Free Bulletproof Princess by Alexis D. Craig

he gestured to her with a forkful of beans, “it’s gonna be okay. In the meantime, think of this as a vacation.”
    She frowned and nibbled on the corner of a triangle of toast. “You’ll pardon me if I don’t find that comforting.”
    Her sarcasm cut him closer than it should have, but he tried to keep them both positive. “I get it, but while you’re here, I can at least keep you comfortable. There are far worse prisons in the world.”
    He hadn’t meant it as a barb, but the stricken look that chased across her features said she’d heard it that way. “I know, and I appreciate that you all are doing this for me. Truly, I’m grateful, but I’m in the way, and I don’t want you to lose your job over me.”
    Her concern was touching, and so not in synch with his initial, but dwindling, idea of her as this self-absorbed twit who profited from her looks and the fact that she could pick a few chords. In fact, he found her refreshingly nice, pleasant even, though as soon as it occurred to him, his mind followed up with exactly why that was not an appropriate line of thought. “Let me worry about that, okay?”
    Conchita snorted, breaking the moment between them. “ Mi niña , you don’t need to worry about Mackenzie. He has the reflexes of a cat, always landing on his feet. You will both be fine.” Rising from the table with Cassie’s empty plate, she took it to the sink. Over running water, she asked, “Have either of you had any sleep?”
    Right up until the moment she’d asked, Mack hadn’t given any thought to anything other than forming a plan to work, so sleep had been off the table. At its mere mention though, he yawned as he pushed his eggs around his plate. “Now that you mention it…”
    She nodded sagely, and pulled her glasses off to make a show of cleaning them, an action he knew from as far back as he could remember. Her way of suggesting, perhaps, he wasn’t seeing the whole picture. When she replaced them on her face, she looked from him to his mostly empty plate. “Get your things from the car and I’ll deal with this.”
    Cassie was already up and gathering dishes to take to the sink, and looked unsure of her place in this conversation, this house. “Are you sure? It’s a lot of—”
    His mamita’s smile was full of compassion. “Please, let me. Mackenzie will show you to your room once you get your things.” Her eyes moved from Cassie, to him, to the door, and he needed no more prompting.
    Cassie met him at the truck, and he’d already unloaded her two bags and her guitar onto the cobblestone driveway. “I’m really not going to be in the way?” she inquired after he shut the doors.
    The uncertainty he’d seen at breakfast still lurked behind her eyes, and while a glib answer was on the tip of his tongue, he wanted her to understand his sincerity, though his reasoning was still a bit sketchy. “Not at all.”
     
    * * *
     
    The best she could reason was she was on a cloud. A cool, fluffy cloud in the sunshine of the afternoon that smelled like clover honey and sunflowers. Carefully opening one eye, she peered at her surroundings and found she wasn’t far off with her initial assessment. From the fluffy white pillows, the pristine sheets and duvet that covered her, the delicate cerulean of the ceiling, it was entirely possible to believe she was on a cloud.
    Then her memories of the day before crashed over her like a bucket of cold water. She sat up and groaned. The sleep had been much-needed, and she had no sense of time other than her knowledge they arrived at sunrise, and dusk was beginning to gather in the mountains outside her balcony window. Stretching, she looked around the room done in early equinophile. Horse and riding memorabilia on every available surface, trophies on the desk at the far end of the giant room, paintings of rearing mustangs at pink-streaked sunsets on the walls, culminating in a portrait of a young woman with red hair not unlike Mack’s in a