Royal Chase (The Royals of Monterra)

by Sariah Wilson

  “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.

&
nbsp; 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.

  I would have to pay my parents back for all the money they’d spent on this wedding. I’d have to return the gifts, write apologies—it was all going to be overwhelming. I was also going to have to shut down my business. Matthew Burdette would make sure of that. Everything I had worked so hard for was just gone. I sighed and squeezed my eyes shut, afraid I might start crying again. But I had so dehydrated myself over the last two days that there were no more tears.

  All I had to do was get through tonight, and deal with everything else tomorrow.

  I put my face on, and then the ivory sheath dress with a silver lace overlay that I had so excitedly picked out weeks ago for this night.

  The doorbell rang, and I could hear voices downstairs. My family, Sterling’s family, close friends, so many people were there to celebrate.

  I came downstairs with a smile glued to my face. I said hello and hugged people and pretended like everything was fine.

  And hoped that no one could see how devastated I truly was.

  Sterling came in, and I had thought that there might have been something—a moment, a spark, anything. But there wasn’t. I knew then that I had made the absolute right choice in letting him go.

  He came to greet me, and I offered him my cheek. I didn’t like the reminder of Dante, but I didn’t want him to kiss me, either. He didn’t seem to notice. “Lemon! I haven’t seen you in so long!”

  I thought, And whose fault is that?

  He studied me for a moment. “You look tired.” They should really give boys in high school a class entitled, “Things You Should Never Say to a Woman.”

  “You look like you’ve got some lines around your eyes. Although, I suppose that’s what plastic surgery’s for, right?” He actually laughed. Kat was right. He was a jerk. How did I not see that before?

  “What if I get fat? Is that what plastic surgery’s for, too?” He seemed a little bit surprised by the venom in my voice.

  “Don’t be silly. That’s what diets and exercise are for. Excuse me a second, but I need to go thank your parents for hosting this evening.” He walked away.

  Dante had at least said he would love me despite those things. Dante. A sharp pain pierced my heart. How could I be thinking of him right then? He didn’t deserve it.

  Ellis Wetherly sauntered in the front door carrying a bottle of wine. I just got cheated on again, and the woman who helped the very first guy to ever cheat on me was in my house. That white-hot rage roared to life inside me, and my gaze flicked over to the antique candlesticks on my right. She was lucky I was more scared of getting blood on my mother’s hardwood floor than I was angry.

  It had been six years since she’d screwed me over, and I still disliked her just as much as I had back then. “Lemon, honey. How are you?”

  She hugged me, but I didn’t return her greeting. “What are you doing here?”

  “Didn’t you know?” She gave me a puzzled look, but I could tell she knew exactly what she was doing and how much she enjoyed doing it. “I work at Sterling’s daddy’s law firm as an associate.”

  He had told me he had to stay up all night with the other associates. I wondered if she was one of them, and what kind of work they’d been up to. “Are you working with Sterling?”

  She gave me a catlike smile. “We do work together. Intimately.”

  I didn’t know if she was just trying to mess with me, but in that moment I knew what was happening with them like I knew with Abigail and Burdette. No wonder he turned his phone off. They were sleeping together.

  Strangely enough, the murderous anger faded. I just didn’t care. “I hope the two of you will be very happy together,” I said, and she looked both confused and shocked as I walked off.

  I went out on to the back porch, needing to have a second to myself. It definitely said something that Dante’s cheating had sent me into a downward spiral that made me wonder whether I should seek psychiatric care, and Sterling’s wasn’t even a blip on the radar.

  Looking up at the stars, I had a moment where I wondered whether I had misunderstood the situation at the mansion. What if that was Rafe? Something had felt off about him, but I had assumed it was the anger and the cheating. But what if it wasn’t? What if he had really been there? But wouldn’t I have known that?

  Was it possible? Anything was possible. The South could rise again. Possible, but not probable.

  What if I had been wrong?

  I wasn’t. If I had been wrong, Dante would have been here by now. He would have called his private plane and would have been in Atlanta before I got here. He would have called. He would have ridden up in his shining armor on his white horse to take me back to his castle, all his quests completed. Something.

  Instead I had a big fat nothing.

  No job, no fiancé, nothing.

  I went into the kitchen, surrounded by the catering staff my mother had hired. Nobody tried to talk to me, and I liked being anonymous and ignored. Nobody to ask me if I was excited about tomorrow, nobody making innuendoes about the honeymoon, nobody telling me how lucky I was to be marrying Sterling.

  I didn’t want to be surrounded by my loved ones, standing alongside the man I was supposed to marry, because I realized that the only man I had ever truly loved was Dante.

  Dante, who didn’t come for me. Dante, who had cheated on me. Dante, who could never be the man I needed him to be.

  The doorbell rang again, and I heard my mother calling my name. I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to stand around talking to people and pretending like my life wasn’t in shambles.

  “Lemon!” she said as she came into the kitchen, looking very bewildered. “There’s someone at the front door to see you.”

  It was him. He had finally come.

  Chapter 26

  Sometimes I think it would be the best thing in the world to be someone’s favorite hello and hardest good-bye.

  Heart in my throat, I followed my mother. What would I do when I saw him? Should I tell him to leave? That I didn’t want to hear
any more of his lies?

  Some part of my heart pleaded with me to listen.

  But it wasn’t Dante standing in the foyer.

  It was Taylor. “Can we talk? Privately?”

  I led her into my father’s study and closed the pocket doors behind us.

  “Is that your rehearsal dinner?” she asked, sitting down on the brown leather sofa. She started chewing the end of her fingernails. I sat in my father’s favorite armchair, facing her.

  “It is.” What was she doing here? Did she think she was going to convince me to come back to film the finale?

  That would not happen.

  “So you’re still getting married tomorrow?”

  “Not that it is any of your business, but no, I’m not.”

  She leaned forward. “Because you’re in love with Dante.”

  I could feel a massive headache coming on, and I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What do you want, Taylor?”

  It was then that I noticed the clear case she had in her hands, small and thin. It was a DVD. “This is the whole show, with some unedited parts at the end of the finale. You need to watch it. It will explain everything. I wanted to e-mail it to you, but I still had your phone and I didn’t know if you’d check your computer.”

  The finale wasn’t scheduled to be filmed until tomorrow. They had filmed it early? Why?

  She pulled my cell phone out of her pocket and handed both items to me. There were like a billion missed calls and texts, most of them from Kat and Dante. I turned my phone off and put the DVD down.

  “You have to watch it. Because Rafe was telling the truth. That was not Dante. Dante was outside in the gazebo waiting for you, and you interrupted Rafe and Genesis.”

  Now he had Taylor doing his dirty work? I ignored the piece of my heart that leapt with hope. I knew better. “Did he send you here to lie to me?”

  “I have no reason to lie to you. That’s why I brought the DVD. So you could see that both men were on the show, and have been from the very beginning. It’s another twist. Matthew felt that the show had become too predictable, and that blogger, Reality Joe, keeps spoiling who the winner will be every season, so we played everything very close to the vest to keep it from getting out. It’s why we broadcast the show early, too.”