The Cowboy and the Princess

“Everything,” she said. And for some reason she couldn’t explain, she looked at his lips. Longing washed over her, and she knew darn well that it was completely wrong. The one thing she knew she wasn’t going to do was develop a crush on Owen Michaels. Or on any man, for that matter. But especially not this one. He would hurt her. She knew that…so clearly.

It was that thought and only that thought that enabled her to step back and away from him.

“Just so you know,” she told him. “I want to do everything.”

For several seconds he said nothing, but his eyes said it all. He was not a happy man.

“Define everything,” he finally said.

But she had had enough. Besides, she didn’t have a clue about the specifics of what she had meant.

“I’ll make it up as I go along,” she said.

“Don’t make me regret saying yes to Andreus’s request,” he said.

Which was the perfect thing to break the tension. Delfyne laughed and headed for the house. “Too late. I know that you’ve regretted it from the start, haven’t you?”

He didn’t answer, and for some reason that fact was still bothering her hours later.

CHAPTER FOUR

ALL RIGHT, Owen thought the next day while he was freeing a cow that had gotten stuck in a broken bit of fence. Delfyne had been here only a few days and already she was playing havoc with his world and also—he didn’t even want to think about this—his senses.

It had been a mistake to touch her. Her skin had been soft, softer than any woman’s skin he could remember. And her lips had been so close that he’d wanted to swoop in and taste. He’d wanted his hands on more than just her chin.

“Get a grip, Michaels,” he ordered himself. He was fantasizing about kissing a princess, one who was going to marry a prince. Besides the fact that finding himself with some sort of fatal attraction was really on his list of things never to do, a man would have to be some sort of idiot to put his hands on a forbidden woman.

“That frown on your face can’t mean anything good. Do you need help with that cow?”

Owen looked around to see Ennis approaching in an old open-top Jeep. The man stared at the cow, who was bawling loudly but standing still.

Owen was glad that he wasn’t a man to redden up with embarrassment. “No, my mind was just wandering,” he admitted as he freed the patient animal. “I do need you to mend this fence, though.”

“Done.”

“I thought you were changing the oil in the truck.”

“I was. Lydia sent me to get you.”

“Lydia?” She’d worked for him for years and had never sent for him unless there was an emergency. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know, but I gather it has something to do with your gorgeous, exotic visitor.”

Owen’s head swiveled around and he looked at Ennis, who had worked for him for five years and been the most circumspect of men. “Gorgeous, exotic visitor?”

Ennis held up his hands. “I’m just saying…”

“Yeah, well, you better not let Alice hear you ‘just saying…’”

Grinning, Ennis went to the Jeep and got his tools. “Alice was the one who told me Delfyne was gorgeous and exotic.”

“Really? What else did your wife say?”

Ennis gave him a look. “She said that if any woman could jolt you out of your ‘idiotic ways with women’ Delfyne could.”

Owen scowled. “What idiotic ways?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ennis mused, squatting to get closer to the fence. “Maybe the ones where you bed them but never wed them.”

“Is that right? Well, Ennis, you know how much I adore your wife, but she’s dead wrong on this one. Delfyne is getting married when she goes home.”

“Hmm, Alice isn’t going to like that. She was hoping for the chance to go to a wedding. Your wedding.”

Owen smiled. “Send her my condolences, but it’s not happening. She’ll have to find some other wedding to attend. You’re sure you don’t know what Lydia wants?”

“She just said that she had some important questions to ask you. And she said that you needed to give her a raise if she was going to have to worry about Delfyne hurting herself or setting the house on fire. Maybe you’d better hurry.”

Ennis chuckled as Owen swore, hopped on his ATV and started to take off.

“Oh, Alice says she wants you to come to dinner on Saturday, and she wants you to bring Delfyne, too.”

“Tell her thank you, but I don’t think I’ll be able to make it.”

“She’ll be disappointed.”

Owen stopped and looked at Ennis, his employee and friend. “I’m sorry.”

He was, too, he thought as he sped away on the ATV. Alice was a sweetheart and she was good for Ennis. She was good to everyone, and she tried to fix people’s troubles, including his. She’d started inviting him to dinner not long after Faye had gone, but…Ennis and Alice had two kids, sweet little munchkins. The very sight of them seared his soul and hurt his heart. How could you tell a man and his wife that the children that gave light to their lives ripped your world apart even as you thanked God for putting them on the earth? He begged off on dinner as much as he could, especially since Alice tended to invite women she thought might fill what she perceived as a hole in Owen’s life. Now, if he went with Delfyne, after what Ennis had said…

“I’m really sorry, Alice, hon,” he said out loud to the wind. “It isn’t happening.” What was happening, he saw as he hopped from the vehicle and strode into the house, was that something had exploded in his kitchen.

“Come on. Let me do that,” Lydia was saying.

“No. I messed everything up and I will fix it.” Delfyne’s lilting accent floated out, its sexy timbre sending his body into full alert. Don’t react, he ordered himself. Don’t feel. Don’t desire.

Instead he moved further into the mess, catching both Lydia’s and Delfyne’s attention. They both looked up, and Owen saw that Lydia, while clean, was flustered and concerned. Delfyne’s face was radiant…and covered in numerous smudges of white. Her dark satiny hair had traces of white here and there, too. The kitchen was coated in what appeared to be flour.

“Problem?” he asked as innocently as he could.

“I’m trying to cook,” Delfyne declared, “but I hadn’t quite realized just how heavy a twenty-pound bag of flour could be.”