Page 51 of Royal Games (The Royals of Monterra)

Rafe chose that moment to smile one of his glorious smiles, and my heart said,Flawed human being. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I loved my computer, but I wanted the flawed human being.

Heart in my throat, I smiled up at Rafe as he opened the door for me, which seemed to surprise him. I couldn’t talk. Not yet. I needed to process and figure things out. He said he’d see me at the diner, and I nodded.

It was a short drive, and there were a lot of hungry people waiting when I got there, which kept my mind blank and free from thinking about everything the pastor had just said.

Until a lull hit, and it all came rushing back. I’d never been in love before, but during the show, I had thought of it as possibility. That I was falling in love with him. Maybe I already was in love and didn’t know it. Maybe that’s why I’d been so sad for so long and missed him so much.

Nicole was still messing with her phone and muttering under her breath. “Not going so well?” I asked.

“How did I ever think Duke was my knight in shining armor? He’s just an idiot in tin foil.”

I brought the water pitcher over to Rafe’s table, where he had finished eating and was now working on his laptop. “What’s wrong with Nicole?”

“Oh, don’t mind her,” I said as I filled his glass with more water. “She’s having female troubles.”

“What kind of female troubles?”

“The male kind.” I certainly knew a lot about that. The bells on the door rang, and I looked up to see a man I didn’t know. Claws of frozen terror clamped down on my heart, and I dropped the pitcher with a loud clanging sound, sending water and ice cubes everywhere. Rafe immediately came over to help me, bringing napkins. “Don’t worry,” he said in a soft voice so that only I could hear him. “That’s one of my new employees, Shane. He’s here to help teach programming.”

I nodded, letting out a sigh of relief and feeling a little silly as Shane sat at Rafe’s table. The two men started an intense discussion as I threw away my wet napkins and hung my rag up to dry. “Who is that?” Nicole asked.

“His name is Shane. He’s new to Rafe’s company.”

She smiled a feline grin. “Do you think he’s single? Because the odds of finding a single, hot, normal man in this town are about as likely as finding Bigfoot. Looking like that, he has to have a girlfriend. Or with my luck, a boyfriend.” He was tall, broad-shouldered, and blonde. She sighed. “Like my dream Iowan farmer. If that man knows how to shuck corn, I’ll be his forever.”

Max called me over. He was alone today. “Did you hear about the power outage in the library at Iowa State today?”

“I didn’t.”

“Thirty students were stuck on the escalator for three hours.”

That made me laugh, and Max chuckled along with me. “Sit down for a minute.” My gaze darted toward the kitchen. “Oh, if that brother of mine gives you a hard time, you tell him to come talk to me. Sit.”

I slid into the booth across from him. It was actually nice to sit. “I hear you finally took my aunt out.”

“Been asking her for years. She always said no. Said she had to put you first. But that the circumstances had changed.”

What circumstances? Rafe? Is that what had changed her mind? She was so sure she could marry me off that now she had time to date?

“And before you ask, it went well. Although we found one thing that we had very differing viewpoints on.”

“What was that?”

“Did I ever tell you that I worked on a horse ranch in Idaho when I was a young man?” Max tore open a packet of sugar and poured it into his coffee. He swirled the spoon slowly while he talked. “The ranch specialized in taming wild horses. One of the lead wranglers told us this old story about how the first rancher caught the first wild horse. The horse would come to graze on his land, and whenever the rancher went near it, the horse would run away. So the rancher started hanging around the spot—far enough away that the horse wasn’t afraid, but always around. Then he put up a fence post. At first the horse was scared and ran off. But the next day he sniffed the post and went back to grazing. The day after that the farmer added another post. And then a rail. And another post and another rail. And before you know it, a whole fence. By the end the horse was so accustomed to him and the fence that all the rancher had to do to catch him was close the gate.”

He took a long sip of his coffee, while I looked over at Rafe, who was still chatting with his new employee. As if he sensed that he was being watched, he glanced over his shoulder at me. I focused on the coffee cup in Max’s hand, thinking about his warning.

Max liked his jokes, but he wasn’t the type to tell moral stories. Was that what Rafe had been doing this whole time? Building a fence slowly around me? Insinuating himself into every aspect of my life so that I would become accustomed to him? Making it so I could let go and forgive him?

Because, after all these conversations, that was turning into a real possibility. His plan was apparently working.

Was this what he and Aunt Sylvia had disagreed about? I excused myself, saying I had to get back to work. Max left some money on the table and stopped by Rafe’s booth on the way out. I gripped my dishcloth tightly. What now?

Max’s booming voice carried through the diner. “She’s special, that one. Our ray of sunshine. Until you nearly put it out.”

“I know, sir. That’s why I’m here. To fix things.”

“You don’t fix this, you’ll have me to answer to, understand?”

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