Royal Pain Read Online Free Page A

Stones. Unplugged.”
    And a $500 ticket , she thought.
    He wanted her with him, obviously… he was going crazy thinking about her, remember? But she was not in a financial position to buy a last-minute plane ticket to Las Vegas, nor, she suspected, her own concert ticket to a private, acoustic show with her good friends Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
    “I don’t know,” she hesitated. “I am really behind at work and I have a huge presentation next week.”
    “Did you hear what I just said? I have tickets to see Mick and Keith with like a hundred other people in a private club. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance.”
    At the time, Bronte felt like every minute with him was once in a lifetime. His entire existence was made up of a string of once-in-a-lifetime moments. She ended up foregoing the trip to Vegas, but it made her realize how tired she was. She was sick of having to make what felt like life-altering decisions every time she wanted to hang out with him. It was all that urgency that made her contemplate a move to Chicago. She was simply exhausted trying to manage what amounted to two lives. Hers and theirs.
    Then he told her he loved her. Really loved her.
    It was the middle of August. They were walking around Millennium Park, enjoying a surprisingly fresh wind sweeping in off of Lake Michigan. And he was so gentle and tender. And he loved her. And then… she just went for it. Head first.
    It was only after her feet left the emotional diving board that she discovered the pool was empty. In hindsight, it seemed glaringly obvious that his I-love-you declaration was nothing more than a reflex, a placeholder, a dating Post-it Note (Month Five: Say, “I love you”), whereas her I-love-you reply was meant to impart the weight and bliss of eternity. It was the first time she’d said it to anyone other than her mother.
    Of course she was moving to Chicago. There was a man there who loved her. A man she loved. From the very beginning, she thought she was getting something that everyone else was too shallow to perceive. Beneath his bawdy jokes and big vodkas, she thought, he was really sincere. They shared a deep, quiet connection. The killjoy part of her brain sassed that the connection might be quiet because it was unspoken lust… or unspoken because it didn’t exist… but she shoved that aside. It was her turn to have the great love chapter of her life. She had always dated artsy, intellectual types. As her college roommate used to jest, Bronte liked readers. And here, instead, was a broad-shouldered, high school football captain, card-carrying male. He read Tom Clancy, not Tom Wolfe.
    So what?
    He had always dated pert blonds; for the long haul, Bronte argued with herself, he wanted the artsy intellectual. It was a twisted sort of justice for them to end up together.
    She tried to be rational, weighing the pros and cons of uprooting herself and moving to Chicago to be with him. Mr. Texas looked great on paper. He had his own successful investment business, came from a great family (parents who loved each other!), and had lots of funny, engaging friends.
    They had not been dating long enough to warrant a marriage proposal, but she thought they might have a real chance. She didn’t care if she ever got married, technically. If she was with the right person, she would know, and it would be right. Right?
    If she moved to Chicago, she would finally be able to see how they would be together in real life, on a daily basis. If not, she was sure she would spend the rest of her life feeling like she hadn’t tried hard enough to secure her own happiness.
    She wanted to go for it.
    By mid-September, certain that seeing each other every day would alleviate some of that crazy urgency and let them settle into a more normal relationship, she applied for a job at a fantastic boutique advertising agency in Chicago and got it. She wanted to surprise him.
    He was surprised all right.
    He was psyched she was moving to Chicago. He