Royal Games (The Royals of Monterra) (21 page)

Even now, just the memory of that night still managed to bring tears to my eyes. I turned around, not willing to let him see.

I heard the bathroom door close as I rubbed at my eyes. He must have gone in to change. For the benefit of my virgin eyes, I supposed. I went over to the armoire, digging through the clothes. Amanda had left some things there, things she probably hadn’t worn since high school. Taking off my wet shoes and socks, I pulled off Rafe’s sweats and put on a pair of hers. They came mid-calf on me and were tight, but they were dry.

Her shirts were out of the question. Every single one was too tight and too short for me to put on and wear around Rafe.

I settled on the smallest T-shirt of Max’s I could find. It was green and had the outline of the state of Iowa on it, and said, “Kiss me, I’m Iowish.”

The zipper on my dress caught. Oh no. I tugged at it, but my fingers still felt cold and didn’t work quite right. I wanted to get changed before he walked back in the room and saw parts of me I had no intention of showing him. I twisted at a weird angle, trying to hurry.

“Problems?”

My heart slammed into my throat as I straightened up. When had he opened the door? He leaned against the doorway, wearing pants that were too big and too short, and a red-and-black plaid flannel shirt that made me giggle.

“What?”

“Your shirt looks like you’re about to go hunting wabbits.”

That reference he didn’t seem to get. He pointed at the shirt I’d laid out on the bed. “Probably better than a blatant invitation.”

Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. My cheeks colored.

“Turn around. I’ll help you.”

I did as he asked and turned, lifting my hair up to give him easier access. He messed with the zipper until it slid easily, smoothly, with his knuckles running over my exposed skin as he did so. My pulse was beating frantically. I stepped away, holding my dress against my chest. It was too much.

“Thanks,” I said before running into the bathroom like a coward. A big window at the top of the shower gave me enough light to see.

After I got changed and hung up my dress on the shower rod to dry alongside his clothes, I searched for a blow dryer until I realized how truly dumb that was, given that we had no electricity.

He had left a pair of dry socks for me on the bed. He was crouched over the fireplace. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“Making a fire.”

“How do you know how to make a fire?” I asked as I went into the kitchen, looking to see if there was anything to eat. Rafe had mentioned after we left the club that he was hungry, and I’d made him drive home. If I had just gone to a restaurant with him, we would have discovered the flat tires while still in civilization and would never have ended up here. Since I was the reason we were in this situation, the least I could do was feed him.

Despite my expectation that the cabin would be fully stocked, the fridge only had condiments and a dozen eggs that were so far past their expiration date that I worried they might fight back if I tried to cook them. The cabinets were no better. They had been totally cleaned out except for some cans of dog food for Max’s pet. I did find an unopened box of Cheez-Its, but they’d been there so long that the crackers had disintegrated into a kilo of Cheez-It powder.

“I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos since I got here,” Rafe explained, and I turned my attention back to him and his fire-building efforts.

“Do you want me to help?”

He gave me a look of displeasure. “You’re implying that I lack the basic abilities of an average caveman. I can make a fire. You do realize that you’re slandering my masculinity, don’t you?”

I bit the inside of my cheek so that I wouldn’t laugh.

There was a noise outside that couldn’t be from the wind. It sounded like a door slamming shut on a car. My throat closed in as my heart beat desperately against my ribcage, like it wanted to break free. “Did you hear that?” I whispered.

Rafe took one look at my expression and went over to the door, yanking it open. The cold air rushed inside, but I didn’t move. He went out onto the covered porch, holding the lantern up. There were no further scary sounds. Just the wind.

“I don’t hear anything,” he said as he came back in.

“I swear I heard something,” I murmured. I was freezing, so I pulled the quilt off of the bed and wrapped myself up, sitting on the couch. Had I imagined it? What if right now John-Paul was closing in on us? We were totally helpless out here. Stranded.

Straining my ears, I kept listening as Rafe went back to making the fire. After several minutes passed and I didn’t hear anything else, I started to calm down. It must have been my overactive imagination.

Eight matches later, he managed to get the fire going past the kindling stage and caught the actual logs. He surveyed it with satisfaction before coming to sit in the chair next to the couch. We watched the fire for a while, the way it danced and burned over the logs.

“We need to talk. And we’re going to talk. I’m going to explain why I did what I did.”

Chapter 21

“That was one of my conditions,” I said, alarmed. “No explanation conversations.”

“You said no talking about it in the car. We’re not in the car.”

Darn him and his infernal and correct logic.

Smoke started to hang heavy in the room, making my eyes water and my lungs ache. “Did you open the flue?” I asked, running over to the fireplace. It wasn’t enough that we’d nearly frozen to death? Now we had to suffocate? So much for his “I know how to make a fire.”

I opened the flue with the knob, and the smoke started to dissipate. I also opened a window in the kitchen, but the wind blew too hard and too much snow came in for me to leave it open for long.

“What’s a flue?” he asked as I shut the window. Poor Rafe. He probably had flue-opening servants, too.

“Something you make sure is open when you build a fire so everybody around you doesn’t die from asphyxiation.”

“Where’s a smoke alarm when you need one?” he teased, and I saw that he had moved over to the couch. He patted a spot next to him and I sat down, holding the quilt around me like a shield.

I couldn’t delay the inevitable forever. I had to let him explain. Even if it hurt, even if it didn’t excuse what he did, I needed to know.

“First, I’m sorry about tonight and everything that’s happened. It’s my fault.”

Not what I had expected. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Wasn’t it?”

He didn’t control the weather, and the mugging and tire puncturing could have just as easily happened to me without him there. It might have had nothing to do with him. It was my fault for being in Iowa City. That had been my decision. Of the two of us, I was probably more to blame. But it had all been an accident.

Or one giant cosmic joke.

I refused to believe that it had been orchestrated.

“Did you stop to think that things might have been worse if you hadn’t been here? What if I’d been alone in Old Bess in my dress and trapped in this storm?” I shouldn’t have been so insistent on having things my way. We probably wouldn’t be stuck in this cabin. I took one hand out of the blanket shield and stroked his forearm. Solely to comfort him. It had nothing to do with how much I liked the way his skin felt.

He put his other hand on top of mine, and I had to pull back my rogue appendage. I needed all my wits about me for whatever he was about to say.

“Regardless, I am sorry. Not only for tonight,” he said, as he looked up at the ceiling and let out a deep breath. “But for everything. For the way that I hurt you. For the deception.”

I didn’t say anything. I would let him talk.

He rubbed the inside of one of his palms with his thumb, and his eyes got a far-off look. “I met Veronique Renault when I was twelve and at boarding school. I had just discovered girls, and she was beautiful and an heiress. I fancied myself in love with her. So much so that I didn’t date anyone else. All through boarding school, we were boyfriend and girlfriend. Which didn’t mean much at first, but had more meaning as time went on.”

He coughed, clearing his throat. The smoke was nearly gone. “When I was eighteen, I decided I wanted to marry her. I proposed, and she happily accepted. Dante tried to talk me out of it. He had heard rumors about her, and he thought I could do better. My parents were livid. There was no way they were going to let their teenage son marry. It caused a rift in my family.”

The pain in his voice was evident. “We made plans to elope when I graduated. We got an apartment together in Paris, and I enrolled at the university. A year later, Veronique was murdered.”

Of all the things I had imagined him saying, that was the absolute last. I gasped, my hand flying to my mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

“The authorities initially suspected me. I couldn’t blame them. They always suspect the boyfriend. Or the fiancé, to be more accurate. The paparazzi were relentless. I had lost my love, and they thought I had done it. I had no privacy, no time to grieve. I didn’t want to go home to Monterra, where I could have been left alone, because part of me blamed my family. I thought that if they’d just accepted us, maybe it wouldn’t have happened. I know now that wasn’t true, but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind. I even blamed myself. Given who I was, the resources I had, I should have been able to keep her safe.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Everyone else was right. The rumors were true. Veronique had a revolving string of lovers and cheated on me every chance she got. One of those men murdered her out of jealousy. It didn’t matter that they caught him. Then the tabloids said my parents had paid someone to take the fall and that I was actually guilty. No matter where I went, no matter what I did, there were cameras and accusations. I had to deal with my loss while I also dealt with the discovery that I had never really known her. One of her friends admitted to me that Veronique had never loved me and had only stayed with me because she wanted to be a princess more than anything. My relationship had been fictional, and I had been betrayed.”

“It wasn’t fictional,” I said, unable to stay quiet. My heart ached for him and the pain that he had felt. I couldn’t help it. “Your feelings were real.” Even if that skanky, cheating French slut’s feelings were not.

He let out a deep sigh. “Have you ever felt like you owed someone everything?”

That was a change from what we had been talking about. “Yes,” I replied, because I did. It was how I felt about Aunt Sylvia.

“Dante saw what was happening. He took it upon himself to save me. He started going out with a different actress or model or noblewoman every night of the week. He called the paparazzi himself, telling them where he would be and who he would be with. I transferred to MIT in the States, while my brother put on a circus act to draw the spotlight away from me. For the past four years, he has protected me by feeding the tabloids with his supposed conquests. None of the relationships were real. They were only for the publicity. But he earned himself an undeserved reputation as a heartbreaker and a playboy, just for my benefit.”

Lemon and I’d had a conversation one night where we talked about our pasts. She explained to me that she’d never had a boyfriend who hadn’t cheated on her. I could see now why she’d held back where Dante was concerned. And why it must have destroyed her to see me and Rafe together, if she’d thought he was his brother. It would have been confirmation of her worst fears. He must have told her the truth and she forgave him.

Which I understood, because the truth was having the same kind of effect on me.

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “There are no words to say how much I owe my brother. He allowed me to heal. He gave me the privacy and anonymity that I needed. He let me come to terms with what had happened. So when he asked me to do this show, to pretend that we were the same person, I immediately said yes. Dante had never asked me for anything, and after all that he had done for me, I couldn’t say no.”

I would have done the same thing for Aunt Sylvia. I
had
done the same thing for her. She wanted me to go on the show, and despite my reservations, I did. For her. I couldn’t tell her no, either.

He shifted his position again, turning his body toward me, his voice clear and strong. “Dante had fallen in love with Lemon, and he would have done anything to make her happy. She had a publicity firm that she was trying to get off the ground. Dante convinced our family to hire her. He volunteered to be on the show to help. And he begged me to do whatever I could to make the show a success to benefit her career.”

I pulled my blanket tighter around me. Despite the weather outside, the ice wall enclosing my heart had shattered into a million pieces. And like the Grinch’s, because it was no longer bound, my heart grew three sizes.

“It was just something I had to get through. I didn’t imagine I would meet anyone that I liked. I didn’t want to. I hadn’t had a real relationship since Veronique died. I thought that I might never be happy again. I thought I would never be able to trust a woman again.” His eyes flicked up to mine. “Until I met you.”

My breath caught. If someone had asked me to describe each emotion I felt in that moment, I wouldn’t have been able to. I was moved by what he had said. Excited. Sad for what he had gone through. Angry at him for not telling me sooner. Angry at myself for not letting him tell me. Forgiving. And a million other things. But they were all tangled up, and I couldn’t figure out which ones were the strongest or which ones I should listen to.

“I can’t describe what happened the night we met. There you were tangled up in your evening gown, dangling on that fence, and you were laughing. It made my heart feel light. I didn’t know what to think about you. But from that first moment, as clear as I knew anything else, I knew we were meant to be together. I knew I would fall in love with you. Somehow, I just knew you were the one for me. I didn’t want that to happen. I fought it. But I couldn’t stay away from you.”

He had his arm along the couch cushions, and by pure instinct, I reached out to take his hand. He interlaced our fingers. “I started seeking you out. I thought about you constantly. I kissed you, even when I shouldn’t have. The more I fell for you, the more I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t. I’d made a promise to Dante, and I always keep my word. But it made me sick that I was lying to you. Especially after Cozumel.”

“Why didn’t you tell me the truth in the elevator? When I told you everything, why weren’t you just honest with me then?”

His fingers tightened around mine. “Because it wasn’t just my secret. It involved Dante, and I had to talk to him first. When we got back, I talked to him. I talked and talked. And he begged me not to tell you. He was afraid of what you might do, that you would tell the others and ruin the show. And he was worried that if something went wrong, Matthew Burdette, the show’s owner, would ruin Lemon’s business.”

“I wouldn’t have told anyone. I would have kept it between us.”

“I know,” he said, his thumb stroking my hand, setting off little whirlpools of fire. “But Dante doesn’t know you like I do. Now I would choose differently. If I could go back and do it over, I would have told you the first night we met.”

“Since Doctor Who isn’t real, there’s no TARDIS to let you go back and change it.”

“And it is the biggest regret of my life.”

Mine too.

“That night in my room on the show,” he went on, and my skin heated. It was a night I didn’t think I’d ever forget. “I wanted to tell you then. I tried. Three different times. It’s no excuse, but I wanted you to know the truth before things . . . progressed.”

And I had told him I didn’t care. I couldn’t exactly accuse him and get angry with him when he had tried to tell me and I hadn’t let him. Should I apologize? Say something?

But I didn’t have a chance to speak. “I know how selfish I’ve been. I probably should have left you alone and let you move on with your life. But I couldn’t. I missed you so much that it was like somebody had torn out my heart and carried it across the ocean. I tried to live my life. But all I wanted was to talk to you. See you. Hold you. And even if you never want to be with me again, I had to at least try to make things up to you. To at least be your friend. Because I don’t want to live the rest of my life without you in it.”

What could you say to something like that? My heart had jumped up into my ears. Despite what I’d thought, he hadn’t come here to manipulate me or force his way into my life. He wasn’t trying to win anyone over or get me into a relationship. He just wanted to be near me.

He tugged on my hand, pulling me even closer. I put my legs on top of his lap. But he didn’t hold me. Because he still wanted to look at me. He reached out, holding my face and tenderly stroking my cheeks.

“I love you.”

What the Spock? “You love me?” I asked in a teeny voice. It probably should have been obvious, but sometimes I was slow on the uptake. And it was one thing to guess at his feelings, but it was totally different to hear him say the words.

A spectacular smile lit up his whole face, the kind that threatened to set the snow surrounding us on fire. There was a smokiness in his voice that had nothing to do with the flue. “I’m not like my brother. I can’t quote poetry. I can only tell you how I feel. And I feel like I have always loved you and have spent my whole life waiting to find you. Even when I didn’t want to love you, because it hurt, I still did. It’s not something I could control. I couldn’t stop loving you any more than I could stop breathing—it’s become so much a part of me.”

He might not have been able to recite poems, but he had a poetic soul. A thousand thoughts screamed inside my head. That I should say it back. Wondering if I did still love him, too. Recognizing the enormity of this moment and what it meant to me that he said he loved me. Finally understanding why he did what he did, and finding that I could forgive him for it.

And knowing that I could trust in myself, and in him, and that we could move past this.

Together.

He ran one of his rough thumbs over my lower lip and my bones liquefied.

“I tried to leave you alone. I figured if you wanted to see me, you would contact me. I stayed away for as long as I could, until I couldn’t spend another moment away from you. So I moved here to be near you. But it’s time for me to stop being selfish. Tell me to leave, and I will.”

The thought of him going, the very thing I had said I wanted all along, terrified me. His voice fell lower, and he was practically whispering the words. “But if you think there’s any chance at all that someday you might forgive me, then let me stay and earn back your trust and your love.”

My skin shimmered with heat from the nearness of his lips to mine. I wanted to totally surrender, completely give in. To agree to whatever he said, forget whatever I had to forget.

But that was while I was under the influence. Because, a second later, there was a loud banging at the cabin door. Rafe reluctantly got up to open it, and when he moved away my sanity returned. Outside stood a very anxious Marco, and they began a rapid conversation in Italian.