The Accidental Princess Read online

  She shucked her clothes, put on fresh shorts and a T-shirt and went outside. Crickets and cicadas joined in an evening symphony typical of Mississippi on a humid summer night. She lingered a while on the front porch listening, then went to the hedge that separated her house from Sandi’s.

  She had to talk to somebody.

  A thorny wild rose growing in the hedge caught the edge of her shorts and she had to stop to untangle herself. Still held captive by briars she heard the unmistakable roar of a Harley.

  Clint. Her heart beat double time and she held her breath as the beam of light moved closer.

  He was coming to see her. She tried to hurry the process of freeing herself and only succeeded in getting further trapped.

  Oh, lord, would he think she wasn’t home and leave? Would he knock on her door, see the light she’d left on in her bedroom and think she didn’t want to come to the door?

  She grabbed the prickly branch and scratched her hand and arm.

  “Drat!”

  A bright light illuminated the hedge, and C.J. felt like a rabbit caught in a trap. She was getting all set to wave and yell when the Harley turned into Sandi’s driveway.

  Knives sliced C.J.’s heart. A giant hand squeezed all the breath out of her chest. The Tombigbee River flooded her throat and choked her.

  Clint was now halfway up Sandi’s driveway. C.J. felt betrayed…and pitiful. Lord, she must look pitiful. What if he saw her like that?

  Worse, what if he saw her at all and thought she was spying? C.J. hunkered down, trying to hide behind the sparse section of hedge and a spindly wild rose. Thorns raked across her cheek and she bit her lip to keep from crying out.

  Clint left his bike underneath a magnolia tree and rang the doorbell. Sandi came to the door all smiles, then reached out and pulled Clint inside and the door closed behind them.

  C.J. jerked free of the brambles and left a long scratch along her thigh. All in all, the only positive thing she could say about the evening was that Clint hadn’t been carrying flowers.

  “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice,” Clint told Sandi.

  “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea. I’m still not convinced I shouldn’t have told her.”

  “I want it to be a surprise.”

  “Surprises sometimes have a way of backfiring.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  A good hunk of cheese and a box of crackers sat on the low table in front of the sofa along with two bottles of chilled beer.

  “I never did learn the art of fine entertaining,” she said.

  “This is just right.”

  It was amazing how excitement made a man hungry. He savored a big hunk of cheese before turning to Sandi.

  “Now,” he said, “here’s what I want from you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Good lord, what happened to you?”

  Blake Dix posed in the doorway of the church’s office as if he’d never taken a public dive into cow manure.

  “Had a fight with a wild rose. I lost.”

  “Yeah. You look like you could use a little tender loving care.” He smiled. “I’m good at that.”

  “I’m sure you are, Blake…with the right woman.”

  “If you’re saying you’re not the right woman, I wish you’d give me a chance to change your mind.”

  “Thanks, but no.”

  “Look, C.J., about the other day. I know I acted like a fool. I’m not usually like that. I want to apologize.”

  “Apology accepted. And, Blake, you just went up three notches in my estimation.”

  “I’ll see what I can do to gain a few more.” He laid a stack of papers on her desk. “I won’t need these till the day after tomorrow. No sense making you stay late just because I’m too lazy to get it to you.” He waggled his eyebrows. “How’d I do that time?”

  Making an upward motion with her thumbs she said, “Another notch.”

  They were laughing when a young man from Pete’s Gifts and Florals knocked on the door frame.

  “Are you Miss Crystal Jean Maxey?”

  “I am.”

  “Sign here, please,” he said, then stepped into the hall and came back with an enormous heart-shaped candy box plus a three-foot cardboard valentine with “Be Mine!” embossed in gold letters.

  “Wow!” Blake hefted the candy box. “How much chocolate do you suppose is in there?”

  “Ten pounds,” the delivery boy said. “Biggest one we’ve got.” He tipped his hat. “Have a nice day, ma’am.”

  “Who’s sending you Valentine’s gifts in June?”

  C.J. wasn’t certain, but she could dream, couldn’t she? Blake walked around the cardboard valentine, viewing it from all sides.

  “‘Your Secret Admirer’” he read. “Clever. Wish I’d thought of it.”

  “Do you mind? This is private.”

  C.J. stowed the huge valentine on her side of the desk, right beside her chair so she could see it every time she glanced that way.

  “Aren’t you going to share that candy? I have a sweet tooth, you know. It’s the curse of choir directors.”

  “Sure.” C.J. examined the box on all sides before she opened it, hoping she’d find a card taped somewhere. But there was nothing. All she had to go by was the signature on the valentine. It had to be Clint, didn’t it?

  “Dig in,” she said. “I’ll just put the box over here on the credenza and you can help yourself any time.”

  “You know you’re going to be the most popular person on the staff.”

  “Well, hey, you know me. I’ll do anything for fame.”

  “Right on, dairy princess.”

  Blake grabbed another handful of chocolate on the way out the door, and C.J. picked up the sheaf of papers he’d left with the full intention of applying herself to her work. No sense going off into a fantasy because she’d received chocolates.

  She typed only one paragraph before the valentine demanded her attention. There it was, all three feet of it, the only valentine she’d ever received from an admirer, secret or otherwise.

  Another first.

  That’s when she knew the identity of the sender— Clint Garrett, who wanted to give her firsts.

  C.J. picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Sandi? I’d give you three guesses about what the delivery boy brought, but I bet you already know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw Clint at your house last night.”

  “Shoot. I was afraid of that. Look, C.J., it was all perfectly innocent….”

  C.J. laughed. “I’ve learned my lesson. You don’t have a betraying bone in your body.”

  “He only wanted to know some things about you, what you like, what you might have missed.”

  “You didn’t tell him everything, I hope.”

  “Of course not, silly. A woman needs to preserve a certain air of mystery. A man likes to discover these things for himself.”

  “Is that what I’ve been preserving? My mystery?” C.J. sighed. “Sandi, what if it turns out he just wants to go exploring and I want more?”

  “You’re asking the woman who has had more failed trips to the altar than the law allows?”

  “Well, yeah…”

  “I don’t know. Just follow your heart, I guess.”

  “You think so?”

  “I read this great romance novel and that’s what it said.” Sandi sighed. “Phoebe always knew what to do. I sure miss her, don’t you?”

  A sweet nostalgia for the woman who had been both her mother and her friend washed over C.J…. and with it the guilt.

  “Every day of my life.”

  “Maybe you could talk to Ellie.”

  “Maybe. Hey, Sandi, do you think Clint’s going to call?”

  “I’d bet money on it.”

  He didn’t call. He was waiting on her doorstep when she got home. Her dad’s truck was gone, and Clint sat on the front porch swing playing a harmonica.

  “What hap
pened?” He leaped up and cupped her face. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, but you ought to see that tiger I whipped.” His hands felt so good on her face, so very good that she didn’t want to move for the next hundred years. “I didn’t know you played the blues harp. I love that music.”

  “It’s just a little something I do to pass the time.”

  His hands were still on her face, thumbs making lazy circles around her mouth. She was in great danger of melting.

  “Thank for the valentine and the candy.”

  “You knew?”

  “Yes. Immediately.”

  Was he going to kiss her? It was right there in his eyes—desire, need.

  The evening shadows fell across the porch in a patchwork of deep blue. Honeysuckle perfumed the air and cicadas sang of soft summer nights and sweet summer kisses.

  Clint stepped back and C.J. pretended it didn’t matter.

  “I stopped by to invite you to the prom.”

  C.J. had to sit down. She was on the porch swing with Clint kneeling at her feet. She kept telling herself that, kept trying to hold on to that fact, but in her mind she was careening across Highway 78 with her mother crumpled in the passenger seat and a blood-soaked prom gown beside her.

  “I’ve never been to a prom,” she whispered.

  “I know.” His hands were warm on hers, but she still felt like ice. Any minute she was going to shatter. “Sandi told me. She said the accident wasn’t your fault, C.J.”

  “It felt like my fault. It still does.”

  “Maybe the prom wasn’t a good idea. I won’t mention it again.”

  “No, I want to go. I need to go.”

  “Good. Friday night then.”

  He was off the front porch and roaring away on his Harley before C.J. thought to invite him in. Why hadn’t she invited him inside? They could have made sandwiches together then carried them out to the back deck and watched the moon rising over the lake.

  He might have held her hand again. He might have cupped her face. He might have kissed her.

  She would have kissed him right back. Then… Oh, and then, paradise.

  Any fool with half sense and one eye could do what he was doing. That’s what Clint decided as he sat in his office at eleven o’clock in the morning with his work already finished and time on his hands.

  That’s why he was spending so much time playing hero for C.J. Maxey. Too much idle time. As long as he kept the facts straight, everything would be all right. As long as he didn’t start believing his own fiction, he could come out of this assignment none the worse for wear.

  As long as C.J. was his assignment, he might as well have fun. Right? As long as she thought he was a hero, he might as well have a few laughs and act the part. Right?

  “That’s exactly why you should be someplace besides here.” Wayne nodded toward the paperwork, then pulled up a chair and plopped an extra cup of coffee on Clint’s desk. “You don’t have enough to do at this paper. Never have, never will.”

  “I like it here.”

  “Is that why you’re leaving? You like it so much?”

  Clint hadn’t thought about leaving for a few days. Actually he hadn’t thought about it since he’d taken C.J. fishing. All of a sudden, his departure loomed large and he felt a huge emptiness in the pit of his stomach.

  “You’re always saying I should leave.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t mean Reform, Alabama.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll go there.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  Wayne sipped his coffee for a while, then propped his feet on Clint’s desk.

  “Sounds like woman trouble to me.”

  “Bull.”

  Wayne laughed. “Wrong gender. Try dairy princess.”

  “You’re full of it, did you know that, Wayne?” Clint kicked back from his desk and picked up his helmet.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “Thought I might scare up a story, being a crackerjack, top-notch, ace reporter.”

  With the wind at his back and seven hundred pounds of pure devil between his legs, Clint got his gumption back. Almost.

  He still had to get through the prom.

  And the state’s dairy princess pageant.

  Then he was leaving.

  Maybe.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Clint and C.J. were the only ones at the prom. He’d transformed the ballroom at the Marriott in Shady Grove to an almost-perfect replica of a high school prom complete with a cut-glass punch bowl and streamers on the ceiling. Then he’d called some old college buddies with a band to come over and play while they danced.

  Wearing the pink rose wrist corsage he’d given her and the blue prom dress she’d splurged on, C.J. felt sixteen again except it was better this time around. Much better. For one thing, the accident was no longer a gaping wound that bled on everything she did, but a fading scar. For another she had a date.

  “You’re the prettiest girl here,” Clint told her and she laughed.

  “I could say you’re the handsomest man…except for the drummer.”

  “Rick may be cute but he can’t dance.” Clint executed some fancy footwork, then dipped her perilously low. “On the other hand, I make Fred Astaire look like a klutz.”

  “Since I’m keeping up with you, that must make me Ginger Rogers.”

  “My favorite dancing partner.”

  “You’re full of flattery tonight.”

  Laughing, he spun her around till she was dizzy and had to sit down.

  “I’ll get you something to drink.”

  While she was sitting at the table it occurred to C.J. that he’d never responded to her remark about flattery. He might have said, It’s the truth, which would have led naturally to a sweet kiss on the dance floor which might have led to something more.

  But facts were facts, and C.J. had never been one to overlook the obvious. Clint was still who he was—an experienced, worldy wise man—and she was still who she was—a homely, plainspoken country girl.

  “And never the twain shall meet,” she whispered.

  In spite of what Sandi had told her about being in love and following her heart, C.J. had no intention of taking that advice. After all, what did Sandi know? Look how many times she’d followed her heart, and she’d had it broken every time. Or at the very least, cracked a little bit.

  C.J. didn’t want her heart broken. Still, she was enjoying all the attention.

  But why was Clint being so attentive to her? By the time he returned with her punch, she was in a state of high anxiety, torn between simply letting go and enjoying the evening or trying to find out the hard truth.

  “Thank you.” While she drank her punch she decided to forego her usual steamroller tactics and try for the subtle approach.

  “You’ve been awfully kind to me lately,” she said.

  He laughed. “Are you searching for ulterior motives?”

  “Perhaps. The fact is, I’m not accustomed to this kind of attention.”

  “It’s their loss.”

  Clint tried for a light touch and bombed. Obviously she was searching for the truth, and who could blame her after the way they’d started off.

  He didn’t even know the truth himself, but one good thing about her not-so-subtle inquiry: it brought him to his senses. Actually, that wasn’t the whole truth. It brought him partially to his senses.

  It was hard to face a woman with shining eyes and flushed cheeks and still have all his cognitive abilities functioning full force.

  Look at it this way, he told himself. C.J. Maxey just saved your bachelor butt.

  “Clint, I want you to know how much all this means to me.”

  Here we go down the garden path. Careful, old boy, you’ll lose your sense of direction.

  Or indirection.

  “I’m glad you’re having fun,” he said. “What’s life if not fun?”

  “I see the band coming back.
”

  “Excuse me a minute.”

  He left her quickly because he couldn’t stand to see the disappointment in her face. Earlier in the evening she’d glowed with bright expectation, and he’d had a hard time keeping his hands off her. Several times he’d wanted to lean down and nuzzle her soft, dewy cheek. He’d wanted to capture her berry-colored lips in a kiss that had absolutely no regard for its audience. He’d come dangerously close to putting his lips close to her ear and whispering romantic nonsense.

  “Saved by an uncompromising intelligence.”

  He was still muttering to himself when he reached the bandstand.

  “What’s up, Clint?”

  “We’re about to wind down here, Rick.”

  “Okay, the boys and I will play some romantic ballads.” Rick winked. “Give you a good excuse to cuddle up with your girl.”

  “She’s not my girl.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “I don’t want any slow music. Do the shake, rattle and roll stuff.”

  “Okay, but man, if it was me I’d seize every opportunity to get close. She’s a classy chick.”

  “I’ll tell her you said so.” Clint shook hands all around. “Thanks for coming on such short notice. After I take her home, I’ll meet you at Snookie’s Den for beers.”

  “Man, you must be losing your touch.”

  “Yep. This tomcat’s getting too old to howl.”

  He left them laughing, which was exactly his intent. No use inviting further questions. He’d never been one to discuss his business, and he wasn’t about to lay himself open to speculation about why he had gone to such elaborate lengths for a woman he planned to take home and leave at her front door with nothing more than a kiss.

  Maybe not even that. Maybe he’d just shake her hand.

  The kiss took on a life of its own. Clint blamed it on the moon. He’d never seen such a spectacular sight, a giant golden orb suspended between a night-black sky and the quiet lake tucked onto the back of C.J.’s daddy’s property.

  He was the one who had suggested the drive with the top down. To cool off after the dance, he’d told her, and naturally she’d agreed. She was the one who suggested this made-for-lovers spot on her farm where stars were so close they seemed to be caught in her hair, on her skin and, most tempting of all, on her ever-so-slightly parted lips. “Will you look at that moon?” he said, turning off the ignition.