Protecting the Princess

by Carla Cassidy

  “Three.”

  “Big enough for a family. How many children do you want?”

  “A boy and a girl would be nice.” He tried not to notice how the sun sparkled on the ends of her hair beneath her hat. The golden strands seemed to beckon for his touch. “What about you?” he asked, trying to keep his mind focused on the conversation at hand.

  “At least two…a boy and a girl. I wouldn’t want to have an only child. It’s far too lonely.” Her expression darkened and she leaned forward to pat Molly’s mane.

  “From what I’ve seen of your life you didn’t look too lonely to me. I’m sure you have lots of friends.” He thought of the pictures of her surrounded by beautiful, wealthy people such as herself.

  “Friends? I don’t know if I had any or not. That’s the problem with being a princess. When I told a joke, everyone laughed whether it was a good joke or not. When I had an idea, it was the best idea anyone ever had. When I wore a dress, everyone said it was the prettiest one in the room. Now I’m sure at one time or another I told a bad joke, had a bad idea and wore an ugly dress, but nobody would tell me because of my position, because of who I was. Were those people friends?”

  It was a rhetorical question and he didn’t even try to answer it. What surprised him was the touch of sadness he heard in her voice. “You tell a bad joke, don’t expect me to laugh. You have a bad idea, I’ll be the first one to tell you. You wear an ugly dress and I’m not taking you out in public.”

  She flashed him a smile, a beautiful, open smile that set a fire in the pit of his stomach. “Ah, he has a sense of humor after all.”

  Tanner returned her smile. It felt as if it had been years since he’d really smiled at anyone. Months of stress melted away from him. “Of course I have a sense of humor.”

  “You should show it more often,” she exclaimed.

  They rode in silence for a few minutes and Tanner felt himself relaxing with each step of the horse. Maybe he had been working too hard lately, not taking any time at all to just enjoy being alive.

  “This was a good idea,” he said. “I needed to get out and enjoy a ride.”

  “Do you ride every day?” she asked.

  “I used to, but lately it seems there’s too much work at the office to do.” He’d noticed that she sat the saddle like a natural, that whatever training she’d had as a young girl was evident in the easy way she controlled Molly. “Feel like a run?” he asked.

  She flashed another of her smiles. “Just lead the way, pardner.”

  With a touch of his heels and a loosening of the reins, Simon took off and Molly followed. As far as Tanner was concerned there was nothing more liberating than a run, with the sun warming his shoulders and the scent of pasture filling his lungs.

  He kept the gelding reined in enough that Molly could stay abreast. The mare didn’t have the long legs or the strength of his horse.

  He tried without success to keep his gaze off Anna. The air had whipped color into her cheeks and the hair beneath her hat was tangled and wind-whipped. Her breasts moved up and down beneath her T-shirt as the horse ran.

  The subtle embers of desire that had burned in his stomach from the moment he’d first seen her burst into flames. If he’d been by himself, he would have urged Simon faster, as if to outrun an emotion he didn’t want to feel.

  Maybe what he felt in his the pit of his stomach nothing more than his appetite? He hoped whatever Smokey had packed for lunch sated that burning hunger.

  The gallop invigorated Anna and reminded her of when she’d been little and she and her mother had ridden on the palace grounds. Her mother had been happiest, it seemed, when she’d been on the back of a horse. She’d given the gift of the love of riding to her daughter. Those childhood days had been the happiest Anna had ever known.

  Funny that she’d felt almost happy when she’d been shoveling horse manure earlier. There had been a profound sense of accomplishment inside her when she’d finished the test and the fresh bedding had been put down. Who would have thought it?

  She was a little bit disappointed when Tanner slowed once again and the horses fell into an easy side-by-side walk.

  “I’d forgotten how much I love riding,” she said, and tipped her face up toward the midday sun.

  “It’s one of the simple pleasures of life.”

  She turned her head to look at Tanner, wondering if he was digging at her once again. But he wasn’t looking at her, rather he seemed to be scanning the area around them.

  “Everything all right?” she asked, a touch of worry filtering through her.

  His gaze flickered to her and he smiled. “Everything seems to be fine. You ready for lunch?”

  Beneath the power of his easy smile her worry found no food to sustain it and disappeared. She shook her head. “Not yet. I’m enjoying the ride too much to stop.”

  For the next few minutes they rode in silence. It was a pleasant silence and Anna found herself looking at Tanner over and over again.

  He fascinated her every bit as much as he irritated her. There was a steadiness about him that was comforting, a sense of purpose and drive that intrigued her. In the brief time she’d been in his care she’d come to trust him implicitly.

  He’d surprised her the night before with his gentle understanding of her fear of the storm. She remembered the feel of his hand wrapped around hers. His hand had been warm and comforting as the thunder had roared overhead.

  He sat tall in his saddle, like a man confident with who he was and how he was living his life. He seemed to know exactly where he was going in life. Unlike her. She had no idea what she was doing or where she was headed.

  “It’s so quiet out here,” she said, needing, wanting any kind of conversation to take her out of the doubts and worries her thoughts had produced. “That’s one of the things I’ve noticed in the time I’ve been here.”

  “Quiet?” He tilted his head and gazed at her quizzically. His lips turned up at one corner in a half smile. “Maybe it’s quiet to a woman who’s accustomed to loud music and jet engines and the ring of cash registers, but it’s not quiet to me. You just don’t know how to listen. Tell me what you hear right now.”

  It was her turn to tilt her head and listen. Certainly there was no music, no ca-ching of a cash register and no traffic noise. “I hear the sounds of the horses’ hooves…a bird singing somewhere nearby. A cow mooing.” She was surprised at what she heard now that she was really listening.

  “The sounds of nature, that’s what you hear out here in God’s country. Nothing artificial about it. You can hear nature at work. I don’t think it’s quiet. I think it sounds like home.”

  Sounds like home. What a nice way to think of it, she thought. When she thought of home no particular sounds came to mind except the silence of loneliness.

  “You think your father will fight to get his country back?”

  “I can only venture a guess,” she said thoughtfully. “Even though the rebels appear to be in power at the moment, I’m not sure how long that power will last. My father was not a king without influence, without supporters.”

  “So tell me, how does a princess spend her days?” he asked as the horses continued to walk side by side.

  She frowned thoughtfully before replying. “I know what you think…that I probably slept late, got breakfast in bed, spent the afternoon in a spa or shopping, then partied all night.”

  “So, tell me differently,” he replied.

  She straightened in the saddle and thrust her shoulders back, eyeing him from beneath the brim of her hat. “I can’t. That’s exactly the way I spent many of my days as a princess.” She thought she saw a tinge of disappointment in his eyes. “I won’t apologize for living out what was expected of me,” she continued defensively. “There’s no way you could understand my life.”

  “Why? Because I’m just a dumb cowboy?” There was an edge of defensiveness to his voice.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But secretly you
think that,” he said.

  “Maybe I did the first time I saw you, but I know differently now. And why are you trying to pick a fight with me?” she asked with a flash of impatience. “You do one thing nice for me, arranging a ride and a picnic, and now you seem determined to ruin it by provoking me into an argument.”

  “I’m not—”

  Whatever he had been about to say was lost beneath the sound of a loud crack.

  Molly reared up on her hind legs with a frantic whinny. Anna tried desperately to hang on as the horse reared again.

  “Anna!”

  She heard Tanner cry her name as she felt herself falling from the horse. She hit the ground with a painful thud, landing on her backside as the back of her head crashed on the hard earth.

  Chapter 7

  Tanner flew off Simon as Molly took off in a panicked run. Tanner didn’t just crouch next to Anna—he threw his body over hers, his gun drawn and his gaze focused on the trees in the distance.

  His heart thundered in his chest as he glanced at Anna, grateful to see her eyes open and looking at him. He’d been afraid she’d been hit when he’d seen her body fall like a rag doll from Molly’s back.

  “Are you all right?” he whispered. He didn’t look down at her again but rather kept his attention riveted to the copse of trees.

  “I—I think I’m okay. I hit my head…that’s all. What…what happened?”

  “Somebody took a shot at us. I think the bullet must have hit Molly.”

  “Oh, no. We have to find her.” She pushed against his chest, but he remained flat against her, his weight making it impossible for her to move.

  “We’re not going anywhere until I’m certain whoever took that shot isn’t waiting to take another one.”

  “But, Molly…”

  “She’ll head back to the stable.”

  Dammit, the trees were just thick enough to provide ample cover for a gunman. Was somebody still there waiting to take another shot at them? At Anna?

  “They found me,” she whispered, her terror obvious as her fingers clutched at his back.

  “We don’t know that.” He shot a quick look at her. “You hear me? We don’t know that for sure. It could have been a hunter.” He said it for her benefit, but he knew it wasn’t hunting season and nobody in their right mind would be hunting on West property.

  “A hunter?” Hope lightened her voice. “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  “We’re going to wait.” He kept his gaze on the trees, cursing himself for not sensing any danger. Even now he saw no hint of anyone hiding in the thick brush. No flash of color from clothing, no glint of a shotgun barrel peeking out. Nothing.

  Minutes ticked by and Tanner remained on the ground, his body covering hers. As the initial wave of shock passed, he became acutely aware of every point of contact his body had with hers.

  His chest mashed against her breasts, his groin against hers. Despite the reason for their present position, a crazy heat swept over him.

  He ignored it and focused on the problem at hand. And the problem was he didn’t know what they were up against. He had no idea if the shooter was still in the trees. He had no idea if there was more than one shooter. He just didn’t know what in the hell they might be facing.

  The fact that no other shots had followed confused him. The fact that they had missed Anna, who had been an upright target in the saddle, also confused him. An assassin rebel with a bad aim?

  “Whoever was there, I don’t think they’re there any longer,” he finally said.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  “I don’t know for sure, but Simon doesn’t seem to be sensing anyone in the area.”

  The big horse stood grazing in the nearby distance. “So, how can we be sure?” Her voice was half breathless.

  He looked down at her again. “I’m going to rise. If somebody is hiding in those trees and waiting to take a shot, they’ll probably take a shot when I get up.”

  “Then don’t get up,” she replied in horror. Her arms tightened around him as if to keep him on top of her.

  He offered her a tense smile. “We can’t exactly stay here for the rest of our lives.”

  “I guess this means our picnic is off.”

  She was impossible. They’d just had a close encounter with a bullet and she was worried about a damned picnic. “I’d say that’s the smallest of our problems.”

  She reached up with one hand and touched his cheek. “Be careful,” she said.

  In that instant, with her body warm beneath him and her eyes large and luminous, he wanted nothing more than to crash his mouth to hers, to taste those lips that had tormented him to distraction since the moment she’d charged into his office.

  But he was her bodyguard, not her lover, and at the moment his job was to keep her protected from harm, harm that had come much too close for his comfort.

  In one smooth movement he raised up into a crouch over her. “Stay down,” he commanded, grateful that for once she didn’t argue or make any movements to protest his command.

  Muscles tensed with expectation, he slowly straightened to a standing position. Nothing. No shot, no sound. Nothing happened.

  “Simon,” he called softly, then whistled. The horse raised its head and whinnied, then ambled over to where he stood. He grabbed the reins and positioned the horse between Anna and the stand of trees.

  At that moment the sound of hooves thundered against the earth. Burt Randall, one of the men who’d been on guard duty, came into view, riding fast toward them. He reined in as he reached them, his gaze dark, a line of worry deep across his forehead beneath his worn dark hat.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I think so. How did you know to come find us?” Tanner asked.

  “Molly showed up at the stables. I knew the two of you had taken off earlier and something must have happened.”

  “Somebody took a shot at us,” Tanner said. He leaned over and held out his hand to help Anna up careful to keep Simon as a barrier between her and the trees.

  Burt touched the butt of the shotgun that lay across his lap. “Where did it come from?”

  “Those trees.” Tanner pointed.

  “I’ll go check it out.”

  Tanner nodded, knowing that the man could take care of himself. “I’m going to get Anna back to the house.”

  As Burt took off in the direction of the trees Tanner turned to Anna. “It should be safe for you to mount. Whoever was in those trees, if they’re still there, they should be running to escape Burt.” He motioned her to the horse’s back.

  She stepped into the stirrup and pulled herself up on Simon’s back. Immediately Tanner mounted and, with his arms around her, urged Simon toward home.

  She took her hat off and held it in front of her, then leaned back against him. He wrapped one arm around her and held his gun in the other.

  He was relatively certain the danger had passed, knew that Burt had his back. But with each step Simon took toward home, he relived that terrifying moment of watching Molly rear and Anna fall to the ground.

  He’d feared she was dead. He’d been terrified that he’d screwed up and Anna had paid for his mistake with her life.

  The ride had been foolish. He should have known better than to take her out in the open where she could be a potential target. He’d allowed himself a moment of softness and that moment had almost gotten her killed.

  He could smell her hair, the clean scent of sunshine and shampoo. Her body was warm against his and despite all that had happened, she stirred him.

  He tightened his arm around her, thinking of how close they had come to catastrophe, how close he had come to losing her. What had he been thinking? How could he have taken such a chance with her, especially not knowing what he was up against?

  The stables came into view, but still his nerves felt strung as tight as he’d ever felt them. For now, she was safe, but a deep dread kept at bay any real feelings of relief.

  “Th
ere won’t be any more rides,” he said as they dismounted. “In fact, I don’t want you outside at all. I don’t want you standing on the front porch, in the doorway or peeking out a window.”

  She eyed him solemnly. “So you don’t think it was a hunter after all,” she said.

  He didn’t hold her gaze, but instead led Simon to his stall. “I didn’t say that,” he replied. He didn’t want to worry her, but in his gut he just couldn’t believe that the shot was accidental.

  “Then why are you saying that I have to stay inside?” She tossed her hat back on the top of her head and peered up at him. “Do you often have problems with hunters?”

  “Never,” he admitted truthfully as he secured the big gelding in his stall.

  “Tanner West, I demand that you tell me what you’re thinking,” she exclaimed. “I have a right to know what you think.”

  He whirled around to look at her, his eyes narrowed as the emotions that had roared up inside him at the sight of her falling off the horse spun out of control. “That tone of voice might work on the servants you have back home, but it sure as hell doesn’t work on me.”

  She bit her lip as a wash of pink filled her cheeks. “I’m sorry.” She took a deep breath and stepped closer to him, so close he could smell the scent of her, see the silver flecks in her blue eyes. “Tanner, I trust you to tell me what’s going on. I need you to be different from everyone else in my life and to tell me what’s really going on. I need you to treat me like a competent woman, not like a pampered princess.”

  “You want me to treat you like a woman?” Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he was out of control, but at the moment he didn’t care.

  He grabbed her by her upper arms and pulled her even closer to him. Her soft full lips that had tormented him since the moment he’d met her opened in surprise.

  He gave himself no time to think, no time to question his own judgment. Instead, driven by a need more powerful than he’d ever known, he crashed his mouth to hers.

  He’d known her lips would be soft. He hadn’t expected the heat they contained, a heat that sucked him in, spinning his senses and threatening to buckle his knees.