Protecting the Princess Read online

  What would it be like to live like this? To wake up every morning to a splendid sky and smell wind-sweetened air? To travel into town every day or two and eat at the café, know people by face and by name?

  There was a silence to this life she’d never known before. Even now a stillness surrounded her. Would the quiet of this place calm her or drive her slowly insane? How did the people who lived here handle the quiet?

  What was she thinking? This wasn’t her life. This would never be her life. Her life was shopping and dancing and playing hostess for dignitaries visiting her country. She frowned. But at the moment she didn’t have a country. Instead she had rebels who wanted her dead.

  For the first time since the night she and her father had been whisked out of the palace reality sank in and she realized she had no clue what the future held for her.

  It was possible her father intended to see exactly what happened in the next week or two in Niflheim and would decide to make a stand to get his country back. It was also possible they would never return to Niflheim again.

  It made her sad just a little, to realize that the thought of never returning to Niflheim didn’t bother her too much. Although it was home, it had never really felt like home to her.

  Troubled by the uncertainty of the future and her own thoughts, she turned and went back inside and to her room. She sat on her bed and wondered what the future held for her.

  She stood and wandered around the room, wondering what women did to pass the time in a place like this? What was she going to do to pass her time here? Tanner certainly didn’t seem inclined to entertain her and she’d rather die from boredom than attempt to make small talk with Smokey.

  Red was the only person she might have sought out to pass the time, but he had indicated at breakfast that he was heading out for Oklahoma City to a horse auction and wouldn’t be home until later in the evening.

  By nine o’clock she was bored out of her head and went down the hallway to the study. She knew with the mood Tanner had been in earlier she was taking her life into her hands by disturbing him, but she wondered if he’d learned anything about the group of rebels who wanted her dead.

  He looked up from his computer monitor as she entered the room, a frown creasing his forehead.

  “Are you going to growl or bite at me?” she asked as she stood in the doorway.

  He leaned back in his chair and raked a hand through his thick dark hair. “Depends. What do you want?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said, sliding into the chair opposite the desk. “I saw the sunrise earlier. Are they always so pretty here?”

  The frown across his forehead disappeared. “If you think the sunrises are pretty you should see the stars at night.”

  “Maybe you’ll show them to me some night?”

  “Maybe,” he replied, his eyes dark and guarded.

  She sighed. “So what are you working on?”

  He ran a hand across his lower jaw, the frown once again appearing in his forehead. “I spent most of yesterday evening and this morning trying to find out more information about the Brotherhood of the Mist.”

  “Have you had any luck?”

  “No, but I’ll tell you what I have discovered. There are hundreds of wacko subversive groups functioning in the world these days. There are religious, political, ecological groups working both inside and outside the law. What I’m not finding is anything new about the situation in Niflheim.” He sighed in frustration.

  “Why don’t you knock off and take me on the tour before lunch?” she suggested. “It’s a beautiful morning, too pretty to be cooped up in here.” He hesitated and she knew an automatic protest was about to make its way to his lips. “Come on, Tanner. All work and no play isn’t healthy. Besides, don’t you want me to say nice things about you and your business after I’m gone?”

  “If you can say anything after you’ve left here, then I’d say I’ve done my job well,” he countered. To her surprise he pushed away from the desk and stood. “All right. I guess I could use a break.”

  Minutes later with her new hat on her head, Anna followed Tanner out the front door. “There’s no sign of the storm from last night,” she said as they walked around the house and to the back.

  “It was mostly lightning and thunder but very little rain,” he replied, his own hat low on his forehead. She saw him nod to a man who stood on the far side of the porch. “So, what do you want to see?”

  “Anything…everything,” she replied, glad to be outside instead of cooped up in the house. “Is that man one of your employees?”

  “Yeah, and there’s another one at the back of the house. We’ll have guards on the house as long as you’re here.”

  This sobered her somewhat. She’d felt utterly safe here from the moment she’d arrived, but the knowledge that there were two men on guard duty reminded her that danger could find her.

  “We’ll start in the stables,” he said. “Do you ride?”

  “It’s been years. My mother loved to ride and when I was little we’d often ride together. After her death my father sold all the horses.” She remembered that day, with her heart still grieving for her mother, her beloved pony had been sold and taken away.

  “Maybe while you’re here we’ll get you up on a horse again,” he said.

  “I’d love that.”

  They entered the stables and her nose was assailed by the scents of horse and leather and hay. They were greeted by soft whinnies and pawing from the stalls. Anna walked to the first stall and turned to face Tanner. “I’ll ride this one,” she said, indicating the large brown horse.

  “Yeah, you’d last about a minute on his back.” He pointed to the next stall. “If you ride, you’ll ride Molly.”

  She stepped in front of the next stall to see a smaller brown horse with a white marking on her forehead. “Molly. Hey, pretty lady,” she said, and rubbed her fingers over the horse’s forehead. She turned back to Tanner to see him wearing a deep frown. “What’s wrong?”

  “Her stall. It needs mucking out.”

  “Mucking out? What does that mean?”

  “The old bedding needs to be removed and new bedding put in.”

  “Then why don’t you do it?” she asked.

  He tipped his hat back from his forehead. “Why don’t you?” he countered. His eyes glittered with challenge.

  “You don’t think I can?” She looked at the stall floor. It couldn’t be that hard to remove the straw that was there and put down some new straw. He thought she couldn’t do it. He thought she couldn’t do anything.

  He walked over to the wall and retrieved a pick and a shovel and returned to where she stood. He held out the tools, an amused grin on his face. “Princess, I don’t think you’ll last five minutes.”

  “Start your clock, pardner,” she replied, and took the pick and shovel from him.

  Chapter 6

  Tanner almost felt guilty as he handed her a pick and a shovel, then moved Molly into an empty stall. Mucking out a stable was one of the nastiest jobs there was and certainly not work befitting a princess.

  As he got a wheelbarrow to carry away the old bedding, he recognized that he’d baited her into this particular challenge because he’d been in a foul mood.

  His mood had been the result of an endless night of tossing and turning and dreaming about a very naked Anna in his arms.

  He’d been angry with her for being tempting and alluring and yet everything he did not want in a woman. This little challenge, which he was certain she would fail, would merely serve to prove to him that she was all wrong for him despite his intense physical desire for her.

  He watched her start to work, wielding the pick with her slender arms. Her jeans pulled taut across her bottom as she bent over and he tried not to think about the fantasies he’d entertained the night before.

  She flashed a glance at him and gave him a cocky smile. The light blue T-shirt she wore made the blue of her eyes all the more startling.

  She coul
d look cocky now, but she’d only been working for three minutes. He fully expected her within the next couple of minutes to stomp her foot and announce that she was finished, that this kind of physical labor was beneath her.

  That kind of a reaction would make it easy for him to remember that she was nothing more than a spoiled, pampered princess who wouldn’t know the pleasure of a day’s work if her life depended on it.

  “Had enough?” he asked as she dumped her third shovel full of old bedding into the wheelbarrow.

  Her eyes sparked with stubbornness. “It’s not finished, so neither am I.” She got back to work.

  Flies buzzed in the air and the temperature in the stable began to climb. She threw off her hat and he saw that dots of perspiration had appeared on her forehead. She didn’t talk, which was a miracle in itself.

  In the time they had spent together he’d found her to be annoyingly chatty. But now it was as if the physical labor took too much out of her for her to work and carry on a conversation.

  His guilt nearly choked him. What did he think he was doing letting her work like this? What kind of perverse notion had even led to this challenge?

  “I could give you a hand,” he offered, and reached for the shovel leaning against the stall.

  She whirled around, wielding the pick like a weapon of mass destruction and glared at him. “Don’t you dare touch that shovel. I don’t want your help. I don’t need your help.” She set down the pick and grabbed the shovel and filled it once again.

  “You’d love that, wouldn’t you,” she muttered under her breath. “You’d love it if I’d grab my crown and run to my room.”

  “Anna…”

  “Don’t ‘Anna’ me,” she exclaimed. “I’m going to finish this work and in turn you’re going take me for a horseback ride and you’re going to sing a cowboy song and not think about work for at least an hour.”

  He grinned, amused by her list of demands. “If I were to sing a cowboy song you really would grab your crown and run to your room.”

  She leaned against the shovel, looking as charming as he’d ever seen her. Several pieces of straw clung to her hair and a smudge of dirt darkened one cheek. “That bad, huh?”

  “Tone deaf,” he replied. “Stone-cold tone deaf. Anna, you’ve proved your point, there’s no reason for you to finish this.”

  “I need to do this, Tanner.” She frowned thoughtfully. “I’m not sure why, but I need to do it all by myself. But, I’m serious about that horseback ride.”

  “It’s a deal,” he agreed. “We’ll ride right after lunch.”

  At heart he liked to think he was a gentleman, and standing around watching a woman work wasn’t his idea of fun. He wasn’t even sure now why he’d challenged her, what he’d hoped to prove.

  She worked until she was half breathless and her arms trembled from over-exertion. Not a word of complaint spilled forth from her and Tanner felt a grudging admiration for her tenacity.

  When she had the floor of the stall cleaned, he ignored her protests and helped her put down new bedding. When they were finished she leaned on the handle of the shovel and pushed a strand of her golden hair away from her glistening face.

  “I can work,” she said. “Nobody’s ever expected me to before. Nobody has ever let me before.” She leaned the shovel against the wall. “And now, I’m going to take a long hot shower before lunch.”

  He walked just behind her toward the house, wondering if he hadn’t drastically underestimated her character. As she headed down the hallway toward her bedroom, he went into the kitchen where Smokey was busy with lunch preparations.

  “You’ve been scarce this morning,” Smokey said.

  “I’ve been teaching Anna how to be a cowgirl.”

  Smokey snorted. “And next week you can teach me how to be king.”

  Tanner smiled wryly. “I think I’d have far more luck transforming Anna into a cowgirl than I could have trying to turn you into a king. She spent the morning mucking out a stall.”

  Smokey raised a grizzled eyebrow. “Maybe there’s more fiber to the woman than I first thought. She’s a feisty one, that’s for sure. Damned if she didn’t tell me to stick it in my ear this morning.”

  “Now that doesn’t surprise me,” Tanner replied. “She doesn’t take any guff from anyone. Don’t set the table for me and Anna for lunch,” he said as an idea struck him.

  “You’re not eating?” Smokey asked.

  “I promised her we’d take a horseback ride. I think I’ll just throw a couple sandwiches in a bag and we’ll have a picnic while we’re out.”

  “A picnic?” Smokey looked at him as if he’d just grown a second head.

  “Don’t look at me as if I’ve lost my mind,” he said irritably. “It’s for her, not me. I’m just going along for the ride.” Tanner walked over to the refrigerator and pulled it open.

  “Go on, get out of here.” Smokey flicked a dish-towel at him. “You want a picnic lunch, I’ll make you one, but don’t go pawing around in my refrigerator. I hate it when people paw around in my refrigerator.”

  Tanner started to reply but was interrupted as his cell phone rang.

  “Tanner,” he said into the small phone. It was his brother Zack checking in from his assignment in Oklahoma City.

  He’d just finished up with the call when Anna entered the kitchen, bringing with her the clean scent of soap and shampoo and the spicy perfume he couldn’t seem to get out of his head.

  “You’re going on a picnic,” Smokey said to her.

  She looked at Tanner for confirmation. “Really?” He nodded and delight lit her face. “A ride and a picnic? What a wonderful idea.”

  “Why don’t you two go saddle up and I’ll bring your lunch out to you,” Smokey suggested, obviously eager to get them both out of his kitchen.

  “If I’d known that my mucking out a stall would make you so agreeable I would have done it on the day I first arrived here,” she said to Tanner as they headed back outside.

  “I’m not a disagreeable man,” he replied.

  She grinned at him slyly. “No, you’re quite agreeable when you get your own way and are in total control of things.”

  “Speaking of control, there are some things we need to go over before we take this ride.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Let me guess. Rules. Rules for trips into town, rules for eating lunch, rules for horse-back riding. I suppose you even have rules when you make love to a woman.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he replied. The woman was impossible. Just when he was feeling inclined to be kind to her, she managed to do or to say something to irritate him. After spending the night fantasizing about making love to her, the last thing he wanted to do was to talk about making love.

  “I’ll bet I know the rules already. Whatever happens, I do exactly what you tell me to do, exactly when you tell me to.”

  He nodded. “Hopefully these are rules that will keep you alive, Anna.”

  By the time he saddled up their two horses, Smokey brought them out their lunch. It took only minutes for Tanner to store the bottled water, fresh fruit and sandwiches in his saddlebag, then he watched as Anna mounted Molly.

  She looked right on the back of a horse. However, Tanner had yet to see her in any position where she didn’t look right. He frowned and mounted his own horse, a black, high-spirited gelding named Simon.

  At least with them each on horseback he couldn’t smell the provocative scent of her, couldn’t see the silver flecks that made her blue eyes interesting as well as pretty.

  “Where are we headed, pardner?” she drawled as if she’d been born and raised in Texas.

  He couldn’t help the smile that curved his lips. She was irrepressible. “Just riding. No special destination.” However, he didn’t intend for them to go too far from the house.

  Over the course of the past forty-eight hours he’d begun to think that she really might have lost her pursuers in Los Angeles, that she was safe here and he was baby-sitting
more than protecting, waiting for her father to arrive.

  Besides, there were plenty of ranch hands on the property and they would recognize any strangers that strayed onto the West land. He decided to keep the guards on the house. A short ride on the property should be fine.

  Although Simon would have loved a swift gallop, Tanner kept tight control, forcing the gelding to a sedate walk. He had no idea what kind of riding skills Anna might possess and until he did know intended to take it nice and slow.

  “Looks like you’re going to meet another member of the West family,” he said as they headed toward the pasture.

  “Really? Who?”

  “Zack. He called earlier to tell me that his client has released him and he’s returning in the morning.”

  “What kind of an assignment was he on?”

  “The kind we hate to take. A domestic case.”

  “Domestic case, what does that mean?”

  “A husband and wife. The wife wanted a divorce, the husband didn’t. It seems he has a temper. Zack was hired to keep an eye on the wife between the time the divorce papers were served to the husband and the trial date, which was today.”

  “And so the danger to the client is over?”

  “She thinks so. Apparently her ex-husband has left town and so she’s confident everything will be fine.” What he didn’t tell her was that there had been something in Zack’s voice that had made him wonder if perhaps his brother had gotten a little too close to his client.

  Always a mistake, he reminded himself.

  As they headed down the lane she asked about the various outbuildings they passed. He explained what each building was and what it was used for. As they passed the original homestead, he told her that it was where he now lived.

  “It’s very nice,” she said. “In fact, it’s quite lovely.”

  “Thanks. I’ve put a lot of work into it.” A sense of pride filled him as they rode past the attractive ranch house. “I’ve been updating it for the past couple of years…new wiring and new plumbing.”

  “How many bedrooms does it have?” she asked.