your dreams,” Sally said, then turned on Tim. “So if she’s only the cook, why do you have your hand on her?”
He did, it was still on Natalia’s back, lightly. He didn’t remove it. Instead, his thumb brushed her spine as his green, green eyes gazed down at her from beneath the brim of his hat. “I was protecting her from you.”
The men laughed heartily, while Sally sent them daggers with her eyes.
“If this is going to cause problems…” Natalia started. “I can—”
“No problems,” Tim said with another pass of his thumb, which in return, caused most of the thoughts to dance right out of Natalia’s head.
But she wasn’t some silly teenager, run by racy hormones. She wouldn’t get all flustered and tongue-tied over a sexy-as-hell cowboy whose jeans should be registered as an illegal weapon. “I don’t want to be the cause of any bad feelings.”
“Well, don’t leave on my account.” Sally smiled sweetly and held open the kitchen door. “Unless you feel you must. How about I call you a cab? You can take it to the nearest body-piercing saloon. In say, California.”
Tim reached out and shut the door.
But Natalia stepped forward. She spoke for herself, always, and had since the age of two. “I’m—”
“Staying,” Tim interrupted again.
He was going to have to stop doing that. Natalia frowned at him.
He frowned right back.
Sally frowned at the both of them. “No cook wears black leather and shows belly button,” she said suspiciously. “Not in Texas, anyway.”
“I’m not from Texas.”
“Hmm.” Sally crossed her arms, clearly stating with that one little rude “hmm” that if one wasn’t from Texas, one wasn’t worth her time. “I thought you were going to hire someone old and ugly,” she said to Tim.
Tim had the good grace to look embarrassed. “I said old and ugly when you wanted to hire Nick the Sleaze, remember?”
“Well I’d stay away from whoever you hired if you hadn’t told Josh that if he touched me again you’d cut off his—”
“Sally, you’re driving me crazy.”
“Yeah, well. It’s a short drive. Speaking of crazy, how’s Grandma?”
“Crazier than even you.”
Natalia watched this exchange between brother and sister with fascination. Not because she’d never fought with her siblings, because she had. A lot. Mostly with Annie just because Lili being the baby—quite literally sometimes—wasn’t as much fun to wrestle with. And she was a tattletale.
But Natalia could never in a million years have pictured cool, calm, collected cowboy Tim Banning acting like an obnoxious older brother.
“So, where is Grandma, Tim?” Sally asked with a false sweetness. “I’m sure with all your charm, you managed to kidnap her away from the life she loves, all in the name of family duty.”
“Ouch,” said Seth from the table with a wince.
“She didn’t come with me,” Tim admitted.
“Probably because she knows you’d ruin her life, too.”
Tim looked tense again.
Natalia, the middle child and therefore a peace-maker at heart, stepped forward and smiled. “How about I cook dinner?”
“Good plan.” Sally strutted across the kitchen and sat at the table with the men. “Though you should know, if you hurt my brother I’ll have to kick your butt. So…is your tongue pierced?”
Natalia blinked. Good Lord, Americans were certifiable. “Hurt your brother? Why would I do that?”
“Just a friendly little warning.”
“Friendly. Right.” Like Tim, Sally Banning was tall, lean and muscular and also sported a crooked eyetooth. Somehow it wasn’t nearly as attractive on Sally as it was on Tim, but Natalia had to admit that it was probably because Sally was looking at her as if she was a bug on her windshield.
Natalia had felt like that a lot today, and she was getting mighty tired of it. She opened her mouth to say so, but Tim neatly cut her off.
“Sally, do you have an extra coat you can spare?”
Sally’s eyes narrowed. “What happened to her coat?”
“It was stolen,” Natalia said. “I’m visiting the States for a royal friend’s wedding.”
Sally lifted a single brow. “Royal friend?”
“I’m a princess.”
Sally lifted the other brow now and looked at Tim. “What have you done?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he said lightly. “Everything still in working order around here?”
“She won’t fit in the stockade with the others.”
“Others?” Natalia asked.
“My brother collects the weak, the weary. The pathetic.”
A funny feeling started in the pit of Natalia’s stomach. She didn’t want to be someone Tim felt sorry for, and it was a tribute to her own privileged upbringing that it hadn’t occurred to her until now that he might see her like that. In a way she didn’t fully understand, she wanted to be someone he liked and respected.
But who in their right mind would like and respect a pampered princess who’d never lifted a hand to help herself in her entire life?
Good question, and right then and there Natalia became even more determined to become her own woman, successful in her own right, not her birthright. “I’m not weak or weary.” She’d leave pathetic out of this.
Sally gestured to the kitchen window. “See that stockade out there? The one filled with the three-legged pig, the ancient horse and the blind goat?”
“Um…yes.”
“That’s Tim for you. He collects the needy.”
And the pathetic.
Natalia got the message loud and clear. She’d just been added to the save-the-world stockade.
TIM CALLED a friend of his, who happened to be a cop. No one matching Natalia’s description had been reported missing. Tim didn’t have him run a criminal check, that would have been wrong. But at least his beautiful crazy cook hadn’t walked out of a halfway house or insane asylum. Good. He didn’t have to feel bad about letting her stay.
Now he had to face what he did have to feel bad about, the fact that he wanted her to stay more than he’d
