form shuffled closer; small, booted feet sliding into the faint moonlight, barely visible below the too-long hem of baggy pants. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” the shadow said.
Forget wariness. The voice didn’t belong to a child. It was feminine. Very British. And so damn familiar his guts twisted and his nerves frizzed like they wanted to bust out of his skin. A runaway would have been preferable to this. To her.
Amelia.
Her name blasted through his head, but he didn’t say a word and after a moment, she took another hesitant step closer. Moonlight crept from the dark boots up baggy pants, an untucked, oversize shirt that dwarfed her delicate figure, until finally, finally, illuminating the long neck, the pointed chin.
The first time that he’d seen her had been six months ago on New Year’s Eve, at a wedding for one of her newly discovered cousins, right there in Horseback Hollow. Her long dark hair had been twisted into a knot, reminding him vaguely of the dancers at the ballet that his mom had once dragged him and his sister to. The second time that he’d seen her months later at the end of April, had been at another wedding. Another cousin. And her hair had been tied up then, too.
But that second time, after dreaming about her since New Year’s, Quinn hadn’t just watched Amelia from a distance.
No.
He’d approached her. And through some miracle of fate—or so he’d thought at the time—later that night, he’d taken the pins from her hair and it had spilled down past her shoulders, gleaming and silky against her ivory skin.
He blocked off the memory. He’d had enough practice at it over the past two months that it should have been easy.
It wasn’t. It was the very reason he was prowling restlessly around in the middle of the night at all when he should have been sleeping.
“What the hell’d you do to your hair?”
She made a soft sound and lifted her hand to the side of the roughly chopped short hair sticking out from her head. She’d have looked like a boy if her delicate features weren’t so distinctively feminine. “It’s lovely to see you, too.” She moved her hand again, and it came away with the hair.
A wig. It was stupid to feel relieved, but he did.
She scrubbed the fingers of her other hand across her scalp, and her hair, the real stuff, slid down in a coil over one shoulder, as dark as the night sky. “It’s a wig,” she said, stating the obvious. Her voice was unsteady. “The second one, actually. The first was blond, but there were reporters at the airport, and—” She shook her head, breaking off.
That night—the night he’d twisted his hands in her hair and thought he’d tasted perfection on her lips—she’d talked about the reporters who had dogged her family’s footsteps for as long as she could remember. How she hated being in a fishbowl. How her life felt claustrophobic. How she envied his life on a ranch; the wide-open spaces, the wind at his back when he rode his horse.
Again, he pushed away the thoughts. He shoved his fingertips into the pockets of his jeans, wishing he could wipe away the memory of her silky hair sliding over his chest as they’d made love. “What are you doing here?”
“In your barn? Proving I’m better at remembering a Google Map than I thought.” She let out a nervous sound that was maybe supposed to be a laugh but could have been a sob.
“Not my barn,” he said tightly. “Here.”
She took a quick, audible breath. She was young. Seven years younger than his own thirty. Practically a girl. Except she wasn’t a girl. She was full-grown. Self-possessed. Aristocratic.
And now, she was hiding in his barn, stumbling around for words.
“Amelia,” he prompted sharply. He couldn’t pretend her unexpected appearance didn’t make him tense. Any more than she could hide the fact that she was clearly nervous. The way she kept shifting from one foot to the other, almost swaying, told him that.
“Yes. Right. The, um, the last time we spoke—”
“What are you doing here?” He didn’t want to rehash that phone conversation. It had been nearly two months ago. He didn’t want to think about what had precipitated it. Didn’t want to think about it and damn sure didn’t want to feel anything about it. Not that conversation, or whatever was making her so skittish now.
Her lips moved again but no sound came out. She lifted her hand to the side of her head again. Swayed almost imperceptibly.
And pitched forward.
He let out an oath, his heart nearly jumping out of his chest, and barely caught her limp body before it hit the ground at his feet.
He crouched beside her, carefully holding her. He caught her chin in his hand. She felt cold. And was out cold. “Amelia!”
Dim light or not, he could see that her lashes, so dark against her pale, pale cheeks, didn’t so much as flicker.
He rose, lifting her in his arms. It was easy. He routinely tossed around hay bales that weighed more than she did, and she seemed even thinner now than the night he’d replaced her fancy gown with his hands. She was neither short, nor tall. Pretty average height. But that was the only thing average about Amelia Fortune Chesterfield.
Everything else—
He shook his head, blowing out a breath and carried her out of the barn, not even bothering to pull the door closed though he’d likely come back in the morning to find that possum taking up residence there again. He aimed for his truck parked up by the house, about a hundred yards away, his stride fast and gaining speed as he went. The moonlight shone down on her, painting her face an even whiter hue, and her gleaming head bounced against his arm as he ran.
He could hardly breathe by the time he made it to his truck, and it wasn’t because he was out of shape. It was because the nearest hospital was in Lubbock, a good hour away.
He could deal with a lot of minor medical emergencies.
He couldn’t deal with an unconscious Amelia Fortune Chesterfield.
Adjusting his grip beneath her, he managed to get the door open with one hand and settled her on the seat.
Her head lolled limply to the side, quickly followed by her lax shoulders.
“Come on, princess,” he whispered, gently situating her again, holding her up long enough to get the safety belt clipped in place. The chest strap held her back against the seat and he started to draw his hands away from her waist and her shoulders so he could close the door, but her arm shifted slightly. Then her hand. Sliding over his, lighter than a breath but still enough to make the world seem to stop spinning.
“I’m not a princess,” she whispered almost inaudibly.
He exhaled roughly. She’d said the same thing that night, too.
Only then she’d been looking up at him through her lashes; a combination of innocence and sexiness that had gone to his head quicker than the finest whiskey.
Maybe she wasn’t a princess. But she was still the youngest daughter of Lady Josephine Fortune Chesterfield
