would make everything real. It would limit all my choices. As it was now, I could still decide how things would go.

  “So what you’re saying is Nico fell in love with me because of magic. Huh. That actually explains a lot.”

  “Stop it,” I said, pushing her shoulder. “That’s not true.”

  “Cool story, but you didn’t answer my question. Are you in love with Dante?”

  “I’m not sure of anything right now,” was my evasive reply.

  “Let’s put it this way. What would your relationship status on Facebook be?” She finished her gelato and put the bowl back on the tray.

  “I don’t think there’s a ‘romantically confused with disagreement over who I should end up with’ as a possible status.” I put my bowl next to hers.

  “You said romantically! So there is romance!”

  “I don’t know,” I sighed as I lay down on her bed. “What I do know is that I do not like being stuck in this Bermuda Love Triangle.”

  “The triangle is indeed a sucky shape. All those points and edges. People get hurt.”

  People would get hurt.

  And I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I also didn’t want to get hurt.

  But it seemed like it would be impossible to accomplish both of those things.

  After Giacomo woke us early in the morning for my flight, Kat mumbled not-nice things about his mother. She hated getting up early. But she did it, because she and Nico had agreed to drive with me to the airport since Dante had to stay behind to welcome the next girl and Kat wanted extra time with me.

  I hugged everyone good-bye and thanked them and said I’d miss them. Dante hugged me the longest, and I loved being in his arms. He whispered something Italian in my ear, which was both unfair and hot. How could I have ever said yes to Sterling?

  We got into the limo and waved good-bye all the way out to the gate, until we couldn’t see them any longer. Nico was on his phone talking in Italian and looking through his tablet. I heard him mention the word “London,” and remembered that they had an interview there after the visits to their family home finished.

  “While you’re in London, you should egg Abigail’s house,” I teased.

  “Do you have her address?”

  “I’m kidding, darlin’.” That was a PR scandal I needed like a hole in the head. “Future Princess Eggs Soap Star’s Home!” “Should you be saying things like that in front of him? Does he know about your vengeful side?”

  “Nico? When he’s like this he doesn’t hear anything. It’s like he’s not even here. We can talk freely.”

  The future king was always busy. He and Kat were scheduled to get married this December, and then there would be a coronation where his father would abdicate and Nico would become king. I anticipated a huge bump in our tourism numbers.

  I hoped my best friend could handle becoming queen. It made some doubt creep back in when I considered their busy schedules. If I did end up with Dante, how could I keep my company?

  “What is that look for?” Kat asked.

  “If I was with him, I couldn’t work.”

  “Not true. I investigated. Prince Alex has an aunt who married into his family, and she ran a PR firm while still being a princess.” She looked far too smug.

  Another reason shot down.

  “Then there’s the womanizing.”

  “Womanizing?” Nico asked.

  “I thought you said he couldn’t hear us,” I hissed at her.

  She looked surprised. “Usually he can’t.”

  “Why would you say that about Dante?”

  I started ticking things off on my fingers. “Um, the Internet. Living in the same house with him for the last few weeks. Watching him flirt with everything that breathes from the moment we met.”

  He studied me, and I could get why Kat waxed on and on about his ice-blue eyes so much. They just seemed to pierce you. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?” Color me thoroughly confused.

  Nico put down his phone and his tablet, focusing his attention on me. “The Internet articles and tabloid reports were all a show for Rafe.”

  “Rafe?” I was turning into a parrot.

  “Rafe was engaged.”

  Now Kat was the parrot. “Engaged? What? Nobody in this family ever tells me anything!”

  “To his childhood sweetheart. She was murdered, and they initially suspected Rafe. There was a total paparazzi feeding frenzy. He had an alibi, and it was eventually discovered that she had been cheating on him, and the other man killed her. Rafe was completely devastated, and the tabloids refused to leave him alone.”

  I exchanged shocked glances with Kat. Neither one of us had known anything about this. It was like an episode of Dateline.

  “They hounded him relentlessly, even after he’d been cleared. So Dante stepped in and started putting on a show for the media so they’d leave Rafe alone. He dates a lot, but only with women who understand that it’s never serious and only for the publicity. My little brother is not a womanizer by any stretch of the imagination. It’s all pretend to protect Rafe. Dante is one of the most loyal, faithful people you will ever meet. In fact,” he said, giving me a pointed look, “he hasn’t been out with another woman since you
came to Monterra.”

  My mouth dropped open, and I put a hand to my chest, trying to prevent my heart from exploding.

  As Kat would say, Oh. My. Frak.

  He’d always wanted to be a knight, and he really was a knight in shining armor. I had totally misjudged him.

  All this time I had been so worried he would cheat on me, that he couldn’t be faithful or committed, and it wasn’t true. It had all been an act. A way to take the focus off of his twin brother so that he could grieve in private.

  And I’d accused him of being a cheater and a liar, and he’d let me believe it. He hadn’t corrected me or told me how wrong I was.

  No, even when it cost him something he wanted, he’d let me go to protect Rafe.

  I owed him an apology. A thousand apologies. I felt sick. He was noble and kind and I was distrusting and awful. He deserved better.

  “That was the one thing you were most worried about and it isn’t even true!” Kat interrupted my self-flagellation.

  I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t collect my thoughts, and I didn’t know how to make this right.

  It changed everything.

  I was tempted to have them turn the car around, but I decided that I wanted to be free when I went to tell him that I was in love with him. As soon as Dante eliminated me from the show, I would fly back to Atlanta and end things with Sterling. I supposed I could have called him, but ending an engagement a few days before the wedding seemed like a face-to-face sort of thing.

  I hated the idea of hurting Sterling. I hated disappointing my parents and their friends.

  But I hated the idea of being apart from Dante even more.

  “Are you okay?” Kat finally asked, probably surprised by my inability to speak.

  “I’m just in shock, I think,” I managed. “He really hasn’t dated anyone in the last six months?”

  “No. And Dante’s never been serious about anyone. We both know how hard it is to find a woman who will love you for yourself, and not because of your title or your money.” Great, now I was getting it from Nico. That’s all I needed. More guilt.

  “Or someone who won’t love you just because of that unbelievably gorgeous face of yours,” Kat said to him.

  “Gorgeous?” Nico raised one eyebrow and smiled. “The feeling’s mutual.” He moved in. They were seriously about to make out. I did not want to see that.

  “Other people are still in the car!” I said.

  I saw Nico mouth the word later, and Kat got all giggly and love-struck.

  That kind of relationship was what I had always wanted for her, and I was so happy that she had it, but I was also feeling a tad bit envious of it. It’s what I thought I had with Sterling, but sitting here with the real thing, even I had to admit that I didn’t.

  Sterling and I would never be like Nico and Kat.

  But Dante and I just might.

  We arrived at the airport, and the driver went to get my bag from the trunk. I hugged both Nico and Kat at the curb outside of the departure terminal. “Promise me you’ll be nice to Genesis. She’s my friend, and she’s so sweet and genuine. You’ll like her.”

  “Why wouldn’t we be nice to her?” Kat sounded confused. I couldn’t say what I imagined she might do, because I could see her trying to sabotage Genesis in some misguided attempt to help me and Dante get together. But as far as I was concerned, Genesis wasn’t even a part of this.

  It was between me and Dante.

  “No reason. You do have my total permission to make Abigail’s life miserable, though.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Done.”

  Taylor passed along an e-mail from Kat a couple of days after I got back to California. She said she hadn’t gotten to meet Genesis, as she and Nico had been called away to meet some famous visiting celebrity. I was glad they did, because it was what I would have told them to do. We couldn’t miss out on any chance to bring more publicity to Monterra.

  Then she went on to say that Abigail’s visit was an unmitigated disaster.

  So, Serafina did her “let’s be best friends and watch Frozen” routine, and asked if she could wear Abigail’s shoes. Abigail told her that if she touched any of her stuff, she would smack her across the face!!! Can you even imagine??? Who would hit Serafina??? She came crying into my room, and I decided that it was open season. I mean, I was just going to ignore her and be polite if I had to talk to her, which I thought was big of me considering that she tried to kill you. She brought it on herself, because nobody threatens my soon-to-be little sister.

  And I won’t bore you with all the details, but suffice it to say that Serafina organized a slight frog infestation in her room and “lost” all of Abigail’s makeup. Chiara accidentally cut a huge hole in her dinner dress when she told her she’d try to tailor it. I did research on her online, and dropped little tidbits of gossip about her previous relationships into the dinner conversation. The king didn’t feel well, and Rafe refused to come downstairs. Nico wouldn’t even look at her. Poor Queen Aria tried to fix things, but there was nothing she could do. I figure Abigail will probably cry in her interviews about how awful we all are, but most of the bad stuff happened off camera and I have an excellent PR woman to release a statement to the contrary.

  Why has Dante kept this luna-chick around???

  Miss you!

  Part of me wanted to gloat when Abigail and Dante returned to the mansion, but I thought Kat had done a pretty good job of handling her for me.

  Genesis and I were in the kitchen making lunch and talking about Monterra, carefully leaving out any personal details, when Harris came in with Abigail. “I need to speak to you ladies for a moment if I could.”

  What now? Genesis and I sat on one side of the couch, and Abigail sat as far away as possible on the other end. She really was a good actress. I knew how badly things had gone for her in Monterra, but she sat there looking like she didn’t have a care in the world.

  “As you probably already know, at this point in the show we would send you out to some exotic locations for one-on-one time with Dante, and then we would give you the opportunity at the end of the night to share a Romance Room together. But we’re not doing that this season.”

  He paused for dramatic effect.

  “Each night we have arranged for one of you to travel to a nearby four-star luxury hotel, where you will be given the option to stay with Dante in his suite or to spend the night alone in your own room.”

  It sounded appealing mainly because I was tired of traveling. But something was definitely off. This was so unlike anything the show had ever done, that I didn’t know what else to think. They always went somewhere for these overnights. Always.

  “You will be delivered an invitation at the very last minute, so none of you will know when the others have left. And, you may or may not receive an invitation before the next elimination.”

  I could almost hear the gasping that would take place in living rooms across the country after that announcement. That had never happened before. Every girl who remained was always offered an invitation to the Romance Room.

  “If you’re given an invitation, I hope you make the most of your alone time with Dante, and that you will think seriously about the future you might have together. Good luck, and I hope you all enjoy yourselves and make the decision that is right for you.”

  He seemed to be looking right at me. After he finished his speech, the production assistants came to separate us, and asked us to stay in our rooms. They were keeping us apart so that none of us would know who got an invite and who didn’t. As a reward for being stuck in solitary confinement, they gave us old gossip magazines to read. At least it was something.

  I spent most of the time packing up my things. I would be leaving soon to go home and fix the situation with Sterling, hopefully with the least possible amount of collateral damage.

  It surprised me when a PA walked in with my invitation. First again. My initial instinct was to assume that he wanted me out of the way first so he
could devote his time to the other girls. I took a deep breath and decided to be an optimist. Maybe he was doing it to so that he could reassure me of his intentions. Maybe he wouldn’t even give the other girls invitations, and I was receiving the only one.

  I took my time getting ready, and put on a red dress that Taylor had bought me for the show. I knew he would like it. I finished putting together my overnight bag and sat down to wait.

  A few minutes later they let me know that the limo had arrived, and a field producer was waiting for me in the car. He asked me if I was nervous, and what I intended to do about spending the night with Dante. I tried to give him generic answers, not letting him know how I was really feeling.

  I knew from the beginning that if I reached this point, I would not stay overnight in his room. The whole “avoiding the appearance of evil” thing. That even if I didn’t do stuff with him, everyone in the whole country would assume that I did by going into that room, and since I was engaged, it hadn’t seemed like a good thing to do.

  But now I wasn’t going to go in there because I needed to break up with Sterling first. It was a shame. I would have liked the chance to spend time with Dante away from the cameras, to ask him about what he had done for Rafe, to give him the chance to explain to me why he didn’t tell me about it himself.

  Dante waited for me outside of the hotel in one of his custom-made suits. He flashed a megawatt grin at me and helped me out of the limo.

  “You look so absolutely dreadful tonight,” he said as he kissed me hello on each cheek, and then he put my hand on his arm to escort me inside.