by Peggy Webb
And he did. Kissing and laughing and stumbling they took their time getting to the bedroom. Clint lowered her to the mattress then bent over and brushed her sweat-damp hair from her face.
“You are so beautiful. I want to see you.”
He switched on the light…and she screamed.
“Good heavens. What happened to you?”
Red welts the size of copper pennies dotted his legs, a long scratch angled down his arm and bits of hay clung to his hair.
He started laughing. “Good lord, I forgot.”
“You forgot?”
“Wait right there. I’ll be right back.” He tore off and left her lolling on the bed, as sleek and satisfied as a Persian cat who has just stolen the tuna.
She didn’t want to move from that spot. And she didn’t plan to for a very long time.
“I’m back.”
Clint stood in the doorway holding the worst-looking roses she’d ever seen. The petals were crushed and bruised, the stems bent and broken, the leaves stripped bare. The bouquet looked as if had left the peanut butter jar then gone to war with six mad dogs and seven angry cats.
“These are for you,” he said.
“Those are the most beautiful roses in the world,” she said, and meant it. What had earlier been a meaningless gesture was now a gift of the heart.
Without moving from the doorway he said, “Here’s what happened to me. I was racing down the road trying to get as far away from you as I could when all of a sudden the moon came out of Alabama and tapped me on the shoulder and Venus winked, and I was unhinged by love. Struck speechless. Brought to my knees.”
C.J. held her breath and listened with all her heart. Magic came only once in a lifetime, and at long last it had come to her.
“Love couldn’t have been clearer if a thunderbolt had scrawled it across the sky.”
Now he started moving toward the bed. Breathless with expectation and love, C.J. watched while he laid the roses on the bedside table and sank onto the mattress. She didn’t move when he smoothed back her hair and caressed her cheek with his knuckles.
“I knew that I couldn’t let you go, that I can never let you go, and so I turned my Harley around and headed toward you.”
Bending down he planted tender kisses on her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks, her lips.
“I couldn’t find a florist, so I retrieved the roses at great peril…” She opened her mouth to comment, but he put his fingers to her lips. “…because I want fresh flowers and champagne when I propose…once and for all.”
He kissed her softly once more. “Tears?” he whispered, then gathered them with his fingertips and put them in his mouth.
“I’m so silly,” she said. “I always cry when I’m happy.”
“Good lord, the price of tissue will skyrocket.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m making it my life’s mission to keep you happy.”
He bent to her lips and passion bloomed so quickly they almost forgot about the proposal. He was already tasting her sweet, perky breasts when he murmured, “Will you marry me?”
“Wait,” she said. “I’ll get the champagne…what’s left of it.”
“I can’t.”
“Well…” He drew a taut nipple deep into his mouth and love exploded through her. “Hmm,” she murmured, which could have had a dozen different meanings, but mostly it meant, “You are my soul mate, my heart, my universe and I don’t need roses and champagne. All I need is you.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
With the lights on Clint explored the terrain of love with a tenderness he wouldn’t have thought possible until tonight. He discovered a small mole underneath C.J.’s left breast and a star-shaped café-au-lait birthmark high on her right thigh and a dime-sized scar on her left knee. Little things. Loving things. The kind of secrets that make a man pause in the middle of work and smile for no reason at all.
She gasped when he kissed the mole, laughed when he nuzzled the scar, exploded in the best of ways when he licked the birthmark.
He watched her eyes squeeze shut then go wide and soft with wonder.
“Wow!” she said.
“I intend to find all your hot spots,” he told her.
“And I intend to find yours.”
“I can’t wait.”
“Neither can I.”
She pulled him down to her breasts and made the sweet, murmuring sounds he loved. And when the anticipation became unbearable, he joined them once more and they became liquid fire. A moving, raging river of heat enveloped them until finally they washed ashore, wet and trembling with the awesome power of love.
They didn’t talk, but lay with arms and legs tangled together, her head on his chest while he traced her spine with his fingertips. Tenderly, ever so tenderly.
Because she was special. Because he loved her. Because he was her first.
The knowledge that she was his and his alone filled him up and made him whole, made him a better man than he’d ever been or had ever hoped to be. No man had ever touched her as he had. No man had ever made her eyes go wide and her mouth go soft. No man had ever heard her sweet, humming sounds of pleasure and her small screams of completion.
“You make me feel like a god. I don’t deserve a woman like you…but I’m certainly going to try.”
Plans for the future whirled through his head. There was so much he wanted to tell her, so much he needed to tell her.
“I know we can’t get everything said in one night, but I’ve been thinking about the offers I got and your schooling. You’re going to be really busy the next few years studying, and I am going to be busy starting my own newspaper.”
He shifted to exactly the right spot, marveling how perfectly they fit together and how wonderful it felt to know he’d go to sleep with her in his arms and wake up exactly the same way.
“I don’t really want to live in a big city. I’ve always fancied small towns, and I was thinking…wouldn’t it be great if we bought a piece of property out in the country big enough for a veterinary practice and a couple of dogs and about five kids?
“I’ll be a good father. I can promise you that.” She didn’t answer. “You do want children, don’t you?” Silence. “C.J.?”
He leaned back to see her face. She was sound asleep, her mouth curved in a soft, satisfied smile.
He kissed her forehead. “I love you, C.J.”
The sun was at twelve o’clock high when C.J. woke up. She stretched, catlike, then rolled over to find the other side of her bed empty.
For a moment panic seized her. He’d had second thoughts. He’d vanished on his Harley and she’d never see or hear from him again.
Then she saw the reddened patches on her breasts where his beard had burned her fair skin and felt the delicious warmth where’d he’d spilled his seed. Every sweet, tender word he’d spoken came back to her, and she knew that Clint Garrett was hers for the keeping.
“Clint?” she called.
“In here.”
Barefoot and naked, she raced toward the sound of his dear voice.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” he said, and she burst into tears. “I take it you’re happy with my surprise.”
Overwhelmed, all she could say was, “Ohh.”
The shades were drawn and candles were everywhere, their flames shimmering on the glitter that covered the carpet. Roses filled every corner of the room, red and pink with long stems in green florist’s vases tied with enormous white ribbons. Heart-shaped balloons bobbed from the ceiling, their messages appearing and disappearing as they did their delirious helium-induced dance.
I love you.
Marry me.
Let me call you sweetheart.
The messages made her cry even harder. Clint brought her a handful of tissue and wiped her face, and that’s when she noticed six boxes sitting on the coffee table.
“In case you get any happier,” he said, and she laughed through her tears.
“What did you have in mind?
”
“This.” Holding her hand, he dropped to one knee, then got distracted and spent several heady minutes savoring the spot she’d marked reserved for Garrett from the minute she’d laid eyes on him.
Holding on to his hair to stay aloft, she whispered, “I love you, Clint Garrett. I’ve always loved you.”
“Truly?”
“Yes, truly.”
“I haven’t made much of my life and I don’t even know my daddy’s name.”
“I know your name and I know your love. That’s all that counts.”
He kissed her hands. “I want you to be my wife. I want to see your dear face when I go to sleep at night and when I wake up in the morning. I want to love you and pamper you and laugh with you the rest of my days. Will you marry me, C.J.?”
“Yes.” She fell to her knees where he wrapped her in an embrace that held them heart to heart. “Oh, yes.”
“I bought a brand-new bottle of champagne.”
“The champagne can wait.”
He lowered her to a carpet of stars, and when he thrust home she said, “Yes, yes, yes.”
“Third time’s a charm,” he said.
It was the last word either of them spoke for a very long time.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The bride wore pink. So did the fifteen bridesmaids who had come from all over the country to celebrate the marriage of one of their own.
Fluffing up her ruffles and adjusting her veil, the bride asked, “Do you think this gown’s too much?” and Mrs. Clint Garrett replied, “Absolutely not. Daddy will think you’re beautiful.”
“Oh, I hope so,” Ellie said. “I didn’t want to wear white because of Phoebe.”
She got a faraway look in her eyes, and her sorority sisters immediately circled the wagons, every one of them wearing fierce looks that said, The Foxes protect their own.
“Ellie, the past is over and done with,” Dolly Wilder said. “Live in the present, that’s what I say.”
She’d flown in from London where she was appearing onstage in Shakespeare’s MacBeth.
“Hear, hear!” Kitty O’Banyon’s crazy hat bobbed as she shouted her approval.
Although all the Foxes wore identical pink bridesmaid gowns, they each wore hats of their own choosing, the hallmark broadbrimmed hat reminiscent of their wild and crazy college days. Some were decorated with sequins, some with flowers and feathers, some even sported the American flag.
Kitty’s flaunted a bouquet of miniature plastic bottles.
“Kitty, where did you get that ridiculous hat?” Dolly asked.
“Where do you think?” Lucy O’Banyon Coltrane spoke up. “She got it free with a case of tequila.”
Amid all the laughter C.J. slipped away and went down the staircase of the vast O’Banyon mansion to check on her dad. Sam was in the library looking nervous while his son-in-law of three weeks adjusted his tie.
“Darling, come reassure your dad,” Clint said. “He’s more nervous than I was.”
C.J. laughed. “Impossible. You dropped the ring.”
“I didn’t drop it. I wanted to see your legs.”
Sam burst out laughing. “I don’t know which makes me happier, C.J. Your wedding or my own.”
“Both,” she said. “I’m equally happy about both.”
“Uh-oh, she’s happy. Here come the water works.” Clint reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, then circled an arm around his wife’s waist and bent over to dab her face. “There you are, Mrs. Garrett. How’s that?”
“Kiss it and make it all better.”
“Scat. Shoo.” Sam waved them out of the room. “We have forty minutes before the wedding. I need some quiet in here so I can have a nervous breakdown.”
Clint whisked her down the hall and shut them up in a walnut-paneled office with heavy draperies over the windows and a deep leather sofa. He closed and locked the door then pulled her into his arms.
“Come here, you. I’ve always hankered to kiss a bridesmaid.”
“Just any old bridesmaid?”
“Only the ones in pink.”
“That gives you fifteen to choose from. How in the world are you ever going to narrow it down?”
“For starters I’ll look to see if there’s a little scar on her knee.” He slid his hand under her skirts and caressed the small indention on her knee. “So far so good.”
“Hmm.” C.J. planted soft kisses all over her husband’s face, starting with his incredible eyes and ending with his talented lips. “And then?”
“Next I have to find a pretty maid with a star on her thigh.”
Clint carried her to the sofa then knelt and gave his full attention to the tiny birthmark just above the tops of her stockings. Suddenly there were skyrockets in her veins and firecrackers along her nerve endings, and as she arched upward on a cry, her husband captured her lips.
“Thank God for thick walls,” he said, and she whispered, “And then?”
“Insatiable minx.”
“Are you complaining?”
“Bragging.” He reached for her zipper and slid her dress off. “And when I find a tiny mole beneath her breast…” He kissed her small mole. “I’ll know I have the right woman.”
“Do you?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said, and then he slid home.
We hope you love
THE ACCIDENTAL PRINCESS
so much that you share it with friends and
family. If you do—or if you belong to a
book club—there are questions on the next
page that are intended to help you start
a book group discussion. We hope these
questions inspire you and help you get
even more out of the book.
READERS’ RING DISCUSSION GROUP QUESTIONS:
1. What are C.J.’s motivations for agreeing to enter the Dairy Princess contest? To what extent do her love/guilt feelings for her mother influence her decision?
2. A hallmark of this Southern author is a fascination with the past. To what extent does the past shape the lives of C.J., Clint, Sam and Ellie? How is this theme reflected in the life of the secondary character Sandi Wentworth?
3. What are the major themes of the book?
4. Although Phoebe is deceased, she plays a major role in THE ACCIDENTAL PRINCESS. What is it? How does she influence C.J., Ellie and Sam?
5. What major events shaped Clint’s character? At what point does he reach an understanding of himself? Of his true feelings for C.J.? Is his epiphany consistent with his character?
6. Although Clint neither admits nor acknowledges his love for C.J. till near the end of the book, he shows his love in many ways. What are they? To what extent does the prom reflect his understanding of C.J.’s needs?
7. C.J.’s virginity plays an important role in the story. What is it? How is her innocence important to Clint? Would a non-virgin heroine have had the same impact on him? Why or why not?
8. How do C.J.’s external changes reflect the metamorphosis of her character?
9. At what point in the book does C.J. experience epiphanies regarding love and her own life? Are they consistent with her character?
10. Why does Clint go to such extremes to take roses to C.J. when he proposes? What is the symbolism of the battered roses he eventually takes to her?
11. Ellie plays multiple roles. What are they? How is she important to C.J.? To Sam?
12. Are there any examples of laughter through tears in THE ACCIDENTAL PRINCESS? Does this novel achieve a good balance between laughter and tears? If so, how?
13. How does this novel create a sense of place? How might the story have been different if it were set somewhere other than the Deep South?
14. The physical contrast between C.J. and Sandi Wentworth is dramatic. How does this contrast reflect the theme?
ISBN: 978-1-4592-3681-3
THE ACCIDENTAL PRINCESS
Copyright © 2003 by Peggy Webb
All rights
reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Books S.A., used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
Visit Silhouette at www.eHarlequin.com
* The Westmoreland Diaries