The Cowboy and the Princess Read Free

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

    S O A NDREUS’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