The Rancher's Runaway Princess

The Rancher's Runaway Princess
DONNA ALWARD

By royal decree – she’ll exchange her tiara for a rancher’s ring!Brooding ranch owner Brody Hamilton keeps his heart out of reach. But there’s something about vivacious stable manager Lucy that brings joy to his hardened soul. Only he must put his past behind him before he can put a ring on her finger…Lucy Farnsworth has just discovered she’s of royal blood. She should be glad, but it’s blown her world apart and she just finds herself wanting to be the old Lucy again. At Prairie Rose Ranch Lucy’s found the man who makes her feel she belongs. Only she hasn’t told him she’s a princess…

Brody leaned forward, the gleam in his eyes intense. “My grandparents used to come here. They’d build a fire and…

“You can guess,” he said. His voice was a sexy rumble that came from the center of his chest. His fingers plucked her hat from her head, dropping it onto the dry grass.

As his hands sank into her hair, her heart trembled. She could well imagine what his grandparents had done around a blazing campfire, with the wide open prairie spread out beneath them. Had he brought his wife here too? The thought slid away into oblivion as his dark gaze centered on her lips, clung there.

She took off his hat too, dropping it beside hers and running her fingers through the short black strands of his hair. His eyes closed briefly, and when they opened they stared right into her core. There was no point in denying the attraction now, or making excuses. It was all too clear to both of them: it was bigger than any of the secrets they’d been hiding.

Donna Alward can’t remember a time when she didn’t love books. When her mother would take her to town, her ‘treat’ was not clothes or candy but a trip to the bookstore. This followed through university, as she studied English Literature, writing short stories and poetry, but never attempting full-length fiction.

In 2001 her sister told her to just get out there and do it, and after completing her first manuscript she was hooked. She lives in Alberta, Canada, with her husband and children, and when not writing is involved in music and volunteering at her children’s school.

To find out more about Donna, visit her web-page at www.donnaalward.com, or her blog at www.donnaalward.blogspot.com, and sign up for her newsletter!

Recent titles by this author:

FALLING FOR MR DARK & DANGEROUS

THE SOLDIER’S HOMECOMING

MARRIAGE AT CIRCLE M

HIRED BY THE COWBOY

Dear Reader

As an author, I’m often asked, Where do you get your ideas? And the answer is as varied as a field full of wildflowers.

But I can tell you that with this book I got the idea from real life. But wait, you say. This is a book about a cowboy and a princess, isn’t it? That can’t be right.

But it is. For a few blissful days in the summer of 2007 this was absolutely correct. Our family went camping in southern Alberta, at a family-run place called the Great Canadian Barn Dance. The kids had a marvellous time, and my husband had a crash course in cowboy—namely learning to play an instrument called the ‘gutbucket’ and also learning to two-step. I felt like the luckiest woman in the world. The children were tuckered out and crashed in their sleeping bags, and we could still hear the music from the dance as we sat beneath the stars. We danced the last dance beneath them.

It was one of those perfect moments that happens so rarely it needs to be cherished.

There’s a part of me in every book I write. In this one, it’s that moment of pure and simple romance.

Love

Donna

THE RANCHER’S RUNAWAY PRINCESS

BY

DONNA ALWARD

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

To Suzanne, who let me go first.

CHAPTER ONE

“IN TWO hundred meters, turn left.”

Lucy grinned lopsidedly in the direction of her GPS sitting on the dash. “Thank you, Bob,” she replied with mock seriousness, looking up the long stretch of road for the intersection her “companion” kept insisting was approaching. The freedom—this wide-open space—was a revelation compared to how claustrophobic she’d felt lately.

“In one hundred meters, turn left.”

She obeyed the monotone instruction and put on her turn signal. A small sign announced a numbered road. Thank goodness she’d been able to program in a waypoint for the Prairie Rose Ranch. Otherwise she would have kept driving the rented SUV through this fairly empty landscape for God knew how long. Not that she’d have minded; there was something comforting in the rolling green hills, their undulating curves broken only by random fences and trees.

She turned onto the road, only to discover after the first few seconds it had gravel instead of pavement. She rolled up the window against the dust curling up from her tires.

Prairie Rose Ranch was out in the middle of nowhere, just as Mr. Hamilton had said in his e-mail. All that isolation and space had sounded wonderful to her ears after the scrutiny she’d experienced the past few months. She couldn’t wait to get there, away from all the prying eyes and whispers from behind hands. In Canada there would be no expectations, even for a short time. At Prairie Rose she would just be Lucy Farnsworth.

Whoever that was.

She frowned as Bob announced he’d lost the satellite signal, grateful he’d got her this far. She was here to buy horses, to look into Hamilton’s breeding program and negotiate stud fees. It was her first real responsibility and one she was more than equipped for. Granted, she couldn’t shake the feeling that King Alexander was placating her, but it didn’t matter. For the first time in a long time she felt in control of something. No one to tell her who she was or how to act.

And no one at the ranch need know who she really was. The last thing she needed—or wanted for that matter—was for everyone to look at her as if she had some invisible tiara perched on her head.

No, this was her chance to get away from all of the curiosity and assessments and do what she knew how to do. Nothing made sense to her anymore, but at least this trip, short as it was, might offer her a bit of a reprieve. Might offer her a chance to shake off the pervading sadness. She’d been thrown from one unimaginable situation into another without time to catch her breath. When Alexander had suggested this trip, she’d left a vapor trail that rivaled the one from the 777 she’d flown in.

On the left up ahead she caught sight of a group of buildings…big buildings. With a rumble of tires, the SUV ran over a Texas gate, leading her up to a graveled drive. A wood and iron arch embraced the entrance, and she knew she was in the right place when she looked up and saw a uniquely shaped iron rose in the centre. Bob came back to life and announced she was arriving at her destination, but she reached over blindly and shut the unit off.

Her eyes assessed the ranch as she drove slowly up the long, straight lane. It was neat, well kept, with a rambling two-story farmhouse hidden behind a long barn and corral. The immediate fences were in good repair and freshly painted; nothing seemed out of place. So far so good.

The land here was different from where she’d grown up, yet somewhat the same, and very different from the sun-baked countryside in Marazur. The sky here was broad and robin’s-egg blue, in contrast to the piercing blue of the Mediterranean sky. Horses dotted the landscape, up a hill and beyond, grazing on rich grass, reminding her of her childhood home in Virginia. It was comforting and unsettling at the same time. It was what she knew. Yet everything she thought she knew about herself had been a lie, and she wanted to run away even as the ranch beckoned to her. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Nothing made sense, and that was the only consistent thing these days.

She pulled in next to a white truck with the same Prairie Rose brand painted on the side, got out and shut the door. The polite thing to do would be to introduce herself at the house, she supposed. But then what? The west wind buffeted her curls about her face and she pushed them aside. The wind carried with it the sound of voices, coming from the open sliding door of the barn. Thankful she’d changed clothing before the drive, she straightened her T-shirt. At least someone in the barn could point her in the right direction.

Lucy heard the man before she saw him, his voice a low, warm rumble as he spoke. Her sneakers made soft padding noises on the concrete floor; for a moment she stopped and closed her eyes, drinking in the mellow smell of hay and straw and the warm pungency of horse, the one true thing that she associated with home. Perhaps that was what kept her going during all the dark days and uncertainty. The one constant she’d always had. The one place where she’d always belonged, no matter where she was. In a barn with the horses.

She knew it, and resented it. Resented that it was the only thing she seemed to have left. The male voice said something else, punctuated like a question. He was answered by a distinctly female voice, who laughed a little, though Lucy couldn’t make out what they were saying. She paused, wondering again if she should have made herself known at the house first. She didn’t want to intrude. But she turned a corner and suddenly two pairs of legs were before her and she couldn’t pretend now that she hadn’t come in.

He…the owner of the voice…stood upright, his weight planted squarely over his booted feet. One hand was resting on the withers of a splendid-looking chestnut mare. Lucy was first aware of his considerable height. Which made her realize how long his legs were in his faded jeans. Which led to his T-shirt. And how the worn cotton emphasized an impressively broad chest.

Color flooded her cheeks. Her assessment had taken all of two seconds, but it was complete, right down to the hot rush of appreciation.

“Can I help you?”

Lucy swallowed against the spit pooling in her mouth. She shot out her hand. “Lucy Farnsworth.” Please, please let him not be Brody Hamilton, she prayed silently, with her hand suspended in midair. It wasn’t possible that the man she’d just been caught blatantly staring at was the man she’d been sent here to broker deals with.

At her revelation he removed his hat, revealing a dark head and even darker eyes that crinkled at the corners with good humor. Her heart thumped at the courtesy…it was natural, not a put-on gesture, she was sure. He smiled as he stepped forward and took her small hand in his large one. “I beg your pardon, Miss Farnsworth. I’m Brody Hamilton. You made good time.”