When Romance Prevails (The Dark Horse Trilogy Book 3) by Cynthia Dane

 
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 1

     
    The world was as bleak as the day before, and the day before that. Funny. The sunlight had seemed to completely disappear those past few days. Weeks. Months. How much time had passed since Kerri last welcomed the sunlight on her skin?
    Her bed was her only warmth for many weeks. Weeks? It’s been weeks? Twelve weeks. Three months. For normal people, the scandal that she was dating her father’s rival’s son would have died down by now. But with Election Day only a month away, the fervor was stronger than ever with the media and the common man.
    It had all happened so fast. The debate at the university. Hunter sitting across from Kerri in his balcony. People asking the same tired old questions. And then that reporter claiming to have pictures of them together. That was when all hell broke loose and Kerri was carried off to her family’s car before the media could descend. The last thing she remembered from that great hall was her father jumping across the stage at Terrence Hall. If only that had been the biggest PR nightmare!
    Kerri saw those pictures eventually. They popped up on TV, on the internet, and even on the news. Grainy black and white things of them holding hands and leaning in close to each other at that supposedly private restaurant. Then the reporter followed them to their hotel and took shots of them going in and coming out later. Then Kerri getting into Hunter’s car. Altogether, it was too damning for anyone to ignore.
    And Kerri couldn’t deny it. Not anymore.
    Since that day everything changed. She hadn’t seen Hunter in three months. Kerri had barely seen anyone outside of her parents. They’ve trapped me in here. She once joked to Hunter that her mother would put her under house arrest. That was true now. Too true. Kerri wasn’t allowed to leave the Governor’s Mansion without an escort, usually her mother. They had long confiscated her phone. Her! A grown woman!
    If she had the strength to fight it, she would have. Pack up her things and get out of there as was her right. But she didn’t have the strength anymore. Not with her parents arguing at the dinner table. Not with her father pulling her into his office that first night and giving her the verbal lashing of her life. “What did they do to you?” he demanded, his carefully composed demeanor coming apart as he pulled off his tie and threw his weight around. Raymond Mitchell was not known for his quick movements, but that night was an exception. “How could you do that to this family? To me? I have worked my ass off to get where I am, and you think you can just tear that down for one boy! Of all boys! What did he do to you?”
    Raymond didn’t need his daughter to tell him. The tabloids speculated enough. Even the interns giggled whenever they saw Kerri. Whispers of “I bet he has a big dick” and “What a lucky girl!” filtered through the halls of the mansion. The most damning one to Kerri’s soul, however, was the snide “Damn whore ruining everything,” uttered by more than one person. Somehow Kerri doubted that Hunter received this kind of treatment.
    Hunter. Thinking of him always planted a spike in Kerri’s heart. Naturally, she thought of him constantly. Like that moment, as she curled up in bed and buried her face in her pillow, the same one she and Hunter shared that first night they met.
    Kerri did not tell her parents about that night. She refused to, as some things were too sacred. Not to mention it would make her home life even less bearable. A guard at her door. Patrols outside her window. If a man could just get into her room on a night like a fundraiser… Never mind that I was the one who let him in. Kerri pushed herself beneath her covers and pulled the pillow over her head.
    There was a knock on her door. Someone opened it, and from the clicks of heels Kerri knew it was her mother without even looking.
    “Dear Lord, look at you.” Brenda walked past her daughter’s bed