Droopy and Snoopy came tumbling up the steps, and they got even more excited when I asked them if they wanted to go outside. I grabbed one of my old jackets, still hanging by the back door, and went out to wander around the ranch.
Fireflies winked their little lights off and on, and for the first time, they didn’t immediately remind me of Sterling and our first kiss. Which made me glad, because I had always loved fireflies and I didn’t want him to taint everything in my life.
I ended up in the orchard, and I let the dogs off of their leashes. They started to frolic around, sniffing everything in sight.
It mended my heart just a little to see their joyful exploration. A full moon hung overhead, casting a mellow, soft light over everything. I found the family lemon tree. A soft wind rustled the leaves overhead, and the faint scent of lemon blossoms surrounded me. There were initials carved on it from the members of my family who had kissed their true loves here.
Something I might never have.
I sat down at the base of the tree, leaning my back against it. I had to find Dante. I had to explain. Kat would help me. She knew what this felt like. If I could just make him understand me, if I could find a way to make him see . . . but how could I? I’d ruined everything. Like in one of those romantic movies where you get so frustrated with the hero and heroine because if they would just talk and communicate, then everything would be fine. There wouldn’t be an obstacle. I had been that idiotic. I had been totally irrational and unreasonable and let all my issues and baggage cloud everything, and it had cost me one of the best men I had ever known.
Snoopy perked up his ears, and Droopy followed. They started to bark, which could only mean someone was approaching.
I got the shock of my life when I saw Dante in his wrinkled Armani suit, looking exhausted. The dogs ran over to him, circling his legs. He patted them briefly and walked until he stopped a few feet in front of me.
“Dante! You’re here.” I stood up and leaned against the tree for support. “I didn’t think you would come. I thought I had ruined everything and you’d never want . . .”
He held up his hand. “Are you still getting married?”
My tears made it hard to see. “No.”
He came so close. “Do you love me?”
“Yes, I love you—” He didn’t let me finish, and his mouth was on mine and everything exploded into flame. He grabbed me by the waist when my legs gave out. He literally took my breath away.
And whatever I’d thought about all the other kisses we’d ever shared, this one put them all to shame.
When he finally stopped, I felt like I had been drugged. He stroked the side of my face, my neck, my shoulders and arms. “My darling Limone, how could you ever think that I wouldn’t come for you? I love you.”
“Because I didn’t trust you when you asked me to. I thought the worst of you.”
He seemed to be considering this. “Maybe that should matter more to me. It doesn’t. At some point, when I have loved you for many years and been one hundred percent faithful to you, there will come a time when you will be nothing but absolutely secure. I can wait for that.”
I hugged him tight, and he rested his head on mine. Then I took him by the hand, tugging him to sit down next to me. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to keep standing if he kept kissing and holding me like that. He took off his suit jacket and laid it on the ground so we could sit on it. He pulled me to him, wrapping me up in his arms.
“About Rafe being on the show . . .”
“I thought you knew,” he interrupted me. “I would have told you if I’d known. But to be honest, I don’t know how you could have been confused. He’s clearly nowhere near as handsome as I am.”
I kissed him then, a soft sweet kiss, to show him how happy I was.
“I don’t think I mentioned it earlier, but you look unbelievably awful right now,” he said with such sweetness and love I wanted to melt.
“You look hideous, too,” I said. More kissing. Then he looked up. “Wait. Is this the famous lemon tree?”
“It is. But we didn’t get to share our first kiss here.”
“We did,” he said, kissing me on my temple. “It was our first kiss since you said that you loved me, and that’s just as good.” He played with the ends of my hair, and I leaned into his hand. “By the way, would you mind saying that again? I want to make sure I didn’t imagine it.”
“That again.”
I giggled when he rolled his eyes. “Limone!”
This time I held his face in my hands, making sure that he could see it in my eyes, and then I told him with my voice. “I love you.” Then I made sure to show him with my lips.
When that kiss ended, he again held me tightly, like he never wanted to let me go. “Why did it take you so long to get here?” I asked.
“There was a huge storm that grounded us, but first I had to deal with production issues. I wanted to come after you immediately, but Matthew Burdette started screaming about everything and threatening you and saying how he was going to ruin your company. I couldn’t let that happen. I told him I would stay and finish filming, and that I had proof of his affair with Abigail and that if he was smart he’d do whatever he had to do to keep you happy.”
“You blackmailed someone for me?”
He pulled my hand up to his lips and kissed it. “Technically it was a bluff, because I don’t have evidence, but he doesn’t know that. And I would blackmail the whole world for you. I think now I have finally completed my last quest by saving your company, and truly proven myself worthy, don’t you?”
I did. He really was my knight in shining Armani.
He put my hand back down and looked at me intently, seriously. “I would give you the world if I could. I would do anything for you. Because you’re going to be my wife.”
“What?” I was both elated and terrified. “Let’s not put the cart before the horse. I just put my parents through all this mess. I don’t think I should be discussing marriage to anybody right now.”
“But you will marry me.” He sounded so confident and sure.
“That doesn’t sound like asking.”
“I’m not asking. Every time I ask you for anything you say no. So now I’m telling. You will marry me, you will be my princess, we will have babies, and I will have my nightclub and you will have your PR firm and we will live happily ever after in our palace.”
I should have been mad. But he was right. We totally would.
“I know it’s scary for you, but if you do me the honor of giving me all of your trust and all of your love, I promise you will never regret that choice.”
Shaking my head, I stopped him. “You don’t have to say anything else or promise me anything else. This time it’s my turn to promise you. I promise to always believe in you. To always assume the best. To always trust you. To always, always love you.”
He had that mischievous glint in his eye. “Those sound a lot like marriage vows.”
“Hush,” I told him. Then I made sure he couldn’t talk.
Snoopy pounced on us, apparently tired of being left out of the affection. We petted him, but never took our eyes off each other. “I forgot to tell you that Rafe said he apologizes for anything that he might have done to upset you, and he promises to never do anything else that will make you angry ever again. He also said that if I cared at all about my own personal safety, I should be careful to never make you mad, either. So recognizing that I’m taking my life into my own hands here, I have something for you and I’m not sure how you will react.”
He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a black velvet ring box, making my breath hitch. Giddy excitement bubbled up inside me, my pulse skyrocketing out of control. My hands trembled in anticipation. He opened it up to reveal an enormous pale yellow diamond ring in an antique silver setting. “You don’t have to say anything yet. But I got this from my mother’s vault when we were in Monterra visiting my family. It was my great-grandmother’s ring.”
“The one from the gypsy legend?”
“The very same.”
I had been right. Dante chose the absolute perfect ring for me. I had loved the magical story of how his great-grandparents found each other. I already adored this beautiful ring, but not nearly as much as I adored him.
“And guess what kind of diamond this is?” He took it out of the box. “A lemon diamond. It’s fated, don’t you think?”
I did.
I even let him put the ring on me. And, not surprisingly, it fit.
“How do you feel, Princess Lemon?”
I looked at my lemon diamond engagement ring in the moonlight, and then I looked at the handsome, wonderful, amazing man next to me who would be my husband. I put a hand on the side of his face.
“I feel happier than a tick on a fat dog.”
“And that’s a good thing?” he asked.
I laughed, and was so happy that I would spend the rest of my life loving and laughing with him.
“Yes, darlin’. That’s a very good thing.”
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
I know that there are so many ways that you could choose to spend what little free time you have, and I am beyond grateful that you chose to spend it with Dante and Lemon.
If you want to find out just how much groveling Rafe will have to do to win Genesis back in the next book, please sign up for my mailing list on my website: www.sariahwilson.com.
It’s an e-book jungle out there, and authors need all the help they can get. Reviews will help other readers discover and experience that royal Monterran amore. I would love it if you could leave a review on sites like Amazon and Goodreads, should you feel so inclined.
Thank you!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have to begin by thanking Kindle Scout/Kindle Press, the Kindle Scout team, and most especially Caroline Carr, for going above and beyond for me. This book exists because of your actions behind the scenes.
Very special thanks to Anh Schluep, for calling me the day before my birthday and making a decades-long dream come true by offering me a publishing contract to write romance. I will always be grateful for that, and I’m still screaming on the inside. Thank you to Chris Werner for jumping onboard and taking care of everything.
Thank you to the Montlake team, to Susan, Marlene, and Jessica, for all your hard work in bringing Monterra to the rest of the world. Thanks to my developmental editor, Melody Guy, for helping me to explain what I meant to say but didn’t, and for leaving LOLs in the margin, reassuring me that I’d made at least one person laugh. Thank you to Montreux Rotholtz and Jessica Fogleman for cleaning up all my grammatical messes and to Kerrie Robertson for the cover. My little sister, Charity Byrd, must be thanked for reading this book before anyone else in the world did, and for letting me know what she liked and what she didn’t.
Thank you to the lights of my life, my four children, who are growing faster than I would like and who are becoming far too independent. Thank you for thinking that being a writer is no big deal and always keeping me grounded, and for filling my heart with so much joy.
And I always save the best for last—my love and thanks to my husband, Kevin, who supports me and loves me and makes this journey through life worthwhile. When people tell me that no fictional hero could actually be so nice, so charming, so smart, so handsome, or so loving in real life, I only have to look at you to know that they’re wrong.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sariah Wilson has never jumped out of an airplane, never climbed Mount Everest, and is not a former CIA operative. She has, however, been madly, passionately in love with her soul mate and is a fervent believer in happily-ever-afters—which is why she writes romance. Royal Chase is her sixth happily-ever-after novel. She grew up in Southern California, graduated from Brigham Young University (go Cougars!) with a semi-useless degree in history, and is the oldest of nine (yes, nine) children. She currently lives with the aforementioned soul mate and their four children in Utah, along with three tiger barb fish, a cat named Tiger, and a recently departed hamster that is buried in the backyard (and has nothing at all to do with tigers).
Her website is www.sariahwilson.com.
Royal Chase (The Royals of Monterra) Page 26
