Rebel – Chapter 1
Em took a deep breath in and slowly let it out. Her head hurt. Vegas had managed to be both less and more than she expected. Her left hand felt weird, lying on something like a tutu. She was likely still in a weird dream.
Emma Kate had rolled in under the bright lights around five p.m., her U-Haul too big for the things she’d had in her dorm and they’d all been rattling around the whole drive. The rental shop had not had the small trailer she reserved and they acted as though they had been very nice giving her the larger one. The problem was, she didn’t want the larger one. The excess space made it nearly impossible for her to keep her things safe. She’d packed her stuff in a two-foot layer on the floor of the trailer and hoped nothing broke. So, when she’d hit Vegas, she decided to call it a night, rented a cheap room, and grabbed a cab to the nearest luxury casino.
Now she lay on the bed, looking up as the ceiling came into focus. This ceiling was beautiful. If she could sit up, she could check it out. Emma Kate prodded at her brain and tried to figure out what she’d done last night.
She remembered playing the nickel slots and the guy next to her pointing out that drinks were free as long as you were feeding money into a game. Then she … well, she didn’t really remember much after that.
Em took another deep breath in and out and only just then noticed the crown molding and the gold flecked wallpaper border. It was nice. Again she asked herself, how was a ceiling nice? But it certainly didn’t look like what she expected from the cheap motel room she’d rented.
Wait, her brain stopped her. Frowning, she rolled her head to the left. The wall was very far away, the room much bigger than she remembered. She squinted. The wallpaper missing, the paint a peachy tan, beautiful and perfect. Not a peeling strip of tacky floral print in sight. She looked right.
Shit.
The curtains were barely open, revealing a slice of sky, but through that slit she could see daylight. She could also see that she was somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen to twenty stories up in the sky. No, this was not the one-story motel room with one window and one door.
Where in hell was she?
Em knew that any normal person would have bolted upright just then, but Em also knew that she’d had too many free drinks the night before. Her head was pounding and spinning at the same time. She felt like a typical college student—though that might be a thing of the past. She cringed to herself and regretted that she remembered dropping out of school so clearly.
She wasn’t generally one for doing really dumb stuff—she wasn’t internet stupid—but she’d made more than her share of bad decisions. Emma Kate also wasn’t one for freaking out. She’d had her freakouts earlier in the year when first her mother had died of cancer, and then her father had followed a few months later, apparently unable to go on without the love of his life.
Em was finished with freakouts. Now was not the time anyway. On the plus side, she was warm, comfortable, and clearly in a nice hotel room. She smiled to herself, pleased when that didn’t make her brain protest. Maybe she’d won a lot of money and gotten herself a suite comped right here in the … No. She didn’t remember which hotel she was in. It didn’t matter anyway. The lamps were beautiful. The painting on the wall was much, much classier than the one in the room she’d rented.
She frowned. She was clearly in a different section of town from where she’d parked. She wouldn’t have driven when she was drinking. She’d never done anything like that. So, her paid motel room, car, and trailer were probably still down the street. She’d gotten a ride to the casino because parking her trailer in the high-end parking lot would have made her look like she was coming to Vegas for the sole purpose of losing her shirt. She would look like Poor-down-on-her-luck-Emma-Kate, and that was not who she was. She’d made a decision to leave school. That was all.
After another deep breath, she slowly sat up, and that was when the troubles really began.
Though Em reminded herself that she wasn’t one for freaking out, as she sat up, Emerson Kate Mayfair realized she had a serious problem on her hands.
For a moment, she thought the pounding in her head was also lying to her eyes. Surely, she was not seeing what she was seeing…
Being a smart cookie, she checked things out before flipping her lid. So she moved her hands around, feeling along the fabric, and realizing she had another sense confirming what she saw. Well, shit.
She did not remember how she’d gotten here, but the king size bed was softer than any she’d slept on in the past several years. Underneath her hands were yards and yards of white tulle. It looked like she’d slept on the puffy cloud.
Far too scared now to just look down at her clothing, she touched the front of her chest. Yup. That was lacework. And beading.
When she did eventually look down, she saw a beautiful sweetheart neckline with cap sleeves, one of which had slid off her shoulder at some point in the night. The dress itself was gorgeous, but she had no idea why she was wearing it.
Damn. She looked amazing. Although, she reconsidered, there was every possibility her makeup had run down her face or smeared off onto the pillow. The dress might be amazing, but she might look like Frankenstein’s monster was wearing it.
Reaching up to touch her hair, she instead felt the crisp reply of hairspray and curls. Clearly, it had been expertly coiffed and then slept on. Reaching around to touch the back, Em realized the hairspray wasn’t as crunchy as she’d originally thought. That was more tulle… on her head. This did not bode well…
She found the tulle was trailing down her back from the tiara pinned into her hair. A tiara. Of course, she was wearing a tiara.
As she rolled her head to the side and looked down, she saw him. Dark hair, high cut cheekbones, long, inky lashes unmoving because he was out cold. Broad shoulders splayed across the bed on the other side.
She wouldn’t have believed him being there was a problem, but he was wearing a tux, and Emma Kate was pretty sure she’d just gotten herself in a world of trouble.
