Plain-Jane Princess

“You came with little luggage, and the clothes you have are obviously new. You are in hiding, Miss Stone. If that is indeed your name.” The old man shrugged, then returned to his task. “Are you running from the law?”

Her laugh was startled. “No.”

“Then it is of no concern of mine why you are here.” He moved on to the next bush, squinting at a bud, from which he removed a layer of aphids. “Although you may find me a good listener…?”

She hesitated, then said, “It’s nothing, really. I just suddenly realized I desperately needed to take some time for myself. To relax. To perhaps think through a few things.”

“Ah. One of those, what do they call them? Workaholics?”

“I suppose, yes.”

He tilted his head, resembling a flower himself in the silly hat. “Too busy to take time to smell the roses?”

She laughed again, then, hugging herself, made her way over to a small wooden shed tucked away in one corner, the stupid shoes clumping on the brick path. “Except,” she tossed over her shoulder, “I find I really don’t know how to relax. I’ve already gone through two novels, just since yesterday.” Like a small child, she peered inside the darkened shed which smelled of damp wood and earth and other vague, gardeny things. “I do need the time away, but—”

“What you need is a change, then. Not a rest.”

She turned then, one hand on the door frame. “Yes. Yes, I suppose that’s it.” On a sigh, she added, “I find idleness doesn’t suit me very much.”

The old man waved his clippers at her in agreement, and she chuckled. Then her gaze lit on the bicycle, leaning against the shed’s back wall. “Oh! Does the bicycle work?” she called out to him, already halfway inside.

“It was my daughter’s,” Mr. Liebowicz said, closing in on her. “It’s been years since anyone’s ridden it. Here—” He motioned for her to bring it out. “Let’s have a look.”

So she did, divesting the poor thing of its cobweb shroud. The tires were flat, but otherwise it looked in decent condition. “Would you mind if I borrowed it while I was here? After I got it fixed up, of course.”

“No, not at all. There’s a bicycle shop not six blocks away, in town, that can fix those tires for you. I’ll be happy to pay for getting it in shape—”

“Nonsense. If I’m going to use it, the least I can do is foot the repair bill.”

“Well, then—take it, with my blessings. The countryside is beautiful, this time of year. And a half hour in that direction—” he pointed west “—takes you to a stretch of woods and farmland that may remind you of home.”

She blinked at him, questions fluttering like moths in her brain.

“Your accent may be English, my dear,” Mr. Liebowicz said with a smile, “but your features are pure central Europe.”

After a moment, she hugged the dear old man, clearly startling him, then knelt by the bike, checking the chain. “Perhaps a few nice, long bike rides will clear out the old brain, you know?”

Mr. Liebowicz stroked the dulled silver handlebars, then nodded. “Perhaps so, my dear. Perhaps so.”

Chapter 3

“Mrs. Hadley—please.” Steve did some fancy shuffling through several half-dressed kids and a dog in order to plant himself in front of the bulldozer of a woman headed for his front door. “If you could just stay until—”

“Mister Koleski.” A pair of frigid blue eyes smacked into his. “I only took this job because the agency said you were desperate, so you knew from the beginning I was only here on a trial basis. Well, the trial’s over!” A pudgy hand swept him out of the way as the woman tromped through the old farmhouse’s uncarpeted living room, tugging her pale blue blouse down over hips that conjured up images of large, scary beasts.

Steve’s peripheral vision caught the six-year-old standing by the doorway, his eyes wide with confusion and fear. “For crying out loud, Mrs. Hadley—it wasn’t like Dylan meant to do it!”

The housekeeper spun around. “No six-year-old should still be wettin’ himself, Mr. Koleski!”

Dylan ran from the room, sobbing; frustration flared into a fury. Steve felt no compunction about turning on the woman standing in front of him with her chin jutted out to Wisconsin. Thank God Mac was out feeding the chickens. The fourteen-year-old was fiercely protective of his younger siblings, and he tended to fly off the handle if he even suspected that someone was hurting one of them. At the moment, Steve understood all too well how the teenager felt. “It’s only been eight months. And Dylan’s only six, in case you missed it. Six. He can’t help it if he still has nightmares.”

Now he noticed the twins, both still in their nightgowns, Bree with rollers in her short hair, sidling out to see what all the commotion was about. Mrs. Hadley turned again to leave; Steve caught her by the arm. “Just wait one blessed minute, all right?” he said in a low voice, then turned to the girls. “Guys, I know you hate to do this, but I really, really need you to get Dylan cleaned up and dressed this morning.”

Courtney, her long, dark hair a tangled mass around her slender face, groaned first. But Steve cut off her protest with a pointed glare he’d learned from his mother, and the two of them trudged dejectedly down the hall, calling for their little brother, while George—the brown-and-white half hound, half whatever mutt that had come with the house—trotted along happily beside them.

He turned back to Mrs. Hadley. “If you leave me in the lurch like this,” he said softly, “don’t expect me to give you any recommendations.”

Mrs. Hadley’s jaw dropped, closed, then flew open again. “I did my job, Mr. Koleski, you know darn well I did! You’re spoiling these kids, is what. Just because they went through a rough patch don’t mean they don’t need discipline and limits! They got you so tied up around their little fingers, it’s a wonder they haven’t set the place on fire!”

Her word choice couldn’t have been more deliberately cruel. Steve jerked one hand up to halt the tirade, then jumped slightly when he felt a tug on his jeans leg. Without even looking, he swept three-year-old Rosie and her lovey—the heart-patterned, and very ratty, crib quilt she always carried around with her—up onto his hip, swallowing hard when she tucked her head into his collarbone and poked her thumb in her mouth, conveying a trust both implicit and explicit that this big man would protect her almost as much as her lovey did.

A trust Steve took extremely seriously.

Bug-eyed and now dressed in nearly identical bell-bottomed jeans and scoop-necked tees, the twins, with a cleaned and dressed Dylan in tow, crept back into the living room, Bree with her arms locked around her ribs, Courtney twisting a lock of hair around her finger. Three sets of dark brown eyes all fixed on the scene, three already mangled hearts subjected to yet more stress.

“And that one’s far too big to be sucking her thumb, too,” the dour-faced woman in front of him said, and Steve lost it. Calmly, but he lost it.

“Mrs. Hadley?” he asked, smoothing a tangle of dark brown hair away from the baby’s face as she nestled more closely against him.

“What?”

“Why on earth do you hire out to care for children when you obviously dislike them so much?”

Thin lips pressed together until they nearly disappeared. Then the woman whirled around, banging back the screen door on her way out. Everybody including the dog wandered out onto the porch to watch her leave, which she did in a spectacular fashion, tromping down the drive to that old blue bomb of hers. She hurtled her impressive body inside and slammed the door, then gunned the car down the rutted dirt driveway in a cloud of dust, as if petrified the kids were going to turn into ten-foot monsters and eat her alive.

As her car sped toward the end of the driveway, though, Steve caught movement out of the corner of his eye—a cyclist coming down the road from the main highway. The road curved a bit, right before it got to the foot of his drive, the entry partially obscured by a forest of volunteer elms he’d been meaning to take out ever since he bought the place. His heart bolted into his throat when he realized the cyclist and Mrs. Hadley, who clearly wasn’t even thinking about slowing down, might not see each other in time—

“Hey!” he shouted, taking off down the steps and out toward the road, Rosie laughing and bouncing in his arms, the other kids hot on his heels, George barking his damn fool head off. “Hey! Slow down! Slow down!”

But of course, the older woman couldn’t possibly hear him. And he doubted she was looking at her rearview mirror—

Oh, hell! Steve ground to a halt, his heart hammering painfully at the base of his throat while the twins and Dylan jumped up and down beside him, shrieking and waving. And now he saw Mac streaking toward them from the back, making more noise than any of them. Steve silently swore at himself for letting them out, because if anything happened, if they saw—

His stomach heaved as Mrs. Hadley took the turn at full throttle, spinning out onto the road at the same moment the cyclist rounded the curve. The kids screamed even louder as car and bicycle swerved to avoid each other, the car quickly straightening out and rocketing down the road. The bicycle, however, wobbled for a second or two, then toppled over into the brush.

The word that rang out a moment later from the bushes was one he regularly gave Mac hell for using.

Sophie was reasonably sure she’d live. Whether she wanted to was something else again.

The ground seemed to vibrate beneath her battered body—pounding footsteps, she realized, intermixed with a dog’s frantic barking. A second later, she found herself surrounded by a herd of short people, all with brown hair and eyes, all shouting, “Are you all right?” and looking both extremely worried and extremely relieved to find her conscious. The dog, a large, rather smelly mongrel, got to her first, whimpering in her face as if to ask where he—at this level, his gender was not in question—should kiss first to make it all better.

“For the love of Pete…! George, kids—get out of the way!”

Oh, dear God in heaven. Tell her it wasn’t…

After judiciously determining her arm wouldn’t fall off if she moved it, Sophie shielded her eyes from the early morning sun and looked up into a pair of familiar gold-flecked green eyes set above a shocked grimace.

It was.