She couldn’t wait to see Jace that night and drifted through her preparations for the next day in a happy bubble which was punctured when she returned to her little house after school to find she had a message waiting from Esther. She didn’t take her cell phone to school because it might be distracting if her father called. He didn’t like leaving messages and would keep calling until she answered. Instead, she depended on the phone Jace had given her for school-related calls.
When she dialed Esther, she was answered by her breathless lady-in-waiting who blurted, “Where have you been? I tried to call you after that pitiful meal they called breakfast, then after our morning torture race through the desert, then again after my five-celery-stick lunch! You could at least answer your phone.”
“I was teaching, Esther, you know that,” Alexis answered, flopping down on her seat sprung old sofa and chuckling at Esther’s aggrieved tone. “What was so important, anyway?”
“I spotted some of those wicked reporters outside the spa. They were talking to some of the grounds-keepers.”
Dread settled in Alexis’s stomach. “How did you know that’s who they were? Maybe they were tourists asking directions.”
“Your Highness, this place is at the end of a private road. No one comes here simply to ask directions. Besides, one of them was someone I recognized—a man who Bevins had thrown out of that reception last year for the Spanish ambassador. He had a tiny camera hidden in his palm and was snapping pictures of all the guests. You remember him, bald, and has a face like a ferret.”
Alarmed, Alexis’s mind formed an instant picture of Dag Skold, a particularly aggressive and sneaky member of the paparazzi. “Did he see you?”
“I’m afraid so,” Esther moaned. “I was behind the others as we returned from the morning nature trek through the cactus. One of the groundskeepers pointed at me with one hand while he slipped some cash into his pocket with the other. I think he must be new, hasn’t learned he can be fired for that kind of thing.”
Alexis rolled her eyes at Esther’s way of getting sidetracked. “What did you do, Esther?”
“I jumped behind a saguaro cactus, but,” she sighed gustily, “I’m wider than it is and I kind of stuck out on each side.”
“And that’s what they photographed?” In spite of her worry, Alexis smiled at the image.
“Yes. Then I pulled my hat down over my face and dashed inside the wall—did you know this whole place is walled so we can’t escape?” she added in outrage. “It’s like a plush prison.”
Before Esther could get started on that topic, Alexis interrupted. “Do you think you fooled them?”
“I don’t know. You and I look a little bit alike, but I outweigh you by about fifty pounds—well forty now.” A silence stretched between the two women as they thought about the possible consequences of this.
“Alexis,” Esther said hesitantly, dropping the more formal means of address she sometimes used. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to carry this off much longer.”
“Don’t say that,” she commanded abruptly. “I’ve started making real progress this week. We’re having an open house this Friday night. All the parents are invited. There’s going to be a barbecue, and…” Her voice died away.
Alexis didn’t even want to think of the possibility of leaving after only a few weeks. She loved it here, loved working with the students, teaching them and assessing their progress, becoming part of the community. More urgently, she didn’t want to leave Jace.
She had finished the business of thinking she was falling in love with him. She’d already fallen.
This realization sent a chill over her and she sat, staring at the blank wall opposite her as this truth slowly sank in. Vaguely, she could hear Esther babbling away in her ear, but she wasn’t listening.
Her love for Jace was the main reason among many that she didn’t want to leave Sleepy River. She had never been in love before. The idea thrilled and terrified her, but to be in love with a man like Jace—strong, so sure of himself—somehow that was even more frightening.
“…think we should do?” Esther was asking. “If those pictures are published, His Highness Prince Michael is sure to see them and then the fat will really be in the fire—not that I have much fat left to go into a fire,” she added.
“What?” Finally, Alexis attended to what her lady-in-waiting was saying.
“What should we do?” Esther repeated patiently.
“I’m not sure except to lie low. Stay out of sight.”
Esther hitched in her breath as if someone had just popped her between the shoulder blades. “I could pretend to be sick! Why didn’t I think of that before?” Excitement rang in her voice. “I could stay in bed and have them bring me food. You know that old saying, ‘Feed a cold and starve a fever’? I could pretend to have a cold.” Esther was off, prattling happily about the possibility of staying in bed and being waited on rather than stomping about on hikes or sweating her way through aerobics classes.
Meanwhile, Alexis worried. She was very much afraid that Esther was right. They couldn’t carry on this charade much longer. Deeply dismayed, she told her friend to handle it however she saw fit. She hung up with sick disappointment choking her.
She didn’t want to leave, to abandon what she had begun, but she was very much afraid that’s what she would have to do.
Slowly, she stood up and moved toward her bedroom. Jace was coming in an hour or so and she planned to prepare one of the few dishes she could cook expertly, herb-baked chicken and potatoes.
Nervously, she ran her palms down her thighs as she considered whether or not to tell him what Esther had said. She decided not to. It was unlikely that the paparazzi would be able to find her here. If Esther did as she planned and went to bed with a “cold,” the reporters would probably lose interest and go off to stalk someone else. Relieved and cheered by that thought, Alexis hurried to change clothes.
Alexis’s relief lasted until about five minutes before Jace arrived when she received another phone call, this one from her father.
“Alexis,” Prince Michael said, in ringing tones. “I think you’ve been at that place long enough. There are no further improvements that you need to make to yourself in order to attract a husband. You realize, of course, that it’s not only your looks, but your title and connections that appeal to the men I’ve found for you to choose from.”
Alexis winced. Royal, he might be. Tactful, he was not. “Thanks a lot, Dad,” she responded dryly. “You sure know how to make a princess feel wanted.”
“Well, hmm,” he blustered. “You know what I mean.”
“Dad, why don’t you think I can find my own husband if I should ever choose to have one?” she asked in exasperation.
“I’ve been watching your sisters for several years now, that’s why. Besides, I’ve seen this happen in other families, too. Why, the Marquis of Sunderland barely found out in time that the man his daughter was about to marry was deeply in debt and already had a mistress on the side.”
“Well, I’ll be sure to avoid him, whoever he is, but I can certainly find my own husband.”
“That’s why you’re hiding out in Arizona, isn’t it?” Prince Michael demanded. “You don’t want me interfering in your life. I hear the same thing from Anya and Deirdre.”
“But do you listen?”
“You’re my daughters,” he reminded her in his thundering tones. “I’m supposed to look out for you.”
“Yes, but not smother us,” Alexis answered. This was an old argument which she doubted she would win.
He ignored that. “It’s time for you to come home. You have duties here.”
She glanced out the window to see Jace arriving in his truck. A sudden feeling of panic swept over her. She didn’t want to hurt her father, but she couldn’t go home yet. For the first time ever, she was having a taste of real freedom, of being needed.
Jace stepped down from his truck, slammed the door and strode toward the teache
rage, his long legs covering the ground in swift strides. He took off his cowboy hat and she could see his mahogany brown hair shining with red highlights as he was backlit by the setting sun.
Wanted. She was also having a taste of being wanted by Jace McTaggart. It was wonderful, heady stuff, and she didn’t want to give it up. He didn’t love her as she loved him, but he liked her and he wanted to be with her. In fact, he’d wanted that before he had known who she really was. He hadn’t been interested in her title, connections, or money. Staying here with him and the people who knew her only as Alexis Chastain was more important to her than going back to Inbourg or doing what her father wanted. And yet she was torn and dismayed by the thought of upsetting her father. She loved him in spite of his controlling ways and she had never doubted that he loved her and her sisters and Jean Louis.
“Dad,” she said desperately as Jace’s knock sounded on the door. “I’ve got other obligations, too. Obligations to myself and…to other people.”
“More important than your obligations to the people of Inbourg?” he asked, outraged. “I don’t think so.”
Confused and heartsick, she said, “I’ve got to go, Dad. I’ve got…someone here.”
“Who?” he squawked. “A man? I want to know what’s going on. Something doesn’t sound right about that Golden Bluff Spa. Let me talk to Esther. I thought she was supposed to be chaperoning you.”
“Goodbye, Dad,” Alexis responded gently. “I love you and I’ll talk to you in a few days.” She quickly broke the connection, turned the phone off so it wouldn’t ring again, and put it down before answering Jace’s knock.
She opened the door and stared hungrily into his face. “Hello,” she said.
He stepped inside and his dark eyes swept over her distraught face. Automatically, his arms went around her. She was glad to put hers around his waist and lean into him.
“What’s the matter, Alexis?” His deep voice rumbled in his chest and his breath brushed the top of her hair.
“The world is rushing in on me,” she said shakily, then pulled away slightly and looked into his face, her gaze tracing the concern she saw there even as she admired the strength and resolve that accompanied it. “Do you ever feel like that?”
“Sometimes,” he answered slowly. “But I doubt that I feel it as much as you do because my world pretty much consists of my ranch and this community.”
While yours is a much larger world. He didn’t say it, but Alexis thought that was probably what he meant and it underlined the differences between them, ones she didn’t want to examine right now. Instead, she formed a smile and asked, “Are you hungry?”
He stared at her for a second as if he was considering whether or not to let her get away with changing the subject, then he gave a small chuckle and leaned over to kiss her lightly. “Starved,” he growled.
With a shiver of delight, Alexis wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back.
By Friday night, Alexis had almost forgotten her fears. The children had been so excited about the open house to which their parents were invited, and the barbecue that was to be part of the evening, that it had taken all of her disciplinary skills to keep them focused. She’d had little time to think about tabloid reporters or her father, or anything else. She had called Esther, though, who had reported her ploy seemed to be working. She had faked a cold, was happily entrenched in her bed at the spa, and the reporters seemed to have lost interest.
Now Alexis looked happily around the school yard. All the parents and children had come, as well as the school board members, and she wondered how many of her colleagues could boast a one hundred percent turnout for an open house. Even Luke Braden had come, though his nephew had not yet arrived.
A baseball game was going on in the gathering twilight and people were setting food out on long tables that had been set up on the lawn in front of the school. A couple of portable barbecue grills had been brought in and were being manned by Gil and Rocky, who seemed to feel that since they had mastered salad and salad dressing, they were ready for the big time.
Alexis was relieved that the two boys seemed to accept her relationship with Jace, though Gil had pulled her aside to say soulfully, “I guess you know what you’re doing, but if things don’t work out, I’m available.” Five minutes later, Rocky had told her the same thing. Fortunately, they’d been called to their duties at the grill before the suspicious looks they’d been exchanging could turn to blows.
When it got too dark to play baseball, everyone came in from the field, hot, sweaty and dusty, ready for food and drinks. Even Billy Saunders’s dog, who had followed the family to the open house, had joined in the game and was now trotting beside his master with his tongue hanging and his sides heaving.
Alexis smiled as Billy found a plastic bowl and poured out water for his dog, then began telling everyone within earshot that Miss Chastain had told him that he was going to be allowed to build a snake house for the school and be the official school herpetologist. Martha Singleton had agreed to it, as well.
Billy’s mother, Carol, approached Alexis with a grateful smile, “You have my undying gratitude for letting him do this. I know it sounds like a female stereotype, but I can’t stand snakes. I’m glad he can have them at school. I’d offer you my firstborn son as payment, but, unfortunately, that’s Billy,” she said with a twinkle in her eyes.
Alexis started to answer, but Billy’s dog suddenly stopped slurping his water, turned his head sharply, then went bawling and barking into the woods that edged the baseball field. Within seconds there was a yelp and a shout, and all the men sprinted in that direction.
“Has he bitten someone?” Alexis asked.
Carol started off. “I can’t believe he has. He’s never bitten anyone before, but he doesn’t like strangers.”
“Why would a stranger be around here?” Alexis asked, and then froze, dread forming a knot in her stomach.
Jace was the first to reach the woods. Loud crashing and thrashing sounded as the other men followed.
It was only seconds before Jace came out, pulling a struggling figure with him, a man who swung and shouted and tried to get away. When they reached the lights of the yard, Alexis was horrified to see the homely face and bald head of Dag Skold.
Chapter Ten
“If you don’t want a lawsuit, cowboy, you’d better let go of me,” the intruder shouted.
“If you don’t want a broken jaw, you’ll shut your mouth,” Jace shot back. With one hand, he had a firm grip on the man’s arm, and in the other hand, he carried a camera with the longest lens Jace had ever seen. He didn’t know which one he’d rather crush—the man’s windpipe, or his camera. The identity of this snake was still a mystery, but he had a pretty good idea why he was here. So did Alexis, he realized, when he glanced ahead to see her ashen face. His gut clenched at her look of dismay and at the way her bruised eye stood out against her pale skin.
When the photographer tried to pull away, Luke Braden appeared and wrapped his fist around the man’s other arm. Between them, the two ranchers frog-marched him to the circle of light in front of the school and the small crowd gathered there.
“Who is this guy?” Stella Kramer asked, stepping forward. She spotted his camera and glanced nervously back at her daughters, then exchanged horrified looks with her husband, Dave. “Is he some kind of pervert?”
“You could say that,” Jace answered grimly.
“Hey,” the other man shouted. “I’m exercising my Constitutional rights. In case you didn’t know it up here in the sticks, there’s such a thing as freedom of the press.”
“In case you didn’t know it, there’s such a thing as trying to walk on two broken legs,” Jace responded. He looked across the shorter man’s head at Luke, who nodded as if to say, “You take one, and I’ll take the other.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” the reporter squeaked, his eyes bugging out and his throat clenching wildly.
Several people crowded around. “Jace, wha
t’s this all about?” someone asked.
Before he could answer, though, the man said, “I’m only here to photograph the princess. Papers will pay a lot of money for pictures of her living here in the boonies.” His laugh was nasty as his gaze sought out Alexis, who was now looking positively sick. “Teaching school, are you, Your Highness? How quaint.”
“Princess?” Stella echoed. “Is this guy nuts?”
“Your Highness?” Hattie Fritz had elbowed her way to stand before the man. “You think we’re royalty here?”
Jace glanced across at Alexis who now looked like someone who had tried to escape a trap only to be caught in it again. He wanted to grab her, to protect her, give her back the radiant look she’d worn all evening. Things were spoiled for her now, and for him.
She looked up and met his eyes. She straightened, her chin lifted and her jaw hardened. He felt a surge of pride in her, followed by protectiveness. Damn, he wished he could have hustled the guy away, but she looked ready to face him.
“I am,” Alexis said in calm, even tones. “I am Alexis Mary Charlotte of the house of Chastain and the principality of Inbourg.”
Her announcement was met with deafening silence. As the Sleepy River residents exchanged stunned glances, she went on.
“This man is Dag Skold, a member of the paparazzi, a Dutchman, I believe, who spends his time stalking my sisters and me, sticking his nose in our business and generally making a nuisance of himself.”
“The public has a right to know what you’re doing,” Skold bluffed, then winced as Jace and Luke simultaneously tightened their grip on his arms.
“No, they don’t,” Jace growled. “This is private property and you’re a trespasser.” He nodded at Luke, who swung the man around.
“I’ll just see you to your car and out of these mountains,” Luke said, as he hauled the man away. “I’ll follow you in my truck to make sure you find your way. Lucky for you, I’ve got a rifle on the rack right behind the seat in case any dangerous animals come out of the woods.”
The Runaway Princess Page 12