funerals and baptisms and graduations of the important people. They should try meeting a million people and never really getting to know a single one of them.
Shoshauna had dreams that were not princess dreams at all. They were not even big dreams by the standards of the rest of the world, but they were her dreams. And if Ronan thought she wasn’t taking what had happened at the chapel seriously, he just didn’t get it.
She had given up on her dreams, felt as if they were being crushed like glass under her slippers with every step closer to the altar that she had taken.
But for some reason—maybe she had wished hard enough after all, maybe Retnuh was her protector from another world—she had been given this reprieve, and she felt as if she had to try and squeeze everything she had ever wanted into this tiny window of freedom.
She wanted to wear pants and shorts. She wanted to ride a motorcycle! She wanted to try surfing and a real bathing suit, not the swimming costume she was forced to wear at the palace. A person could drown if they ever got in real water, not a shallow swimming pool, in that getup.
There were other dreams that were surely never going to happen once she was married to the crown prince of an island country every bit as old-fashioned and traditional as B’Ranasha.
Decorum would be everything. She would wear the finest gowns, the best jewels, her manners would have to be forever impeccable, she would never be able to say what she really wanted. In short order she would be expected to stay home and begin producing babies.
But she wanted so desperately to sample life before she was condemned to that. Shoshauna wanted to taste snow. She wanted to go on a toboggan. She felt she had missed something essential: a boyfriend, like she had seen in movies. A boyfriend would be fun—someone to hold her hand, take her to movies, romance her. A husband was a totally different thing!
For a moment she had hoped she could talk Ronan into a least pretending, but she now saw that was unlikely.
Most of her dreams were unlikely.
Still, a miracle had happened. Here she was beside a handsome stranger in a stolen taxicab, when she should have been married to Prince Mahail by now. She’d known the prince since childhood and did not find him the least romantic, though many others did, including her silly cousin, Mirassa.
Mahail was absurdly arrogant, sure in his position of male superiority. Worse, he did not believe in her greatest dream of all.
Most of all, Shoshauna wanted to be educated, to learn glorious things, and not be restricted in what she was allowed to select for course material. She wanted to sit in classrooms with males and openly challenge the stupidity of their opinions. She wanted to learn to play chess, a game her mother said was for men only.
She knew herself to be a princess of very little consequence, the only daughter of a lesser wife, flying well under the radar of the royal watchdogs. She had spent a great deal of time, especially in her younger years, with her English grandfather and had thought one day she would study at a university in Great Britain.
With freedom that close, with her dreams so near she could taste them, Prince Mahail had spoiled it all, by choosing her as his bride. Why had he chosen her?
Mirassa had told her he’d been captivated by her hair! Suddenly she remembered how Mirassa had looked at her hair in that moment, how her eyes had darkened to black, and Shoshauna felt a shiver of apprehension.
Before Mahail had proposed to Shoshauna, rumor had flown that Mirassa was his chosen bride. He had flirted openly with her on several occasions, which on these islands was akin to publishing banns. Shoshauna had heard, again through the rumor mill, that Mirassa had asked to see him after he had proposed to Shoshauna and he had humiliated her by refusing her an appointment. Given that he had encouraged Mirassa’s affection in the first place, he certainly could have been more sensitive. Just how angry had Mirassa been?
Trust your instincts.
If she managed to cut her hair off before her return maybe Prince Mahail would lose interest in her as quickly as he had gained it and Mirassa would stop being jealous.
Being chosen for her hair was insulting, like being a head of livestock chosen for the way it looked: not for its heart or mind or soul!
The prince had taken his interest to her father, and she had felt as if her father had noticed her, really seen her for the very first time. His approval had been drugging. It had made her say yes when she had needed to say no!
Ronan came back to the car, dropped a bag on her lap, reached in and stowed a few more on the backseat. She noticed he had purchased clothing for himself and had changed out of the suit he’d worn. He was now wearing an open-throated shirt that showed his arms: rippling with well-defined muscle, peppered with hairs turned golden by the sun. And he was wearing shorts. She was not sure she had ever seen such a length of appealing male leg in all her life!
Faintly flustered, Shoshauna focused on the bag he’d given her. It held clothing. A large pair of very ugly sunglasses, a hideous hat, a blouse and skirt that looked like a British schoolmarm would be happy to wear.
No shorts. She felt like crying as reality collided with her fantasy.
“Where are the scissors?” she asked.
“Forgot,” he said brusquely, and she knew she could not count on him to make any of her dreams come true, to help her make the best use of this time she had been given.
He had a totally different agenda than her. To keep her safe. The last thing she wanted was to be safe. She wanted to be alive but in the best sense of that word.
She opened her car door.
“Where the hell are you going?”
“I’m going the hell in those bushes, changing into this outfit, as hideous as it is.”
“I don’t think princesses are supposed to change their clothes in the bushes,” he said. “Or say hell, for that matter. Just get in the car and I’ll find—”
“I’m changing now.” And then I’m going into that market and buying some things I want to wear. “And then I’m going into that market and finding the restroom.”
“Maybe since you’re in the bushes anyway, you could just—”
She stopped him with a look. His mouth snapped shut. He scowled at her, but even he, as unimpressed with her status as he apparently was, was not going to suggest she go to the bathroom in the bushes.
“Don’t peek,” she said, ducking into the thick shrubbery at the side of the road.
“Lord have mercy,” he muttered, whatever that meant.
CHAPTER TWO
RESIGNED, Ronan hovered in front of the bushes while she changed, trying to ignore the rustling sound of falling silk.
When she emerged, even he was impressed with how good his choices had been. Princess Shoshauna no longer looked like a member of the royal family, or even like a native to the island.
The women of B’Ranasha had gorgeous hair, their crowning glory. It swung straight and long, black and impossibly shiny past their shoulder blades, and was sometimes ornamented
