скачать книгу бесплатно
“Not quite as satisfying as the hair of the dog,” he murmured as he made his way painfully toward the kitchen table. “But probably more effective.”
Slumping into a chair, he threw his head back and closed his eyes and wondered, and not for the first time, why he put himself through this sort of punishment. Admittedly, it had been a good long time since he’d tied one on like he had the night before. At one time it had actually seemed like fun. As the years went on, it had become rather dreary, and he’d pretty much given up the party scene. But last night…
He wasn’t kidding anyone. He knew why he’d tried to drown himself in a bottle the night before. The anniversary of his parents’ murder was a tough thing to get past, and last night had been the twentieth one. Hopefully by next year this time he’d be too busy in Nabotavia to go through this yearly ritual.
He opened his eyes and found himself staring right into the steady green gaze of the young woman gently pacing back and forth in front of him. Suddenly he was almost embarrassed by his condition. She was so young and bright and clean-looking. He felt shopworn and seedy in contrast. He sat up a bit straighter.
“What have you got there?” he asked, noting the bundle she carried close to her chest.
She cuddled it closer, pressing a kiss to the tiny head. “A baby,” she replied, gazing at him over the top of the blanket.
Suddenly he was wide-awake. “A baby?” He sat up even straighter as the implications became clear to him. “Your baby?”
“No.” She glanced at him, then away again. “Someone left her out in the yard. I just brought her in out of the rain.”
“Uh-huh.”
That hardly seemed likely. Now he was guarded. He tried to remember if she’d been carrying the baby when he’d first seen her in the gazebo, but he hadn’t been thinking clearly enough at the time to notice much of anything. He frowned, focusing. Had he ever seen her before? No, he didn’t think so. He would have remembered. And she wasn’t claiming any previous relationship at this point.
“I know nothing about babies,” he said, as though merely making conversation. “I’ve heard they have something to do with human beings, in much the same way the acorn magically transforms itself into the mighty oak, but I have a hard time believing it.”
She wasn’t paying any attention to his jesting declaration. Her face was bent down to the little one and she was murmuring soft sounds to it. He frowned. She did seem inordinately attached to a baby she’d only just met. He couldn’t help but be suspicious.
One thing he’d been scrupulously careful about all his adult life was to make sure there would never be a woman who could claim her baby was his. There had been a few who had tried that scam, but the claims had never held up. Still, it had happened often enough to make him very wary.
He’d learned very young that his special station in life meant there weren’t many people he could trust. Everybody seemed to want something from him, whether it was influence or favors or just the extra prestige of being able to say they had been hanging out with the prince. He didn’t often let his guard down. The few times he’d done that had led to pain and disaster. His carefully maintained image of vaguely good-natured cynicism was real in part, but it also served to hide an inner vulnerability he wouldn’t ever risk again.
“So what’s it doing here?” he asked.
She looked at him as though she was beginning to doubt his intelligence. “It’s a baby,” she said carefully.
“But not yours.”
“No, I found it in the yard.”
“So you said.” His mouth turned down at the corners. “So whose is it really?”
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “I don’t know, but your gate was unattended. Almost anyone could have sauntered in.”
“True.” He wasn’t convinced, but then, it didn’t really matter. He didn’t have much interest in babies anyway. But he did like the look of the woman who held it. “So you think things are a little lax around here, do you?”
“That’s putting it mildly,” she said without bothering to soften her judgment. “This place is run like a public park.”
“Oh. I suppose you think you could do a better job.”
She gave a short laugh. “I know I could.” He liked her attitude. It was refreshing to meet an attractive woman who didn’t seem to be bowled over by just being in his presence. “Really. If you took over management, what would you do to improve it?”
She gave him a sideways look and went back to rocking the baby in her arms. “My first item of business would probably be to fire you.”
“Fire me?” He stared at her for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed.
“Absolutely.” She followed up her assertion with a scathing glance that went up and down the long, muscular length of him, and was meant to convey disapproval, but ended up feeling too much like admiration for comfort and she quickly looked away. “I would never put up with an employee who acted like you do.” She shifted the baby from one hip to the other. “What do you do around here, anyway?”
He grinned. She really didn’t know he was the prince of this castle. That was great. “Oh, not a whole heck of a lot. Mostly they just keep me around for comic relief.”
“Really?” Her look told him she halfway believed it. “Well you could make yourself useful right now. Would you like to hold the baby for a moment?” She offered the little bundle with the blanket open so that the baby could be seen.
He glanced at it and looked away, shaking his head dismissively. “I’m not much of a baby person.” She stepped toward him. “Hold her anyway, while I fix a place to put her down.”
Not likely. Something about the thought of taking charge of that little piece of life gave him the willies. He threw her a baleful look. “I’ll do it,” he said, rising and looking around the kitchen, grabbing a large basket and arranging the napkins it held into a sort of bed. “Here you go.”
She carefully laid the sleeping child in the impromptu bed and pushed it to a safe place on the counter, then looked down with a sweet smile. “She’s so beautiful.”
He’d never considered red and wrinkled to be beautiful, but he did like the look of the woman. She interested him. She kept looking at him in the oddest way. It wasn’t just that she was attracted to him. Women usually were. But there was something more, something mysterious in her smoky green eyes.
She was very pretty, but it was a careless sort of beauty. The way she held herself, the way she moved, he could tell she didn’t think about her looks any more than she thought about the weather. There was an innocence about her, and yet at the same time, a sophistication, as though she knew a lot, but it was mostly secondhand information, experience gained from books and not from mixing with the masses.
“Funny,” he said softly, looking at the way her bronze hair lay against the smooth pale skin of her neck and wondering if she smelled as good as she looked. “You don’t look like a pastry chef.”
“I am not a pastry chef,” she responded automatically, looking up at him. It didn’t occur to her to say she was a princess. She never said things like that. If she had her way, the whole princess thing would fade from her life and no one would ever know about it again. Of course, being a princess was the very reason she was here, a fact she had practically forgotten by now.
“I saw Milla, the kitchen maid, in the hall and she said you’d come about the pastry chef position.”
Tianna gave him a long suffering look. “Milla was wrong.”
He frowned. Thinking wasn’t as painful as it had been a few minutes earlier, but it still wasn’t back with its usual zing. “What are you, then?”
“I’m a photographer.”
He groaned, dropping back down into the chair and stretching. “Not another photojournalist sniffing around for a story on the royals.”
“I’m not a photojournalist,” she assured him quickly. “I told you, I’m a photographer. I mainly concentrate on architectural photography. And I have no interest in photographing royals.”
“Good. Then we won’t have to kick you out on your ear.”
She bristled. “I’d like to see you try,” she said sharply, one hand on her hip.
“Oh. That’s right. I forgot you were the dangerous one.” His blue eyes glinted at her in a way that sent a new awareness skittering along her nerve endings. “Quite the little wild cat, aren’t you?” he said in a tone that made her sound downright erotic.
Her breath caught in her throat and color flooded her cheeks, but she lifted her chin and tried to ignore it. “I’m nothing of the sort. But I do know how to defend myself.”
“I’ll say you do. I’ve got the sore hand to prove it.” He shook the hand, deemed it basically unscathed, but looked up at her accusingly anyway. “That was quite a nice demonstration of the old thumb trick you put on this morning. What other escape moves do you have up your sleeve?”
She looked fully at him and for just a moment, their gazes seemed to connect, fuse, and sizzle.
“I…I think I’d better keep that to myself,” she said, feeling a bit muddled and looking toward the window, absently noting that the rain was coming down pretty steadily now. “The element of surprise is half the battle.”
“Here,” he said, coming to his feet. “I’ll show you a good one.”
“No thanks.” She turned away, shaking her head, but he moved too quickly for her.
“If someone grabs you, like this,” he said, coming up behind her and sliding his arms in, locking them just beneath her breasts, pulling her close in against him. “What would you do?”
She gasped. His face was next to hers, his breath tantalizing her cheek, his rough day’s growth of beard rasping against her skin. It had all happened so fast, she had to wait a beat or two to make sure she understood just exactly what was going on here.
“You snap back your right elbow and at the same time, you make a turn to the left,” he was advising, his voice silky, so very near her ear.
She could hardly breathe. He was holding her to his long, strong body and she thought she could feel every one of his muscles against her back. Her natural inclination was to do as he said and turn toward the left, but one second of clear thinking and she realized what that meant. She might be in his arms now, but if she followed his instructions she would be in his embrace and in perfect position to be kissed.
A lovely thought—if only she could believe he wasn’t doing this on purpose just to mock her. Which, of course, he was! She steeled herself. She wasn’t going to follow through and fall into his trap. Instead, she made another move her personal defense trainer had taught her and quickly raised her foot, coming down hard on top of his.
He yelled. She pulled out of his grip, whirling to glare at him hotly. Half-laughing, he was hobbling in pain.
“My God, woman, you’re lethal. I was just trying to show you…”
She raised her hands as though to defend herself. “Stay back!” she ordered him.
And at the same time, the cook came bustling in through the outer doorway, her hair damp, her look very cross. She took in the scene at a glance, nodded at Tianna, and glared daggers at the man standing beside her.
“Young mister, you know the rules,” she said sternly, shaking a finger at him. “There’s to be no trifling with the help.” She all but stamped her foot and pointed to show him the way out of her kitchen.
“Trifling?” He glanced at Tianna and shook his head, laughing softly. “Don’t worry. This lady is definitely a no-trifling zone.”
His gaze met hers and held for a moment, then he turned his full charm on the cook.
“That you, of all people, should accuse me of trifling.” He had the confident smile of a man who had used charisma as his currency out of many a sticky situation in his life and was pretty sure it would work for him again, any time he chose to use it. “I was doing no such thing. I was merely keeping a visitor company while waiting for you to return and do your duty by her.”
The cook was still pointing. “If you want to practice your profligate ways, you’ll do so somewhere else,” she insisted. “I’ve got work to do here.”
The handsome charmer reacted with weary resignation.
“Aye aye, Cook.” He gave her a somewhat disjointed salute, then leaned toward her teasingly. “My mentor, my conscience, my guide. As ever, words of wisdom fall from your lips like petals from the rose….”
The cook colored and had a hard time not showing pleasure at his affectionate mockery. “Get on with you.” She swatted at him with a dish towel, but she was beaming in a way that gave full evidence to how much she cared for him. “And keep your crazy poetry to yourself.”
“Hey, watch that talk,” he said as he prepared to depart. “You know I have to maintain my reputation as a soldier. Don’t start spreading that poetry rumor.”
He stopped to drop a quick kiss on the cook’s cheek, then dodged another swipe with the dish towel as he made his way toward the exit. Tianna noted with a twinge of guilty satisfaction that he was limping slightly. He paused in the doorway, looking back.
“Goodbye, lovely lady,” he said to Tianna just before disappearing out the door. “I hope we meet again.” A fleeting smile, and then he was gone.
Tianna thought she’d probably seen the last of him and was disappointed in herself for caring. She had to admit, it would be tempting to let herself get a healthy crush on a man like that, to start thinking about the scent of roses and kisses in the moonlight. The only love affair she’d let herself attempt had ended badly and had seemed hardly worth the effort in the end. She had the feeling things might have been different with a man like this.
“He’s got a heart of gold, that one,” the cook confided once he was out of the room. “But he does tease so.”
Tianna smiled, her pulse still reacting to the man’s presence in the room. “Is he your son?”
The cook looked shocked. “My son? Heaven’s no. My dear, don’t you know who that is? Why, it’s Prince Garth, that’s who.”
Chapter Two
Tianna felt the room fade and pulse, and she barely avoided a gasp. “Prince Garth!” She put her hand over her heart. “But…but the little maid told me the prince had gone to Texas.”
“Oh, aye. She thought you meant Crown Prince Marco, no doubt about it. He was here last week.” She began to bustle about the kitchen. “No one thinks of Garth as ‘the prince.’ He’s always been the younger brother, you know. The rascal. The charming one.” She grinned affectionately.
Tianna sat, still dumbfounded, and growing more and more astonished as she thought over this latest wrinkle. So the man they expected her to marry really was a playboy and a carouser. Delightfully irresistible—and the last man in the world a woman would want to be married to. Hah! Just wait until she explained all this to her father. It looked like she would be able to put together a nice tight case for annulling this betrothal. And wasn’t that what she’d come for?
Actually, it was getting hard to remember what she’d come for. Too much was getting in the way.
The cook had turned back and was frowning down at her. “Well, now about your business. Come about the pastry chef job, have you? We weren’t expecting you quite this soon, but that’s all right. We’ll make do.”
Tianna turned to tell her the truth, but she was rattling on.
“Now, let’s see a bit of your talent. I’ve got some dough mixed for pies. Why don’t you roll it out and we’ll see what you can do with it. Try something creative.”
“I’m really not here for the pastry chef job.”
“No?”
“No. I’m…”
It was going to be hard to explain what she was here for at this point—and why she hadn’t talked to Garth when she had a chance. Her day was careening wildly out of control. It was probably time she made herself known to everyone and tried to get some order back into things. “Actually, you see, I’m Princess Katianna of…”
Unfortunately, her words were drowned out by the sudden wail of the infant. The cook whirled and stared at the basket on the table.
“A baby!” Cook’s gaze fell on the basket. “Ah yes, Milla said you’d brought your baby. We really don’t have facilities for babies here. You should have asked first, you know.”
Tianna considered tearing her hair out, but thought better of it. “She’s not my baby,” she said evenly. “I found her in the yard.”
Cook rolled her eyes. “What nonsense,” she said, and bent over the little thing, cooing to it.
Tianna bit her lip and silently counted to ten, then drew herself up and gazed coolly at the woman. “I assure you, I’m telling the truth.”
Cook glanced up and seemed to recognize her growing irritation. “Well, that’s as may be. But then where did this baby come from?”
Good question. If only someone would answer it! Stifling the urge to scream, Tianna gave her a quick explanation of how the estate had been left unguarded and open to the world when she’d arrived. The cook finally seemed to accept that, though reluctantly.
“Oh yes, we’re so shorthanded right now, things are falling to wrack and ruin,” she said, shaking her head. “You know, they usually leave their babies at the guard gate. We never even see them up here. And you say you found her right out in the garden?”
Tianna frowned. “Are you telling me strange babies show up here all the time?” she asked.
Cook shrugged. “Well, not all the time. But it’s been known to happen. Single girls hoping we’ll take the tykes in and raise them as royals. Surely you know about the legend of Baby Rose. It’s an old Nabotavian story.”
She didn’t, but she wasn’t in the mood for a story right now. “You think this one was left by a desperate young girl?” she asked, looking down at the dewy little face and wishing she didn’t feel such a strong emotional pull every time she did so. The baby was starting to fuss again and she pulled it up into her arms without thinking twice, patting her little back and whispering sweet nothings against her silky head.
“No doubt about it.” The cook turned and spoke to the kitchen maid. “Milla, call the orphanage. Tell them we’ll be sending another baby over.”
Tianna looked up, frowning. She hated to think of letting this little angel go. “Don’t you think we should call the police? And perhaps, Children’s Services?”
