Undercover Princess

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Close enough,” Katherine said. “It wasn’t about her clothes, but you did criticize her, Trey. For riding her skateboard in the kitchen. You didn’t say good morning, you didn’t greet her in any way at all. You just told her that you wished she would leave her skateboard at the door, and your frowning expression and tense body language communicated that she’d messed up for the four millionth time this week.”

  “So what are you saying?” he asked. “That I’m never supposed to criticize her?”

  “If you don’t want her to ride her skateboard in the house, make a rule and have her keep her board in the garage,” Katherine advised. “And then if she slips up and forgets, you tell her good morning because she’s your daughter and you love her and you’re glad to see her, and you tell her about the funny dream you had last night because you know it will make her laugh, and then you say, ‘Oh, by the way, it looks as if you forgot about that rule we made, so please take the skateboard outside, okay?’ And you smile so she knows it’s not the end of the world.”

  “Easier said than done,” Trey muttered.

  “I once read this really great book about something called anchoring,” Katherine told him. “It’s something people do automatically, kind of along the lines of having a song that makes you feel really good because you first heard it when something wonderful happened. You know, ‘Oh, honey, they’re playing our song?’ Well, people anchor things to bad experiences, too. I think the example I remember reading had to do with husbands and wives. The honeymoon’s over, and they have a fight—apparently most people fight about money. A volatile topic, right? The issue’s not solved in just one day, and they both come home from a tough day at work, and little Jimmy got into trouble at day care to boot, and instead of kissing each other hello, they start right in again, fighting about money. If they do this often enough, the money problem can be solved, but still they’ll start to fight the instant they walk in the door, because they’ve anchored the very sight of each other with all that anger and pain and frustration and tension. These are two people who made vows to love and honor each other, but now they’ve subconsciously trained themselves to feel absolutely dreadful whenever they see each other’s faces.”

  “Oh, God.” Trey looked stunned. “That’s what I’ve done, isn’t it? With Stacy.”

  Katherine nodded. “I think so. You said the very sight of her makes you tense. That probably goes both ways. And even if it doesn’t, she’s so sensitive, at the very least she’s picking up on your tension. But this isn’t all your fault. She’s not perfect. I’ve watched her calculate what response will upset you the most, go for it, and then sit back to watch the fireworks.”

  “So what do I do?” He answered his own question. “I just have to stop. I have to look at her and not get angry. I have to look at her and think, ‘This is my daughter and I love her,’ not ‘This is my daughter and I want to wring her neck.’”

  That wasn’t going to be easy. But Katherine knew that Trey Sutherland wasn’t the kind of man who was daunted by a difficult task.

  “You also might want to hold back the criticism for a while,” she suggested. “Whenever you see her, tell her something good, even if it’s just that you’re glad to see her.” She smiled to soften her next words. “And you might try smiling at her occasionally, instead of glowering the way you do.”

  Trey gazed at Kathy. “God, you must think I’m awful.”

  “No. I think…” She looked down at the floor for a moment before meeting his gaze. Her eyes were warm, and that now familiar faint tinge of pink was spreading across her cheeks.

  Somewhere between this morning and right now, she’d let her hair out of that ponytail. It hung around her shoulders, a gorgeous shade of chestnut, thick and rich and shiny, and probably very, very soft to the touch.

  Trey picked up and held tightly to his wineglass with his right hand, slipping his left beneath his right arm. Running his fingers through a female employee’s hair would be considered bad form, even if he did only think of her as a sister.

  “I think you’re wonderful for wanting to improve your relationship with Stacy,” she said softly, “and for deciding to take action, to work to make it better. So many people don’t even try.”

  Kathy thought he was wonderful. Maybe it was only the result of a full glass of wine on an empty stomach, but her words made Trey feel ridiculously good. Or maybe it was the sudden hope he was experiencing that made him feel so damn positive. For the first time in years, he actually thought about tomorrow and felt that there was a chance—a very slim chance—that he and Doug and Stacy might actually survive the tragedy of Helena’s death with their family still intact.

  He finished the last of his wine and set his empty glass on the table. “What do I have to do to make you stay on permanently?” he asked.

  He’d surprised her. She shook her head as she smiled at him, clearly thinking that he was only kidding around.

  “Please.” He leaned forward in an attempt to prove his sincerity. “I’m not joking, Kathy. Think about what it would take for you to stay, oh, say, seven years. Until Doug goes into high school. Think about financial compensation, as well as other things. How many days or nights off you’d need each week. How many weeks of vacation. Housing—you know we could make a private apartment for you right here, in one of the wings of this house. And you know, if the time came that you wanted to get married, your husband could live here, too.”

  Kathy was completely taken aback. “Mr. Sutherland…Trey, I—”

  “I know you said you didn’t have a boyfriend, but if there’s someone special back home, I’ll fly him out and find him a job.”

  “There’s no one,” she said.

  “Whatever he does, I know I can find him a position in Sutherland-Lewis and—”

  “There’s no one special,” she said again, louder this time. “Truly.”

  Trey smiled at her. “Sorry,” he said. “I have the tendency to go into steamroller mode when I really want something. And I can’t help it—I really want you.”

  She broke eye contact at that, looking down at her hands clasped tightly in her lap, and he realized that his word choice had been extremely poor.

  “To work for me,” he added quickly, but again, as it had several nights ago, the image of Kathy tumbled back on his bed, her gorgeous brown hair spread out on his pillows, flashed instantly to mind.

  Wrong, wrong, wrong. Where the hell had that thought come from? The wine? Maybe, but he hadn’t had anything at all to drink the other night.

  Trey looked away, afraid she would see an echo of that shockingly intimate image in his eyes. He was trying to entice her to stay permanently, not scare her away for good.

  And the way she was sitting there, so proper and polite, knees glued together, back ramrod straight, shoulders back, as if she were wearing one of those old-lady suits she’d worn to the job interview, she would be horrified to know that he’d been thinking about her not only naked, but naked with her long legs wrapped around him as he took her hard and fast and—

  As Kathy would say, “Oh, dear.” Oh. Dear.

  Trey stared at his wineglass. Sister, remember? She was adorable, yes, but his feelings for her were brotherly. At least, they were most of the time.

  He risked a quick glance at her. Yes, so she did have long legs. She had very, very nice long legs.

  And those very, very nice, very long legs had never been wrapped around anyone in the manner of which he’d been thinking. Those very nice legs belonged to a very nice, very young woman who was completely not in his league.

  He was jaded, he was bitter, he was cynical, and he wanted to lose himself in a completely physical relationship that didn’t touch his heart or his soul. He wanted savage, pounding, tempestuous no-commitment sex.

  And sweet Kathy Wind, well, it didn’t take all those degrees he’d earned from NYU and Harvard to know what she wanted. She no doubt wanted sweet, gentle lovemaking, a heart-stoppingly slow communion of mind, b
ody, heart and soul. She wanted whispered words of love and forever. She wanted happily ever after.

  Except happily was just a myth, and ever after was a lie.

  Damn it, he’d been feeling almost decent, but now he’d gone and depressed the hell out of himself.

  At least he no longer had the urge to nail Kathy to the wall simply because she was soft and warm and female, with pretty hair and an even prettier smile.

  God, he was a royal mess.

  He looked up and found her watching him.

  “Are you all right?” she asked quietly.

  “I’m tired,” he said. “I’m sorry, I…Do me a favor, Kathy?”

  “Of course.”

  “Just think about it,” he said. “You know, about staying here permanently.”

  Eventually he would convince her he was dead serious. And then he would win. Because everybody had a price. And sooner or later he would figure out what Kathy’s was, even if she didn’t know it herself.

  “I’m afraid that thinking about it won’t do very much good,” she told him apologetically. She had such pretty eyes.

  “Think about it anyway,” he said. “Make your demands as decadent as you can imagine.”

  Kathy laughed. “You truly have no idea how decadent I can be.”

  “Actually,” he said, “considering that one of your references was Wynborough royalty, I do have some idea. And, you know, I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. How does one go about meeting a princess?”

  The pink was back, tingeing her cheeks. “It’s easier than you might think,” she said. “Meeting them was…purely an accident of birth.”

  “Did your mother or father work for the royal family or something?”

  “Or something,” she told him. She stood up, clearly ill at ease and not wanting to talk about herself any further. “I should probably go check on Stacy. It’s time for her to go to bed.”

  Trey rose to his feet, too, glancing at his watch. He’d had no idea it had gotten so late. “Just so you know, the princess spoke extremely highly of you.”

  It was funny, actually. Kathy looked as if she wanted to shrink down to almost nothing and escape from the room by crawling beneath the crack in the door. “I’m so glad,” she managed to say. “If you’ll excuse me, sir.”

  Somehow he’d flustered her so much that “sir” was back.

  He walked with her toward the door. “I have another early-meeting tomorrow morning. I’ll be out of the house before you get the kids up. With luck, I’ll be back before five.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes wide and hopeful. “Oh, good. We’ll expect you for dinner, then?”

  Um.

  His complete chagrin must have been written all over his face, because she laughed softly. “I guess not.”

  “There’s a charity dinner tomorrow night. In a moment of complete insanity, I promised my mother that I’d go. I’m sorry. There’s no way I can get out of it this late in the game.”

  “Friday then?”

  She looked so sweetly hopeful, Trey felt like a total villain.

  “It’s going to take me a few days to clear my schedule,” he admitted. “There are a few things I can’t change, and Friday’s dinner meeting is one of them.”

  The hope in her eyes was significantly subdued, and Trey knew she no longer thought he was quite so wonderful as she had only minutes earlier.

  “I’m going to do this,” he told her. “I’ll come to dinner. Soon. I promise you.”

  “Don’t promise me,” Kathy told him. “Promise yourself.”

  Chapter 5

  “There. Now you look perfect.”

  Katherine stood in the shadows in the upstairs landing, and watched as the extremely beautiful dark-haired woman finished adjusting Trey’s bow tie.

  Trey was wearing a tuxedo and Katherine was very sorry, but whoever she was, the dark-haired woman was wrong. He didn’t need his tie to be exactly straight to look perfect.

  The expensive wool-blend jacket and pants had no doubt been tailored to his form precisely. Dressed in a business suit, Trey was drop-dead gorgeous. But in a tuxedo…It was definitely drool time.

  Katherine had been eight years old when she’d seen her first James Bond movie. And ever since then, a handsome man in a well-cut tux had the power to turn her knees to bread pudding.

  She couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to. And part of her—the very naughty part of her that knew she was eavesdropping and didn’t particularly care—didn’t want to move.

  Down below, the dark-haired woman was still completely invading Trey’s personal space. She was standing much too close, yet he didn’t seem to mind.

  No, indeed, and Katherine didn’t know many men who would mind if someone as beautiful as this luminous woman moved close enough to kiss.

  Her thick, black hair was to die for, her body gorgeous, her face a perfect oval with delicate features that were perfectly matched.

  Unlike Katherine’s face. Her own eyes belonged to some sensible English schoolteacher, her nose was decidedly Germanic, and her much too generous mouth looked as if it belonged on a Muppet.

  Growing up in a house filled with beautiful women—and all three of her sisters and her mother were heart-stoppingly beautiful—Katherine thought she had learned never to compare what she saw when she looked in the mirror to anyone else.

  Obviously, she needed a refresher course.

  The dark-haired woman who was brushing imaginary lint off of Trey Sutherland’s extremely broad shoulders was, no doubt, wearing extremely fancy underwear. Hence her complete confidence.

  Yes. Sure.

  The woman was wearing a very form-fitting black dress that was cut low enough to reveal the tops of her extremely lush breasts. That same dress hugged her flat stomach and softly flared hips and tight rear end and—

  And the last crazy shard of her fantasy—the one in which Katherine had a Sound of Music type love affair with her handsome employer—was smashed. There was no way in Hades she could compete with a woman like this one.

  As a rule, it was foolish and self-depreciating to make comparisons, but rule or no, this was a total no-brainer.

  The dark-haired woman was older than Katherine, more sophisticated, coolly, elegantly in complete control.

  “Your mother’s already out in the car,” she murmured. She was standing so close, her enormously perfect breasts were brushing against Trey’s chest. “This could be our last chance to be alone all night.”

  She was giving him every body language signal in the book, all but using semaphore flags to let him know that she wanted him to kiss her.

  But instead of taking her into his arms, Trey took a step back, away from her. “We shouldn’t keep her waiting.”

  He didn’t want to kiss her. He didn’t even particularly like her.

  Katherine felt a flare of triumph that she instantly squashed. She had to laugh at herself. Logical, practical Princess Katherine—caught up in a childish fantasy.

  And just because Trey didn’t like the woman didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to go home and have mad, passionate sex with her later tonight. Katherine knew that men usually didn’t have mad, passionate sex with women they sincerely liked. She knew because men usually liked her.

  And she needed to remember that she wasn’t here in Albuquerque to have a desperately romantic love affair with the darkly brooding Trey Sutherland. She was here to find Bill Lewis, to find out if he might be her long-missing brother.

  Katherine watched as Trey led Miss Gorgeous to the door. And as that door closed behind them, she sat down on the top stair and sighed.

  Elbows on the knees of her jeans, she rested her chin in the palms of her hands.

  She knew she wasn’t the most experienced woman in the world, but despite that, when it came to desperately romantic love affairs, she knew precisely what she wasn’t looking for.

  She wasn’t looking for complicated. And she definitely didn’t want impossible.

  An
d, since that was the case, she should be doing her best to keep every kind of distance possible between herself and Trey Sutherland. She shouldn’t be sitting here at the top of the stairs, positively mooning over the man.

  Because even if some miracle happened and Trey—perhaps after suffering some otherwise minor head injury that temporarily impinged on his common sense—were to decide that he was as wildly attracted to Katherine as she was to him, any relationship they began would be horribly, dreadfully, painfully complicated.

  He was, after all, still in love with his dead wife.

  And, adding even more complications to the tangled web of their lives, the man had no idea who Katherine truly was.

  Although, in many ways, she found her hidden identity to be particularly wonderful. Trey didn’t have a clue that she was a princess, yet—amazing!—he liked her. She knew that he liked her. And he thought that she was doing such a good job caring for his children that he wanted her to stay for seven years.

  Katherine had never had a job before—duties, but certainly never a job she’d earned and was being compensated for—and it was intensely gratifying to know that on her first time out she was doing so wonderfully well.

  Trey’s feelings—his appreciation and fondness—for her were genuine. She knew that. He liked and respected her.

  For the first time in her entire life, Katherine knew for certain that someone liked her for who she was inside and not because she was a princess.

  And if that miracle occurred and Trey actually fell in love with her…

  Yes, it would be complicated and impossible, but oh, how wonderful, too.

  When Katherine had been twenty, she’d let herself get swept off her feet during a holiday in Rome.

  Richard Anderson had been an American, a student visiting from New York, whom she’d met when she slipped away from her sisters and their bodyguards to take a very public group tour of the catacombs. She’d worn sunglasses and a hat, and, as usual, no one had recognized her as Princess Katherine of Wynborough.