The Cowboy and the Princess Page 5

  You might be a princess if . . . you identify with Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday.

  The blurry lights of Dallas slipped away as they headed west toward the town of Jubilee. The radio played softly. A song Annie did not know sung by a man with a gravelly voice. “On the Road Again” flashed green on the digital readout of the satellite radio. Willie Nelson. The song seemed apropos. Fated almost.

  The truck’s engine panted. The tires strummed. The windshield wipers swished, rhythmically wiping away the continuously falling rain.

  Both of Brady’s hands gripped the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on traffic. His hair was mussed; his straw Stetson sat on the console between them. The long cut from his ear to his jaw curved like a parenthesis.

  The blood on his face had dried. He was right. It was a superficial wound. Still, she had an overpowering urge to trace her finger along the wound, coo words of comfort to him the way Rosalind had cooed to her whenever she fell ill. A tender touch and soft language could soothe an ache. Why was she feeling that way? Was it because he had swooped in and saved her from the unsavory character in the parking lot?

  He had been hurt protecting her, this cowboy hero who could have stepped from an old Western movie. Her stomach reeled, listed.

  She caused his pain. Yes. This was her fault. She admitted it. She acted rashly out of character. Her world was byzantine, but out here, in the unknown, well, she was stumbling around wreaking havoc on Brady’s simple life. He was a good man. He should not have to clean up her messes.

  She thought of Princess Ann from Roman Holiday and how enchanted the character had been with the way the Romans lived. How her innocence had gotten her into trouble and Joe Bradley had rescued her.

  Brady was her Joe Bradley, and Annie was making the same mistakes. She felt the same enchantment for Texans, and in that enchantment, loneliness tugged at her. She wanted so badly to belong here: to be part of this world she had vividly imagined for years, but no matter how much she wished it, she did not belong. She would never belong anywhere ordinary. She was royalty. A birthright she could never leave.

  Annie had been six years old when she first realized how truly different she was from everyone else and it had all happened because her mother would not allow her to visit the carnival.

  Vividly, she remembered watching the carnival crew set up the rides and displays. They had unloaded animals from train cars—elephants hooked together trunks to tails, tigers in cages, prancing horses. She recalled the posters plastered all over town, featuring fire eaters, contortionists, chain-saw jugglers, and sword swallowers. Rosalind regaled her with tales of sideshows and thrill rides and delicious food. The servants’ children whispered in the hallways about the amazing experiences to be found at the carnival.

  From her bedroom window, Annabella could see the lighted Ferris wheel circling high into the sky, and before she fell asleep on those long summer nights, she would rest her hands on the windowsill, nestle her chin on her stacked hands, and stare wistfully out at the boardwalk.

  Excited voices filled the air along with tempting scents of portable food—cotton candy and funnel cakes, turkey legs and caramel apples, corn dogs and French fries. Foods that Annabella was never, ever allowed to taste, much less eat, but it made her mouth water. The delighted shrieks of children on roller coasters reached her ears, the colored lights on the rides dazzled her eyes.

  Then the queen would come into the room, close the window, draw the curtains. “Nasty things. Nasty people. You have everything you could possibly want. Why are you so fascinated by the lowest common denominator, Annabella?”

  Why couldn’t Mamman understand how bright lights beguiled? Annabella was expected to stay behind the iron gates, the stone walls of Farrington Palace, and gaze longingly at the world that went on without her. She wanted to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl with the village children. She longed to walk into the House of Mirrors and see her body distorted first tall, then short, fat then thin. She yearned to play games of chance—toss rings over the necks of bottles, throw a ball through a hoop, blow up balloons with a water gun until they popped.

  Night after night, she gazed through the window at all that she was missing, a prisoner in her luxury. How disappointing to play checkers with Rosalind when she wanted to have her palm read by a Gypsy fortune teller with rings on all fingers and cheap jangly bracelets at her wrists. How frustrating to eat fresh strawberries dipped in sugar when she wanted to gorge on strawberry ice cream and buttery popcorn. How unsatisfactory to fall asleep on a goose down pillow when she wanted to win a giant teddy bear at the midway and go to bed with it clutched in her arms.

  By the last day of the carnival, Annabella was sick with longing. After tonight the carnival would vanish for an entire whole year. But it just so happened this night was Rosalind’s one night off a week and she was spending it at the carnival with a friend.

  Her nursemaid tucked her into bed, kissed her head, and whispered, “Good night, Noodle, I will see you tomorrow.”

  The second the door closed behind Rosalind, Annabella sprang from the bed in her pajamas. She ran to the window, threw it open, and shimmied down the big oak tree growing beside the wall. She reached Rosalind’s little blue Peugeot in the car park before her nursemaid did. Heart thumping, Annabella climbed into the backseat and lay down on the gray carpet. It smelled of licorice and she stayed curled up quiet as a cat. If Rosalind caught her, she would scold her and make her get out of the car.

  Even so, she could not contain her excitement. It was the first time she had ever run away. The first time she ever dared anything rebellious. Without the allure of the carnival, she would never have done anything so defiant.

  After Rosalind stopped the car and the door closed behind her, Annabella lay for a long moment, holding her breath. Then tentatively, she sneaked out of the backseat and found herself in wonderland. The sights were as gripping as she imagined—the lights, the sounds, the scents, the textures, the crowd. She’d never been alone in the midst of so many people.

  She felt at once very big and incredibly small.

  Finally, finally all her dreams were coming true.

  For a long time, she stood just staring at the wonder of it all. Her hands curled into fists, her nose twitching, not knowing what to do first. She ran up to a booth to buy some cotton candy, but then the man asked her for money. He was short with greasy black hair and a mustache as big and thick as a push broom. He smelled sweaty and there was dirt underneath his long fingernails. He wore a tight shirt with no sleeves and there were pictures of naked ladies drawn on his fleshy upper arms.

  Ashamed, Annabella dropped her gaze; she did not want to look at the man with naked ladies on his arms, but she wanted that cotton candy.

  “Money,” he insisted, rubbing his thumb against two fingers in a circular motion.

  She had no money and he would not give her the candy.

  Stubbornness set in. She was a princess and unaccustomed to being refused anything by a servant. “Give me the cotton candy,” she demanded haughtily.

  “You pay, you get.”

  She snatched the cotton candy from his hand.

  “Thief,” he accused and lunged for her.

  Annabella danced from his grip. She was not a thief. She was hungry. Starving for the ordinary experiences of ordinary children. Defiantly, she bit into the sweet, pink fluff. It dissolved against her tongue and she laughed out loud at the joy of it.

  The man raised a hand as if to smack her, but there was her bodyguard, Reynaldo, grabbing the man’s hand. “Strike the princess and it will be the last mistake you ever make.”

  The cotton candy man’s eyes grew wide. “Pri-Pri-Princess Annabella.” He fell to his knees in front of her and began kissing her feet. “Please forgive me. Take the cotton candy, it is yours.”

  But Annabella didn’t want the cotton candy any longer. It had been ruined. Everything had been ruined. Her bodyguard snatched her up, tossed her over his shoulder, and carried her back to th
e palace. All she saw of the carnival was upside down from behind Reynaldo’s back.

  The bodyguard delivered Annabella to her mother in the upstairs parlor. It was the coldest room in the house and her mother’s favorite. Even in the summer, Annabella often shivered in the draft slipping from the stained-glass window. A heavy tapestry of dark colors and hues hung on the wall, it made the room feel colder still. The carpet was equally dark. In the corner stood a stately grandfather clock with a large pendulum. It swung back and forth, ticking loudly.

  Snowflakes. Whenever she was in this room Annabella thought of snowflakes. She shivered, knowing she was in trouble.

  “You were right, Your Highness.” Reynaldo bowed low before the queen. “I found the princess at the carnival eating cotton candy.”

  “Look at your face!” Her mother gasped, horrified. She dismissed Reynaldo with a wave. “You may go.”

  Annabella raised a hand to her face. It was sticky. Pink goo stuck to her fingers, evidence of her sin.

  Her mother grabbed her by the shoulders, marched her to the mirrored wall at the back of the room. “Just look at yourself. You look like a guttersnipe. Ordinary. Common. Cheap.”

  The queen snapped her fingers and the servant who had been standing silently beside the velvet curtains at the window sprang forward.

  “Bring me a wet cloth,” she commanded.

  The servant nodded, slipped away.

  Queen Evangeline shook her shoulders. “What is wrong with you? What were you thinking? Going out into the streets alone? You could have been kidnapped! Shame on you for scaring your mother half to death.”

  Annabella hadn’t thought about any of that. All she wanted was to go to the carnival. She burst into tears.

  “Stop that crying. You stop it right now.” Her mother shook her again, more forcefully this time. “A princess does not cry. Tears are for weak, ordinary people.”

  The door opened and Rosalind came in with a wet washcloth. “I am so sorry, Your Highness.” She did not meet Queen Evangeline’s eyes, but kept her head bowed. “The child hid in the backseat of my car. I did not know she was there.”

  Her mother snatched the cloth from Rosalind, shot daggers at the nursemaid with her eyes. She squatted before Annabella and scrubbed at her face. “Filthy carnival. Nasty people. You could have gotten a disease, Annabella. You are a princess. You are a . . . Farrington. You are above such shenanigans. You have a duty and an image to uphold. Do not ever do anything like this again or you will be severely punished.”

  “Mamman, I just wanted to have fun.”

  “Well, you cannot have fun. Not that kind of fun. You are special. You are chosen.” The queen shifted her glare to Rosalind. “This is all your fault.”

  “I am dreadfully sorry.” Rosalind worried her hands.

  “You are too indulgent with her. You read her those silly, romantic fairy tales. I want it to stop. No more stories about cowboys and knights in shining armor.”

  “It is not her fault, Mamman,” Annabella protested. “I sneaked into her car when she was not looking. Rosalind did not know.”

  “And how did you get out of your room?” Her mother glowered.

  Annabella ducked her head, as sheepish as Rosalind. “I climbed down the oak tree.”

  “Reynaldo,” Queen Evangeline called sharply.

  The bodyguard appeared in the doorway. “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “Cut down the tree outside Annabella’s bedroom window.”

  “Your Highness, the tree is two hundred years old.”

  “Cut it down.”

  “It will be done.” Reynaldo bowed and then vanished as quietly as he had shown up.

  The queen turned her attention back to Rosalind. “We had an agreement.”

  “Yes, mum,” Rosalind mumbled. Standing beside the tall, dark-haired queen, the blond nursemaid looked young, fair, and fragile.

  “You violated our agreement.”

  “I beg your forgiveness.”

  “You know what I can do to you.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.” Rosalind raised her head and in that moment, boldly met the queen’s stare.

  Something dark and silent passed between them, a look that Annabella did not understand. Her mother squeezed Annabella’s shoulder tight, drew her up against her body. Her hands trembled. The queen was trembling. She was afraid of Rosalind?

  The stare-down lasted a long minute more, then the queen cleared her throat, tossed her majestic head, and glanced down her nose at the nursemaid. “You are dismissed.”

  Rosalind notched her own head up, stuck her chin in the air. “For tonight?” She clenched a fist. “Or forever?”

  Queen Evangeline licked her lips, hesitated, and then said firmly, “For tonight. But in future we will have no more of these incidents. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “You will make it perfectly clear to my daughter that she is above the common people. She is a ruler. It is in her bloodline.”

  “In her bloodline,” Rosalind echoed, and without dropping a curtsy, she turned and stalked from the room.

  “Annie?” Brady’s voice tugged her from the past and put her back in the pickup truck beside him.

  She blinked, glanced over. She still couldn’t believe she was here. Free for the first time since she was six years old and running off to the carnival for cotton candy. But now she fully understood the hidden threats her mother had been trying to protect her from. It was dangerous enough out here without anyone knowing she was a princess. What had she done?

  Momentarily, she considered the consequences of her actions. Her father would be upset. Teddy would be confused. Rosalind would be alarmed. She regretted causing them any upset, but this was something she had to experience. Before she committed herself to Teddy for a lifetime, she had to see the world through different eyes. She couldn’t fully explain her longing to anyone else, but it had dogged her from infanthood—the feeling that there was a simpler path for her to follow.

  She spoke of it to Rosalind. Carefully of course, testing the waters. Her nursemaid had assured Annie that her emotions were nothing more than prewedding jitters. She had been born into the complex life of royalty. There was no long-term escape. It was her duty, and should be her honor, to rule over Dubinstein with her husband.

  Husband.

  That was the sticking point. In less than two months she’d be forever shackled to a man she did not love. If only for a little while, she desperately wanted to know what it felt like to be desired by a man that she was attracted to.

  A man like Brady Talmadge?

  Just looking at him made her body grow warm in soft places. He wore faded jeans with a rip in one knee, probably caught it on barbwire once and never bothered mending it. His hair, as dark as the color she’d dyed her tresses, was neither clipped short nor long, but a medium length just on the right side of shaggy. She lowered her eyelids, looked at him through the fringe of her lashes, not wanting him to see that she was inspecting him.

  Why not be honest? No point fooling herself. She was admiring him. All manly muscles and angular bones.

  “Annie,” Brady repeated. “You awake?”

  She had trouble hearing him over the masculine rumblings of the big diesel engine. “Yes.”

  “Who were those guys?” he asked.

  “What guys?” She stared at the dashboard of his truck. There were all kind of knobs and dials lit by a faint green light. A laser radar detector, GPS tracking device, and the satellite radio were mounted there. It reminded her that she had tossed her cell phone in the lake on her way from the presidential compound so that she couldn’t be tracked through the GPS inside it.

  “You know what guys. The men at the restaurant. One tall. One short. Sunglasses at night. Fedoras. Not your typical truck stop patrons. The ones you were so anxious to hide from that you asked me to kiss you.”

  “Oh, them. They were just some people I did not want to see,” she said.

  �
��How come you didn’t want to see them? Were they old boyfriends?”

  “That is a very impertinent question.”

  “Impertinent, huh?”

  “Examine this topic from my position if you will,” she said.

  “What position is that?”

  “You told me you do not like liars. Do not make me lie to you.”

  “I don’t like people who keep secrets either. Secrets aren’t good for anyone. C’mon, let the truth out. You’ll feel better.”

  “You cannot expect full disclosure from someone you just met.”

  “Why not?”

  “By nature, humans are reluctant to trust. Unscrupulous individuals could use their secrets against them. People need to protect themselves from getting hurt. Life never taught you that?”

  “Life taught me secrets are the things that hurt people the most.”

  “What secrets hurt you?” Annie murmured.

  “We’re not talking about me. I gotta know one thing,” he said. “This thing you’re running from, is it a husband or a possessive boyfriend?”

  In a way, it was, but she knew that was not how he meant it. “No.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “What are you running from?” she asked.

  “Who says I’m running from anything?”

  “You are pulling your home behind you.”

  “Roots,” he said. “I’m running from roots.”

  “Roots?”

  “You know. Like tree roots.”

  “And why are you afraid of tree roots?”

  “I don’t like being tied down.”

  “You have been married before?”

  “No. That’s the point.”

  “Have you ever come close to getting married?”

  “No, but hey, how come I always end up answering the questions and you keep sidestepping them?”

  “Because people like to talk about themselves more than they enjoy listening to others talk about themselves.”

  “You saying I’m self-centered?”

  She shrugged. “I am saying you are normal. You like to talk about yourself. You run away from commitment . . .”