Did he seriously have to be adorable right now? I was trying to be strong. I reminded myself that he had younger sisters. He was good with kids because he grew up around them, not because of some natural and overwhelming charisma.
Meredith spoke up. “That’s almost the same as Jen-sis! She’s old too!” I loved how all the kids pronounced my name—“Jen-sis” instead of Genesis.
Slanders to my age aside, I’d forgotten that Rafe and Dante had a birthday in October. It was weird to think that at one point I had hoped that we would celebrate it together.
Rafe smiled at the kids. He didn’t smile the same way his twin did. When Dante smiled, he did it with his whole body. There was never a question whether or not he was happy. Rafe’s smiles were slower and harder to come by. You had to earn his smiles, and you had to be paying attention to catch them before they were gone. Dante gave his smile away to everyone, but Rafe’s meant something. It made me feel even stupider for not figuring out their deception earlier.
Although, when we were together, he used to smile at me all the time.
Meredith wiggled with delight at having captured his attention. “Gwandma says you’re a pwince.”
Whitney and her mother tried to shush Meredith at the same time. They had correctly guessed that I was dying inside and wanted him to go away. This close proximity was affecting my ability to properly inhale and exhale.
“Your grandma is right,” Rafe told her.
This seemed to embolden Meredith, and she ignored the adults trying to quiet her. “Do you have a castle?”
“I do.”
“And a pwincess?”
“Someday.” His gaze was intense, burning, and directed at me. Stupid smoldering eyes.
My baby-making parts swung back into full force, letting me know they thought I was an idiot.
“I could mawwy you. Or Jen-sis! She doesn’t have a husband. She could mawwy you.”
All the blood drained from my face. Whitney’s mom picked Meredith up and carried her to the back of the room, effectively ending the conversation. Meredith protested the whole way, apparently wanting to stay and finalize suitable marriages for both of us.
“What do you think, Genesis?” he asked. He was teasing me. I could hear it in his voice, see it in the way his eyes gleamed and how he tilted his head to one side.
But I couldn’t think. Couldn’t move, couldn’t respond. I wanted to shrug off his flirting the way I’d seen Lemon do a thousand times with Dante, but I couldn’t.
When I caught my breath, I finally managed, “I could never marry you. I can’t be Princess Genesis. Think of how stupid that would sound.”
“I’ll abdicate. You don’t have to be a princess if you don’t want to be.”
“You would do that?” I forgot that I was mad. Forgot that he had hurt me. Forgot his lie. Forgot that we were sitting in a roomful of people who would gossip about this interaction for at least the next year. “Are you being serious right now?”
He must have been encouraged by my lack of animosity, because he reached out to put his hand on top of mine. Warmth flooded my hand, sending sparkling tingles up my arm and tiny shivers down my back. “Have I done anything to indicate that I’m not? I’d do anything you ask.”
Fortunately, before I could shove Gracie off of my lap like a sack of potatoes and launch myself at him, Brooke Cooper called the room to order, banging a gavel on a wooden podium. He stood up and walked toward the back of the room, leaving me.
“I’d marry him tomorrow,” I heard Nicole murmur behind me, squashing any hopes I had that our interaction hadn’t been the most entertaining thing to happen in this town since Myrtle Williams got drunk and ran over her cheating husband’s collection of stuffed moose heads with their riding lawn mower.
“You and me both,” Whitney whispered back.
“Calm down,” I told them. “He didn’t ask me to marry him. He was joking.” They exchanged amused glances, but they did stop talking.
I’m mad, I had to remind myself. I’m hurt. He lied to me. He humiliated me on national television. He doesn’t have the right to make me feel the things he makes me feel.
But it wasn’t doing me a lick of good.
No, instead I watched him out of the corner of my eye. He leaned against a large wooden pillar with his arms crossed over his chest. He was the only person I’d ever met who managed to look both devastatingly elegant and completely relaxed at the same time. He had always been clean-shaven on the show, but now he had a five-o’clock shadow, which served to make him even hotter and more masculine than before, if such a thing were possible. Something about him tugged at my heart.