The Accidental Princess

by Peggy Webb

  C.J. went back inside. Sam was stretched on the kitchen floor with his head under the sink.

  “Dad? I’m ready to go to the Expo.”

  “Fine.” He didn’t even stick his head out.

  “I thought you were going.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  Was this a good thing or a bad thing? Probably a little of both. Obviously he was avoiding Ellie, who would definitely be there, but also he was fixing a faucet that had leaked for three years. Showing a little interest in things around the house. Showing a little life, a little spunk.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Have fun.”

  “I will. I’ll tell Ellie you said hello.”

  Sam came out from under the sink so fast he banged his head. “You’ll do no such thing.”

  “Why?”

  “If Ellie wanted to say hello, she’d have come here and said it in person.”

  “It works both ways, Dad.”

  He gave her another of his famous looks, then disappeared under the sink. “I’m busy here,” he said.

  “Okay, then. If you change your mind, come on down. We’ll be at the Expo about two hours.”

  Blake Dix was his name. Clint had inquired. What was a man like that doing at the Expo anyway? You’d think a man who worked at a church would know better than to practically maul a woman in public.

  To make matters worse, C.J. didn’t seem to be minding all that much. She was sitting on a bale of hay soaking up every word that fell from Dix’s lips.

  “Where have you been all my life, C.J.?”

  Dix’s line was the oldest pickup in the world. Stale as last week’s bread.

  “Right under your nose,” she said with a good deal of spunk and more than a little stinger.

  Clint took heart from that, but not much. Especially since the Dix masher leaned over and twirled a wisp of her hair between his sleazy fingers and she seemed inclined to let him.

  “Just think of all the time we wasted, C.J.”

  She slapped his hand out of her hair. “Go chase some pretty girls, Blake. I have more important things to do than canoodle with you.”

  “I’m dying here, C.J.”

  Clint almost felt sorry for the fool. Dix actually thought he could get past her lethal stinger. The consequences weren’t long in coming.

  “Go sing a dirge. Maybe that’ll revive you.”

  C.J. launched herself off the hay and left Dix standing there wondering if his deodorant had failed him.

  Clint wanted to give a rebel yell, but grabbed a handful of cotton candy cones instead.

  “What are you doing here, as if it’s not perfectly obvious?” C.J. stood like a female Patton, hands on her hips, a take-no-prisoners look in her eyes.

  “Having a little snack.”

  “Five cones of cotton candy?”

  “I like sugar.” He stared deliberately at her berry-colored lips and watched the flush come into her cheeks. He was beginning to feel more like himself. Heck, he was beginning to have fun again.

  “Want some?” he said, making it perfectly clear he wasn’t talking about cotton candy.

  “Why don’t you ask a more appreciative audience? I see her coming right now.”

  “What in the hell do you mean by that?” he yelled, but the devilish Crystal Jean Maxey had already sashayed away toward the dairy barn.

  “What’s going on?”

  He wheeled around to see Sandi Wentworth standing at his elbow. Any man in his right mind would have been thrilled by this turn of events. Exit a heartless woman, enter a woman who was all heart.

  It said more than he cared to know about his state of mind that he pined for vinegar when he could have sugar.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “You tell me.”

  C.J. told herself if she looked back she’d turn to a pillar of salt. Like Lot’s wife. Like every other woman who didn’t heed all the warning signs.

  She hastened into the dairy barn and searched the crowd for Ellie. Where was she? The program would be starting in fifteen minutes. It wasn’t like her to be late. Maybe she was sick. But wouldn’t she have called?

  C.J. reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out her cell phone.

  “Ellie? You sound terrible. Are you sick?”

  “Allergies.”

  Ellie’d never had allergies that C.J. knew of, but she didn’t contradict her. “The show’s about to start. I thought you were coming.”

  “I have lots of catching up to do at work. Is Sam with you?”

  “No.”

  “Give me twenty minutes. I’ll be there.”

  “Ellie…”

  “What?”

  “It’s working.”

  “What’s working?”

  “Absence is making the heart grow fonder. Dad’s been a bear.”

  Ellie snorted. “It’s not his heart. It’s indigestion.”

  “We’ll see.” Out of the corner of her eye C.J. saw Sandi coming. “I have to go, Ellie.”

  She ducked across two rows of chairs that had been set up for today’s events. If she could just make it around the corner of the makeshift stage she’d be all right: she’d be out of sight.

  “C.J., wait.”

  Caught. Sandi looked flushed and out of breath, and C.J. wondered how much of it was from the exertion of trying to catch her and how much was due to the attentions of a certain sexy reporter. She couldn’t say his name to herself, couldn’t even think it without getting weak in the knees.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you.” C.J. didn’t say anything. What was there to say? “I knew I’d find you here. We need to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Oh, C.J. Don’t. We have nothing to fight about.”

  “You’re right. We certainly don’t.”

  The county’s biggest dairy farmer, Walter Crumpett, walked onstage and began to fiddle with the microphone. High-pitched squealing noises filled the barn and a couple of cows started mooing.

  Reprieved. “I have to go.” C.J. started around to the back of the stage but Sandi caught her arm.

  “Nothing happened between us,” Sandi said. “All Clint did was ask questions about you.”

  Sandi had never lied to her. C.J. wanted to believe, but still…

  “Don’t you see, C.J.? It’s you he wants, not me.”

  “I have to go.”

  “C.J….”

  Years of friendship loomed large and suddenly C.J. wondered how she’d ever been foolish enough to let one little misunderstanding come between them.

  “I believe you, Sandi. Come over tonight and we’ll eat popcorn and watch Clark Gable.”

  C.J. hugged her oldest and best friend in the whole world. “I’m sorry, Sandi.”

  “Hush, hush. You’re making me cry.” Onstage Walter Crumpett paged C.J. over the ornery microphone. “Knock ’em dead, C.J.”

  “I’ll be satisfied if I can keep them awake.”

  Waiting backstage to be announced, C.J. knew she should be thinking about the speech she was about to deliver. Instead she thought about Clint Garrett cozied up in the bar plying her best friend with questions. It would have been a very hopeful sign if C.J. didn’t know that the woman Clint had inquired about was not she but a make-believe woman, a trumped-up glamour queen who didn’t even exist.

  Maybe he was interested in that woman, interested enough to steal a few kisses in the meadow and take her home for a brief fling.

  They say be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. It looked as if C.J. had received what she wished for—excess.

  Sure, it was fun and exciting, heady stuff for a plain country girl who had no wild days of youth to recall and whose social whirl consisted of having five dollars bid on her fried chicken at the church’s box supper.

  All of a sudden she realized she wanted more, she wanted real love, the kind where a man loved you exactly as you were and loved you completely. The kind where a man kissed the back o
f your neck in the evening and said, “Let me give you a massage, darling.” The kind where a man cherished everything about you.

  The kind where you loved him right back in exactly the same totally accepting, all-encompassing way.

  An announcement filtered through her preoccupation. “And now here she is…Lee County’s Dairy Princess…Crystal Jean Maxey!”

  C.J. smoothed her jeans, made sure her T-shirt was tucked in, then climbed the rickety steps of the makeshift stage. The audience was sparse, a few dairy farmers, some she knew, some she didn’t, along with a handful of wives who had come along because any outing, even one to a smelly old dairy barn, was better than none.

  Ellie was in the audience giving her a thumbs-up smile, but Sam wasn’t there. C.J. had half expected him to change his mind and come. Except for the few times he’d had an emergency in the clinic, he’d never failed to show support for his daughter.

  Not that she was upset, not by a long shot. In fact, she took his absence as a good omen, a sign that at last Sam was becoming whole again.

  Sitting beside Ellie was Sandi, and lounging in the back was Clint, camera slung on his hip and a sardonic grin on his face.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “I feel like Eve without her fig leaf. Cast into a situation I’m totally unfamiliar with, being a princess.”

  Winning her audience with laughter was heady. It gave C.J. the courage she needed to launch into the heart of her speech—promoting the dairy industry.

  Chapter Eleven

  Clint didn’t know who that was on the stage, but it certainly wasn’t C.J. Maxey, at least not the one he knew. The smart, articulate, unadorned woman onstage was not somebody he would ever offer a conjugal visit. The woman onstage was the kind you carried hothouse roses to, the kind you didn’t mess around with usually, because they were way out of your league. Shoot, she was the kind of woman you’d take fishing…if you got really serious.

  The thing was, he wanted to buy roses for this woman. He wanted to grow two sizes taller so he’d be worthy of being seen with her on his arm. Hell, he was about a hair’s breadth from inviting her to go fishing.

  He should leave. Right this minute.

  But that would be a cowardly act, and anyhow he was only going to be in town a few weeks longer, just long enough to cover the princess all the way to the state pageant. He could certainly hold out against this interesting, intelligent, straightforward woman that long.

  Look on the bright side, the way she changed chameleon-like from day to day, she’d probably metamorphose into somebody else tomorrow, maybe even somebody down on his level.

  The audience gave her a standing ovation. Clint felt as if he’d personally wooed and won the crowd. When she smiled and waved, he thought she was looking directly at him.

  Walter Crumpett pranced back onstage and brayed into the microphone, “Let’s give her another round of applause, folks…our own dairy princess. Wasn’t she wonderful?”

  The audience showed their agreement by stomping and clapping. That Dix character who was still hanging around made a complete jackass of himself.

  “And now, folks,” Crumpett said, “we come to that part of the show where you can win a chance to have your picture taken with the princess. Bring ’em on, Jack.”

  Two black-and-white Holstein cows topped the ramp and clomped onstage switching their tails and chewing their cuds. “There they are, folks,” Crumpett yelled, “Bossy and Jane, two fresh milk cows. Now who wants to try their hand at milking? Come on, boys, don’t be shy.”

  Dix was the first one onstage. He was the most determined fellow Clint had ever seen, and it didn’t surprise him one bit when Dix won the milking contest.

  Clint moved to the stage to get a shot of the winner, and what happened next couldn’t have been better if he’d scripted it himself.

  The princess took her place beside Dix who behaved himself long enough for the cameras to click off several shots. Then temptation overcame him. He eased an arm behind C.J. and grabbed a handful of her cute little bottom. Still smiling for the camera, C.J. reached back, grabbed his wrist and twisted.

  Dix yowled and Bossy, who was right behind them, relieved herself in fright. C.J. twisted again and when Dix stepped backward, his fancy boots lost purchase and he went down with a thud.

  “I guess you really fell for the princess,” Crumpett yelled, and Dix said a word you couldn’t print in a small-town family newspaper.

  C.J. extended her hand to help him up, but Dix declined.

  “Congratulations, Blake,” she said. “You won.”

  Clint was going to send that woman roses.

  “That was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen,” Sandi said.

  She and C.J. were sitting on the swing on C.J.’s front porch with a moon as big as Texas shining through the trees and music drifting through the open screen door.

  “Served him right.”

  “It was the best comeuppance I’ve ever seen. He’ll probably never get the smell out of his boots.”

  Their laughter lifted on the hot summer air and C.J. felt cleansed.

  This is the way it should be, she thought. Good friends, always there, loving and supporting, understanding and forgiving.

  “That music’s too good to sit still,” C.J. said, and she and Sandi jumped up and began to jitterbug.

  Sam came smiling to the door. “Looks like you two are having fun,” he said.

  “We are. Come out and join us, Dad.”

  “No, I thought I’d take a little ride.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  “Over to Ellie’s. Don’t wait up for me.”

  They watched until he got into his pickup truck.

  “He looked ten years younger,” Sandi said. “What do you think’s going on?”

  “I think he’s going courting.”

  “Good. Turn up the music.”

  C.J. turned it to ear-splitting volume and they began to boogie once more.

  “May I have this dance?” Clint Garrett was standing on the front porch steps with the moonlight in his impossibly black hair and a dozen long-stemmed pink roses in his hand.

  “How did you do that?” C.J. asked. “I didn’t even hear your motorcycle.”

  “I have my Corvette.”

  Sure enough, a sleek black Corvette convertible of ancient vintage was parked underneath the magnolia tree. C.J. turned to ask Sandi if she’d heard him drive up, but her friend had vanished through the hedge that separated their houses.

  Clint held out the roses.

  “For me?”

  “Yes. The color reminded me of your cheeks.”

  It was the most romantic thing any man had ever said to her. C.J. felt like lolling back on the swing in a full-blown swoon.

  “Thank you.” She buried her face in the fragrant blossoms and bit her tongue to keep from asking why. Tonight was not the time for a sharp tongue and a stinging wit. Tonight was the time for moonlight and magic.

  “They’re my way of saying I’m sorry,” he said.

  “So am I. For…everything.”

  They looked at each other as if they’d never met, strangers vividly aware of each other. The boogie gave way to a romantic ballad.

  Clint held out his arms and C.J. laid her roses in the swing then moved into them as naturally as if that’s where she’d always belonged. Her head fit exactly right against his shoulder, his arms fit perfectly around her waist, her hips matched his hips as if they’d been designed to meld together in a romantic dance in the moonlight on a soft summer night.

  “We fit,” he said, echoing exactly what she was thinking.

  “Yes.”

  He moved a fraction closer and C.J. saw how it would be possible to fall in love in an instant without even trying. She saw how it was possible to forget reason and listen entirely to the heart.

  She closed her eyes and rested her head on a shoulder so broad and strong it could keep a woman safe no matter what. He smelled faintly of soap, and of s
oft summer wind. She could die of happiness right now.

  “We dance well together,” he said, as if he were surprised.

  She wasn’t. She guessed she’d known all along that whatever she and Clint Garrett did together, they’d do it with a compatibility that was surely shaped by fate.

  “I’ve never danced with a man,” she said. In high school she was always the wallflower, the one left to pour the punch while other girls whirled around the dance floor.

  “Never?”

  “I guess I was waiting for you.”

  He tangled his hands in her hair and tilted her head so he could gaze into her eyes. “And I guess I was waiting for you.”

  She’d never seen anything as beautiful as his eyes, never felt anything as wonderful as his lips, never known anything as magical as the kiss that transformed her from ordinary to special. Of all the women in the universe, she was most blessed.

  Chapter Twelve

  The woman in his arms was soft and sweet, yet another facet of the ever-changing, endlessly fascinating C.J. Maxey. Clint had thought he’d kiss her lightly in a casual sort of way, a let’s-make-up-and-be-friends sort of way. But the way it all ended up surprised him out of his socks. Even a man as jaded and devil-may-care as he knew when a kiss was special. This one topped the scale. It sent him over the moon, and that’s where he stayed.

  There was no way he could let go of her, no way he could stop kissing her. He pulled her closer, molding their bodies together in a fit as perfect as any he’d ever known.

  He wanted her as he’d wanted no other woman. The porch swing beckoned, and he eased her back onto the cushions.

  She was in shorts. Her legs were bare. Her T-shirt was a small barrier, easily dispensed.

  With the small wanting sounds of a woman on the edge, she wrapped arms and legs around him, urging him closer. It would be so easy to take what he wanted.

  No, more than wanted. He needed C.J. Maxey and that scared him.

  In addition, a latent honor reared its aggravating head, and he knew he could never take this woman casually. He could never take his pleasure then simply walk away.