As I open my dressing room door, a flicker of guilt hits me.
But then the image flashes in my mind again. Maddie's body pressed against Joseph’s. Her laughing with Keith. Hedging her bets.
The guilt dies instantly.
No one breaks my heart and gets away with it.
CHAPTER 26
MADDIE
Ifollow Rio and that woman to his dressing room. But the door slams in my face with a sharp crack that makes me flinch.
Then the lock clicks into place.
I stand with my hand half-raised to knock, not even sure what I would say.
"Maddie!" Prince Michael's voice booms down the hallway. I turn to see him charging toward me like an enraged bull with Antoine trailing behind him.
Snorty yips in fright. Then he falls into a wheezing cough.
I quickly calm him and put him in his carrier before rising to address Rio's handlers.
"I'd like you to explain yourself, please." Prince Michael says, speaking through gritted teeth.
"Explain what?" My stomach drops. Whatever this is, it's bad.
Prince Michael shoves his phone in my face so hard I jump back.
The screen shows a photo that makes my gut twist. In it, Joseph's hand's grabbing my ass, his lips pressed against mine. The headline above it screams that I'm cheating on Rio with my ex-fiancé.
"You get paid big bucks to pretend to be Rio's fake girlfriend," Prince Michael spits, "and you fly in your ex-fiancé to join the pre-nuptial fun?"
No," I choke out, my voice barely audible. My throat feels like it's closing up. "It's not like that. I'll explain everything.”
My voice shaking as I try to keep it together. I tell them about seeing Joseph in the lobby, how he chased me outside.
"He's supposedly here for some financial conference this afternoon."
"Prince Michael's face turns an even deeper shade of red.
"And why did he squeeze your ass?" he demands, each word sharp as a knife.
I shrug, feeling my shoulders tense up.
"Who knows. Probably to twist the knife. To humiliate me even more after what he did."
"Which was what exactly?" Antoine asks.
I take a deep breath. "He didn’t show up at church on our wedding day.”
Antoine's voice carries a note of horror mixed with pity. “Left you at the altar?”
The memory floods back. I can still feel the scratchy lace of my dress collar. The weight of my veil.
The painful pinch of those stupid heels as I stood there waiting.
And waiting. My mom's worried glances. The whispers starting in the back pews.
