Free The Cowboy and the Princess by Myrna Mackenzie Page B

once they were out of the box.
    “I’d better get you to the store and back to the ranch,” he said. “Lydia is going to be worried.” Another half truth. Lydia would assume that Delfyne was safe with him, and she’d be half right. His thoughts might be in the wrong place, but so far he was controlling his body. Barely.
    Still, his comment about Lydia had apparently cast a pall on Delfyne’s fun. Within a half hour, Delfyne had shoes, a pair of boots and some jeans and white shirts. Owen had rushed in at just the right moment to witness Delfyne’s distressed look. He realized the problem. She didn’t have any way to pay. He supposed that princesses didn’t carry cash around on them.
    “Bill them to the Second Chance,” he told the clerk.
    “Thank you. You will, of course, be repaid in full for all you’ve done,” Delfyne said in that every-inch-the-princess tone.
    Owen’s gaze and the clerk’s locked. If the man had been the sort to ask nosy questions of his customers, Delfyne’s last line might have elicited a few. As it was, Owen was the one asking questions of himself. What was he doing?
    He was lying, going along with this charade and acting crazy because of a woman…again.
    The acting crazy had to stop right now. He knew all the facts, and he wasn’t dumb enough to fall for a woman he couldn’t have and definitely couldn’t hold. Not this time.

CHAPTER SIX

    D ELFYNE rushed up to Owen the next morning, her arms out to the sides. “Do I finally look the part now? I dare anyone to mistake me for a princess like this.”
    She was dressed in a plain white blouse, open at the neck, and a pair of blue jeans that clung to her curves like icing on a cake.
    Heat sizzled through him, but he pushed it aside. She wasn’t asking what her jeans did to his temperature.
    “You look like a woman who means business,” he said.
    “And I do. Today, Lydia’s letting me back in the kitchen. We’re baking cookies. I’ll bring you some when they’re done. And then Morgan is going to show me how to milk a cow. Isn’t that exciting? That is, we have cows, of course, in Xenora, but no one has ever suggested that I might milk one.”
    “I’ll just bet they haven’t,” Owen said with a grin.
    She wrinkled her nose. “Make fun of me if you will, but you haven’t spent your life in a pretty box.”
    He studied her. She was right. He had lived his life on his own terms and done exactly what he wanted to, when he wanted to, where he wanted to, with disastrous consequences for those closest to him.
    “Is your pretty box that bad?”
    She gazed up at him, her eyes bright and earnest. “No, it’s not.I know how privileged I am, but…I’ve been impetuous at times. Always. I never walked. I ran. I never trotted sedately. I galloped. And sometimes I did things and said things that were so spontaneous and ill-thought-out that I scared those I love. There are things even beyond what they know…things I’ve done that I regret, and I—I guess I see why they’ve tried to hem me in, but it’s so very hard not to want to experience things. I know they’re not trying to punish me, but…oh, I’m saying this badly, I know.”
    But she wasn’t. Not really. Owen stepped closer. “Do you feel trapped here at the Second Chance?” He’d heard that before.
    She looked at him sharply and he knew that she had heard about his wife. Not a surprise, even though he knew that Andreus wouldn’t have shared much even with his family. Faye had cried to pretty much everyone who would listen before she left him. Trapped had been one of the nicer words she’d used. And later…everything had spiraled out of control after their tragedy.
    “You’ve been completely hospitable to me,” she said. “How could I feel trapped? How could I be so ungrateful?”
    That soft, silky voice washed over him, and frustration rushed through him.
    “You don’t have to be grateful. I don’t want your gratitude. I know all too well that a trip to