Royal Chase (The Royals of Monterra)

by Sariah Wilson

  I looked at the silver disc. She said it would prove that I had found Rafe, not Dante. “Why didn’t Dante tell me?”

  Now she looked uncomfortable and chewed on her nails again. “He might have been under the impression that you already knew.”

  “And who gave him that impression?”

  “I did,” she confessed. “When it became clear that you were the favorite of both the audience and Dante, they wanted you to be surprised too. They also liked the tension between you and Genesis, where you guys were trying to be friends, but you thought you were both falling in love with the same man. Only that wasn’t how we wanted you to find out. You caused total chaos when you walked into that house and went upstairs. Not only because we wanted to film everything, but because you were about to ruin the surprise and we knew it would not be good.”

  “So sorry my pain messed up your TV show.”

  “It’s okay.” She shrugged, totally missing my sarcasm. “It worked. It’s reality television. Everything’s about the drama. It’s what we do.” She expelled a deep breath. “And I should probably let you know that the audience saw the whole story.”

  “What do you mean the whole story?”

  “The whole one. Your engagement. Your previous relationship with Dante. We filmed everything. There are cameras in every room, including the bedrooms. We did censor out Sterling’s name, because he didn’t sign a release, but everything was filmed.”

  “Not everything,” I corrected her, my heart thudding lowly. “There aren’t cameras in the bathrooms. And there were times Dante and I were alone that there were no cameras around.”

  “The times you thought you were alone with Dante, we had cameras and long range microphones to pick up what you were saying. Even if we couldn’t see you, we could still hear you. His bodyguard nearly took out a few cameramen a couple of times. And when you and I were in the bathroom together, I had a small camera on my shirt.”

  I felt so violated and betrayed. “The interviews when the camera was off?”

  “Hidden cameras were filming.”

  I thought of everything I had told her, everything I had admitted to in those interviews, everything that was personal and private that was now no longer mine. Had everyone at this party seen everything? Did they watch the show? The only thing I had going for me was that my parents’ crowd were not the television-watching type. Nobody here had said anything to me.

  But that wasn’t the point. The point was that Taylor had used me to advance her own career. My life had been used to entertain. My problems, my suffering, would be given to the masses to enjoy.

  And I was not okay with that.

  “You signed a release,” she said defensively. She must have seen how angry I was getting.

  “Are you filming me now?”

  She paused. “Yes.”

  Unbelievable. She hadn’t come here as a friend. She didn’t care about my feelings or what had happened to me. She cared about ratings. She had come here to film my reaction, to see what I would do next.

  “Get. Out.” I marched over to the pocket doors, throwing them apart, and then to the front door, flinging it wide open.

  “Lemon . . .” she tried.

  “If I see you or any cameras on this property, I will sic the dogs on you. Now go!”

  She looked sorry, but I knew it wasn’t for the pain she had caused me. Only that she probably hadn’t gotten on film what she had come here to get. I slammed the door shut behind her.

  More than anyone else, I understood being devoted to your career, wanting to succeed more than anything. But I had also been willing to give it up, to put other things, like my own sanity, first. Taylor wasn’t, and she was willing to sacrifice me and our relationship to get further ahead.

  I never could have done that to someone I cared about.

  Our friendship was over. One more thing for me to be sad about.

  The DVD reflected the overhead lights in my daddy’s study. My chest constricted tightly as I thought about what she said it contained. Weeks’ worth of episodes showing that Rafe had always been a part of the show.

  Which would mean that Dante hadn’t cheated on me. He hadn’t lied to me. I had been so quick to believe the worst of him, to automatically jump to the worst possible conclusion. After he had told me he loved me and promised to be honest and true to me.

  I would have to spend the rest of my life apologizing to him.

  First, I had to watch that DVD.

  “Lemonade, it’s time to go in and eat.” My daddy had been sent to find me. He put his arm around me, and it was all I could do to not rest my head on his shoulder and sob my heart out.

  “I spoke to your young man,” he said. My pulse jumped and my whole soul lifted with anticipation. When had he talked to Dante?

  “I’ll tell you what. I set that Sterling straight.” I felt deflated. “He said you were going to stay home after you got married, and I told him that my little Lemonade was just like me, and that you would figure out how to be a wife and a mother and have a career.”

  My heart caught. “Thank you, Daddy.” I kissed my father on the cheek. He finally got it. He finally understood.

  And I knew that had been thanks to Dante.

  All I wanted to do right then was call him. Make this right. But I didn’t even know where he was. If they had already filmed the finale, he could be on his way back to Monterra. I could call Kat to track him down.

  But if he hadn’t cheated on me and he wasn’t guilty, why wasn’t he here? Why hadn’t he come after me?

  With a sinking sensation, I wondered if maybe he had left me here because of what I had done. Because I hadn’t trusted in him or in our love. That I hadn’t waited to find a reasonable explanation for what was happening. He kept trying to prove that I could trust him, but I had shown him that he couldn’t trust me. Maybe he didn’t want to be with me anymore.

  I couldn’t blame him for that, even if it destroyed me.

  Dinner was a blur. I smiled and nodded, unaware of what was happening around me. I was suddenly ravenous, though. After not eating for two days straight, I gobbled up everything they put in front of me. They brought dessert out, a gorgeous chocolate mousse, and as I went to take a bite, Sterling took the plate away from me.

  “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

  I nearly stabbed his hand with my fork. That’d teach him not to get between a woman and her chocolate. I snatched my plate back and shot him a dirty look. I ate every single last bite, and then asked my mother if I could have the rest of hers. Sterling excused himself, as everyone sat around the table, still talking.

  I had to get that DVD. I had to see with my own eyes what a moron I’d been. As guests started drifting away, I snuck over to the study.

  Someone had closed the doors. I heard voices. I put my ear to the crack to listen.

  It was Sterling and his father. “I don’t know if I can do this, Dad. I don’t love her.”

  “What’s love got to do with it? This is a merger. After the wedding tomorrow, her father’s going to sign the contract. Beauchamp Oil will be our newest and biggest client.”

  “It doesn’t seem right.”

  “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

  I pushed open the doors, and both men just stared at me. “You’re marrying me for my father’s company? I think I would have preferred to catch you in here with Ellis.” This seemed worse, somehow. That I hadn’t ever mattered to him at all. I was just a means to an end. He hadn’t loved me. I had at least thought I’d loved him, even though I had been wrong.

  “Ellis?” His voice sounded strangled.

  “You’re together.” I didn’t need him to confirm it.

  “We were.” His eyes darted to his father. “Until . . .”

  “Until your daddy promised you that you could make partner if you brought Beauchamp Oil in as a client.” I crossed my arms and stared them both down. I guess the jerk apple didn’t fall far from the jerk tree.

>   His father looked furious. “Now look, Lemon, don’t go getting . . .”

  “Quiet, please, Mr. Brown. Sterling and I are having a discussion about ending our engagement.”

  “I’m sorry, Lemon,” Sterling said. “I never meant to hurt you.”

  “No, you just meant to use me and cheat on me. Because that’s so much better.” I let out a sigh. I didn’t need to be taking my anger out on the idiot patsy. “It doesn’t matter. You never had the power to hurt me. I never really loved you, either. I only did this because . . .”

  The reasons were too many to explain to someone who mattered so little.

  “I never should have said yes,” I finished. “This will hurt my parents, so I hope you’re at least enough of a man and a gentleman to apologize to them.”

  There was no ring to return. It was probably symbolic or a manifestation of both of our subconscious minds that we had never bothered to get it. Because we had both known this wouldn’t work.

  I left to find my mother and father first. I didn’t want them to hear about the cancelled wedding from Sterling. I could imagine how disappointed they would be. I would just add the guilt to the emotional pyre burning inside me. They were saying good-night to their dear friends Eunice and Charles, so I waited until they were finished. With a trembling voice, I asked them to come with me into the parlor, and I closed the doors behind us.

  They sat down, and I told them quickly what had happened, that I was calling the wedding off, apologized for taking so long to get to this point, and what Sterling and his father had planned.

  Talking about Dante was still too painful, so I left that part out.

  My parents sat in silence, both looking at me thoughtfully. I prepared myself for the lecture. To be told about the money and time I had wasted, and how I had let both of them down.

  Then my mother said, “Well, thank heavens. Took you long enough to throw that boy over.” She turned to my father. “I never liked him. I told you they were all up to something.”

  “You were right.”

  There was nothing they could have said that would have stunned me more. “What? I thought you were so excited for me to marry him. Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Because I didn’t want to influence your decision. I know we give your our opinions probably more than we should,” my mother said as she glanced at Daddy, “so I didn’t say anything.”

  “I didn’t call it off earlier because I was afraid of disappointing you both. I know that I’m always letting you down.”

  My daddy put his arm around me. “Why on earth would you say that, Lemonade? We are so proud of you! Don’t you know that your mother and I are thrilled by everything you accomplish? That we will support you in any decision that you make? That we think you’re the most wonderful girl in the whole world?”

  Tears burned the back of my throat and my chest ached. All this time, I thought I was disappointing them. And it was all in my head. They loved me and were proud of me.

  “Maybe we should all just start saying what we actually feel and not worry about what anyone else will think,” I said. My parents nodded in agreement. “And I will pay you back for whatever y’all have paid for already.”

  My father shook his head. “Don’t you worry about that for one second. You and your happiness are what matters, not the money.”

  Then he hugged me, and my mother joined him to hug us both, and the tears I thought I could no longer cry sprang up.

  “You leave everything to us,” my mother added, as she wiped the tears away from my eye makeup with a Kleenex. “We’ll make all the calls and take care of everything.”

  I nodded, grateful and touched beyond words.

  “First, the Browns and I are going to have a discussion,” Daddy said as he walked out of the room quickly. I didn’t envy Sterling or his father to be on the other end of that.

  My mother kissed me on my cheek and then rubbed her lipstick away. “I’m going to send everyone home. So now all you have to do is go find the man that you’re really in love with and tell him there’s not going to be a wedding and that you are a free woman.”

  I couldn’t tell her that I had ruined everything with Dante. That he didn’t want to see me. The stabbing heart pain was back. “There’s something I have to do first,” I told her.

  Chapter 27

  Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?

  Wherever my father was confronting the Browns, it wasn’t in the study. The room was empty when I went in for the DVD. I took it and my father’s laptop and went up to my room. I changed out of my clothes into jeans and a T-shirt, preparing myself for what I was about to see.

  I really hoped Taylor hadn’t been lying to me again. I wasn’t sure I could take much more of the hope-and-despair carousel. I heard the front door opening and closing and the sound of cars driving off as guests left.

  Sitting on my bed, I put the DVD into the laptop and pressed “Play” when a screen popped up asking what I wanted to do.

  It was the entire season of the show, and there was no way to skip to the end. So I had to fast-forward instead.

  Maybe I would watch it later, when some of the pain had subsided and it didn’t feel so fresh and terrible.

  I slowed down during the horseback riding group date and watched as Dante and I had our race. I remembered that Genesis had gone to help one of the girls whose horse had wandered off, and she went down toward the stream. She got the girl back on track, and a rider emerged from the woods.

  It had to be Rafe, because I knew for a fact that at that very moment Dante had been with me.

  What about editing? What if they filmed it later? There were times we had to do things over again because the lighting was wrong or the sound guy had stepped into the shot. Maybe they’d had Genesis go to the stream again later on, only this time Dante showed up. I watched some of the Genesis and Rafe scenes, thinking it still might be a scam.

  But now there was no question. As I listened to him talk, watched him move, saw his smile, I knew, without a doubt, that it was Rafe.

  Rafe had been there from the beginning, romancing half of the women on the show while Dante had the other half.

  Only there hadn’t been any other half for Dante. There had been only me, and the show made very certain to show it. All of our dates, all of our conversations that I had thought had been private, out there for public consumption.

  Kat had been right. I could see it on his face. Documented evidence that Dante had loved me. It made the breath catch in my throat to see what I’d had.

  And what I had thrown away.

  I fast-forwarded again, until a point when the footage was different. This hadn’t been edited yet. There was no music, no slick scene changes, no voiceovers from Harris. It was me finding Rafe. I didn’t watch that. I didn’t want to relive it. But then there was Rafe in the backyard, getting Dante, who was waiting for me. I didn’t hear want to hear what they said, because the look on Dante’s face tore me apart. The cameras only barely kept up with him.

  He came running out front, trying to stop me. And I just drove off.

  Then it was the finale, and Rafe went first. Genesis waited for him in a beautiful jade-green gown that shimmered in the light. She didn’t look happy as he approached, and he looked brokenhearted.

  Before he could speak, she said, “I’m only here because I have to be. I’m not interested in hearing what you have to say.”

  “Genesis, please, let me explain why I did what I did.”

  “There’s nothing you can say or do to fix this,” she told him with a mixture of anger and sadness as she walked to the waiting limo.

  I’d been so obsessed with my own feelings, that even after I’d realized that Rafe had been there, I hadn’t given a single thought to what Genesis had been going through. I would force Taylor to give me her number, and I would call her first thing in the morning to apologize. I had been totally out of line and had no right to speak to her the way that I did. She was
suffering from the deception, too.

  Then there was Dante with Abigail. She wore a tight black sheath, leaving no room for her to even breathe. She must have had ten pairs of Spanx on under that thing. She held her left hand out in front her, as if she expected there to be a ring on it soon.

  She looked far too smug and tossed her Disney princess hair as Dante approached. He stood in front of her.

  “I’m sorry to do it like this, but I’m not in love with you. I’m in love with Lemon, and have been for a long time. I just found out that she saw my twin brother with Genesis and thought it was me. So now I’m going to find her and think of some way to make sure that she’s mine forever.”

  My heart pounded so fast I thought it might rupture. He walked away from her, and she started screaming at him, and I couldn’t understand what she was saying.

  Because her real accent most definitely was not British. If I wasn’t mistaken, that was one thick Cajun accent spewing out of her mouth. But what about her “family” in England? Knowing her, she had probably just hired some actors to keep up the lie.

  A small part of me enjoyed that revelation as I imagined how that clip would play nonstop on the Internet indefinitely. Karma truly existed. But this was filmed last night. Why hadn’t he come? I shut the laptop. It was late, but I needed to clear my head, and I felt like the walls were pressing in on me. I slipped on a pair of shoes and went downstairs.

  My mother was in the kitchen, directing the cleanup. “Everyone’s left.”

  “Thank you for handling everything. I’m going to go for a walk.”

  “Take the dogs with you. I’m sure they’re dying to get out of the basement.”

  I would not think about the last time I freed them from the basement. When Dante had asked me to consider being with him, and I already wanted to. Even then my heart knew what my head refused to accept.