And if that happened, I would have to go home to Georgia, tail between my legs, proving everyone right. Like the bosses from my summer coffee-fetching internships, who immediately assumed I was nothing more than a dumb blonde and predicted that I wouldn’t be able to hack it in the real world, or my family, who thought I didn’t need a job.
I had worked so hard to prove myself. I couldn’t fail miserably. I reckoned I would do whatever I had to do to keep my company afloat.
Even pretending to be falling in love with Dante whenever a camera was pointed at us.
I headed straight for the kitchen and threw open the door of the stocked pantry. There was mostly quinoa, granola, and dried fruit, but I did manage to find a box of Keebler Mini Fudge Stripes in the one-hundred-calorie packs.
Ripping the box apart, I sat in the middle of the pantry and started hoovering up cookies as fast as I could get the packages open. I had always been a terrible stress eater, and I knew I’d be kicking myself tomorrow.
Or later today. After I got some sleep.
I didn’t feel tired anymore though. I was so wired. Like I was mainlining coffee.
My cheeks felt wet, and I realized that I was crying angrily. I wasn’t the type to run away from anything. My daddy used to say that in a fight between me and a grizzly bear, he’d put his money on me. And now I was cowering in a pantry. I hated that I’d been so weak in front of Matthew Burdette. But he held all the cards, and I had none. I never liked feeling powerless and out of control.
It was in this state that Dante found me. Sitting on a pantry floor, streaks of black mascara running down my face, surrounded by crumpled-up empty packages.
“Limone, what’s wrong? What happened?” He crouched down next to me, his expression of concern too much for me. It made me want to cry more.
Instead I sniffled, ordered myself to stop crying, and wiped the tears from my cheeks. I tried to calmly and dispassionately recap my run-in with Burdette. Dante sat down next to me and put his arm around me. It took all the willpower I possessed not to turn and cry on his very broad and very comforting shoulders.
“Do you want me to go and talk to him?”
“No!” I barked, startling him. “That’s the absolute last thing I want you to do. I’m a big girl and I don’t need you to protect me. I can do this on my own, even though nobody else thinks I can.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you how my parents and my grandma don’t want me to work. My momma wants me to come home, marry Sterling, and go volunteer at the Junior League with her. Sterling thinks it’s pointless for me to have a job since he can support us. But this is important to me. I want to work. I want to succeed on my own, on my own merits and talents, and not ride somebody else’s coattails or be somebody’s accessory.”
I was perilously close to crying again. I drew in a big breath and continued.
“This is important to me. I can’t mess it up. Does that make any sense?”
It was pathetic how desperately I wanted him to get it. Nobody else seemed to.
“It does,” he said, his arm tightening around me slightly.
Relief crashed into me, and I wanted to cry yet again. I blamed the lack of sleep.
“It’s a good thing these cookies come in these hundred-calorie packs, because now it’s easy to count the thousands of calories I just demolished.” I shook my head. “Such a mistake.”
“This is why you should spend more time with me. I don’t make mistakes.”
“Oh, really?”
“I thought I did once, but I was mistaken.”
It felt good to laugh.
Taylor wasn’t laughing, though, when she found us sitting on the floor. “Dante, we need you to get some rest before the group date later on today. They’ve set you up in the master suite. Lemon, I think you and I need to have a discussion.”
This time I let Dante help me to my feet, which turned out to be a mistake. Once I was upright, he tugged my hand and pulled me a little too close. “I’m glad we’re friends,” he said.
Friends. Yes. Friends. That was all we were, I told my prickly skin and racing heart.
I needed to remember that.
Despite being upset, Taylor was a woman with a pulse, and so she watched Dante until he left the room. “So you’re staying?”
“I’m staying.”
“I’m assuming you don’t have the right clothes.”
I ran my fingers through my short, blonde bob, certain I looked terrible. “Sure don’t.”
“Okay,” she said, taking out her phone and typing. “You’re going to need some dresses and shoes and accessories.”
“What about the stylist?” He had offered me dresses at the hotel.