He had told me he had to stay up all night with the other associates. I wondered if she was one of them, and what kind of work they’d been up to. “Are you working with Sterling?”
She gave me a catlike smile. “We do work together. Intimately.”
I didn’t know if she was just trying to mess with me, but in that moment I knew what was happening with them like I knew with Abigail and Burdette. No wonder he turned his phone off. They were sleeping together.
Strangely enough, the murderous anger faded. I just didn’t care. “I hope the two of you will be very happy together,” I said, and she looked both confused and shocked as I walked off.
I went out on to the back porch, needing to have a second to myself. It definitely said something that Dante’s cheating had sent me into a downward spiral that made me wonder whether I should seek psychiatric care, and Sterling’s wasn’t even a blip on the radar.
Looking up at the stars, I had a moment where I wondered whether I had misunderstood the situation at the mansion. What if that was Rafe? Something had felt off about him, but I had assumed it was the anger and the cheating. But what if it wasn’t? What if he had really been there? But wouldn’t I have known that?
Was it possible? Anything was possible. The South could rise again. Possible, but not probable.
What if I had been wrong?
I wasn’t. If I had been wrong, Dante would have been here by now. He would have called his private plane and would have been in Atlanta before I got here. He would have called. He would have ridden up in his shining armor on his white horse to take me back to his castle, all his quests completed. Something.
Instead I had a big fat nothing.
No job, no fiancé, nothing.
I went into the kitchen, surrounded by the catering staff my mother had hired. Nobody tried to talk to me, and I liked being anonymous and ignored. Nobody to ask me if I was excited about tomorrow, nobody making innuendoes about the honeymoon, nobody telling me how lucky I was to be marrying Sterling.
I didn’t want to be surrounded by my loved ones, standing alongside the man I was supposed to marry, because I realized that the only man I had ever truly loved was Dante.
Dante, who didn’t come for me. Dante, who had cheated on me. Dante, who could never be the man I needed him to be.
The doorbell rang again, and I heard my mother calling my name. I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to stand around talking to people and pretending like my life wasn’t in shambles.
“Lemon!” she said as she came into the kitchen, looking very bewildered. “There’s someone at the front door to see you.”
It was him. He had finally come.
Chapter 26
Sometimes I think it would be the best thing in the world to be someone’s favorite hello and hardest good-bye.
Heart in my throat, I followed my mother. What would I do when I saw him? Should I tell him to leave? That I didn’t want to hear any more of his lies?
Some part of my heart pleaded with me to listen.
But it wasn’t Dante standing in the foyer.
It was Taylor. “Can we talk? Privately?”
I led her into my father’s study and closed the pocket doors behind us.
“Is that your rehearsal dinner?” she asked, sitting down on the brown leather sofa. She started chewing the end of her fingernails. I sat in my father’s favorite armchair, facing her.
“It is.” What was she doing here? Did she think she was going to convince me to come back to film the finale?
That would not happen.
“So you’re still getting married tomorrow?”
“Not that it is any of your business, but no, I’m not.”
She leaned forward. “Because you’re in love with Dante.”
I could feel a massive headache coming on, and I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What do you want, Taylor?”
It was then that I noticed the clear case she had in her hands, small and thin. It was a DVD. “This is the whole show, with some unedited parts at the end of the finale. You need to watch it. It will explain everything. I wanted to e-mail it to you, but I still had your phone and I didn’t know if you’d check your computer.”
The finale wasn’t scheduled to be filmed until tomorrow. They had filmed it early? Why?
She pulled my cell phone out of her pocket and handed both items to me. There were like a billion missed calls and texts, most of them from Kat and Dante. I turned my phone off and put the DVD down.
“You have to watch it. Because Rafe was telling the truth. That was not Dante. Dante was outside in the gazebo waiting for you, and you interrupted Rafe and Genesis.”
Now he had Taylor doing his dirty work? I ignored the piece of my heart that leapt with hope. I knew better. “Did he send you here to lie to me?”