Alexis finally focused in on what her father was saying. She leaned back and exchanged a look with Esther, who rolled her eyes humorously and mouthed the words, “Be tactful.”
“Dad,” Alexis broke in. “I’ll be happy to attend the reception with you and meet the president of this company, but I won’t be marrying him, or anyone else for that matter.”
He stopped and gaped at her. His long, patrician nose fairly quivered. “What?”
Alexis took a deep breath. “Dad, I haven’t been at the Golden Bluff Spa. Esther went in my place, that’s why she looks so wonderful. I’ve been teaching school in a one-room schoolhouse in the mountains. I loved it. I loved everything about it, working with the children, living in the quiet of the mountains, but I couldn’t stay because the paparazzi found me, disrupted the school, and made it impossible for me to stay. Teaching is my vocation, Dad. That’s what I’m good at and it’s what I want to pursue. I’m going to begin working on a project to improve the schools here in Inbourg. I hope I can count on your support, but I’ll go ahead, even if you don’t support me.
“Oh, and by the way,” she finished, giving her father a loving smile. “I have no intention of marrying any of these men you’ve found, though if you need me to go to receptions and dinners I will if I have the time.”
“Not…?” the prince sputtered. “Now see here, young lady, you’ve got the wrong idea if you think you can just flit home and start telling me what you’re going to do. You’re still a member of the House of Chastain, and…”
“Which I’m very proud to be,” she broke in relentlessly. “But I didn’t spend four years in college getting a degree in education simply to let it gather dust on a shelf while I swan around with the jet set looking for a husband.” She took yet another deep breath because the next thing she was going to say was painful. “Dad, listen to me. I met someone in Arizona and fell in love with him. We can’t be together because his life is there, and…and mine isn’t, but I love him and I don’t want anyone else.”
Prince Michael was staring down at her in wonder. She gave him a sweet smile, squeezed his arm, then with a nod, Alexis moved ahead to where his car waited in the spot reserved for members of their family. It was an older Mercedes-Benz limousine his chauffeur had been driving him around in for as long as she could remember.
“Hello, Landis,” she said to the stooped gentleman who held the door for her. “How’s the family?”
Prince Michael followed, too stunned to say anything. Behind him, Esther walked, big-eyed and silent, but she gave Alexis a thumbs-up, signaling her support.
As she had expected he would, Prince Michael questioned her relentlessly on the drive to the palace. Alexis answered him with enthusiasm, describing the Sleepy River community, the school and the children. She refused to say anything more about Jace because it was still too raw, but he finally seemed to understand that she had plans and ideas which would improve educational standards in their country, though he wasn’t sure if the entrenched old guard of the Ministry of Education would listen to her.
“Well, then,” she told him as they pulled into the palace drive. “I’ll simply have to change their minds.”
She was delighted to see her sisters and Jean Louis, who all enjoyed hearing about her adventures in Arizona. Anya was taking on more and more of their father’s work and was busier than ever. Deirdre was running the charity she and Anya had founded as well as spending time with her new love, who was a wealthy horse breeder as Alexis had suspected. Jean Louis was happily leading a group of his school friends into scrapes.
Alexis’s firm stand that she had work of her own to do convinced the family to let her go her own way. No one expected her to be responsible for Jean Louis unless she chose to do so.
The second day after she arrived home, she began her campaign to improve the schools in the principality.
It was as difficult as her father had predicted. Her ideas were condemned as unworkable, but Alexis went to the administrators of Jean Louis’s school and asked for their help. She needed records of student performance in order to work up statistics to prove her point and they let her have them.
Prince Michael was so impressed by her single-minded dedication to the project that he convinced the state treasurer to release funds to hire consultants to help her. Within two weeks, she was directing a group of people with doctorates, which she found highly ironic since she had a bachelor’s degree and all of three weeks’ teaching experience.
Long hours were spent in meetings and conferences, hours in which she was grateful to have her mind occupied because then she wasn’t thinking about Jace.
He hadn’t contacted her, though she had called and left a message with Gil that she had arrived home safely. Being away from Jace hurt, but having him ignore her call hurt even more. By the time she had been home for two weeks and she had heard nothing from him, she realized with intense pain that he wasn’t going to call her at all.
“Don’t ever fall in love again, Alexis,” she muttered to herself one day as she climbed the stairs to the long gallery where pictures of her ancestors were hung. Jean Louis and his friends had been allowed to play in the old nursery up here, but now she had to round them up and send the little boys home. “Falling in love hurts too much. Especially if it’s to a stubborn cowboy who doesn’t love you back.”
As she passed through the long rows of pictures, she glanced up to see Hedrick the Henchman, her ancestor whose memory Jace had called up. She stopped and gazed into the painted brown eyes and arrogantly curled lips, and wondered why she’d ever thought Jace was like this cold image.
She pressed her hands against the sudden ache of emptiness in her stomach and her shoulders slumped. She missed him so much sometimes it was hard to breathe. As she turned away from the painting, she spotted a small tapestry and stood gazing at it for long moments. It had always been one of her favorites, a woodland scene with a small, rock house that reminded her of the Running M. It wasn’t particularly old or valuable, but it was beautiful.
Impulsively, she reached up to take it off the wall. She would ask her father if she could send it to Jace to replace the quilt she’d ruined. Holding it in front of her, she turned and glimpsed someone at the far end of the gallery.
For an instant, she thought it was Jace, then blinked as she admonished herself to stop living in a fantasy world. But when the man began to move forward, walking with a long easy stride, Alexis knew it was him.
Instead of the jeans and boots she’d always seen him wear, he was dressed in a suit with a snowy white shirt and a dark red tie. He looked like a banker instead of a rancher, but it was Jace all right.
The room seemed to spin around her and she grabbed the back of a chair for support.
He was before her swiftly, putting his arms around her and saying, “Hey, is that any way to say hello?”
“Jace,” she said, hardly able to believe what she was seeing. Her eyes were huge as she searched his face. “How did you get in here?”
“Some nice guy named Bevins made the guards let me in. He said Esther had told him all about me. Esther being your lady-in-waiting, right?”
She had stood stunned throughout this little speech, but now she nodded. “Yes, she’s my…” She broke off to run her hands along his arms. He was really here. “But what are you doing here?”
He shrugged in the characteristic way of his. “Everyone in Sleepy River is mad at me, so I’m not sure they’ll let me live there anymore.” His eyes twinkled at her.
“What?” She reached up to touch his face. Realizing she was still holding the tapestry, she dropped it onto a nearby table.
“They couldn’t believe I let you get away, so now they’re mad at me, especially the kids. They won’t even let me umpire their ball games anymore. Hattie Fritz threatened to set her bees loose on me if I didn’t come get you.”
Alexis looked up at him in some confusion. “You’re here because you want to umpire ball games and you’re afraid
of bees?”
He laughed. “No, I’m here to accept your proposal.”
“What?” She blinked. “My proposal?”
“Isn’t that what you meant when you asked me to come with you?”
“I don’t know….” Her face turned red. “I wanted you to be here. I didn’t want to be away from you….”
“Sounds like marriage to me,” he said matter-of-factly. “Don’t tell me you’re taking back your proposal.”
“But how can we do this? There are still the same problems,” she said, not allowing herself to hope.
He lifted his chin. “I forgot to mention one thing. I love you.”
“Oh.” All expression wiped from her face. She didn’t know what to think. “But you didn’t return my call. I thought you didn’t care that I was gone.”
He grimaced. “I was a fool, mad that you hadn’t stuck around to work things out.”
“I didn’t see a way.” She gave a disbelieving laugh. “I still don’t.”
“We’ll get to that in a minute. I think you forgot to mention that you love me, too, Alexis.”
“You’re right,” she said.
Jace took her into his arms and kissed her. She melted against him, glad to have him back. “Now’s as good a time as any,” he said.
“I love you, Jace,” she responded dutifully. “But now what?”
He pulled her over to a chair that stood beneath tall plate glass windows looking out over the beautifully sculptured palace grounds. He sat down and pulled her onto his lap. Happily, she looped her arms around his neck.
“I had a lot of time to think,” he said. “Nothing like being ostracized by the whole community to give a man time to think.” His tone was dry.
“Even Gil and Rocky?”
“Especially Gil and Rocky. If they couldn’t have you for themselves, they were at least willing to let me have you. They didn’t speak to me until I told them I was on my way here.” He tilted his head. “Actually, it was nice not having to listen to them. They didn’t start in again until I announced I was coming to get you and they told me that I’d better not screw this up.”
She kissed him. “You’re doing fine so far. What was it you were thinking about all those lonely hours?”
“You, of course, and why we couldn’t be together.”
She frowned. “I don’t think I like the direction this is heading.”
“Just wait. I accepted your proposal, didn’t I?” He paused for a minute, gathering his thoughts. “It finally dawned on me that I can’t let my fate out of my own hands. I’m just not made like that. But I kept remembering that quote of your mother’s about a person being lucky if they know their place in the world. I thought the Running M was the only place for me. I guess it was because of being jerked around between my parents for so long. But you’d never had your fate in your own hands until you came to Arizona to teach, and even then you had to resort to subterfuge.”
She winced. “Not my proudest moment.”
“But you did it because you had to prove yourself. I don’t want you to have to do that again. You have the right to live your life the way you want to, but you also have your duties to your family and to your country.”
“Yes.”
“But I want to marry you and be with you.”
“How can we? The same problems still exist. I’ve got responsibilities here. The paparazzi won’t leave me alone….”
“I think they will eventually. The boring wife of a rancher isn’t going to make very good copy. When you need to be here in Inbourg, I’ll be with you. When I need to be at the Running M, you’ll be with me.” His eyes were deep and serious. “I love you, Alexis. We can work this out.”
Tears were standing in her eyes as she kissed him, ran her hand along his rugged jaw and said, “Of course we can, but there’s something you should know about marrying a princess royal of Inbourg.”
The warmth in his eyes changed to wariness. “What? That I have to be called Prince Jace?” he asked, shuddering.
“No, but we have to get my father’s approval, the national council’s approval and be counseled by the head of the church.”
“All that?” He looped his hand in her long chestnut hair and tilted her head back so that their lips were only millimeters away. “How long will that take?”
“A few months.” She breathed in a big sigh, bringing in the essence of him. “So we’d better get started.”
“In a minute,” he said, drawing her close for another kiss.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-5264-9
THE RUNAWAY PRINCESS
Copyright © 2001 by Patricia Forsythe.
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The Runaway Princess Page 14
