The Cowboy and the Princess

by Lori Wilde

  Tension coiled his muscles. “Why’s that?”

  “All your friends really like you. I think they miss you when you’re not around.”

  Did they? Brady shrugged. “I have friends in other towns too.”

  “But none like these.”

  She was right and that’s what made him itchy. He got antsy when people started depending on him long-term—too much pressure, too many expectations. He was scared to death of being tied down. Or maybe he just didn’t want to face his own mortality.

  Coward, a voice in the back of his head mocked. Brady knocked the voice down, booted it aside. Shut up.

  “Tell me something,” Annie said.

  Brady tightened his jaw. What was she going to ask? “Yeah?”

  “Can you really read horses’ emotions?”

  It wasn’t what he expected. “Yes.”

  “What’s on that horse’s mind?” she asked, inclining her head toward a muscular paint waiting in the wings for the next event. His ears were up, eyes alert.

  “He’s a competitor ready to go.”

  “What about the bucking broncos?”

  “Those are wild ponies. Some are frightened, but most are pissed off about being contained and ridden.”

  “Do you believe in reincarnation?” she asked.

  “Do you?”

  “I do not know,” she said. “But if there was such a thing, I think perhaps you might have been a horse in another life.”

  He liked the idea of that. “I might have been at that.”

  “Now for the barrel racing,” the announcer came over the loudspeaker. “Our first contestant is Jodi Burnam from Clyde, Texas, riding Dewdrop.”

  From the far gate, a young woman on a rocket-swift quarter horse burst into the arena. The mare flew around the barrels. Brady slid a glance over at Joe. His first wife, Becca, had died in a riding accident while barrel racing. Joe looked calm, expressionless, but Mariah reached over and slid her hand over his.

  “Sweetheart kiss cam!” the announcer cried out.

  Brady shifted his gaze to the big screen. A cutout of a heart was superimposed over an elderly couple in the audience. Someone nudged them. They looked up and saw they were on camera.

  “Come on, kiss her,” the announcer called out.

  The elderly gentleman gave a sly grin, took off his hat, covered his and his wife’s faces as they kissed behind the hat. That got a cheer from the crowd and a chorus of “awwws.”

  “What is this?” Annie asked.

  “They don’t have kiss cam where you’re from?” Brady asked.

  “No.”

  “If you’re featured on the kiss cam, you’re supposed to kiss.”

  “What is the point?”

  “It’s fun.”

  “It seems embarrassing. Kissing in public.”

  “Um . . . is this the same woman who kissed me in a truck stop restaurant night before last?”

  Annie’s cheeks flushed. “That was different.”

  “That was desperation. You were hiding.”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  Brady still had a nosy urge to get to the bottom of what was going on with her. Find out who she was hiding from. He fretted it was an ex-husband or boyfriend bent on doing her harm, but she didn’t seem like a woman who’d been abused. Sheltered, yes. Dominated, no. Just who in the hell was she?

  While they’d been talking, more barrel racing competitors had come galloping into the ring. With each new rider was a fresh call of “Kiss cam.”

  At one point, the camera zoomed in on Jake and Lissette and they gave such a heartfelt, passionate kiss for the camera that the audience broke into applause.

  “Kiss cam!” the announcer called out after the final barrel racing competitor while the computer tabulated the scores.

  “Brady.” Prissy tapped him on the shoulder. “It’s you and Annie.”

  Startled, Brady looked up, saw himself and Annie on the big screen. Annie slunk down in her seat, raised her hands to shield her face.

  “Kiss, kiss!” hollered the crowd.

  “It’s better just to do it and get it over with,” Brady told Annie. “The more you resist, the more they insist.”

  “C’mon,” the announcer egged him on. “That’s a pretty young lady. Give her a kiss.”

  Brady shook his head, shrugged.

  “Awww.” The announcer sounded disappointed.

  Then to Brady’s shock, Annie straightened, leaned over, and kissed him.

  The crowd went wild, hooting and hollering their delight at that turnabout. Brady, however, was too busy enjoying the kiss to care. He’d barely slept a wink last night, lying alone in his trailer recalling what it had been like to lie with Annie beside him.

  The kiss brought it all back.

  He pulled her across the seat and into his lap. She did not resist and Brady kept right on kissing Annie long after the kiss cam went away.

  Chapter Nine

  You might be a princess if . . . you own a tiara.

  Kiss cam. What a delightful concept.

  The rest of the rodeo blurred past as Annie sat beside Brady fingering her lips and trying not to smile. She had engaged in behavior unbecoming a princess and she loved it.

  Still, it had been dumb. Her face had appeared on the big screen for all to see. What if someone in the audience recognized her as Princess Annabella? One well-placed phone call would end her adventure.

  The rodeo concluded at seven-thirty and their group ended up going out of an exit on the opposite side of the coliseum from where they’d entered, and this side of the building bordered fairgrounds.

  Annie caught her breath.

  Strings of light bulbs decorated the midway—red, yellow, white—burning beacons hanging in the night air. The clatter of the roller coaster cars clacked on the wooden track in an upward chug. Seconds later, the cars plummeted downward, passengers screaming bumptiously. Other rides dipped and swirled and flashed. The Ferris wheel and merry-go-round, Kamikaze and Crazy Wave.

  “A carnival!” Annie exclaimed. “You didn’t tell me there was a carnival. Oh my, it’s a carnival!”

  “Comes along with the rodeo every year. You like carnivals? I wouldn’t have pegged you for a carnival girl,” Brady said.

  “Why? Because they’re generally dirty and they take your money?”

  “Well, yeah. That’s exactly what I thought you would think.”

  “But is that not the appeal?”

  “It’s always been the appeal for me. Give me dirty and costly and I’m there.” He chortled.

  “You tease.” She poked him in the ribs, surprising herself.

  Brady slung an arm over her shoulder. “You make it easy to tease, Buttercup. What do you like best about carnivals?”

  “The cotton candy,” she said, because honestly, it was the only thing she really knew about carnivals firsthand.

  “You don’t have to go to a carnival to get cotton candy.”

  “But we can go, right?”

  “Hey, y’all,” Brady called over his shoulder to his friends. “Annie wants to go to the carnival. Anyone else up for it?”

  “Hell, yeah!” Prissy hooted. “I thought no one would ever ask.” She held up a hand to Annie. “Give me some skin, girlfriend.”

  Annie was not sure what to do.

  Prissy kept her palm upraised.

  Brady leaned down to whisper in her ear. “She wants you to slap her palm. You know, high five.”

  Oh yes, that thing ball players did to demonstrate team unity. Tentatively, Annie reached up to slap Prissy’s palm.

  “That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout,” Prissy said.

  Annie had no idea what the woman was saying fifty percent of the time, but Prissy seemed pleased, so she just smiled. Smiling, she had been groomed, was a princess’s preferred default option in situations of ambiguous protocol.

  “We really need to be getting home. Kyle can be a handful for a babysitter,” Lissette said.

&nb
sp; “Come on, honey,” Jake coaxed. “It’s our last big night out before . . .” He let his words trail off.

  Nobody said anything. Jake slung his arm around his wife’s shoulder and she tensed visibly. “C’mon . . .”

  A muscle in Lissette’s jaw twitched, but she nodded. “Okay, we can stay for a little while.”

  The ten of them entered the fairgrounds, walking two by two, stopping at the admission kiosk to purchase ride tickets.

  Antsy to get started, Annie shifted from foot to foot, then heard Queen Evangeline’s voice in her head. A princess does not wriggle and jiggle, Annabella. A princess moves with grace and aplomb. Always.

  No. Not always. Not at a carnival with normal people who were rapidly becoming her friends.

  While her mother was alive, whenever Annabella behaved in an unladylike manner, the queen made her stand in the corner on tiptoes with her nose pressed in a circle drawn on the wall. She was not allowed to move her nose outside the circle for ten minutes. If she did, the clock started over.

  “I’m going to make you a princess if it’s the death of me,” her mother would say.

  Later, when she suffered leg cramps from the tiptoe standing, Rosalind would massage her calves and sing to her. When charley horses caused Annabella to cry out, Rosalind would say, “It’s important to do as the queen says. It’s your duty and honor to behave like a princess.”

  Just thinking about it made Annie stop shuffling.

  “Bumper cars. We gotta do this,” Cordy enthused.

  Ila rolled her eyes. “What is it with guys and bumper cars? The slams? The sparks? The whiplash?”

  “Hey,” Cordy said, and measured off an inch with his thumb and index finger. “I came this close to winning the state bumper championship at Bumper Cars-o-Rama my junior year in high school. I swear to God, I would have won it if Jeanna Riddle hadn’t come strutting by in a micro-mini.”

  “Old story.” Ila sighed.

  “I found out later, Max Jeffers hired her to distract me, because he knew I was going to beat his butt.”

  “We’ve all heard it.” Ila bumped him with her hip.

  Cordy took the bump like a boat rolling with the ocean. “I had superior reflexes and Max knew it. Hell, I could rope and brand a calf in under five minutes. Let’s see Jeffers do that.”

  “How many people here have heard this story more than once?” Ila quizzed.

  Everyone except Annie raised his hand.

  “So,” Cordy said, singling out Annie, “Jeanna goes by and I’m a guy, of course I’m looking. You could practically see to London if you get my drift, and wham!”

  “Hey look, Cordy, there goes Jeanna right now,” Ila said, pointing in the direction of the crowd. “Her skirt’s even shorter. This time you can see the Panama Canal.”

  But Cordy wasn’t falling for it. “Max slams into me so hard I go flying over the top of the bumper car.”

  “Were you hurt?” Annie asked.

  “Nooo,” Ila pretended to wail, clasped her hands to her face in imitation of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. “You encouraged him. Never encourage the bumper car story.”

  Cordy made a face. “I’m just saying—”

  “You coulda been a contender,” the entire group finished.

  “I suppose I have told this story a time or two too many,” Cordy conceded. “But Annie’s never heard it.”

  “And now she has.” Ila linked her arm through his. “Rather than just talking about your bumper car prowess, why not show us?”

  The group moved to line up for the bumper cars.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Brady asked Annie.

  “Yes, please.”

  “My friends are a little weird,” he said. “I’m sorry that they’re weird.”

  “Do not apologize. I like them very much.”

  “You fit right in with this bunch, you know.” Brady smiled.

  That pleased her even more. “Because I am a little weird too?”

  “Just like the rest of us.”

  Annie fell in love with bumper cars as quickly as she lost her heart to kiss cam.

  The fun of slamming one’s car with a heavy rubber bumper into one’s friend’s vehicle revved her blood. Sparks skittered along the ceiling as electricity traveled down the flexible poles to power the cars. She battled the steering wheel and squealed each time someone smacked into her.

  “What next!” She rubbed her hands together gleefully when the bumper cars ride was over. She glanced around at the rides. There was a big sombrero going around in circles at the same time it swayed up and down. Down the midway lay games of chance and barkers hollering at carnivalgoers, trying to get them to come over and win a giant stuffed animal.

  She spied the entrance to a shambled mansion with distorted dimensions. Too big doors, roof pitches high as a witch’s hat. “Fright House. What is that?”

  “You’ve never been on a haunted house ride?”

  “No.”

  Brady clucked his tongue. “Such a deprived childhood.”

  “My parents were very strict.”

  “No rebellion on your part? No sneaking off?”

  “Not until now.”

  “You never dated a bad boy?”

  Annie grinned. “Not until now.”

  “C’mon. Everyone has to ride through the Fright House at least once in their lives.” Brady took her hand and guided her toward the line where Mariah and Joe, Ila and Cordy, Lissette and Jake were already queuing up.

  Prissy and Paul announced that they were going on the Kamikaze.

  “I’m not in the mood to throw up,” Mariah said, and waved good-bye to them as they strolled off arm in arm.

  “We love you,” Prissy called to the group over her shoulder. “Just in case you’re never seen or heard from again.”

  “Is it really that scary?” Annie asked as the ride operator directed them to a moving walkway, where they had to hurry to catch one of the two-seated cars with a high, scalloped-shell back.

  The minute they sat down, music started playing through speakers piped in through the plush padding. “Werewolves of London.”

  Chills ran up Annie’s arms. Brady pulled her into the crook of his arm as the car jerked forward and entered the dark tunnel.

  “If you get scared,” Brady said, “just grab on to me.”

  “That is a pretty corny line.”

  “So you’re not all that innocent, huh?”

  “Just because I have been sheltered does not mean I do not know when I am being played.”

  “Gotcha, but if you do get scared . . .”

  Annie laughed. “I know where to grab.”

  The tunnel was deeply dark. Warren Zevon sang about a werewolf ripping out lungs. Then, suddenly, the undead were popping out at them right and left, up and down. Skeletons fell from closets. Zombies reached out to grab them. Banshees wailed. Vampires lunged. Frankenstein lurched. A headless horseman galloped beside their car. A Gypsy woman’s head in a crystal ball swung cackling from the ceiling.

  Their car twirled, spun, moved backward. A million giant radioactive green spiders scurried down all sides of the sweaty Fright House walls.

  Annie pressed her cheek against Brady’s chest and covered her eyes. She could feel the vibration of his chuckle underneath the steady lub-dub of his heart. She thought of the scene in Roman Holiday where Gregory Peck pretended the Mouth of Truth had bitten off his hand and scared poor Audrey.

  What was it with men scaring princesses?

  He does not know you are a princess. Remember, this experience is as temporary as a movie. Inhale it. Swallow and it is gone.

  A sharp ache of sadness momentarily pushed out the thrill of Fright House, but Annie shrugged it off. She knew when she began this whole adventure that it could not last.

  Brady’s hand closed over hers. He lowered his head and in the darkness, amid the mechanical screeching of artificial otherworldly creatures and the jaunty strains of “Monster Mash” from the headboard spe
akers, he kissed her again.

  The twirling and swirling was normal. Right? It was a swiveling car in a twisty haunted house. That was why she felt so topsy-turvy. No other reason. It had absolutely nothing to do with Brady’s quick, wicked tongue and the long, slow way he wielded it.

  His fingertips hooked under her chin. Annie parted her teeth. He took full advantage. A conqueror invading a new country. She surrendered. Running up the white flag without one sliver of resistance.

  Pathetic. She was completely pathetic.

  Then the monsters stopped mashing, light vanquished darkness, ghouls ceased screaming, spiders curled up and died.

  The car settled. The ride finished. They emerged whole and safe. Sort of.

  “Goodness,” she said. “That made my blood race.”

  “Mine too.”

  “Buy a photo of your Fright House adventure!” commanded a stubby-legged, thirtysomething attendant at the end of the line. He had short, Brillo pad hair that sprang from his head as startling as if he showered with a Tesla coil. “Right over there.” He pointed to the photograph kiosk. “Go get it.”

  Annie started to walk past the man and join the rest of their group waiting for them over at the concession stand, but Brady took her hand and tugged her toward the kiosk. “Don’t you want to see our picture?”

  “Picture?”

  “In the midst of Fright House they snapped our picture.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “To make money selling souvenir photographs.”

  “Oh.”

  “You meant it when you said you’d never been to a carnival or an amusement park.”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you were exaggerating.”

  “No.”

  “Let’s just see what we looked like in the middle of being terrified. We don’t have to buy it if you don’t like it.”

  “All right.”

  He led her over to the kiosk and they searched through the photographs slowly scrolling over the screen.

  “Oh, oh, there we are.” She pointed and giggled.

  “Dude,” said the kid behind the counter. “I’ll print you up a copy. Only fifteen bucks.”

  “Fifteen dollars,” Annie said. She wasn’t good figuring out American currency and did not know if that was expensive or not, but before she could ask Brady about it, the attendant had already hit the button on the printer.