Dante’s Girl (The Paradise Diaries #1)(12)
Author: Courtney Cole

It’s Miss America.

Or, Miss Caberra, rather.  I’m sure of it.  She has to be.

Perfect russet colored hair, not red, but not quite brown, flows perfectly down her back.  Her legs are two miles long, her skin lightly tanned to a golden sheen, her teeth are brilliantly white, and her face. Oh, her face.  Michelangelo himself could have used her as a model.  She is perfection personified, there’s no doubt about that.

Her deep emerald green eyes assess me thoroughly and shrewdly for a moment, evaluating any threat that I might pose to her.  After all, I’m clutching Dante’s arm.  Her eyes flicker down to my swollen, grotesque leg and then back up at my face.  Is that amusement that I see in her face right before she dismisses me and turns back to speak with Dante?

Bitch.

Utter bitch.  I can tell right now.

But Dante seems oblivious.

“Elena!” he smiles and releases my arm so that he can embrace Miss Perfect.  She kisses him on both cheeks in what I have learned is a European custom.  I try not to seethe with jealousy. He turns to me.

“Reece, this is Elena Kontou.  We’ve known each other since we were toddlers.  Her father is my father’s best friend.  They live on the estate just south of Giliberti Olives.”

My stomach plummets into my toes.  This is even worse than I had thought.

Miss Perfect has a long-standing claim to Dante.  And I can see in her eyes that she’s not relinquishing it any time soon.  She extends a slender, well-bred hand toward me.  Her rings cut into my hand as she shakes it.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Reece.  Are you here for an extended visit?  Dante didn’t tell me that he was expecting company.”

She turns her beautiful green eyes toward Dante for an explanation which leaves me wondering how much they actually share with each other.  Do they talk about everything?

Dante quickly gives her the run-down of what had happened in Amsterdam and I can see the instant she decides that I’m not a threat to her.  Her face lightens right up.

“Oh!” she exclaims. “Then you’ve witnessed firsthand Dante’s heroic tendencies. He saved my life once.  I fell off of his father’s yacht and I can’t swim.  Dante dove right in and pulled me out of the ocean.”

“She should have been wearing a life-jacket,” Dante interjects, “But she didn’t want to mess up her tan.”  He rolls his eyes good-naturedly and Elena nudges him.

“Who needs a life jacket when I have you?”  She smiles up at him and bats her eyelashes and I want to throw up.  And this time, my nausea has nothing to do with the jellyfish that just tried to kill me.

Elena turns to me. “How long will you be here?” she asks innocently. “I’ll have to show you around Valese.  And what happened to your leg?”

“Apparently, I’m allergic to jellyfish,” I answer.  “And I would love to hang out with you while I’m here. I’ll be staying until the airports open back up.  They’re closed right now due to the volcanic ash.”

“I know!” she gushes as she returns her attention to Dante.  “Did you know that Michel is stranded in London?  He’s furious because he’ll probably miss the Regatta.  He’s got a new boat this year and everything.”

She and Dante talk about that for a few minutes, about this important annual boat race that is apparently a big deal thing here in Caberra, and I have been forgotten. I stand there awkwardly with my freakish leg throbbing until finally Dante looks at me as if he suddenly remembers my presence.

“Oh, god.  I’m sorry, Reece.  I forgot my manners.  We really need to get you back to the palace.  I want you to lie down for awhile and I’ll get the doctor to look at you.”  He turns to Elena.  “We’ll catch up soon, Leni.”

He calls her Leni.  I am instantly and ridiculously resentful of that.

“There’s a bonfire tonight,” Leni tells him as she watches him take my arm.  “Will you be there?”

He glances at me, then back at Leni.  “Maybe. We’ll see how it goes.”

“Don’t keep me waiting, D,” she warns playfully.  “You know how I hate that.”

And I hate that she calls him D.

I’ve known her all of five minutes and I already hate this girl because she’s known Dante longer. He’s D and she’s Leni. Plus, she’s perfect.  I hate that too.  And hating that makes me petty, which of course I hate also.  I’m just downright hateful today, apparently.

Dante smiles at Elena and we walk away.  I know that if I turn around, I’ll see her watching us. I can feel her emerald green eyes staring a hole into my back.  She is not one to be messed with.  I know that, too.

Chapter Seven

“Mom, I swear to you, I’m fine,” I insist once again into the phone.  “It’s just a jellyfish sting.  It’s not like my leg was amputated or anything. Apparently, it’s a common thing around the ocean.  I had a slight allergic reaction, but I’m all fixed up. The doctor gave me a shot of cortisone and it’s not even swollen anymore, it just has red patches.”

I look down at my splotch-covered legs and know that I look like I had been on the losing end of a jellyfish tentacle, which of course, is exactly the case. 

Also, the cortisone shot hurt like a wench.

But I don’t mention that part.

My mother is already wound up enough.  She’s not happy that I’m here.  She’s happy enough that I’m getting exposure to culture and all, but she wishes that I’d get that exposure in a country that she’s actually heard of before.  And somewhere that isn’t thousands of miles from home.

I listen to her motherly concern and nagging for the next ten minutes as I stare absently out of my bedroom window.  I am situated at the back of the house over the tennis courts. I can see a sparkling blue pool to my right and pristine gardens to my left.  The tennis courts are in the center.

There are rose bushes everywhere. And peonies, which are my favorites.  And lots of white marble statues of Greek gods.  And one of Napoleon.  Why in the world is this country so obsessed with Napoleon?

I am just wondering if the small statue is life-sized when Dante interrupts any coherent thought process that I might have by striding across the lawns with a racquet in hand and wearing short-short tennis shorts.