“You know, when you give me that look, I get the feeling you should be wearing a diamond tiara and handing down royal edicts from a throne.”
Alexis started visibly and she felt the color washing out of her face. “What…what do you mean?”
Jace’s dark eyes narrowed and he stepped forward. “Hey, I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said, his voice gruff. “I just meant that you can give a very cold look when you want to.”
Relief relaxed her muscles. “It’s something teachers learn quickly. Now what other piece of advice did you have for me?” She tried to keep her tone of voice from sounding as though she wouldn’t take his advice no matter what it was, but wasn’t sure she succeeded.
Jace stared at her for a few seconds before answering. “That suit,” he said, indicating her designer original. “It looks nice, but jeans would do just as well.”
Alexis almost laughed at the idea of a Charles Piccard original being described as “nice.” “I wanted to look professional.”
“And uncompromising,” he murmured, giving it another glance.
Alexis had been quite pleased with the way she’d held onto her temper, but now, she could feel it simmering. “It’s important to dress in a professional manner. It gives people confidence that you know what you’re doing,” she informed him in what she knew was a pedantic tone. “When you get together with others in your profession, don’t you dress up?”
This time he laughed out loud. “No, jeans and boots pretty much do it for me and the rest of the ranchers. We don’t spend a lot of thought on clothes since we’re busy worrying about range management, feeding cattle, and now about keeping our herds moving to avoid the wolves that have been reintroduced to this area.”
Alexis felt embarrassment tinged with regret. She had been so busy preparing for school and focusing on what she needed to do, that she hadn’t given much thought to the problems and challenges of being a rancher in this area. Somehow, it only served to point up the vast gulf between herself and Jace. It made her feel sad, which was confusing in itself since she hardly knew this man. She reached up and pushed back strands of the chestnut hair that had pulled out of her French twist when she had been tussling with the desk.
“No,” she said quietly. “Of course not. Well, um, thank you for stopping by, but I assure you, I have everything under control now that I’ve evicted Billy’s snake, and I’ll think about your suggestion to put him in charge of a classroom snake project, and…believe me, I know how to dress appropriately.”
“Well good.” Jace turned away and headed for the door, then hesitated. “There’s one more thing.” He paused and an uncomfortable look passed over his face.
“What?” She braced herself for more corrections of her behavior, dress, actions.
Jace reached up and rubbed the back of his hand across his jaw. “I’ve managed to keep Gil and Rocky from pestering you for nine days now, but I don’t think I can hold them off much longer.”
“Oh?”
“So, I’m thinking maybe you should come over for dinner.”
“You invited her to dinner?” Gil asked, staring at Jace.
“You really did?” The expression on Rocky’s face was that of someone who had come downstairs on Christmas morning to find Santa Claus parking a sleek sports car in the living room.
“Yes, I really did.” Jace gazed at them, uneasy at confirming the thought that he’d made a terrible mistake. When he’d promised their parents that he would watch out for them as well as pay them fairly, he’d had no idea that he would have to deal with their megadose of puppy love for the new schoolteacher.
He’d issued his invitation to her on Monday and it was now Friday. He’d had a full week to fluctuate between anticipation and regret. He hadn’t told Gil and Rocky until today because they would have driven him absolutely insane over the whole thing.
Gil and Rocky looked at each other. “Why?” Gil asked. “You’ve been threatening to horsewhip us if we even thought about going over to offer her our help.”
Jace winced, recalling that threat, but he’d felt justified when he’d found the two brothers visiting Alexis.
“She seemed to have plenty of help,” he said evasively. In truth, he hadn’t known how much help she had, or needed. The women of the community had taken over for him, and he’d been glad to let them, though he actually heard frequent reports, mostly about her fabulous clothes. “But we’re her nearest neighbors and even though she’ll only be here a few months, we should get to know her.”
The Patchetts gaped at him.
Jace, who hadn’t blushed since he’d gone through puberty, could feel his face turning red at that blatantly lame excuse. Gil and Rocky seemed willing to swallow it, though, if it meant getting them closer to the goddess they adored.
The boys grinned, then Rocky’s face fell. “Does that mean we have to cook?”
“I’ll cook,” Jace growled, feeling more ridiculous by the moment.
“But you only know how to cook eggs, bacon and steak, and she’s already had your eggs and bacon,” Gil pointed out.
“Then I’ll cook steak,” Jace said, exasperated. He pointed at Gil. “You can bake some potatoes. Anybody ought to be able to do that.”
“Even you,” Rocky said, grinning as he began edging from the room.
“And you.” Jace pinned Rocky with his pointing finger. “You can make a salad and…and some salad dressing.”
Rocky’s mouth sagged. “Are you kidding? I don’t know how to make salad dressing.”
“Then call your mom and ask her.” Feeling more ridiculous by the moment, Jace swung away. “I’m going to take a shower and change clothes.”
There was a moment of silence behind him as it seemed to occur to Gil and Rocky that they had to do that, as well. In fact, this was the moment they’d been breathlessly anticipating since Jace had forbidden them to bother Alexis, though they each would have preferred to be alone with her.
The thundering of boots had Jace diving to one side, grabbing the stair rail, and almost flipping over it as the boys barreled past him to beat each other to the shower. Shoving and shouting, they thundered their way upstairs.
Jace shook his head as he went into his own room. Fortunately, his bathroom had its own water heater because there would be none left after Gil and Rocky finished.
He pulled clean, but wrinkled, underwear from a drawer where he’d thrown it after removing it from the dryer a few days ago. He and his hired hands didn’t worry much about folding their clothes away neatly as their mothers had taught them. Clean they needed, folded didn’t matter.
Jace walked to his closet and threw open the door.
He’d invited her for dinner. Jace considered that thought as he stared dumbfoundedly at the shirts hanging in the closet. He saw work shirts, a few dressy white ones, including one that actually didn’t look too bad if you didn’t notice the place where he’d inexpertly sewn on a button after getting the cuff caught on a fence post last spring. And he was almost certain he had some fairly new jeans in here somewhere.
What he’d told Alexis was true, that jeans and boots pretty much covered his wardrobe needs, but then he rarely went anywhere other than local towns where he bought supplies—and he only did that when he couldn’t convince Gil and Rocky to go in his place. His friends and neighbors teased him about it, but Jace was a confirmed stay-at-home. Jace loved his ranch and rarely thought it was necessary to leave it.
In spite of the rough way he’d been raised—by a demanding father willing to sacrifice everything to the needs of the Running M, including his wife—Jace loved the ranch. The one woman with whom he’d ever been seriously involved said it was his only love, and he couldn’t deny it.
Jace frowned, not sure why he was thinking about things like that when he was supposed to be getting dressed. He searched through the articles hanging in the closet until he found the nearly new jeans near the back. He pulled them out, brushed off the line of dust that topped the crease
left by the hanger, and tossed them on the bed.
If he would face up to the truth, he would admit that he didn’t know the first thing about having a woman over for dinner. He didn’t date. The few women available in Sleepy River were married and trips into town for female companionship took up too much time. That’s why he’d long since reconciled himself to being single.
Which brought him back to thinking about why he’d invited Alexis to dinner. To dinner?
In spite of what he’d told the boys, he wasn’t sure exactly why he’d done it. Alexis had looked tired at the end of her first day of school and he’d felt a tug of sympathy for her. He knew what it was like to have worked hard and not been sure there was any reward for it.
He’d been alarmed, and then touched, at the way she’d dragged Billy’s desk outside and heaved it into the grass to get rid of the snake. She’d seemed determined to handle it on her own and he’d admired that even as he’d shaken his head in wonder at the clothes she’d been wearing. A fancy suit and high heels weren’t anything he’d ever seen on a Sleepy River schoolteacher before. Martha almost always wore slacks or jeans, especially when it got cold outside.
As he showered and changed, Jace couldn’t stop thinking about Alexis and he finally concluded it was because he still wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing in allowing her to stay. He hadn’t heard anything negative about her from any of the students’ mothers, but they were women who were busy running their ranches and their families, so maybe they hadn’t had time to stop and concentrate on the job Alexis was doing. Time enough for that when the newness of the first weeks of school wore off.
Somehow, that seemed to point up the differences between her and the local women. They were strong, hardy wives and mothers who were at ease baking bread or branding cattle. For all her determination, he suspected that Alexis would turn green at the sound of bawling calves and the stench of scorched hair that filled the air at branding time.
Jace paused with his razor halfway to his face and stared at his lathered-up reflection in the mirror. What did it matter if she turned green at branding time? She wouldn’t even be here at branding time.
He lifted his razor and took a swipe at his beard. He needed to stop fantasizing. Gil and Rocky did enough of that for everyone.
Alexis slowly climbed the steps to Jace’s front porch, recalling her first night in Sleepy River and the way she’d set fire to his grass. She was relieved to see that it was growing back and the evidence of her clumsiness would soon be covered by fresh growth. She still didn’t know what she was going to do about the ruined quilt. He had spurned her offers to pay for it, but for someone like her, whose home was filled with antiques and treasured heirlooms hundreds of years old, it was torture to know she had ruined something of such sentimental value. She wouldn’t give up her attempts to replace the quilt. It was only a matter of catching him in the right mood.
Nervously, she ran her hands down the front of her skirt, a long broomstick one in patterns of turquoise and peach, which she had paired with a peach-colored silk blouse. She had dithered for half an hour over what to wear, ironically aware that she hadn’t been so anxious since her introduction to the King and Queen of Spain. In fact, she didn’t think she had been this nervous even then.
She knew it stemmed from her desire to fit in and the certain knowledge that she wasn’t doing so. For the most part, her students were well-behaved and their parents were polite, but they viewed her with puzzlement as if she was some kind of tropical bird that had landed in these mountains. It distressed her, but she didn’t quite know how to solve it. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this and she couldn’t recall anything from her classes that had mentioned how to become part of a community. That’s why she had accepted Jace’s invitation. In spite of the smallness of the community, he was almost the only person she knew in Sleepy River and she hoped to be able to ask him for suggestions on what she should do.
Deep in thought, Alexis started when Jace’s voice roared from inside the house. “If you two yahoos don’t quit fighting over the mirror, I’m going to break it over your heads.”
Alexis paused with her fist an inch from the door. “Okay,” she murmured. “Maybe he’s not in the right mood tonight to give me advice.” The sound of his voice had kicked her heartbeat up several notches. Odd that his anger didn’t frighten her. She found it exhilarating, something like skiing straight down a mountain and landing face-first in a snowdrift.
She knocked and then jumped back when she heard a stampede toward the door. The door was swept open by Gil, no, by Rocky, no, by Gil who was showered, shampooed, and shined up to within an inch of his life. He grabbed the door by its frame, elbowed his brother out of the way, and then blocked him, all the while grinning at Alexis with a dopey expression.
Eyes wide, she stared at the two tussling young men, but before she could say anything, Jace intervened, grabbing each of them by an arm and hauling them out of the way. “Don’t mind them,” he instructed her. “Their parents are normal, but insanity has obviously struck in this generation.”
The boys didn’t seem offended by Jace’s manhandling. They grinned happily at her and Gil said, “Why don’t you come on in? Can I take your coat?”
“Why’d you say that?” Rocky asked frowning at his brother, giving him a backhanded slap across the bicep. “I was going to say that. Mom always said we were supposed to offer to take a lady’s coat,” he explained to Alexis who answered with a weak smile.
“She’s not wearing a coat,” Jace roared, reaching out and touching the fluttery, lettuce-hemmed edge of her blouse. “It’s seventy-five degrees outside. Why the devil would she need a coat?”
“Oh, yeah,” Rocky said. “Why didn’t you notice that, Gil?”
Alexis could feel laughter bubbling inside. She hoped she could keep it under control through what promised to be a long evening. “Something smells wonderful,” she said, edging closer to Jace, who seemed like the only safe haven in the place.
“Baked potatoes,” Gil said puffing out his chest. “I made ’em. My secret recipe.”
Beside her, she could hear Jace snorting derisively. “Baked potatoes don’t need a recipe. You just bake them, and…Oh, never mind,” he grumbled.
Alexis couldn’t resist a look at his face. He had the appearance of a man who was wondering how he’d gotten himself caught in a whirlpool as he went down for the third time. She gave him a secret grin that said she knew the two of them needed to stick together this evening. Jace answered with an apologetic little shrug, admitting he’d probably made a mistake, but the two of them could soldier on together.
“And I made salad,” Rocky added, not to be out-done by his bragging brother. With the strategic use of an elbow and a foot, he managed to edge past both Jace and Gil to stand close to Alexis. “And dressing to go with it. I got the recipe from a book.”
The four of them were now standing in a space of about eight square feet, not enough for an averagesized woman and three cowboys. Alexis stepped back, but the two younger men advanced.
“Oh yeah? Who read it to you?” Gil asked.
“Hey,” Rocky protested, giving Alexis an embarrassed sideways glance. “Quit acting like a jerk.”
“Both of you quit acting like jerks,” Jace said. Taking Alexis’s arm, he brought her protectively close to his side and said. “If you two don’t settle down, I’m going to gather up all the food and take it over to Alexis’s house and she and I will eat it there.”
The brothers didn’t seem to hear him. Instead, they took another step closer to each other, jaws stuck out, eyes narrowed. Rocky raised his hand as if to shove his brother on the shoulder, but he never got the chance because Jace lifted his arm to stop him. Alexis, who had leaned forward just at that moment, got Jace’s elbow full in the eye.
Chapter Six
“Ouch!” Alexis’s hand flew up protectively as the world went momentarily black from the blow.
“Oh my God.” Jace’s vo
ice was horrified as he reached for her, his arm going around her waist, and leaning her against him. “I’m sorry, Alexis, I…”
After the first intense moment of pain subsided, she shook her head. “It’s all right.”
“You hit her,” Gil said, scandalized. “You hit a woman.”
“Yeah, Jace.” Rocky echoed his brother’s outraged tone. “Why’d you hit her?”
Alexis could hear Jace’s growl rumble against her ear as he said, “Oh for God’s sake, I didn’t do it on purpose. As usual, I was getting between you two. Rocky, open the door.”
Though her injured eye was watering badly, Alexis could see well enough to know that they were at last going inside the house. Jace’s touch on her was gentle and protective as he compelled her into the entryway and then into the living room. Sitting her down in a chair, he snapped on a lamp and turned her face toward it, emitting a low hiss of dismay at what he saw.
“What?” she asked, alarmed. “How bad is it?”
“Not good,” he said, his face full of regret. “I’ve got a darned hard elbow. I didn’t think I hit you that hard, but this is already puffing and turning dark.”
“I bruise easily,” she answered, holding up her arm to indicate the pale skin on the inside of her wrist. “I’m thin-skinned.”
His lips quirked and his gaze met hers. “I’m sorry about that because you’re going to have a black eye.”
“No,” she cried. “No, I can’t. I’m…” Through her mind rushed thoughts and scenarios of what people would think. She could visualize the tabloid headlines: Princess Alexis In Brawl At Wild Night Spot—Black Eye Is Result—Inbourg Royal Family Humiliated.
Immediately, she felt a surge of relief as she realized that wouldn’t happen. In spite of Esther’s dire prediction, the tabloids didn’t know where she was, but the questions from her students would be no less curious. She could only imagine what kind of spin the imaginative Billy Saunders would put on it in front of the students whose respect she was trying to gain.
“It’ll heal in a few days,” Jace assured her, but she gave him a baleful look. He had the grace to appear embarrassed. “I’ll get something to put on it.” He stepped back and nearly tripped over Gil and Rocky who were hovering at his heels. “Will you two get out of my way?” he roared. “Go finish getting dinner ready.”
The Runaway Princess Page 7
