The Cowboy and the Princess

“I was under the impression that you aren’t pleased about coming here.”

Delfyne’s exact words had been that she would rather rot in the royal dungeon than spend a summer on a secluded cattle ranch. “I hadn’t fully researched the situation at the time,” she said pleasantly. “I hadn’t examined the upside of the location. Now I have.”

Owen gave a terse nod. He looked down at her hand. “I’m rusty on my royal etiquette. Do I shake your hand, or kiss it?”

His deep voice rumbled, and something primal and earthy and terribly unnerving simmered through Delfyne. She lowered her hand. “I think we’ll settle for hello for now.” This man, after all, was her jailer, even if he was a reluctant one. She could not and would not feel an attraction for him. He was her brother’s friend. He was a commoner. And she was soon to marry.

Still, despite the fact that she should feel nothing for him, she and Owen Michaels were going to be stuck together for a while. She glanced into his flinty, wary eyes. Maybe he had limits, and if she pushed them he’d send her away. She wondered just what Owen Michaels’s limits might be.

She would soon find out.

Myrna Mackenzie is a self-proclaimed ‘student of all things that concern women and their relationships’. An award-winning author of over thirty novels, Myrna was born in a small town in Dunklin County, Missouri, grew up just outside Chicago, and now divides her time between two lake areas, both very different and both very beautiful. She loves coffee, hiking, cruising the internet for interesting websites, and attempting gardening, cooking and knitting. Readers (and other potential gardeners, cooks, knitters, writers, etc…) can visit Myrna online at www.myrnamackenzie.com, or write to her at PO Box 225, La Grange, IL 60525, USA.

Dear Reader

My first thought when I decided to write this book was How incredibly awesome to be able to marry two of my favourite fantasies into one book! Because as a child (and way past the time when I could be called a child), I was in love with stories of princes and princesses.

I read them all—from those with happily-ever-after endings to those with sad endings, the fairy tale stories and the real ones. There was just something about a world so different from my own that enthralled me. It was a world of privilege, but also one closed off from so many of the ordinary pleasures most of us know on a day-to-day basis.

Then, when I grew up and visited the American West for the first time, I fell in love with that part of the country. It’s big, beautiful, rugged and still untamed. There are gorgeous mountains and there are ranchers—hardworking rough, tough guys who never know what hand they’ll be dealt from day to day.

So…a princess and a cowboy? Two people whose worlds would ordinarily never intersect—one tied to the crown and one tied to the land—who could never marry? What a challenge! What fun! I had to write Delfyne and Owen’s story. It begins something (but not exactly) like this:

There once was a princess who was rather disobedient, so her family sent her off to a part of the world where she couldn’t get into trouble…or so they thought…

This book is for those of us who have imaginary princess centres. You know who you are—and, yes, if you still like to play dress-up, even though you’re a grown-up, you are a princess at heart.

I hope you enjoy the story!

Best wishes

Myrna Mackenzie

BY

MYRNA MACKENZIE

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CHAPTER ONE

“OH MAN. There are good ideas and bad ideas, and believe me, sending your sister here so that I can chaperone her is an unbelievably bad idea.” Owen Michaels leaned back in his chair and propped his boot-clad feet up on his desk.

“Nonsense, Owen, it’s a master plan,” the voice on the other end of the line said.

Owen glanced out the window at miles of empty space. Beautiful stuff, if solitude was what you craved. He did. Most people didn’t. No denying that. “You been hitting the cognac, Dré? Or…it has been a long time since you’ve been to Montana. Maybe you’ve forgotten that while I may be a wealthy man, the Second Chance is a working ranch. It’s pretty isolated. Your sister’s a princess. This isn’t what she’s used to.”

Oh no, Owen thought. A woman like that is used to a heck of a lot more. She would crave culture and the excitement of being at the hot, happening center of things. She’d expect to take part in events that involved the cream of society. He already knew too much about women like that. Women didn’t transplant well here, as evidenced by his mother, who had run away, and his wife, who had divorced him after—

Owen swore beneath his breath, halting the painful thought. The point was that everything he knew told him that bringing a princess here was a recipe for doom and disaster. “Nope, buddy. What you’re asking…it’s just not happening. You can’t send her here.”

“Owen, stop. Let’s talk. Or I’ll talk. You listen. This plan is perfect. Absolutely perfect,” Owen’s former college roommate said, excitement evident in his voice. “And in answer to your question, I’ve never been more serious, and no, I haven’t been drinking even a little. At least, not since I came up with this solution. Before that, I was going mad trying to figure out what to do with Delfyne.”

Andreus’s groan brought a frown to Owen’s face. “Why do you have to do anything with her?”

His friend sighed. “Because she is a princess, one who’s getting married soon. As such, she’s demanding the summer of freedom from royal life that the rest of us had. It’s her right. We all get that opportunity to shake off our bonds once—just once—before we settle in to live our fate.”

Owen watched as the almost-too-bright-to-look-at sun began to sink over the landscape, painting the work vehicles red as it began its retreat. When it was finally gone, the darkness would be a black blanket, thick and impenetrable out here where there were no streetlights of any kind, no neighbors for miles. And the silence…well, a person couldn’t get much farther from the royal life than this, but Owen was pretty darn sure that that wasn’t the kind of vacation Andreus’s sister had in mind. “She wants a few months off before she gets married? A trip away from her life? So, what’s the problem? Send her on some exotic retreat, or on a cruise or a trip to Manhattan.”

“No.”

The word seemed a bit too emphatic, and Owen swung his feet off the desk and stood up, dragging the telephone over to the window where he stood in the gathering darkness, watching the clouds turn fiery oranges and purples. “Why?”

Andreus uttered an audible sigh. “Delfyne…is…”

Owen was getting a bad feeling. He turned away from the setting sun and gave all his attention to his friend. “What about Delfyne?” He vaguely remembered meeting Andreus’s sister seven years ago when he had been twenty and visiting Andreus in Xenora on spring break. All he remembered was that she had been seventeen, thin and pale, with a posture that had been far more perfect than that of any seventeen-year-old he had ever met. She’d left to visit a cousin in Belgium soon after his arrival. He’d had the feeling that she’d been sent away so that she wouldn’t be tainted by the American cowboy running loose in the palace. Even he had to smile at that. Still.

“Delfyne…” Andreus was saying. “My younger sister is… The problem is that Delfyne isn’t like our other brothers and sisters. She’s lived a sheltered life—a spoiled life in many ways—and she’s impetuous and naive. She knows no boundaries and doesn’t believe that anything bad can happen to her. She’s the girl who had to learn that fire is hot by touching it. Warnings were never enough. Send her out into the world with a total freedom pass and…well, I’m pretty sure you can imagine what could happen.”

Silence settled in. Owen could imagine all kinds of things, none of them good.

“Owen?”

“So what you’re asking me to do is to babysit your little sister,” he said finally.

“Well, I wouldn’t put it that way. At least, not to Delfyne’s face. She has a temper.”

Great. Owen wanted to groan, but, sensitive to the fact that this was his good friend’s sister they were talking about, he held back. Just what he needed. A princess with no common sense and a bad temper.

“Andreus…” he tried. “Hell, Dré, you know how unpolished and rough I am. I’m not cut out to take care of a princess.”

“Nonsense. Your rough edges will be a boon. You won’t let her get into trouble.”

“You want me to ride roughshod over a woman?”

Andreus hesitated. “I want you to restrict her a bit.”

“Sounds like major babysitting.”

“She won’t be a problem.”

“You just said she was a handful.”

“With other people. Not with you.”

Owen couldn’t hold back a chuckle. “Are you trying to snow me?”

His friend sighed. “Owen, buddy,” he said in that stilted way he had. Andreus was a prince through and through. Americanisms didn’t come easily to him. “My friend, I’m sure it sounds terrible, but I’m not trying to…to snow you, as you say. You’re very good at getting your way and barking orders, aren’t you? Remember when I showed up in your dorm room when we were freshmen at the university? I’d been raised a prince, destined to take over the throne. Power was in my blood, but I’d barely made it through the door when you told me which bunk was going to be yours, that you liked quiet when you studied and that you intended to study a lot.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t know you were a prince.”

“Maybe, but my being a prince didn’t seem to matter to you. You treated me like an equal. Like an ordinary person. I appreciated that more than you can ever know. You became my friend. My best friend,” he stressed.

Owen finally gave in and groaned. “And you saved my butt when four guys jumped me outside a bar. You flew halfway around the world when…”

The pain was still searing even though years had passed. Owen still couldn’t say the words. “You helped me when I needed you to,” he finished lamely. “I owe you.”

“You owe me nothing,” Andreus said. “You know I don’t operate that way. That’s not what this is about. I’m not calling in a favor.”

No, that wasn’t the kind of man Andreus was. And, Owen remembered, he wasn’t the kind of man who asked for favors lightly, either. Despite the lightness of his tone, this couldn’t have been easy for him.

“You’re really worried about your sister, aren’t you?” he asked his friend.

“She holds a special place in my heart, Owen. Delfyne is…sunshine. She’s special. And then, too, I know just what she’s feeling right now. Being royal has many benefits, but it also provides iron bars that separate a person from the world. Permanently. Freedom to choose one’s life is an illusion for a prince or a princess. Her life will never be her own after this time. She knows that.”

And what was a man to say to that? Owen valued his freedom and his open spaces above all else. He’d sacrificed other peoples’ happiness to that freedom.

And even if his friend would never call his cards in, he owed Andreus his sanity.

“Send her,” he said. “Do it. I promise you I won’t let anything happen to her and I’ll return her to you just as she is now.”

“Thank you, Owen. You’ll never know what this means to me. You are a saint, my friend.”

Owen couldn’t help chuckling. “If you think I’m a saint, then you’re delusional. But then, I must be delusional, too, saying yes. I hope neither of us ends up regretting this decision.”

Of course, it was too late for that, Owen thought as he hung up the phone. Regrets were already pouring in. He’d been called many things in his life. Stubborn, arrogant, rough, a loner. Despite his millions, which would have enabled him to live anywhere he wanted to, he liked his silence and the relative peace he found on the ranch. He’d sacrificed everything for this and he always would.

His peace and his loner status were about to end. A princess was coming to visit the Second Chance Ranch.

“A princess?” Owen muttered when he hung up the phone. “On a ranch? That’s crazy talk. Maybe she’ll hate it and go back home right away.”

A man had to have his hopes and dreams.

Delfyne emerged from her family’s private jet, took one look at the very tall man waiting for her and instantly knew that she was in trouble. It wasn’t because she found him physically attractive, although she did. What woman wouldn’t respond to long legs encased in form-fitting denim, broad shoulders, dark hair and silver-blue eyes? But good looks could be ignored.

What couldn’t be ignored was something much more difficult to describe. The expression on his face…this man was a wall, even more of a wall than she remembered from the time he’d visited Andreus years ago. He was a warrior. Stubborn. What’s more, he didn’t look especially pleased to see her, and she was pretty sure she knew why.

Her brother had told Owen Michaels to look after her. There was no question of that. Because, despite the fact that for her entire life she had been promised this time outside her princess skin, when it came to actually granting her this freedom, every member of her family had been nervous. They’d fussed, they’d tried to give helpful advice without looking as if they were giving helpful advice. Delfyne had come upon her father and Andreus whispering and then acting as if they hadn’t been whispering all too often. Because of that and because all her suggestions for places she wanted to stay had been brushed aside with carefully planned criticisms, she’d known months ago that no one was ever going to let her have a true taste of freedom.

They were afraid she was going to make an impetuous mistake…again. Like the time she had slipped away to go swimming alone in the middle of the night and nearly drowned, or the night when one of her maid’s daughters had talked her into going to a local town party unescorted and she’d almost been abducted. And yet they didn’t know even half the mistakes she’d made as she struggled against the bonds that had always kept her from joy and freedom. She was never going to let them know the very worst thing that had happened to her. She didn’t want to think about it herself and she wouldn’t, Delfyne thought as the old panic began to rise up.

Still, that didn’t mean she was going to spend her life hiding away from the world and from life. She needed this time away from who she was. Just this once to live in the real world, to experience the heady freedom of normalcy, to know what ordinary people knew. She craved that desperately.

But now they had assigned her two bodyguards and a reluctant babysitter and… She glanced at Owen Michaels’s square, solid jaw, noting the tension visibly coiled in every muscle in that lean, tough body.

For a moment she felt sorry for him for being stuck watching over her, but she was never going to say that. That would be admitting that he was in charge of her. That wasn’t acceptable. She appreciated his hospitality even if it was done as a favor for an old friend, but he was standing between her and her dreams. At least until she could come up with a plan.

Taking a deep breath, Delfyne pasted on the smile she had been trained to wear almost before she had learned to walk and talk. She lifted her head, automatically slipping into regal mode.

“You’re Owen, aren’t you?” she said, moving toward the man and holding out one hand in a gracious, queenly gesture. “How very kind and generous of you to offer me lodging during my time here in your United States.”

A hint of an amused look lifted the warrior’s lips slightly before his grim expression returned. He raised a brow. “You’re Delfyne? I was under the impression that you weren’t especially pleased about coming here.”

Her exact words had been that she would rather rot in the royal dungeon than spend a summer on a secluded cattle ranch. Even though it had been a childish statement to make and even though there was no royal dungeon and never had been. It was simply an expression she and her siblings had used to protest parental rule. It had seldom worked and obviously hadn’t worked this time.

Andreus had sung the praises of Montana’s wide-open spaces, blue skies, starry nights and the proud, nurturing nature of the people, especially Owen. Her parents had been completely sold on “the Montana plan.”

Delfyne had wanted to protest, but a part of her had also been won over, at least a little. She couldn’t help being curious about Montana, too, after she’d heard that parts of this place were still wild and untamed. Like me, she’d thought.

“I hadn’t fully researched the situation at that time,” she said pleasantly. “I hadn’t examined the upside of the location. Now I have.”

“Ah. The upside. You’ll have to tell me later what you think that is.” The warrior gave a terse nod loaded with meaning, if only she knew what that meaning was. He looked down at her hand. “Meanwhile…I’ve never actually touched a princess and I’m a bit rusty on my royal etiquette. Do I shake your hand or kiss it?”

His deep voice rumbled, and something primal and earthy and terribly unnerving simmered through Delfyne. She lowered her hand to her side. “I think we’ll settle for hello for now. Touching isn’t really necessary.” This man, after all, was her jailer, even if he was a reluctant one. She could not and would not allow herself to feel an attraction for him. That would be wrong and foolish in so many ways. He was her brother’s friend. He was a commoner, and she was soon to marry a man she barely knew but who would bring great connections to her people. She would, of course, do her duty…after she had her taste of life.

Still, despite the fact that she knew she could feel nothing for her brother’s friend, she and Owen Michaels were going to be stuck here together for a while unless she could talk him into letting her go off and do all the dazzlingly wonderful and normal things she’d been waiting to do all her life. And unless she could also convince him not to tell anyone about her plans.

She glanced up into his flinty, wary eyes and knew that this wasn’t a man who could be convinced easily.

Delfyne withheld a sigh. “Is it very far to your home?” she asked.

He smiled then, and this time his smile looked genuine. And far too dazzling. His silver-blue eyes lit up, and something hot and sparkly zinged right through Delfyne’s body, heating up parts of her she preferred to ignore. “Everything is far around here if you’re not used to driving distances,” her captor-babysitter said. “Are you ready to go?”

She nodded. “Yes.” The sooner she assessed her surroundings, the sooner she could figure out how she was going to manage these next few months and what she intended to do either to make this situation palatable or to change it.

Turning toward the airplane, she gave another nod. Immediately, two members of the royal guard appeared. Stoic. Big. Their expressions gave away nothing.

“Who the hell are they?” Owen asked, his voice quiet but deadly. She thought she heard him say something worse than hell beneath his breath.

“My escort,” she said simply.

“Your escort,” he repeated as if she’d just said she’d traveled here accompanied by flying pink ponies. “They’re going home?”

She wished. “If you think you can convince them to leave, you’re welcome to try. They follow me everywhere. It’s their job.”

Owen Michaels frowned. “Any other members of your entourage I should know about?”

For the first time since she’d left home, Delfyne felt like laughing. “I see Andreus didn’t tell you about my guards,” she said with a smile. “I wonder why.”

But they both knew why. Owen didn’t want her here, and friendship only went so far. If he’d known he was going to have to house a brooding pair of guardsmen in addition to a princess for months on end, she wondered if he would have agreed to let her stay.

Maybe the man would have said no. Maybe he had limits, and if she pushed them, he’d send her away to where she wanted to go. That was definitely something to think about. Delfyne wondered just what Owen Michaels’s limits were.

She would soon find out.

CHAPTER TWO

SO ANDREUS’S kid sister wasn’t a kid anymore, Owen mused as he led Delfyne to his SUV. She’d been skinny before. Now she was willowy and curvy and stunningly gorgeous, with sable hair and violet eyes. And her legs… He swept his gaze down those sweet legs, ending at a pair of barely there lacy stiletto heels that would have looked at home in a ballroom, a boardroom or…oh yes, they would have looked very fine in a bedroom, but they sure didn’t belong on a rough, tough ranch or anywhere near a man like him.

It was all he could do to stop himself from banging his fist on the Land Rover. This was going to be a hellish mistake of an experience. He certainly had no business imagining his calloused palm skimming over a princess’s legs.

Frowning, he glanced at her and saw that she was studying him with dismay. And no wonder. He realized that in addition to blatantly eyeing her curves, he had been slamming her bags around and had been silent for several minutes.

“I apologize,” he said.

Those pretty violet eyes blinked. “For what?”

Oh, she was good. Her parents had probably trained her to maintain that cool princess aura in the face of bad manners from birth.

Owen shook his head. “I’m supposed to be your host, to make you feel welcome. I don’t think I’ve done that.”

She studied him for a moment and then reached out and placed her hand on his arm. Heat shot through his skin and sank deep into his body. Great. Just great. He was lusting after a princess, one who was destined for a prince. What’s more, Delfyne was his best friend’s little sister, a woman he had sworn to protect, not seduce.

Owen took a deep breath. He forced himself not to look at the point where his skin connected with this beauty’s soft palm. She was smiling. No, she was practically dancing, her eyes lit up like twin candles.

“Enough,” she said. “Let’s not pretend anymore, all right?”

He waited.

She shook her head and, as if she had just realized that she was touching him, looked at her hand and slowly eased it from him. “My brother forced me on you. He and my parents sent me here so that I couldn’t be tempted into trouble or so that trouble couldn’t be tempted into finding me and hurting me. I’m not your guest, Owen. I’m your short-term obligation. I don’t expect you to pretend otherwise.”

He considered that. “You didn’t want to come to a ranch. This can’t be fun for you.”

“Well, it’s not at all what I’d planned when I planned it.”

“When was that?”

She looked to the side and for a second he thought she wasn’t going to answer. “I started making my plans when I was eight, when I realized that no matter how carefully I planned my birthday party and no matter how many commoners they reluctantly allowed me to invite, my guests would always be screened, some wouldn’t be allowed near me and those that were admitted would be coached on etiquette before they came into my presence. It would never really be a truly free experience completely of my own choosing…except for this one summer.”