Page 46 of Royal Games (The Royals of Monterra)

“We might have scarred that poor girl for life,” I mused out loud.

“When can we demonstrate that again?” Rafe asked, grabbing the bottom part of my earlobe with his lips. I backed off, trying to ignore the lightning that zapped the right side of my head and was traveling along my veins.

“That is not happening again,” I said, flustered. “You should move on.” I wanted to mean it, but I wasn’t sure that I did.

“Like you did?”

I didn’t know if you could call what happened between me and Tommy moving on, but I nodded.

“I tried,” he said, and jealousy flared to life inside me, so ugly and twisted I wanted to inflict bodily harm on the women who had dared touch him.

“And?”

“No one was you.” The jealousy quickly shifted to something bright, happy, and dangerous.

I didn’t want to dwell on it. “That must have broken a lot of hearts.”

“I don’t plan on breaking anyone’s heart ever again.”

His words shivered across my spine. My emotions in that moment were careening all over the place, scary and uncontrollable. I was so moved by what he said, and I wanted to be excited, but I couldn’t let him in again. I couldn’t keep getting hurt. So I joked. “Too late. I think you’ve broken the heart of almost every woman here in town. They’re all in love with you.”

He made me turn and look at him, his eyes hypnotic. “There’s only one heart I’m truly concerned about keeping safe.”

Too much. This was too much. I had to get away from him. “I’m going outside for a second.”

Where I planned to dunk my head in a snowdrift in hopes that it would cool me off.

After rehearsals ended and I’d made sure that every kid got picked up, Rafe asked me for a ride. He’d had his bodyguards drop him off at the school. Which seemed deliberate and sly.

So I turned up my favorite country station, one that played the hits from the 1990s and heavily featured my favorite singers—Garth, Reba, Travis, Shania, Faith, George. Fortunately, he picked up the signal I was broadcasting: that I wasn’t interested in talking about his explanation or the kiss that had rocked my world. Again.

When we pulled up to the driveway, I asked if he would get the mail for me, since the mailbox was on his side of the truck. I could see from the color of some of the envelopes in his hand that there were a lot of final notices for bills.

After I parked the car, I took the mail from him, thanked him, and went toward the house. Laddie shot out the front door when I opened it, and I called after him. “He’s not supposed to be out this late,” I told Rafe. He had a tendency to wander toward the main road, and we were afraid he would get hit.

“I’ll get him,” Rafe said, heading after Laddie and calling for him to come back. I set the mail down on a side table and took off my coat and boots, shaking the snow off before I put them away. Rafe came in the front door, carrying a squirming Laddie. The dog leapt from his arms and ran around in circles, managing to slam into the side table and knock the lamp and all the mail to the floor.

“Laddie!” I exclaimed, but he took off for the kitchen. “I don’t know what’s gotten into that dog,” I said, putting the lamp back while Rafe picked up the mail.

“You got a postcard,” he said, handing it to me. It was a picture of tall pine trees with the words “Wish you were here” on the front. I turned it over, gasped, and promptly passed out.

When I came to, Rafe had moved me to the couch and was hovering over me, worried. “What just happened?” he asked.

“The postcard,” I said, holding my shaking hand out for it. He picked it up off the ground. I had to make sure it said what I thought it said. That I hadn’t just hallucinated or imagined it. I struggled to sit up, still feeling sick to my stomach.

He gave it back to me without reading it. I wasn’t sure I had as much restraint as he did. I flipped the postcard to the back again. My heart sank as my pulse violently throbbed in my neck. There was my name, my address, the postmark from Washington State. And on the left side just one thing. A name.

Mary-Pauline.

A cold knot formed in my stomach, and my chest hurt as I realized what this meant. John-Paul had found me. I didn’t know how it had happened, but he had found me. My lungs constricted, and I started to wheeze in and out. This couldn’t be happening. It had been so long that I had thought he had given up. I should have known better.

I pulled my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. There was a rushing sound in my ears, and I couldn’t concentrate. The wordHow?kept repeating itself in my mind over and over again.

“What is it? Your face has gone completely white,” Rafe said, getting even more concerned. I handed him the postcard.

My lips and chin started to tremble, but I was not going to cry. I was not going to give John-Paul that kind of power over me ever again. He read it, his eyebrows lifting and his eyes widening. He sat on the couch next to me, and I didn’t protest when he hugged me, holding me close. He always knew how to make me feel safe.

But it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t stop feeling cold. It was like I was back in that box, with everything closing in around me. I could feel the wood against my fingertips, and my throat hurt as if I’d been screaming. I clenched my fists tightly.

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