The Cowboy and the Princess by Myrna Mackenzie Page A

intrigues me.”
    Owen digested that, turned it over and decided that he couldn’t just let it pass.
    “She’s actually a guest who graciously volunteered to help out this evening. And…she’s taken.”
    “Is she involved with you?”
    Never. But he could see that this was a man who pursued what he wanted if there was half a chance he could win. “Yes,” he said. Another lie.
    This time Owen didn’t regret the lie. Yet.
     
    “You’re not ever going to let anyone think you’re my employee again. This was the worst kind of mistake and I was a jerk for putting you in the position you were in last night.”
    Delfyne let Owen rant on and beat up on himself for a while before she finally felt he had gotten things out of his system.
    “I don’t recall asking you if I could be in that position.”
    “I went along with it.”
    “To protect me.”
    “I don’t see how it was protecting you when people were all but throwing wineglasses at you last night, demanding that you take the olives off their food and…well, all that other stuff, too. Treating you like a piece of dirt.”
    “It was my choice to indulge in a masquerade, not yours.”
    “Don’t even try to tell me you enjoyed it, Delfyne.”
    “I wasn’t going to.”
    “See, you hated it.”
    She couldn’t help smiling at the chagrin in his voice.
    “It was…educational.”
    “Learning a language is educational. The Baxters’ behavior, not to mention Martin’s and mine, was disgusting.”
    Now she frowned. “You didn’t do anything!”
    “Exactly.”
    “Well, it’s not as if Martin or I would have allowed you to stop the event. And even you…well, if the town needs this company, you don’t want to take food out of your people’s mouths just because I suffered a few indignities last night, do you?”
    “You shouldn’t have to suffer any indignities. That wasn’t a part of the deal when you came here.”
    “Maybe not, but I know a lot about duty, and so do you. If your people need you to bite your tongue, you do it.”
    A small smile transformed Owen’s usually stern face into a virile expression that had surely been the downfall of many a woman. Delfyne reminded herself that she had to be careful here. She had exercised poor judgment in the past with men who were far less potent than Owen, and with men who would have at least been acceptable to her family. Money was not enough for a royal. Especially not a royal who was already promised. Duty wasn’t the only important lesson she had been taught.Honor had been hammered into her since she was two. But still…Owen was smiling and her knees were misbehaving, getting wobbly. Her heart was hammering, her breathing was…
    “You needn’t smile,” she said, aiming for dignity and haughtiness. “Why are you smiling, anyway?”
    “You.” That smile grew, as did her consternation and susceptibility.
    Delfyne forced a frown. “What about me?”
    Owen reached across the table past his coffee cup and touched Delfyne’s wrist right above the spot where her bracelet of bright yellow ceramic suns and turquoise beads dangled. “You try so hard to be just an everyday woman with your inexpensive bracelets and your insistence on scrubbing bathtubs and on blending in, but you can’t scrub the princess out of you, Princess. She’s there, always. She lives inside you.”
    Delfyne struggled to ignore Owen’s touch. It was such a small touch, just one finger whispering across her skin. A mere breath of a touch, but she felt the effects swirling inside her and turning her to very soft butter. And his words…
    She stared at his fingertip lying against her wrist. “I love my bracelets,” she said and immediately regretted it. She sounded like a forlorn child. “They’re one of the few things I wear just for me.”
    Owen uttered a low curse and without another word circled the table and hauled her up beside him. “I love these damn little bracelets, too. They drive me insane, the way they jangle and