delved into her jewelry box and came up with what she wanted. “Finally! A chance to wear these!” She placed the yellow, blue and white bangle bracelets on one wrist and the cute bracelet with the gaudy pink elephant charms on the other.
Then she slipped bone-colored ballet flats on her feet and ventured out into the house, wandering the massive hallways. This was very much a man’s house. Everything was big and spare with clean lines and no frills. Golden wood was everywhere.
There was art on the walls. Expensive art, she noted, but no personal items. No photographs, no mementos of any type. And most of the rooms looked as if they were seldom used, which was probably the truth. Altogether there was little here to tell her about her host, about the man.
She knew some things, of course, the little that Andreus had told her in the past or had felt she needed to know now. Owen had once had a wife, a gorgeous blonde he’d met in college. They’d married and he’d taken her back to the family spread. Eventually, they’d had a son who had died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Then the marriage had dissolved. That was all Delfyne knew other than the fact that Owen was very rich. He’d spent his alone time doing more than just building this house. He’d invested his money in a mix of risky ventures and conservative stocks and had earned a fortune. But he seldom left the ranch. Andreus had tried to get him to visit their palace on Xenora several times to no avail, other than that one trip when the two of them had been in college. So Owen was a man of mystery.
And now he was her man of mystery, temporarily.
Delfyne’s breath caught at the expression. She knew better than to have those kinds of thoughts. Much as she wanted to have some adventures, she didn’t want to have romantic ones. Already she’d learned that being a princess—an impetuous princess—had its downside. Men had taken advantage of her and misread her enthusiasm for life as something more. The fact that she was destined eventually to marry a royal and couldn’t ask for a commitment had encouraged the few men she’d known to try and take advantage of her. So no, no man of mystery for her. No men at all in a romantic sense.
The fact that Owen was rugged and good-looking with fierce, compelling eyes had to be immaterial. He was her host, no more, and he was a reluctant host at that. He didn’t like having her foisted on him.
That was probably why, during the two days she’d been here, she’d barely seen him at all. When she got up in the morning, he was gone. Apparently he ate his meals elsewhere, and she had no idea when he came in or what he did all day.
What she did know was that her glorious plans for independence were fading away. She’d spent the two days alone or bugging Lydia Jeffers just so she would have someone to talk to. Lydia, while she was a very nice woman, had work to do and she seemed suspicious of who and what Delfyne was.
None of this was getting Delfyne what she wanted—a taste of real life.
Something had to happen soon. Something good and exciting and different. The hourglass held only so much sand and once she returned to Xenora, her life would never be her own again. Not a minute of her time here could be wasted.
“So, that’s it, then. Owen may not like having me here, but I won’t be locked away in the house reading books and eating bon bons. The man is just going to have to put up with me,” she declared to the empty walls. Pushing open the door, she wandered out into the green and misty morning.
Immediately, her bodyguards, Theron and Nicholas, stood up from where they’d been sitting. She waved them away. Yesterday she’d explained to them their role as greenhorns trying a taste of ranch life, but they didn’t seem to be getting into the spirit of things.
“Go. Do something,” she said.
“What?”
“I don’t know. Eat.”
Theron laughed. He sat down again. She ignored him and continued on her way.
The scent of growing things and something animal filled her nostrils and she breathed in deeply, acclimating herself to the unfamiliar. This was the perfume of life, not the palace.
Staring around her, Delfyne took in the endless miles of land, the buildings that were clearly not living space and a number of big, hulking, unfamiliar vehicles.
She smiled as Jake and Alf, two of the ranch dogs, ran around barking as if vying for her attention, jumping around so much that Alf nearly stepped on the paw of a little orange cat that came too close.
“You two behave yourselves,” she ordered affectionately, scratching Jake behind the ears. “And watch where you’re walking. You nearly squashed this little guy.”
Indeed, the cat was limping slightly, but when Delfyne tried to pick him up he gave her a look that said, “I’m a rough tough ranch cat. I don’t need coddling,” and continued on his way.
She knew the cats here had no names. They were working animals, not pets, and there were too many of them. “But I’m calling you Tim,” Delfyne announced to the cat’s retreating back. “As in Tiny Tim.”
Her parents would have groaned. Her father in particular had worried about her tendency to request bedtime stories with happily-every-after endings. He’d taken to giving her warnings about the tales, telling her that in the original story of The Little Mermaid, the heroine had not married her prince, and that in her favorite Xenoran legend, King Vondiver, the hero, had given up his crown to pursue his love of a common woman and had suffered a terribly alarming, sad and lonely ending. Surely she didn’t want to end up like that.
Her parents needn’t have worried. Delfyne knew that stories weren’t real, and she had absolutely no desire to have her life turn out like the endings of those tales. She just liked hearing them. Vondiver’s story in particular always left her misty-eyed.
“Getting teary over a silly story can be downright embarrassing, Tim,” she said.
The cat continued to ignore her, and Jake and Alf had already run off, attracted by something else.
“On my own again,” Delfyne said with a sigh. “But I refuse to feel sorry for myself. Princesses don’t. When we find ourselves in less-than-ideal circumstances, we do something about it!
“So stand tall,” she said, quoting from that ever-present supply of lessons that had been fed to her as a child.
Some princesses might take that a step further and take action, she thought. Okay, that had never been part of her lessons. It was from her own personal, flawed guidebook…which meant she was on the verge of doing something ill-advised. “But I have to do something,” she muttered.
She looked around again. Owen was nowhere to be seen, so Delfyne continued on toward one of the large structures. Was it the barn, perhaps? She had no idea, but she wasn’t about to be deterred now that she’d made up her mind to escape the house. She was almost to the door when she heard a rustle and a shout.
“Damn it, Ennis, stop messing around and get over here and help me!”
That was unmistakably Owen’s voice. It was coming from the structure next to this one. Delfyne didn’t hesitate. She followed Owen’s voice, slipping inside the building.
What she saw stopped her in her tracks.
There was Owen,
