The Cowboy and the Princess (10 page)

Panic began to rise within her as she realized that she had let down her guard and let this stranger into the house. Used to her bodyguards screening her contacts, she had simply assumed she was safe and plunged ahead without thinking. But people came through here all the time. Lydia let them in. She talked to them. So did Owen. Friends, neighbors, business people stopped by. Those people weren’t strangers, and obviously this man wasn’t either.

Taking a deep, enervating breath, she tried to remember who she was and how to command respect and maintain a distance. “Who are
you
?” she countered, but her voice came out too shaky.

He smiled slyly, and right away she hated that smile. “You don’t have to worry about me. Owen knows me. I live in the next county. Owen mentioned that he had a likely stallion to service my best mare. I came to look.”

But as he said the words, he reached out to touch.

“Don’t!” Delfyne said, sliding back and away.

“Hey, don’t be so skittish and fussy. I’m not going to hurt you,” the man said, continuing his advance. “You have chocolate on your cheek. I’m going to rub it off.” But his voice was thick and his hand was unsteady and his eyes—

“I’ll wipe it off later,” she said, taking a step back.

“Oh, I don’t mind helping at all.” His thick fingers made contact with her skin.

“Do
not
touch me!” she ordered in her best princess voice, through teeth that chattered. And she ducked away and headed for the front door, her knees shaking.

The door flew open in front of her and Owen stepped inside.

His eyes blazed as he looked past her to the man. “Dekins, get out of my house,” he said.

“Owen, I wasn’t doing a thing. I don’t know why the stupid woman was screeching like that. You know me. You know why I’m here. And she asked me to help her.”

Owen didn’t even look at Delfyne for verification or denial. “Frankly, I don’t care what she did or didn’t do. You’re not to touch her. Now, get out.”

The man started forward. “Owen, you’ve known me for years. I didn’t do a thing wrong. She let me in. She’s—”

He never finished the sentence. Owen’s fist smashed into his face and the man reeled backward, struggling to stay on his feet.

“Not another word,” Owen told him. “Any business you and I had is concluded. For good,” he said. “Don’t come back on my land again.”

The man cast Delfyne and Owen a look of hatred, but he left the house, climbed in his truck and roared away, his tires spinning and spitting gravel.

When he was gone, Delfyne dared to look at Owen. He was breathing hard. His eyes were dark with anger.

“Did he hurt you?”

She swallowed hard.

“Delfyne?”

“No.” She shook her head vehemently. “He just scared me. He touched my cheek and he looked at me as if he was going to—”

Owen reached out and pulled her to him. He crushed her against him. “I never did like him much. Good riddance. The man is total dirt.”

Delfyne closed her eyes and breathed in the warm male scent of Owen. She felt safe against his hard body. But…

Pulling back, she looked up into his eyes. “I
am
partly at fault. I
did
let him in. That was very stupid of me. And so…typical. Andreus and my family are right about me. I’m too unpredictable and spontaneous. I act first and think later. This was as much my fault as that man’s.”

“Like hell it was. There’s never an excuse for a man trying to touch an unwilling woman.”

“But maybe by letting him in the door, I was inviting something I never meant to. That is…sometimes things happen that way and…”

Memories of other mistakes she’d made crept in. Delfyne closed her eyes.

The next thing she knew Owen was lifting her into his arms. He carried her to the nearest sofa and sat down with her, holding her.

“‘Sometimes things happen that way’?” he said. His voice was icy. “What on earth has someone done to you, Delfyne?”

She leaned against him, trying to breathe, to think, to
not
think. “I don’t want to tell you. I don’t want to tell anyone. Ever.”

“Yeah, like that’s going to stop me from asking. Now that I know that someone has hurt you, I…Tell me now.”

“Once you know, you’ll respect me less than you already do.”

“You say that as if I don’t respect you.”

Her laugh was brittle. “My brother pawned me off on you because I couldn’t be trusted to handle myself. How could you respect someone like that?”

She sat up taller and gazed into those blue eyes.

He placed his hands on her forearms and pulled her within a
breath of his lips. “You don’t have a clue what I think about you. Frankly, neither do I, because I spend a lot of time trying to avoid thinking about you, but when I do allow myself a few thoughts, I can guarantee that none of them have to do with disrespect.”

They stared at each other for five full seconds. She swallowed and struggled to keep breathing, to keep from leaning closer to him.

“So tell me, Princess, what happened to you?”

She shook her head. She hesitated. Finally, she just waded in. “I grew up much the way I am now. Always expecting the best, not stopping to think that anything bad could happen to me, rushing in to do whatever I wanted to do. And…I think a part of me really believed in the princess fairy-tale story. I was a romantic. Even though I knew my parents were brokering a marriage for me with another suitable royal, a part of me believed that that was unimportant. Irrelevant. That it could be ignored or prevented. Love was possible.”

“I see you’re talking in the past tense. What changed your mind?”

She flung out one hand. “I was seventeen. Some other royals were visiting, and one of them was an eighteen-year-old boy. We flirted, we swam, we danced, eventually we kissed. I fell hard. Head over heels, as they say. I was ecstatic, transformed. Now my life would change. I imagined that we would talk on the phone, write, visit. We’d convince our parents of the need to tear up my marriage contract and his. But the night before he left, he tried to…do more than I was ready for, and I told him that I wanted to wait until we knew each other better.”

She paused and began fidgeting with the buttons on Owen’s shirt. “I take it that he disagreed?” His hands tightened on her.

“He laughed at me. He told me that we weren’t going to know each other better. I was a weekend fling. Knowing that I was off-limits and that I couldn’t possibly demand more, he’d assumed
by my eagerness that I was open for some safe sex, some fooling around before my marriage and his. He’d assumed I’d done that kind of thing before. He certainly had and would, and no, he wasn’t even slightly capable of loving me.”

Owen began to rub slow circles on her arms with his thumbs. “I’m real sorry that someone hurt you that way, Delfyne.”

His touch was making her burn and she jerked. “But you don’t understand, Owen. Other women would have learned from that. They would have been more careful and scared, or they would have retreated back into their ordered, safe, arranged little world, but not me. Now that I knew that I was most likely trapped, I struggled harder, but men saw me as a safe target. I was already committed eventually to marry a man my parents had chosen, so I couldn’t ask for more than they wanted to give. I was to be engaged to a man I barely knew, so surely I would be open for some fun and romance and…more.”

“You’re not telling me that men forced you?”

“No. I finally understood the rules, and I avoided those men as much as I could. I acted out in more innocent ways, so I thought I was safe. I was no longer sending the wrong kind of signals. At least, I thought I wasn’t, but…there
was
another incident where a man tried to seduce me by lying to me. This time the scenario was different and I walked away without any heartbreak, except—”

She stopped. “Well, I walked away,” she ended lamely.

“Except what?” He was gripping her lightly, but his voice was steel, his eyes were silvery and angry.

She raised her chin. “Two years ago my parents threw a big birthday party for Andreus and they invited a group of his friends and acquaintances. One of them, a prince, seemed to take a special interest in me. A group of us went for a walk. I felt safe enough in a group, but suddenly I realized that the others had
fallen away, all except the prince. I realize now that he’d convinced his friends that I wanted to spend some time with him just as friends, but that I was worried because my father is such a stickler about protocol.”

She took a deep breath and looked at Owen.

“So he set up a ruse?”

Delfyne looked away. “He seemed to think that I would be fine with that. I don’t think I encouraged him. I didn’t even particularly like him, but suddenly it was dark and we were alone. I started back toward the party and he grabbed my arm and started trying to…make love to me. When I pushed him away, he told me that I’d been giving off vibes, that I was the type who encouraged men without even working very hard. I remember that he was speaking softly, coaxing, trying to make the whole thing look like my idea. He tried very hard to seduce me and managed to rip my dress. Whether by accident or intent, I don’t know, because I just ran.

“Fortunately, thankfully, he didn’t come after me. For a long time after that I was suspicious of any man I didn’t know well, but…it’s been two years. I guess I let my guard down today.”

She was shaking now, remembering the shock of that day despite how much time had passed. Owen pulled her to him and tucked her head beneath his chin. He held on tight.

“Does Andreus know?”

She shook her head against his chest. “It would hurt him. He would blame himself, since the prince had been part of his group and had been invited as his guest. Besides…although the prince frightened me, I think he may have been right, at least a little. I’m not defending him. He was, as you say, a jerk. But I do know that my impulsiveness and my openness make me a target at times. People read me the wrong way.”

Owen swore. He set her away from him and rose to his feet.
“You’re not taking the blame because some royal jerk couldn’t keep his pants on. Andreus should know. Your family should know, and the prince should never be allowed near you again.”

“It’s too late now. I didn’t say anything then, and now I can’t. And I’m not taking the blame. I know I didn’t invite his advances in any way, and I’m sure I should have said something right then, but…he’s married now and he has a baby. The princess is a good woman who keeps him on a short leash, and I don’t want to cause a scandal because of something that happened two years ago when in the end nothing happened. I’m pretty sure he was drunk. I’ve heard nothing that has led me to believe that any other girls have been in danger. I think that’s part of why I tend to believe my own exuberance might have been misunderstood. My family thinks I’m uncontrollable, and to some extent they’re right.”

“There’s
nothing
wrong with you.”

“Owen, I let a total stranger into the house a few minutes ago,” she said, rising to stand beside him, and to her surprise she was calmer now. Something about Owen’s presence and his touch, his championing of her soothed her.

“He wasn’t a stranger. He’s been here many times.”

“He was a stranger to me. In most books that makes me a woman too stupid to exist.”

“You’re not even slightly stupid. Andreus once complained that you were a far better student than he was.”

“Well, I’m not stupid, no, but I
am
impulsive and you can’t deny that. It’s a despicable trait, it makes me read people wrong and…Owen, I just thought of something. That man—he’s probably going to bring a lawsuit against you for hitting him. That’s so unfair, but don’t worry. My bodyguards can dissuade him. They’re very good at that kind of thing, you know.”

For the first time during this entire exchange Owen laughed.

“What?” she asked.

“Okay, you
are
impulsive,” he agreed. “And given that last statement, maybe even a little bloodthirsty, but you’re absolutely not to blame because men have behaved badly with you. And I don’t want you worrying about a lawsuit. If it comes to that, I can afford the best lawyers around. And I can afford to pay any damages the jackass might win.”

She looked up at him, stricken. “The paparazzi are going to love this so much.”

“That’s true. I completely forgot about them. Well, that’s not going to be an issue. I’ll handle this.”

“Owen, really. I so do not want you to have to pay him money to keep him quiet. Even if you can afford it. That’s just not right when you were trying to do a good thing for me.”

She couldn’t keep the sadness from her voice, and he gently tipped her face up to his.

“Andreus shouldn’t have asked you to invite me,” she said. “Look at that. You’ve bruised your poor hand and now you’re shelling out money to keep my name out of the news and…”

“And…shh,” he said. He kissed her, quickly, then put her aside.

“For the record, no matter how attracted to you I am, I would never try to talk you into doing something you didn’t want to do,” he said.

She looked up at him, indignant. “I know that. You think I don’t know that?”

He stuck his thumbs in the back of his jeans’ pockets and blew out a breath. “What I know is that I’ve gone crazy kissing you several times, and we both know that’s leading nowhere. And I don’t want to be another of those guys trying to seduce you. I like you and respect you too much to do that.”

“Do you think I don’t know that, too?”

“You’ve already told me you have bad judgment where men are concerned.”

She crossed her arms. “I did not say that. I said that once,
when I was seventeen
, I misread a boy. After that, I had several instances where men just happened to think that my situation and the fact that I tend to be a bit too vivacious and spontaneous made them think I would be easy to seduce. You, I recall, didn’t like this setup from the start. I don’t think you feel that anything about my visit is easy, and rightfully so given all the upheaval, lies and bruised hands you’ve suffered since I arrived. Today…that man was here to do business with you, so now I’ve even cost you a business deal.”