Royal Games (The Royals of Monterra) (23 page)

“They are?” I said in surprise.

“Well, it’s mostly just me saying it, but everybody nods whenever I bring it up.”

I laughed. “It’s way too soon for that. I haven’t even told him that I love him yet.”

“Do you? Love him?” She sat down on a barstool. “Why am I even asking that? Of course you do. Why haven’t you told him?”

I sat next to her. “It’s kind of dumb.”

“Oh sweetie, you’re in love. Dumb is a prerequisite.”

“I want to be sure. I’m like ninety percent sure, but I want to get all the way to a hundred before I dive back into anything. I don’t want to get hurt again. And he’s being really patient with me.”

Rafe had coaxed Gracie out from under the table and was putting the presents back, trying to fix them as best he could. It was sweet.

“Look at you smiling at him. I don’t know how to tell you this, Genesis, but you’re already at a hundred percent.”

I wanted to tell her she was wrong, but found that I couldn’t.

“So if he didn’t get you a diamond, what did he give you?”

Other than keeping me out of Taylor’s clutches and giving me an easy raid on
Warcraft
? “Nothing yet.”

Whitney finally realized what Gracie had been doing and went over to help clean up the mess her daughter had made.

Rafe’s gift would probably be something extravagant that I would have to make him take back. A new car? Beach house? My own space shuttle? A private island?

Rafe came up behind me, putting his hand on the small of my back. “What are you thinking about?”

“About what kind of present you got me.”

“Who says I got you a present?” he teased.

He’d been doing nothing but giving me gifts since he rolled into town. There was no way he hadn’t gotten me one. So I just gave him a pointed look, which made him chuckle.

“You’re right. I did get you something. But since you told me you hate surprises, I’m trying to decide whether I should tell you what it is or wait. Technically, every gift here is a surprise.”

“Not every gift. Gracie’s opened half of them.”

“True.” He pressed his lips together. “But I think I’d prefer to see your face. A present is a loophole in the no-surprises rule.”

Whit came back and said she needed to get home to put her kids in bed, so she had some of the guests bring the cake out. It was the biggest sheet cake I had ever seen, covered in teal roses. My favorite color. I hoped the twenty-four candles wouldn’t accidentally set off the sprinkler system. Everybody sang “Happy Birthday” to me, and Rafe seemed to sing it the loudest.

“Make a wish!” Sylvia told me when they were finished, as some of the kids sang about me looking like a monkey and smelling like one too. I grinned, mentally picking out the candle I’d make my wish on. I closed my eyes.

I wish I could figure out a way to work things out with Rafe.

And save the farm. And make Aunt Sylvia better.

That was three wishes, but I was the only one who knew. I opened my eyes and blew out all the candles and everybody clapped. Aunt Sylvia had Whitney start cutting up the cake, and Amanda helped to pass it out, giving me the first piece.

I reached over to the cake and plucked out the candle I’d made my wishes on. I sucked the whipped frosting off the edge. I caught Rafe looking at me, and the hooded expression in his eyes made me cough the icing back up. I had to turn away, sticking the candle in my front pocket.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“It’s a tradition. My mom and aunt did it as girls and now I do it. I keep the candle I made a wish on so that my wish can come true.”

One side of his mouth quirked up. “So somewhere you have a box full of wish candles?”

I nodded.

“Do you think your wish will come true this year?”

His gaze fixed on my mouth. I wondered if I had frosting on me. I ran my hand across my lips, making sure. “I think it might.”

Then he smiled for real. “I think it might, too.”

I opened gifts from the people who had to leave first. There were gift cards and homemade cards and lotions and candles and a pile of candy bars big enough that I could have opened my own candy store.

“Don’t eat too much of that candy,” Whitney warned on her way out the door. “The older you get, the harder it is to lose weight because by then your body and your fat have become super good friends.”

She always made me laugh.

The families with small children started to file out, and I thanked everyone for coming. Rafe and his guards took it upon themselves to load all of my presents and cards in the back of his car.

But there was no gift from him. I hadn’t opened every card, because people had generally lost interest in watching me open presents and were talking to one another. Maybe his card was in there somewhere? I didn’t get much of a chance to look, because they were too efficient at getting everything packed up.

Rafe told me we needed to go. He still needed to give me his present. I felt bad about leaving my own party, but I had to admit, I was curious. What did he want to give me that he couldn’t give me in front of everyone else?

When we got back to the farmhouse, he held up a blindfold.

“What do you think you’re going to do with that?”

“Trust me,” he said as he put it on me.

“Okay, but if this ends up someplace weird, you’re in trouble.”

He helped me out of the car, and as soon as I stumbled over some snow, he swooped me up into his arms. I put my arms around him, enjoying not only that he was strong enough to carry someone as tall as me and that it didn’t seem to faze him, but also getting to be close to him like this. I laid my head on his shoulder. As birthday gifts went, so far it was a pretty good one.

He set me down. “Ready?”

“Yes.” Nervousness bounced along my veins, cranking up my excitement.

He took off my blindfold.

In front of me, in her stall, stood Marigold.

I blinked a couple of times, not sure of what I was seeing. It was my horse. My wonderful, beautiful, lazy horse. She came to the front of the stall as I walked over, her ears forward and alert, her eyes bright and wide as she nickered at me.

When my hand went flat against the side of her soft coat, I started to cry. Marigold nudged me with her nose, and I wrapped my arms around her neck, sobbing against it.

After my tears had slowed, I turned to him. “How did you . . . where did you . . . I don’t understand . . .”

Rafe wore the world’s biggest grin. “You’re not going to make me send her back, are you?”

I tightened my arms around her. “I can’t afford to keep her.”

“That won’t be an issue. It’s already taken care of.”

This time, I wouldn’t argue with him. I wouldn’t fight or tell him to return her. I didn’t care that it was too extravagant or too expensive. I would accept his gift and not complain. I loved her too much for that.

Marigold tugged her head away, heading over to her feeding trough. She’d had enough reuniting for one night.

So I went over to Rafe and hugged him tightly instead. “Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he murmured into the top of my hair as his arms held me close. I loved this. Loved the way it felt when he held me. Even in the past when I had been upset with him, I still craved his touch. That had to mean something.

Maybe Whitney was right. Maybe I was already at a hundred percent.

Chapter 23

I was sorely tempted to tell Rafe he could kiss me. But I didn’t want to kiss him just because he’d bought me a horse. When I kissed him, and by now I knew that would happen again, and soon, it would be because I wanted to more than anything else. And there would be no extenuating circumstances.

We walked hand in hand back to his car, where we started to unload my presents. A card slipped out of the pile I had been carrying, and I stopped to pick it up.

When I got into the kitchen, I opened the envelope. But there wasn’t a birthday card inside. It was a folded up piece of paper.

I unfolded it and gasped, and it felt like hot liquid silver filled my mouth. Rafe was immediately by my side. “What is it?”

With a shaky hand, I gave him the paper. It was a black-and-white picture of me on campus, on my way to class. “I’ll see you soon, Mary-Pauline,” was written across the top. I couldn’t tell if it was a recent photo or not. For all I knew he had taken the picture years ago. Rafe took one look at it and got on the phone. First he called his team to come over, and then he called the sheriff.

The picture was blurry, but there was no mistaking that it was me. “He’s messing with me,” I told Rafe.

“Why would he do that?” he said. He had just finished his calls and hung up his phone.

“It’s hard to explain, but that was one of the ways he kept control over everyone. He kept us off balance all the time. We never knew what he would do next.”

My knees didn’t work, and I fell hard onto one of the kitchen chairs. “The worst part of this is that he didn’t mail it. It was with my other presents. Which means either he or someone who follows him came here to Frog Hollow”—here my voice started to tremble—“and left that with my other presents.”

The thought that John-Paul could have been standing next to me, close enough to touch me, made me nauseous. Bile burned in my stomach as I thought of what he could have done to Aunt Sylvia. Or Whitney. Or Nicole.

Or Rafe.

He crouched down next to me. “I swear to you, on my life, I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

Then he held me until the sheriff, his bodyguards, and Max and Aunt Sylvia all arrived at the same time.

Rafe told his men to hire even more security. This being the most exciting thing that had happened to the sheriff’s department in the last ten years, the sheriff promised again to increase their patrols and keep a closer eye on who was coming and going. They promised to contact everyone at the party to see if anybody had any footage on their phone that they could look at.

I stayed up that whole night, unable to sleep. I just sat in the front room, and Rafe stayed with me. He held me the entire night. We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to.

I couldn’t bear the thought of going to the diner. To where he had been the night before. So Rafe got Laura to cover my shift. “I have to go to the church bazaar tonight,” I told him. “I’m in charge.”

He agreed, but only if we had a bunch of bodyguards with us. I didn’t argue. But as the sun rose higher in the sky, I started to feel silly. As I sat encircled in Rafe’s protective arms, I decided that John-Paul would have to be the world’s biggest idiot to try to get at me while I was literally surrounded by men who would love to have an excuse to shoot him. And he might have been a lot of things, but he wasn’t an idiot.

Rafe reluctantly left me to shower and change.

A worn-out and worried Aunt Sylvia took his place on the couch. “Are you glad to have Marigold back?”

I was glad that she didn’t want to talk about John-Paul. “I am. But I feel bad that he gives me those kinds of presents. Like I’m some poor girl he has to take care of.”

My aunt huffed. “That’s ridiculous. Especially since his money is inherited. Would you like him less if he was poor?”

“Of course not!”

“Right. You’re being a reverse snob and feeling bad about something that isn’t his fault. And even if he works hard and earns more, so what? He shouldn’t have it? And he shouldn’t spend it on someone he loves?”

She was right. The money might make me uncomfortable, but I would probably have to figure out a way to cope with it.

I hoped she didn’t see my secret smile. Aunt Sylvia only guessed that Rafe loved me. She didn’t know that he had told me as much. No one did. Not even Whitney. It was between him and me and I intended to keep it that way. At least for a little while.

We all went together to the church bazaar. I felt bad about making them come early with me, but I had a lot of things to set up. Only it didn’t take anywhere near as long as I thought it would because the security team volunteered to help and everything got done super fast.

I enjoyed getting everything ready. I made sure the booths were set up correctly, that the silent auction was ready to accept bids, and that the food for dinner was hot and ready.

Nicole arrived, all dolled up in a little black dress for her MC-ing duties. She hugged me when she saw me. “Sorry I didn’t get to talk to you at your birthday last night, but you were a little busy.”

“Back at you,” I said. “And how are things going with Mr. Shane?”

“Um, completely perfect. Which is worrisome. Like three of the horsemen of the apocalypse are already here and I’m waiting for the fourth one to show up and destroy everything.”

“Or you have nothing to worry about because you’re amazing and Shane appreciates it.”

She was holding a plate of cookies in one hand. “He said he’d bid on my cookies. I’ve been trying to feed him more because you know the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Either you’re a good cook and he’ll marry you to keep getting fed, or you’re a bad cook who will give him food poisoning, making him delirious, and then you can lock it down.”

I put my arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Things will work out the way they’re supposed to work out.”

She shook her head. “Maybe. But enough about me. What’s up with you and Rafe? Way to get back on that goat!”

“I think you mean back on that horse.”

“Back on that horse, under your prince, whatever,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Now I’m going to go put these on the auction table, and then I’m going to stuff food in my mouth until the feelings stop.”

It was time for the bazaar to start. All of Frog Hollow showed up to support the church getting a new roof, and to enjoy the socializing. I ran around the entire night, making sure that everything ran smoothly. I didn’t even get to eat dinner. There were games to supervise and an auction to oversee and activities to get going. I was so glad to be busy. It made it almost impossible for me to think about John-Paul.

Max was in a bluegrass band that met in the city, and he had convinced his bandmates to come out for the evening and play for free. They were up on the stage, and we even had people dancing to their music. Every time I made a pass around the room, I collected money from the various booths. It was so gratifying to see everybody so happy and having so much fun.

Rafe kept an eye on me the whole evening. Whenever I would look up or stop for a moment to catch my breath, he was there. Making me feel safe. And loved.

Nicole volunteered to help me count the money. “I need to know how much this auction has to earn.”

We were both disappointed when we realized we had only collected a little over ten thousand dollars. “I would have to auction everyone off for at least a thousand dollars apiece,” she said sadly. There was no way that would happen.

And it wasn’t like we could buy a third of a roof.

“Just trust in me,” she said. “I have faith we’ll do it.”

I had used up what little trust I had left on Rafe. I could probably give her some paranoia or anxiety. I still had loads of those.

When Nicole started the auction up, her first eligible bachelor was Tommy. “If you win Tommy, you will win a night in Iowa City at the restaurant of your choosing! Do I hear ten dollars?”

“Ten dollars!” someone yelled out.

“Going to bid?” Rafe asked, as he came to stand next to me.

I had told him the details about my single date with Tommy, the one he’d crashed. After I’d finished, Rafe had laughed for like five minutes. Which annoyed me because it was not that funny. “Ha-ha.”

Tommy sold for seventy-five dollars, which seemed awfully high to me. Nicole gave me a panicked look.

Fortunately, she had been smart enough to recruit an entire team of firefighters to come out and participate from a neighboring town. The women in the crowd got to their feet, cheering and holding up their dollar bills like we were at some strip club instead of the house of the Lord.

The firefighters had planned dates ranging from cooking chili to going salsa dancing. Nicole racked up a bunch of money by playing the women off of one another.

“It’s not going to be enough,” I muttered.

“What’s not going to be enough?” Rafe asked.

“We’ve only raised about ten thousand so far. I don’t know how we’re going to raise another twenty thousand dollars.”

Brooke Cooper walked over to us, interrupting our conversation. “Hello, Rafael,” she cooed.

“Ms. Cooper. Nice to see you again.”

She narrowed her eyes, not liking his response. Or lack thereof. So she turned her attention to me. “Genesis, I was hoping to talk to you tonight.”

Uh-oh. This would not be good.

“I wanted to make sure you’d be able to head up the blood drive again. You did such a great job on it last year.” She was being nice to me solely for Rafe’s benefit. She’d never spoken so sweetly to me in her entire life. In fact, even though she was talking to me, she only had eyes for Rafe.

“I . . .” I was going to say yes. It was like a reflex. Somebody asked me for help and I said yes.

I glanced at Rafe next to me, and a power I didn’t know I had swelled up inside me. “No.”

“Thanks, that’s . . . what? Did you say no?” She might have looked stunned if the Botox had allowed her forehead to move.

“I said no. I can’t. I’m too busy right now. You’ll need to find someone else.”

“Oh. Fine. Whatever.” And with a flick of her blonde hair, she was gone.

He put his arm around my waist, pulling me into his side. His pressed a soft kiss against my ear, his breath warm and tingly. “Well done. I don’t enjoy you saying no to me, but I’ve discovered I love it when you say it to other people.”

I elbowed him. “Stop it.”

“She doesn’t seem very nice,” he observed.

“Well, what she lacks in niceness and compassion, she makes up for in expensive shoes. Plus, she was married to Tommy. We have to give her a pass for that reason alone.”

He gave me a half smile and glanced at his watch. “Almost my turn. Are you going to bid on me?”

Now it was my turn to act nonchalant. I lazily shrugged one shoulder. “We’ll see.”

He grabbed my hand and pressed a warm kiss onto my palm before going backstage. I found Aunt Sylvia and Max and sat next to them at their table. Aunt Sylvia handed me her bidding number. “I have a feeling you’ll be needing this soon,” she said with a wink.

Shane came out on stage. Nicole announced, “This is Shane Fitzgerald. His date will be a horse and sleigh ride out to Frog Hollow Lake, where there will be a romantic dinner and heater waiting. Let’s start this bid at a hundred dollars.”

She started it high on purpose. She didn’t want there to be any competition. But someone raised a number. Nicole counter-bid.

“You can’t bid!” someone protested.

“Yes I can!” Nicole retorted. “Three hundred dollars!”

The bidding got all the way up to five hundred, and then Nicole smacked her podium. “One thousand dollars!”

The room went silent, and she asked sweetly, “Are there any other bids? Going once, going twice, sold to me!”

And then Shane walked across the stage to Nicole and grabbed her. He leaned her backward and kissed her in front of the entire audience. Everyone went nuts, whistling and clapping for them.

Nicole’s face was bright red when he finally released her, but she was deliriously happy. “Okay! Our final bid for this evening. Here we have His Royal Highness, Prince Rafael, and his date is . . . to be determined?” She put her hand over the microphone and said something to him. He responded.

“Okay, so Rafe says that his date will accompany him on his private plane to his oldest brother’s wedding in his home country of Monterra, where you will be his personal guest and stay in his palace. Do I hear a hundred dollars?”

“Five hundred dollars!” Brooke called out.

I couldn’t let her get him. I still had some of that club opening money left. I raised my number.

“We have six hundred. Do I hear seven?”

“A thousand!” Brooke said.

She was not going to touch Rafe. “Two thousand dollars!” I yelled, jumping to my feet. Brooke looked at me, as if trying to ascertain how serious I was.

“Three thousand!”

I didn’t have that much left. I sank back down in my chair. Max offered to lend me some money, but I held up my hand. I couldn’t go any more into debt. Not even for Rafe.

“Do I hear four thousand?” Nicole asked, but she knew she wouldn’t get a response. No one but the Coopers had that kind of money here. I swallowed back the lump in my throat. Brooke would get to go to the wedding. The one I had imagined going to, where I had imagined I’d get to see Lemon and Kat and his whole family again. The church needed the money. I had to think about things besides what I wanted.