Courting Trouble (Reality Romance Book 5) Read Online Free PDF

Caitlyn’s big day, but also because she was a firm believer in never showing weakness. Never let them see you cry.
    Old Elena would have grabbed a cocktail and a handy groomsman and slipped off to one of the mansion’s many bedrooms to make herself feel better, but she was New Elena now. New Elena was drinking seltzer water and determined to be the freaking Virgin Mary if it was the last thing she did.
    Surprisingly, the alternative wasn’t even tempting. One drunken man in a purple tie had gotten a little too handsy on the dance floor earlier and she’d walked away without a backward glance, completely uninterested.
    Now she sipped her seltzer and watched the dancers from the fringes, trying to fade into the crowd for possibly the first time in her life.
    “ Bellissima Elena.” Dickhead Daniel lurched up to her side, reeking of gin and beaming at her in a way she couldn’t believe she’d once found charming.
    She’d never bothered explaining to him that bellissima was Italian the way he pronounced it, not Spanish, finding his effort at the time endearing. Of course, that was before he threw her under the bus of public opinion, back when he’d actually seemed like he deserved the title Mr. Perfect.
    She couldn’t believe Caitlyn had actually invited the asshat to her wedding, but maybe that was part of why Caitlyn was so much more deserving of love than Elena was. She could forgive and forget.
    Elena tried forgiveness on for size by deigning to acknowledge his presence. “Daniel.”
    “Wanna dance?” he slurred, waving his glass toward the dance floor so the ice rattled.
    Forgiveness didn’t stretch that far. “No.”
    Daniel pouted, swaying like a drunken pendulum. “No one wants to dance with me tonight. Did you know Samantha’s engaged?”
    “Yes.”
    “ Engaged ,” he reiterated, as if she’d missed the significance. “Thought I had a shot there. But no. Engaged.”
    Realization rose up in an unwelcome tide. Daniel was making his way through his exes, seeing if any of the Suitorettes would give him a second go. And Elena—the one he’d strung along the longest—hadn’t even been his first stop. Dickface .
    “I screwed up,” Daniel admitted.
    Elena turned to look at him, shocked by the words, by the startling hint of self-awareness in them. “Yes, you did.”
    He wasn’t looking at her, watching the happy couple on the dance floor instead. “Could’ve been me,” he slurred morosely. “Caitlyn’s wife material.”
    “Which is why you proposed to her if I recall.” And not me, you drunken dipshit.
    “She said yes.”
    “Yes, she did. And then she changed her mind.”
    “I think I loved her.”
    Was that before or after you told me I made you feel like the luckiest man in the world, you slimy excuse for a human? Elena wondered if she kneed Daniel in the balls if it would make the papers as the high or low point of the wedding. Probably both.
    The song ended and the dancers left the floor. Daniel swayed, pivoting toward her, and grinned, “ Bellissima Elena,” he said again, seeming to recall who he was talking to. “Always the sexiest Suitorette.”
    “Thank you,” she said without enthusiasm.
    “What do you say? You and me? Old time’s sake? There’re bedrooms upstairs.”
    Revulsion must have shown on her face. “You can’t be serious.”
    “You’re not still mad about the show, are you? You know why I couldn’t pick you. America would have hated me if I’d picked you over Caitlyn.”
    There were so many insults in that one sentence she couldn’t seem to process them all. Her hand tightened on her glass of seltzer, the urge to throw it in his face almost overpowering.
    New Elena. Be calm. You’re New Elena.
    “Did it even occur to you that maybe you shouldn’t have told me repeatedly that you were going to pick me if you knew all along you were going to propose to Caitlyn?”
    He frowned, visibly confused. “I didn’t tell you that.”
    “You told me you didn’t