by Peak, Renna
I, on the other hand, feel like I want to squeal. Instead I turn back to Prince—I don’t care what Nick thinks, that’s his name—and take his head between my hands, nuzzling my nose against his. He’s extremely friendly, not as skittish as I expected, and I know he and I are going to be the best of friends.
As for Nick and me…that might be a slightly different story. Taking this job means that not only do I have to learn how to run a ranch, I also have to learn how to get along with an owner who is, at best, a bit broody and grumpy. An owner who I suspect can only be bullied by me for so long before he grows immune to my habit of talking my way into whatever I want.
I bite back another smile. At the very least, Nick is the exact opposite of Adam, who talked as much as me and could charm his way into—or out of—anything. It’ll be nice to be around a man who’s more of the strong, silent type.
“When did you say you could get that bed?” I ask him.
He frowns. I’m beginning to think that’s his usual expression.
“I was going to purchase some furniture on Saturday,” he says. “Bill assures me there’s a place that carries some quality pieces about seventy miles north of here. I’m not, however, overly confident in his definition of ‘quality’.”
I don’t think I’ll ever cease to find his stiff formality amusing.
“Why don’t we go tomorrow instead?” I say. “There’s no reason to put it off.”
The corners of his mouth deepen. “We?”
“Why not? It will be my room, after all. And furniture shopping is always easier with two people. Plus I can show off some of my budgeting and planning skills.” I nod, the matter settled. “Unless you plan on paying for my room and board at Delilah’s bed and breakfast for the next week? I can tell you right now, that’s not a very wise financial decision.”
Whether or not he agrees with my reasoning, he seems to decide it’s easier just to let this one go.
“Fine,” he tells me. “We leave promptly at nine tomorrow morning.”
“Don’t worry,” I say, grinning. “I will be perfectly prompt.” I give Prince another scratch under the chin. “Has anyone ever told you that you sound nothing like a cowboy? If we’re going to make this place successful, we might need to work on your image a little. Get you some proper cowboy boots and teach you how to get a little drawl in your voice.”
His forehead is crinkling again. “You don’t have boots, either.”
He pronounces the last word eye-ther, in a lilting, almost formal way like he’s having tea with the Queen of England or something.
“Maybe there’ll be some clothing stores near the furniture place,” I say. “We can both get wardrobe makeovers.”
He actually looks a little terrified at that suggestion. This time I can’t fight down a laugh.
“But we’ll worry about that in the morning,” I say. “For now, let’s get these two beauties fed.”
Nicholas
Each day I live at the ranch it would seem that I learn something new. But as I wait for Clara to ready herself this morning, I realize I’ve grown soft.
Perhaps it is because of all the time I spent with my sister Sophia last year, following her around and trying to protect from the man who would become her husband. Or perhaps it is because of all the children around the palace now.
Whatever the reason, I know I can’t allow this woman to take advantage of me, too.
“I’m leaving,” I call.
“Another five minutes,” she says from behind the closed bathroom door.
“What could possibly be taking so long?” I grumble to no one in particular. “For a woman who brought nothing with her, this is taking an inordinate amount of time—”
She interrupts by swinging the door open.
And though I’d never admit it, whatever was taking her so long has had an effect. Her clothing is still a bit mismatched—she wears the same slacks as she wore yesterday, but this time with a gray sweater that highlights the color of her eyes.
What color are they, anyway? Yesterday, I could have sworn they were a shade of blue, but today, they appear more gray.
I frown, shaking my head. This won’t do. The woman is my employee, and it doesn’t matter that the sweater she wears hugs her breasts in a way that seems meant to make a man hard…
“We leave now.” I narrow my gaze, almost willing myself to stop thinking of the needs of my cock. It’s a ridiculous notion—the woman before me might be beautiful, but she’s also under my employ. And there would be nothing more inappropriate than taking advantage of that fact.
“You’re so weird.” She grins, almost skipping past me toward the door.
Part of me knows that by weird, she’s speaking of my manner. I still haven’t got things quite right. My accent is still off, I know. But even with my shortcomings, I don’t think she’s guessed my true identity. Why would she? It isn’t as though royals purchase large ranches in the middle of nowhere very often.
We make our way outside to my vehicle, something else I purchased upon arriving here. While my brothers have always enjoyed their sleek, fast sports cars, this truck has always been my dream vehicle.
I open the door for Clara, and she lifts a brow at me, cocking her head as she climbs into the cab.
My gaze narrows, and I frown. I would ask her what the problem is, but I’m still trying to be cautious about talking too much.
I close the door after her before making my way around to the driver’s side of the truck. We say nothing as we drive off the ranch and head back for the highway.
There are a few enjoyable minutes of silence before Clara begins fiddling with the controls for the radio.
“Ugh, is there anything but country music?” She looks over at me. “Do you have your phone?”
“For what purpose would you need my phone?” I don’t even glance over at her.
She pauses for a moment. “For the purpose of finding some music that isn’t about drinking or cheating on your wife.” I can feel her staring at me for a moment. “Can I ask you something, Nick?”
“You may not have my phone.”
“That isn’t what I was going to ask.”
“You already asked.”
“And I realize that.” She chuckles. “Seriously, can I ask you something?”
This trip is going to take forever. It might only be an hour to the nearest small city, but that hour is very likely going to be the death of me.
“Where did you go to college?”
“I didn’t say you could ask me a question,” I grumble. “And why would you assume—”
“I’m pretty sure I have you figured out, Nick. I know exactly what you’re hiding.”
“You…do?” My stomach clenches in a knot. Of course, I could buy her silence. She’s obviously hiding as much as I am, if not more. She agreed to take a job for no payment—surely if I offered her money, she’d keep quiet about what I’m doing, at least for a time.
“I sure do.” She laughs. “I went to Columbia, you know.”
“Is that revelation supposed to—”
“That’s just it.” She laughs again. “Revelation. What sort of cowboy says that?”
I shrug. “This sort.”
“Right. Where’d you go to school? Harvard? Yale? You don’t strike me as the Princeton type.”
“There’s a certain type that attends Princeton?” I glance over at her—she’s beaming.
“I think you already know the answer to that question. So which was it?” She playfully narrows her gaze. “It was Harvard, wasn’t it?” She nods a few times. “I figured.”
“I did not attend Harvard.”
“Ohh, so it was Yale.” She laughs. “It’s okay. I worked with a couple of Yale grads. I know all about your type—”
“Can we just…not.”
“Of course, Your Highness. I’ll stop now. I have all the information I need.”
My cheeks begin to burn. Did she just call me…Your Highness? Did I miss so
mething?
“Ohh, didn’t like that one, huh?” She grins. “You Yale grads all think you’re pretty much better than everyone, right? So tell me, Prince Nick…” I can tell from her tone that she’s teasing, but having her call me by my formal title is making me quite uncomfortable, even if she has no idea why.
“You’re wrong.” I force myself to stare at the road, certain that if I look over at her, she’ll see the truth. “I didn’t attend Yale.”
“No?” She pauses for a moment. “I was sure…”
“I…I went to school in Europe.” There. That should satisfy her, perhaps get her to stop asking so many questions.
“Ah, that actually makes more sense. How long were you there?”
“A long time.”
“Mm, got your graduate degree, too. What did you study? Because it obviously wasn’t ranching.”
I risk a glance over at her. “What did you study? At Columbia?”
Her eyebrows draw together. “I told you yesterday.”
I frown. I know she told me she studied business and marketing yesterday, but I was hoping to get the topic of our conversation off of me and back to her. If I know anything about women, it’s that once you get them talking about themselves, you don’t really have to lead the conversation at all.
“I realize that. I meant to ask what made you choose to study business.”
Something about the way she smiles makes something twinge inside my chest. I quickly turn my gaze back to the road.
She goes on for the rest of the trip, seeming to forget all about our earlier conversation and how she called me by my title.
Thank God.
And by the time we pull up to the bank, it’s as though she’s completely forgotten what we’d talked about earlier.
“Why are we here?” She looks over at me. “I thought we were going to the furniture store.”
“We are.” I frown at her. “I need to get some money before we can shop.”
Her forehead crinkles with confusion. “You’re getting money? Cash?” She shakes her head. “Why would you need cash to buy furniture?”
My heart begins to pound in my chest. I can’t exactly explain that I can’t use a credit card—even if the local people don’t recognize my name, they’ll certainly be suspicious when I’m asked for my identification and I hand them my Montovian passport.
I glare at her for a moment. “You ask too many questions,” I say as I slide off my seat and slam the car door without giving her an explanation.
Clara
Nick really is a weirdo.
He’s grumpy after he gets his cash. I’m not sure which surprises me more—that there are people in this day and age who still don’t have credit cards, or that my new employer apparently has enough cash on hand to purchase an entire house’s worth of furniture. Nothing about this guy is anything like what I expected.
He’s sullenly quiet at he pulls out of the bank. I shake my head and hide my smile as he drives us down the road. I’ve dealt with brooding men before. Sometimes you just have to let them brood.
A few minutes later, he parks in front of a long, low building with a sign that says “Flo’s Discount Furniture.” At least four of the fluorescent letters are out, and a bird has built its nest in the D. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the best I can say is that this is certainly going to be an adventure. Setting my jaw, I march toward the doors, and Nick follows behind.
To be fair to Flo’s, it looks a lot better on the inside than the outside. It still has a bit of a “thrift store” feel to it, but the furniture is better quality than I expected. A lot of it appears to be real wood. And they carry a number of different styles.
“Let’s start with the living room,” I tell him, pointing him to the right. “At the very least, you need a sofa, a couple of armchairs, two to three end tables, a coffee table, and an assortment of lamps. You’ll want some decor, too, but we can worry about that another time. Right now, we’re here for basics.”
“A sofa will do for now,” he says.
“You’ll want a coffee table, too,” I tell him. “And at least one armchair. And maybe one end table for—”
“A sofa and a coffee table,” he concedes. “But no more. I don’t expect to spend a lot of time lounging about.”
“You say that now,” I say, examining a dark red upholstered sofa. It’s a beautiful color, but it doesn’t look very comfortable. “But what happens when it gets cold? We’ll want to be able to take advantage of that fireplace.” I grin over at him. “But as long as you’re okay with sharing the couch, then I am, too. Don’t worry, I’m a good snuggler.”
His jaw tightens, his face going three shades of red. “Fine. One chair. A chair, a sofa, and a coffee table. But nothing else.”
“Good choice,” I say, still grinning. “What do you think of this one?” I plunk down on a sofa in a rich, coffee-colored leather with a row of tiny brass studs along the arm. “Ohh, it’s comfy. Try it.” I pat the cushion next to me.
He acts like it pains him to take a seat beside me. But his expression softens slightly when his butt hits the cushion.
“See?” I say, leaning back with my arms behind my head. “Can’t you imagine lounging on this in the dead of winter, a warm fire crackling in the fireplace, a snuggly blanket draped across your lap, and a good book in your hands?” I glance over at him. “You like to read, don’t you?” Someone with his vocabulary must read.
“I read,” he says.
“What kinds of stuff? Wait—let me guess.” I rub my chin, making a show of studying him until he starts to look amusingly uncomfortable. “I bet you tell people you read history and philosophy but that you secretly love sci-fi.”
His nose wrinkles, almost like he’s fighting a sneeze. “You mean that nonsense with aliens and spaceships? Hardly.”
“It’s not all aliens and spaceships.”
“It’s still a bunch of nonsense. I can’t believe you think I’d read that drivel.”
“Don’t knock it until you try it,” I tease. “So what do you read, then?”
“I’ll admit, I enjoy the occasional history—”
“I knew it!” I laugh. “Oh, Nick, you’re not at your fancy college anymore. You can enjoy real-people things, you know.” This last year with Adam, I suddenly found myself reading all sorts of things I thought were “beneath me” before—steamy romance novels, epic fantasies, and for a while I got really obsessed with young adult books. Adam teased me about all of it, of course. But it made me realize exactly how much I was missing in life.
“Maybe while we’re here we can find a bookstore and get you something fun to read,” I tell him.
His frown deepens. “Histories are fun.”
“Not as fun as what you could be reading.” I wink at him before popping up off the couch. “Well, we’ve picked out the sofa. Let’s find the armchair next. Then the coffee table.”
He watches me warily as he gets up off the couch, almost as if I’m some sort of wild, rabid animal that might try to attack him if he lets his guard down for even a second. Poor Nick. He really does need someone to help him loosen up a little.
But as my gaze wanders over Flo’s selection of armchairs, my mood dampens. My phone got service again when we re-entered civilization, and it’s just beeped to inform me that I have a new voicemail message. I refuse to look to see who it’s from. I should have just left my phone back in Firebird Falls and left it at that. Now I have to feel guilty for ignoring yet another message.
But I put on a happy face as we look through the furniture. We actually find an armchair Nick likes fairly quickly, but the coffee table is a little trickier. He’s very picky about his tables, apparently. At one point he throws up his hands and declares he’s going to buy this hideous, boxy thing with over-ornamented legs, but I manage to talk him out of it, thank goodness. We settle on a simpler piece that will look right at home in his cozy ranch house.
Then we move on to the beds. My eyes immediately
go to a beautiful, weathered headboard with roses carved along its upper edge.
It’s perfect.
I run my fingers across the wood. It’s smoother than it looks, and all the hard edges in the carving have been sanded away. The wood is gray with hints of red and blue. Everything about it calls to me.
I see movement out of the corner of my eye and realize Nick has come to stand beside me. He’s frowning.
“That’s far too feminine,” he says.
“Not for you,” I say, more sharply than I intend to. I try to soften my voice. “I like this one for me, though. Very much.” I run my finger along one of the roses again. “Beds are a very personal thing, don’t you think? They’re where we start each day. Where we recover and dream every night. Where we spend most of life’s most intimate moments. You should go find one that speaks to you. But this one is mine.”
He lingers a moment longer than I expect him too, and for a second I wonder if I’ve offended him—after all, he is the one paying for this bed, and that means more than my silly feelings—but when I finally build up the nerve to glance his direction, he’s already turned away. He wanders among the other bed frames and headboards, and I allow myself one last longing look at the weathered rose bed before heading over into the mattress section.
It’s a good half hour before I see him again. I’ve spread myself out on my back across one of the mattresses, my eyes half closed.
“Is this the one you want?” he asks in that deep voice, startling me.
“It’ll do,” I say, sitting up quickly. “It has a lot of support, but it’s nice and soft on top. Like lying on a cloud.”
He glances toward a salesclerk hovering about ten feet away. “I’ll take two.”
“Don’t you want to try it?” I ask him.
He gives a shake of his head. “I’m not that particular.”
I guess not, considering he’s been sleeping on a pile of blankets. What a weirdo.
“Will you be wanting anything else?” the salesclerk asks.
“That will do for now,” he says. He turns back to me. “I’m getting you that bed you liked. I’m assuming you haven’t changed your mind?”