by Jess Bentley
We found our princess. I know it.
Chapter 1
Vanessa
The moving van rolls slowly down the long, curved driveway while heavy walnut branches scrape gently along the top. I wave a couple of fingers in greeting at the moving company driver, waiting patiently on the side of the cul-de-sac as he maneuvers the huge truck out of the way.
After clearing the brick mailbox post by just inches, the truck accelerates toward the exit, and I slip my Subaru back into gear. I see an older couple sitting on a loveseat swing on the porch to my left, rocking slowly back and forth. They drink beverages out of tall glasses in the cool shade of the deep porch. On my other side, there is another driveway that leads back between rows of trees toward another house, but I only see the top edge of the roof line over the leaves.
It looks like something out of a fairy tale, to be honest. The curving drive, the houses tucked away behind manicured hedges and dense woods. It all looks mystical, magical.
Keeping an eye out for mischievous woodland creatures, I drive up the concrete driveway, noting how the two neighboring houses appear in flickers among the tree trunks and ample undergrowth. It's still pretty secluded out here, and not what I had expected.
When my mom told me that they had rented a house on a cul-de-sac, I thought that they had gone totally suburban on me. Now I see it just happens to be a glorified dead-end street that sprouted off a remote county road in the middle of Pennsylvania. Not suburban at all.
As I roll up toward the house, I see my mother, Anita, wandering around a well manicured turf lawn with a moving box in her arms. She zigzags back and forth, her wavy blonde hair streaming behind her in the light breeze. When she hears my Subaru, she pivots and smiles at me, squinting against the sunlight.
“Well, here we go,” I breathe into the quiet interior air. “No turning back now.”
Taking a deep breath, I slap a big fat smile on my face and open the door, waving cheerfully over my head as though I have got an imaginary banner unfurled or something. Mom tips her chin toward the house, suggesting that I take a look at it. As if on cue, my dad emerges from the open garage door, pulling on a pair of work gloves.
“Hey! You're here!” he calls out, smiling.
“I sure am!” I reply with as much cheer as I can muster. Despite my cranky mood, I can’t help but love their enthusiasm.
Striding across the lawn, I join my mom and her moving box as my dad cuts diagonally toward us. Her eyes slide toward him, then back toward me. She nods happily, but I don’t know why. This is her way: a lot of nonverbal communication that goes right over my head.
I'm happy that my dad came over to this spot on the lawn because he likes to use actual words that other human beings can understand. My mom, on the other hand, operates in some kind of super primate clairvoyance experiment instead. I assume that all these years making nature documentaries has convinced her that words are for humans who refuse to truly evolve, or something like that.
“Man, you look great!” my dad sighs, crushing me in a big bear hug. “Doesn't she look great?”
My mom tips her head to the side and looks at the toes of my shoes, then my left shoulder. She smiles and shrugs at the box in her hands.
I raise my eyebrows at my dad, hoping for some kind of clue what that all meant. He just smirks.
“Where is all your stuff? Did you bring everything?”
“Yeah, it's all here in the back,” I reply.
He walks over and opens the back gate of the Subaru, stacking a couple of crates and angling them confidently against his hip.
“It sure doesn't seem like very much,” he says doubtfully. “Are you sure this is it?”
“Yeah, well, it's just one dorm room worth of stuff. I guess it's not really all that much,” I mutter, but he's already on his way up toward the house again.
“You should come see your room!” he calls over his shoulder as he takes the concrete steps, two at a time. “It's pink!”
Grabbing a couple of duffels, I glance over my shoulder to see if my mom is trying to send me more psychic messages, but she's still following her moving box around as though it is some kind of divining rod. The boxes are all labeled on the sides: dining room, pre-Columbian artifacts, etc. The box that's in her hands is marked “Notebooks, 1 of 2.” Looks like it must be searching for its better half.
As soon as I walk in the front door, I can tell that this house is actually a lot nicer than other places we’ve lived. My parents are definitely the adventurous types, so we have stayed briefly in lofts, other people's guesthouses (which are basically garages), industrial spaces, and tiny shacks in out of the way places. Once we lived in a Russian-style yurt in southern Wyoming, tracking buffalo by day and looking up at the stars through the smoke hole at night.
My parents make documentaries about American wildlife, so we tend to end up in remote towns that are frankly better suited for wildlife than humans. Mom writes the documentary and dad shoots it with her over a few weeks or months, then we move on. We’re basically vagabonds.
But this place is pretty nice, I think as I run my palm over the carved wooden post at the bottom of the staircase. It's got two spacious rooms that I can see from the front hallway, set up with small sofas facing each other, as if conversations are required here. There’s a staircase leading upward to a ninety degree angle topped with a stained-glass window. It's pretty. Most surprisingly of all, this seems utterly habitable with no major intervention or rehab required. We’re not roughing it, for once.
At the top of the stairs, I peer down the hallway to figure out which room is mine. I assume it has to be the one with the door open and that neon pink glow spilling out.
“Isn't it great?” my dad breathes excitedly as I come around the corner and through the doorway. He holds his hands out like, ‘ta-dah!’
“Oh, man,” I start. I'm not sure what to say. It's definitely pink. Pink walls. Slightly darker pink ceiling. Long, floral lightweight curtains that skim along the top of the petal pink carpet.
“You got your own bathroom too!” he announces, flinging open one of the walnut stained doors. Thankfully, that room is stone white, like a visual breath of fresh air.
I set my duffels down on the bed and rub the ache out of my shoulder.
“This is pretty awesome,” I say, forcing a smile. I can tell how proud he is that the room is set up with my bed, my bedspread, and a nice set of drawers. And do I really have anything against the color pink? No. I mean, this quite a bit of it, but…
“Your mom said you would love it,” he winks.
Despite myself, I wonder what combination of gestures that entailed.
“Yeah, it's pretty great,” I nod.
Awkwardness marches between us like a bunch of popsicle stick figures. Suddenly he points toward the large window.
“And a desk! That came with the house. You can, you know… set up your books. Or whatever. No pressure!”
I smile tightly. Nothing says all the pressure like the phrase no pressure.
He shifts from foot to foot.
“So, okay!” he announces. “I'll just go grab whatever you’ve got left in the Subaru and be back in a jiffy. Check out your bathroom!”
“Thanks. Will do,” I say with a little salute.
As he leaves the room, my shoulders slump just a little bit. One interaction down, several more to go.
The truth is, I need to tell them I don't want to go back to college. Emptying out my dorm room felt amazing. After four semesters of trudging dutifully through finance and accounting classes, with a little bit of math and English thrown in for good measure, I was glad to empty out that tiny little closet, those cramped cubbies. I was happy to chuck all my stuff into the back of Subaru and set out for the highway toward this admittedly strange destination.
Two years in college felt like a prison sentence, and I’m finally on parole.
Still, I take my duffel off the bed and move it toward the desk to attempt to do wh
at my dad asked. The books clunk together when I set it on top. They're worthless now. Six hundred dollars in textbooks, and for what? How can a book possibly cost $150 when you can only use it once? That seems stupid.
I never even picked a major, just straddled the fence between business management and finance, hoping that I could see myself as a banker or a CFO or something. But it never clicked. It all just seemed so absurd.
And really, shouldn't my parents have known that? It's been a source of family pride that we are the kind of people who can always be on the road, always ready for the next new adventure, always taking up the challenge when it's presented to us. How could they have thought that I wanted to sit in an eight-by-twelve-foot dorm room for years at a time? Scribbling out notes in spiral-bound notebooks until somebody granted me yet another piece of paper? Why would they think that was me?
I push aside the pale curtains and peek out through the pretty, divided light window. Just below, my dad marches across the lawn to my mom. They stand there moving their hands and pivoting ninety degrees this way and that, like keys that won't turn completely in their locks.
In a few moments they separate and she walks around the side of the house, while he walks to the back of my car. He pulls out another couple of boxes and stacks them on the edge of the driveway, then takes my guitar case and closes the trunk.
Who would've thought that guitar case would cause so much trouble in my life? But we've argued over it quite a bit. Last time we talked, I laid down the ultimatum that I would only go back to school if I could major in music. If college was so important to them, I should at least have some say so in what I studied, was my reasoning.
That conversation didn't go very well.
But I can't help but be excited when I see him carrying my guitar. It's like watching my own kid from far away, knowing it's coming closer, knowing it will be right back in my arms at any moment now.
Dad clomps back up the stairs and carefully angles the case into the room ahead of him, making sure not to bang it against the shiny wood work. He casts me a look and then lays the case on the bed, scowling at it for just a millisecond before looking at me again.
“Well,” he announces finally. “That’s just about it, I guess. Welcome home, Vanessa!”
“Thanks, Dad,” I smile. I know I have a thousand things I need to say to them if we are going to work through this together, but I don't have to say them all right at this moment. We've got the rest of the summer.
Learn what happens to Vanessa and the five sexy brothers…
About the Author
Jess Bentley is a contemporary romance author who adores writing about adventurous young women--and the hot sexy men who love them. She spends her days reading and writing, tending to her flower garden and growing vegetables, as well as playing the guitar.
For more information:
www.amazon.com/Jess-Bentley
[email protected]
Also by Jess Bentley
One Bride for Five Mountain Men
Five Men and a Nanny
One Bride for Five Brothers
Package Deal
Twin Tempt
Twin Tease