The Cowboy and the Princess (7 page)

A rush of heat seared through him. “Don’t do that. You may be right about my need to protect, but I’m not infallible. You’re who you are.”

She looked up, and he knew she was going to get all upset about him calling her out on being a princess. Without thought he placed two fingers over her lips. “You’re who you are,” he repeated. “You’re a desirable woman. That makes me a dangerous man.”

And he replaced his fingertips with his lips. For seconds he felt her cool perfect mouth beneath his own. He fought not to move or taste or take things further. This was just a warning…for both of them. No more.

Then he moved away. “I’m not the type of man who apologizes for kissing a desirable woman, either. Andreus might have trusted me too much. It would be best if we don’t spend too much time together. Now you know all there is to know about me.”

She looked shocked, dazed, and Owen walked away feeling as
if he had kicked a kitten. But no, that wasn’t right, was it? He felt as if he had just kissed a woman he wanted to kiss again. And again.

Delfyne stood there, her fingertips pressed to her lips, and fought the urge to run after Owen.

Because he’s still a man in pain and a man who’s unfair to himself
, she tried to tell herself. But she knew that wasn’t the true reason, at least not all of it. She wanted him to kiss her again. And she saw right then and there how his wife had gotten caught in the snare of wanting something so badly that she’d convinced herself that what was wrong was right, that red was blue, that earth was sky.

Owen’s wife had deceived herself into seeing what hadn’t ever been there. And Delfyne had done that, too, several frightening times. The last time that had happened back at home…

She’d learned that cold, hard, painful lesson all too well. “Don’t start seeing things that don’t exist,” she whispered to herself. “Because even if they do exist, this summer is just a moment, one that is going to end.”

She didn’t want to think about that, and the best way to keep from thinking was to keep busy. Delfyne turned to head off to the kitchen, but when she reached the hallway she ran smack into Theron and Nicholas, her bodyguards. They were looking at her as if she had just done something unholy.

One of them, Theron, looked at her clothes. “Not good quality,” he said. “Does your family know that you’re posing as a servant?”

She raised her chin. “My family knows that I’m safe.”

“They
think
you’re safe.”

“What does that mean?”

He looked off in the direction Owen had gone.

Delfyne frowned. “Owen is my brother’s dear friend.”

“Yes, but…”

“What?”

“He looks at you as if he wants you.”

She crossed her arms and rose to her fullest height, looking down at them. “Theron, you’ve guarded me a long time, you’re as much friend as guard, but Owen is an honorable man. You have to know that.”

“He seems that way, I’ve heard he’s that way, but he’s still a man. And you’re…”

“I know who I am and I know what my future holds. You don’t need to remind me of that. And…”

They waited.

“I wish you wouldn’t follow me so closely. You don’t do that at home. Why do it here?”

“You went to town without us the other day.”

“I needed to. Your presence makes it too obvious what I am and I don’t want anyone to know that.”

Nicholas opened his mouth. To object, she was sure, so she rushed on. “Nicholas, look, please. No princess could ask for better bodyguards, but for once in my life, I want—I
need
—some personal space. No one even knows I’m here and
unless
someone realizes who I am—which isn’t going to happen unless someone starts wondering why I have two hulking men trailing me about—nothing bad will happen to me.” Unless her own foolish longing to feel Owen’s lips against hers again led her to do something she’d end up regretting.

Nicholas shifted from one foot to another. “So, what should we do?”

Suddenly she felt an affinity for these men that she’d never felt before. They were as much at loose ends as she was. Ships out of water, hemmed in, not knowing what to do with themselves.

She shrugged. “What you’ve been doing. Whatever the ranch hands do. Find Owen or one of his workers and tell them you want to help more.”

The men stood there for a minute as if she had suggested that they circumnavigate the globe while hopping on one foot.

“We should keep being ranchers?”

They exchanged looks, then turned to Delfyne. “Andreus might not like it.”

She shook her head. “Andreus is thousands of miles away. He has no idea what it’s like to twiddle his thumbs all day when there’s work to be done. And I’m your princess. You’re here to work for me. Go work. Go ranch. I’m telling you to do this thing. Are you going to ignore my request?”

In a matter of seconds the men had gone. Delfyne headed for the kitchen, where she hoped to forget the taste of Owen in a batch of cookie dough.

She was on her fourth batch—the first unburned batch—and Lydia was praising her for remembering that cookies quickly turned from tasty to torched in a matter of seconds if she didn’t watch over them carefully when the telephone rang and Lydia turned to Delfyne.

“Will you be okay on your own?”

Indignation swirled through Delfyne even though she knew Lydia had excellent reasons for asking the question and even though Lydia had been patient and nurturing.

“I can do this,” Delfyne assured her. “Go.”

Lydia raised a brow and Delfyne realized that she had answered in full princess tone. “Please,” she added gently.

The woman slipped out of the room and Delfyne turned to the oven, carefully opening it and sliding a cookie sheet out as Lydia had shown her.

She placed it on the stovetop and shut the oven door, then
picked up a spatula and removed a cookie, putting it on a cooling rack. Perfect.

Three more. Perfect.

One more.

“Those smell good.”

She shrieked and the cookie fell off the spatula headed toward the floor. Delfyne lunged for it, then immediately jerked back as the hot cookie touched her fingers.

“Damn it,” Owen said, marching forward and reaching for her hand.

“No. I’m fine,” she said, trying to hide her hand behind her back.

“Let me see.”

“No.” She tried not to look distressed.

Owen stopped and stared at her. “I—are you afraid of me? Because I kissed you?”

No, she was afraid of herself, but she couldn’t say that, and she couldn’t let him think she feared him. Owen already had enough guilt to live with.

Slowly she pulled her hand from behind her and presented it to him.

Gently, he held her wrist between his thumb and forefinger, imprisoning her with the lightest of touches and making her heart, her stomach and her knees all start misbehaving. Very improperly, too. She drew in a deep shaky breath.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not a terrible burn, but even little burns hurt like the dickens, don’t they? You need cold water. I should have done it sooner.”

But she had been withholding her hand. Now she let him put her fingers beneath the cold powerful flow of the water. He let it run for a while, then shut it off.

Grabbing a clean cloth, he barely blotted her skin. A slight sting remained, but it was Owen’s touch that was the far greater danger.

“This isn’t the best timing, but there really isn’t any good time to tell you. That phone call that Lydia took was from the mayor. He has a group coming in from Chicago to talk about an expansion of the Lambert Wood Products company to Bigsby. There’s no hotel in town, at least not yet, and the closest one isn’t particularly stylish. I’d agreed to house his guests a while ago, but I’d rather not expose you to too many people. Maybe it would be best if I found somewhere else for them to stay.”

And here she would be causing yet another change in his life.

“Would that seem odd to the mayor?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then have them come. I can fade into the woodwork. That won’t be a problem. It’s what I want.”

Well, it wasn’t exactly all she wanted, Delfyne thought as she felt Owen’s fingertips slide a bit against her skin. But what she wanted wasn’t available or wise or possible in any way.

She would have to settle for playing her part and hope for the best.

O
WEN’S
guests had all finally arrived. Most were in their rooms getting ready for dinner, and Martin O’Casey, the mayor, was smiling with glee.

“If we can convince them that this is the perfect place to locate their business, this could be good for Bigsby,” he said. “Thank you for loaning your house for this shindig, Owen. You’ve got the most impressive property in a hundred miles. These men and their wives like to be treated well, but I’m sure they didn’t come to our town expecting anything like this,” he said, gesturing around the huge, lodge-style living room with its hundreds of lights twinkling from the more than a dozen chandeliers. “Your place and Lydia’s cooking will convince them that we can be just as elegant as the city.”

“I don’t know anyone in town who lives an elegant life, Martin,” Owen said. “It’s probably best not to mislead them.”

Martin gave him a look that told him he was wasting his breath. “You know this business could be important.”

Owen knew it was important to Martin, and Martin’s father had been Owen’s father’s best friend.

“Are you even sure any of the people in Bigsby want a new business? The property you’re talking about has any number of possible uses.”

“But this one means money and jobs, and the town will want that.”

Well, maybe Martin was right. Owen stuck to his ranch. He didn’t really know what went on in the town half the time.

But what he knew before too much time had passed was that this event was going to be a bit different from others he’d hosted here. In the past, Lydia had hired a couple of waitresses from town to help her serve, but tonight Delfyne was doing the honors.

And things weren’t going all that well.

“Miss, I’d like another one of these canapés but without so many olives. This one has too many olives,” a woman said.

For a minute Owen saw a look of disapproval on Delfyne’s face. “Lydia is a superb cook,” she stated.

The woman looked as if a bee had just stung her. “I’m sure Lydia, whoever she may be, is adequate, but I don’t like olives. Bring me one without.”

For half a second Owen thought that Delfyne was going to order that the women be beheaded, but then he saw her visibly work to control her reaction. He saw now what Andreus had meant by Delfyne’s temper, but to him she looked magnificent. “I’ll replace it,” she told the woman.

But she had barely taken a step when a man standing nearby stuck out his glass. He didn’t even look her way, just expected her to take it.

Delfyne looked at him half-expectantly, then took the glass.

“You’re welcome,” she said, just as if he had thanked her.

“Do you have anything more bracing?” His speech was becoming slurred.

“It’s extremely bad etiquette to drink too much,” Delfyne said. “It’s quite disrespectful of the company. Drink impairs the memory and judgment and paves the way for regretful embarrassing circumstances one cannot call back.”

Uh-oh. That sounded like something right out of the
Etiquette for Royals
playbook. Andreus had once said something much the same to a fellow classmate who was making an ass of himself at a party.

Martin flashed Owen a What’s-going-on-here? Do-something look.

“Excuse me? Do you have any idea who I am and how much I’m worth?” the man asked, looking down his nose at Delfyne.

All right, Owen had had enough. When tonight was over, he would never let her do this again. It was one thing to help her act out her fantasy of being an ordinary person. It was another to expose her to jerks like these. He stepped up beside the man. “The lady doesn’t care how much you’re worth, Mr. Baxter. Martin here, now he’s the one you want to tell that stuff to.”

“Yes, this must just be a misunderstanding, Baxter.” Martin was practically begging. “I’m sure the girl meant well.”

“She has a smart mouth on her,” the woman who disliked olives said. “I’m surprised you’d allow someone so disrespectful to serve at your functions, Mr. Michaels. Here you have this beautiful place, I’d think you’d want your servers to add to the atmosphere. Part of our decision about whether to bring our business here will depend on the atmosphere. We don’t want to go where we’re not wanted.”

Anger rose up within Owen. Had other servers at his house been treated as if they were mere appendages of the house? Had he been blind to bad behavior in his guests before?

“I assure you that Delfyne is a superlative individual with a fine character,” he said. “She’s much more than just a person who takes your glass and hands you food. She’s an important part of our household this summer and I’d appreciate it if you’d treat her as such.”

He heard Martin hiss behind him, but he ignored the warning.
Maybe this company
was
important to the region, but so was a person’s dignity. A line had to be drawn somewhere.

“Owen, the town needs this deal,” Martin whispered.

There was no way Delfyne or anyone else could have heard Martin, but Owen supposed the man’s face would have given away his distress.

Delfyne looked at Martin and himself and gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. Then she dipped a slight curtsy and turned toward the couple. “I beg your pardon if I appeared rude. I’m very new at this type of situation, and I’m still learning. You know much more of the proper procedures than I do, I fear. How can I make up for my inexcusable gaffe?”

Immediately the woman preened as if she had won a contest. “Well, I suppose we don’t want to be the cause of a
needy
person getting into trouble. Just…go on about your business quietly, bring my husband his drink and we’ll consider it forgotten.”

She flung out her hand and for a moment Owen thought she was asking Delfyne to kiss it, but she was simply dismissing Delfyne. As if she were some sort of insignificant insect.

Rage boiled up within him and he started forward. Immediately he felt Martin clenching his arm. Delfyne gave him a look that screamed
Halt!
Then she headed for the kitchen.

For the rest of the evening she seemed to be an invisible shadow to everyone but him. She carried food, she took orders, she spoke only when spoken to and then only in a subservient manner.

“Thank you for allowing us to stay here. I assure you we’re not all such ignorant jerks,” Alex Wade, the CEO of the group said to Owen. “Still, I’m impressed that a man of your apparent stature would stand up for a server when business is at stake. You’re a legend on Wall Street. The rancher who’s made millions but still gets his hands dirty.”

Owen turned to look at the man. “Having money doesn’t
make a man blind to the needs of others. People deserve to be treated with dignity no matter their station.”

“Is that a warning?”

“It might be. People around here expect fairness. Provide it and they’ll go to the ends of the earth for you. Deny it and you’ll fail because they’ll shun you.”

“Even if we offer them jobs?”

“No one around here would be allowed to starve for lack of a job.”

“So you wouldn’t have fired her for insubordination?”

“She’s not mine to fire.”

“Whose is she?”

Now Owen sat up and took notice. “Why?”

“There’s something about the way she carries herself and the way she stood up to Baxter even though it was a clear risk. She intrigues me.”

Owen digested that, turned it over and decided that he couldn’t just let it pass.

“She’s actually a guest who graciously volunteered to help out this evening. And…she’s taken.”

“Is she involved with you?”

Never. But he could see that this was a man who pursued what he wanted if there was half a chance he could win. “Yes,” he said. Another lie.

This time Owen didn’t regret the lie. Yet.

“You’re not ever going to let anyone think you’re my employee again. This was the worst kind of mistake and I was a jerk for putting you in the position you were in last night.”

Delfyne let Owen rant on and beat up on himself for a while before she finally felt he had gotten things out of his system.

“I don’t recall asking you if I could be in that position.”

“I went along with it.”

“To protect me.”

“I don’t see how it was protecting you when people were all but throwing wineglasses at you last night, demanding that you take the olives off their food and…well, all that other stuff, too. Treating you like a piece of dirt.”

“It was my choice to indulge in a masquerade, not yours.”

“Don’t even try to tell me you enjoyed it, Delfyne.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“See, you hated it.”

She couldn’t help smiling at the chagrin in his voice.

“It was…educational.”

“Learning a language is educational. The Baxters’ behavior, not to mention Martin’s and mine, was disgusting.”

Now she frowned. “You didn’t do anything!”

“Exactly.”

“Well, it’s not as if Martin or I would have allowed you to stop the event. And even you…well, if the town needs this company, you don’t want to take food out of your people’s mouths just because I suffered a few indignities last night, do you?”

“You shouldn’t have to suffer
any
indignities. That wasn’t a part of the deal when you came here.”

“Maybe not, but I know a lot about duty, and so do you. If your people need you to bite your tongue, you do it.”

A small smile transformed Owen’s usually stern face into a virile expression that had surely been the downfall of many a woman. Delfyne reminded herself that she had to be careful here. She had exercised poor judgment in the past with men who were far less potent than Owen, and with men who would have at least been acceptable to her family. Money was not enough for a royal. Especially not a royal who was already promised. Duty wasn’t the only important lesson she had been taught.
Honor had been hammered into her since she was two. But still…Owen was smiling and her knees were misbehaving, getting wobbly. Her heart was hammering, her breathing was…

“You needn’t smile,” she said, aiming for dignity and haughtiness. “Why
are
you smiling, anyway?”

“You.” That smile grew, as did her consternation and susceptibility.

Delfyne forced a frown. “What about me?”

Owen reached across the table past his coffee cup and touched Delfyne’s wrist right above the spot where her bracelet of bright yellow ceramic suns and turquoise beads dangled. “You try so hard to be just an everyday woman with your inexpensive bracelets and your insistence on scrubbing bathtubs and on blending in, but you can’t scrub the princess out of you, Princess. She’s there, always. She lives inside you.”

Delfyne struggled to ignore Owen’s touch. It was such a small touch, just one finger whispering across her skin. A mere breath of a touch, but she felt the effects swirling inside her and turning her to very soft butter. And his words…

She stared at his fingertip lying against her wrist. “I love my bracelets,” she said and immediately regretted it. She sounded like a forlorn child. “They’re one of the few things I wear just for me.”

Owen uttered a low curse and without another word circled the table and hauled her up beside him. “I love these damn little bracelets, too. They drive me insane, the way they jangle and hit against your skin. I wait every day to see what each one looks like, what new part of you is revealed.”

With that, he took her hand, raised it high and placed his lips against the most sensitive inner portion of her wrist, doing terrible, wonderful, exciting things to her body.

“I can hardly think when you flip your silly little bracelets. They make me crazy.
You
make me crazy.”

“You’re making me crazy, too,” she managed to whisper. “Owen, I—” She cupped his jaw in her palm and nudged his face up so she could look into those tortured blue eyes. She knew he didn’t want to do this, that he was just answering the siren’s call that she had been feeling, too. She intended to say so. That’s all she intended to do, but in the next instant that stupid, spontaneous part of her personality that had caused her so much trouble in her lifetime took over and she raised up on her toes and pressed her lips against his.

The minute her mouth met his, she felt a sense of finally being where she wanted to be, doing what she had been struggling against as well as an intense desire to want more, to do more.

“Kiss me,” she commanded, not caring if she sounded like a princess for once.

As if she’d handed out a royal decree and he was obeying, Owen didn’t hesitate. He slanted his mouth over hers. He devoured her, teased her, licked at the seam of her mouth and came inside. His warmth became her warmth, his taste became her taste. He was delicious. She was delirious.

His wide palms spanned her waist and pulled her tight against the length of his body, introducing her to a heaven she had heretofore never experienced, the just-right fit of a man who was made to please a woman.

He slid his hand lower down her spine.

“Yes. Do that,” she demanded as he caressed her.

He complied and heaven grew brighter, closer…not close enough. Then his other hand cupped her breast and all sensible sensation ceased.

“This is insanity,” he moaned against her lips. “I shouldn’t even be touching you.” But he didn’t stop.

“You’re right. I know you’re right, but…touch me.” She practically breathed the words.

She twisted and plunged her fingers into his hair. Her bracelets slapped against his head.

As if that jangling touch of ceramic against skin pulled her out of the vortex of sensation that had held her captive, Delfyne became aware of the sounds of the ranch. Lydia was right next door in the kitchen.

She didn’t want what was happening here with Owen to seem cheap or tawdry or clandestine, but both of them knew it could lead nowhere. And the fact that it was even happening…would she never learn to think before she acted?

Delfyne suddenly leaned back, bleakness filling her heart. Men who knew she would never be available for the long-term had tried to take what little they could get before. The mere fact that she was off-limits had seemed to be a bonus in their eyes. And now, with Owen, she was so off-limits. They both knew that and…