The Accidental Princess Read online

  “I doubt that. Dad rarely does a thing simply because that’s what everybody expects. In fact, just the opposite is true. I think he sometimes does the unexpected just to prove what a maverick he is. Or he used to.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I know so.”

  “Well, whatever he felt for me couldn’t hold firm in the face of Phoebe’s charms.” Ellie sighed. “I was the one he escorted to the dance that night. Phoebe was the one he took home.”

  It amazed C.J. how her situation paralleled Ellie’s. Like her old friend before her, she couldn’t hold a candle to Sandi’s beauty and charm. Who could blame Clint Garrett for falling at Sandi’s feet?

  Apparently history was going to repeat itself: she would play Ellie’s role, the maiden lady who hovered on the sidelines with a heart full of unrequited love.

  “How did you and Mom manage to remain friends after that? Didn’t you feel betrayed?”

  “Yes, for a while. By both of them. I guess Phoebe and I didn’t speak for months, and then I got to missing her. She was always the one cracking jokes and thinking up fun things to do. Without her, my life was drab and boring, and so I locked up my feelings for Sam and forgave Phoebe.”

  “And never found anybody else…”

  “I didn’t even try.”

  “Do you regret that?”

  “My life is what it is. I accept things as they are and try not to have regrets.”

  “I wish I could be like that. Ellie, I have something to confess to you.”

  “You hate being the dairy princess.”

  “How did you know?”

  “My dear, anybody who loves you can see that. And I love you as if you were my own.”

  “I love you, too, Ellie. You’ve been a mother to me.”

  “I’m sorry I ever got you into it. You can give up your title if you want to. No harm done.”

  “I’m no quitter.”

  “I know that, still I don’t want you to be miserable in a role that makes you uncomfortable.”

  “What if I just be myself? What if I forget about the padded bras and the excess makeup and the posturing and just act naturally?”

  “Honey, that’s all I ever wanted you to be in the first place.”

  C.J. laughed. “Why didn’t you say so? Then I wouldn’t have sweated all over Sandi’s red dress.”

  “I thought you wanted to make yourself over.”

  “Not anymore. I can probably kiss any chance of winning a scholarship goodbye, but no more slinky red dresses for me. I promise you this, though, I’m going to be the best plain princess the dairy industry ever had. I want you to be proud of me.”

  “I am proud of you. Who knows how it will all turn out? I think the tide in these pageants is turning in favor of smart sensible girls.”

  After the events of the past few days C.J. had a hard time thinking of herself as either smart or sensible. But there was one thing she knew for sure, she wasn’t going to sit around and wait for turning tides to determine her fate. She wasn’t fixing to end up in a cottage all by herself with nothing to look forward to except deadheading roses and an occasional afternoon on the back porch sipping tea with a man who didn’t know she was in the world.

  The sign said Reform. Clint didn’t miss the irony. Although he had no intention of taking its advice he did take the sign as an omen and stopped at a small café on the outskirts of the small Alabama town.

  He needed an oversized cup of coffee, a big mess of collards and cornbread and a telephone, in that order. The waitress came to the table bearing a coffee urn, which was one of the things Clint loved about the South. No messing around on formalities. Just nod your head, flip your cup upright and wait for your first fortifying drink.

  “Cream and sugar?” The waitress’s name tag said Lorraine.

  “No thanks, Lorraine.” The first drink jolted him all the way to his toes, and he gave the waitress a smile of pure satisfaction. That’s all it took to make them bosom buddies.

  “It’ll put hair on your chest, hon.”

  “Just what I need.”

  “Pshaw. You look like the kind of man just full of piss and vinegar.”

  He’d thought so, too, till he tangled with a crazy-making woman named Crystal Jean Maxey.

  “I’m about a quart low.”

  “Well, hon, we’ll try to fix you right up. What can I get for you today?”

  He spied just what he wanted on the menu, and when he ordered, Lorraine said, “You’ve hit the jackpot. It comes with the best chicken and dumplings in Alabama.” She winked. “I’ll make sure you get the best parts of the chicken.”

  True to her word, she heaped his plate with enough food to sustain two grown men plus a hound dog under the table.

  “Do you serve food like this every day?”

  “Every day except Sunday, and Mike says—that’s my sweet husband, we own this place—if the Almighty had to take a day off to rest, I guess the good folks of Reform can wait for me to do the same thing.”

  She pronounced the name with a heavy accent on the first syllable, and Clint decided then and there that he could live in a town like that, a town where the café owner’s wife made sure a man had food that would stick to his bones and plenty of coffee to keep him warm on a cold winter’s night…or in this case, bring him back to life on a hot summer’s day.

  “What’s the matter, hon? Ghosts walking on your grave?”

  Clint was losing his grip. Once, he could win six hands straight and then use the same poker face to tell a lie that would gain him entry into a sweet-faced woman’s warm bed.

  Now look at him. He couldn’t get in a woman’s bed on a bet, and waitresses in Reform, Alabama, were ready to send him sympathy cards.

  Of course, C.J. wasn’t just any woman. And there had been his woeful attack of honor.

  “No.” Another lie, hopefully with a face not so bald. “If you’ve got some good fishing holes, I might just pack up and move here.”

  “My husband Mike’s the best fisherman in Reform. He’d show you a few.” She poured him a fresh cup of coffee without even asking. “And, hon, if you need anything, finding a place to work or anything, just come here and talk to Mike. He’s a pure miracle worker, that man of mine.”

  “Thanks for the offer.”

  Clint left Lorraine an outrageously generous tip, then went outside to the free-standing pay phone in the parking lot. He put in his change and dialed his editor.

  “What’re you doing, Wayne?”

  “I was napping till somebody who ought to know better than to call a working man on a hot Sunday afternoon got me up off the couch. This had better be good.”

  “I’m moving.”

  “This is supposed to be news? You said that last year.”

  “Yeah, but this time I mean it.”

  “Finally decided to take my advice and move to Atlanta where you could put your talent to use, did you?”

  “No. I’ve decided to move to Reform.”

  “Reform, Alabama?”

  “That’s right. They make the best chicken and dumplings in the South, and they’ve got people here you could cotton to if you took a notion.”

  “Cut the bull. What’s going on…and don’t tell me it’s chicken and dumplings?”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to say C.J., but Clint knew he’d sorely regret his slip of the tongue tomorrow.

  “It’s time to move on, that’s all.”

  He could feel Wayne’s roaring silence all the way across the state line. The sun beat down on Clint’s head, scorching his brains and he wished two things—that he hadn’t left his cell phone on his hall table and that he hadn’t left his helmet hanging on the handle bars of his Harley.

  Three things, actually. He wished he’d never laid eyes on a woman named Crystal Jean Maxey.

  Finally Wayne broke his brooding silence. “I suspect you wouldn’t be waking me up to tell me this on a Sunday afternoon when you could have told me the same thing in t
he morning unless you’re dead-dog serious and fixing to make a break for it right now.”

  “You got it.”

  “You think it’s that easy, huh? Just pick up and walk out?”

  “I’m giving you notice.”

  “I’m not accepting it. I’ve got a newspaper convention in Biloxi to go to and I sure as hell can’t go and leave Charlie in charge.”

  “When’s the convention?”

  “The last of July.”

  “Shoot, Wayne, that’s a month away.”

  “One more month in Hot Coffee’s not going to kill you.”

  It just might. But he couldn’t tell that to Wayne either.

  “All right. A month, but that’s it. Then I’m leaving.”

  Chapter Nine

  “The phone’s ringing, C.J.”

  Sam appeared in his bathrobe, although it was two in the afternoon, to impart this information to C.J. as if she weren’t perfectly capable of hearing the telephone.

  “Can you answer it, Dad?”

  “It’s not likely to be for me.”

  “Still, I’m busy here.” She held up a fat book of statistics about the dairy industry in Mississippi.

  “Well, all right. I guess I can get it.”

  He walked like a very old man when he left the room.

  “Dad, if it’s Sandi, tell her I’m busy.”

  “C.J., I don’t understand this. That’s what I told her yesterday and the day before.”

  “I know, but will you please tell her again?”

  By the time they’d finished waltzing around this topic, the phone had stopped ringing. C.J. felt reprieved, though knew it wouldn’t last long. Sandi wasn’t the type to give up, and C.J. knew she couldn’t keep avoiding her. Eventually the truth would have to come out.

  “I guess whoever it was will call back.” Sam eased into his recliner then picked up his newspaper and turned on the lamp although it was broad daylight and he didn’t need it to see. This little ritual took several minutes, then he polished his glasses, put them on, took them off and polished them again in another of the small daily routines that ate away time and fooled him into thinking his life was busy and full.

  C.J. had never recognized it for what it was, but now she saw the narrowness of Sam’s life…and hers. Ellie was right. It was time to move on. If she didn’t she’d end up just like her father, petrified, habits and thoughts solidified into a pattern as rigid and unyielding as the statue of the Confederate soldier that stood in the town square over in Shady Grove.

  Looking over the tops of his glasses, he cleared his throat, which meant he had something important to say. It was just another little quirk, but today it irritated C.J.

  “Have you seen Ellie lately?” he asked.

  “Not since Sunday. Have you?”

  “No. I wonder why she hasn’t dropped by.”

  “Maybe she’s waiting for an invitation.”

  “Ellie doesn’t need an invitation. She’s part of the family.”

  “Not really, Dad.”

  “I thought you loved her.”

  “I do. And she loves us. Especially you.”

  Sam picked up his paper, shook it out, held it in front of his face as if he were suddenly absorbed, then folded it twice and laid it back down.

  “What do you mean by that?” he said.

  “Just what I said. Why don’t you call her?”

  “She’s probably busy.”

  “Call her and find out.”

  “She’ll drop by in a few days.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “She’s been doing it for years. I don’t see any reason for her to change…unless you know something you’re not telling me.”

  “We talked, Dad.”

  “About what?”

  “Why don’t you ask Ellie?”

  Sam shook out his paper, but not like a man looking forward to the ease of the grave. Not at all like that. He gave it the vigorous, mad-as-hell shake of a man feeling his sap rise for the first time in years.

  C.J. held her book in front of her face so he wouldn’t see her trying not to laugh, so he wouldn’t see the devilish delight she took in rattling the doors of his self-made prison.

  She tried to get her mind back on lofty topics such as cows’ udders and the number of gallons of milk they produced for the coffers of Mississippi’s dairy farmers, but a few things got in the way, things such as remorse and a recently liberated libido.

  “That Clint Garrett’s a good writer,” her daddy said, and she jumped as if he’d been reading her mind.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you mean, what do I mean? I mean the young man has a talent for writing. I wonder what he’s doing with a small-town paper.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  Sam pulled his glasses down and gave her this look. “Well, I didn’t ask you. I just made a statement. What’s bothering you?”

  “Nothing.”

  He snapped the paper twice and glared at her. “All right then.”

  C.J. got up and went to the kitchen where she consoled herself with three crackers loaded with peanut butter.

  What was Clint Garrett doing?

  Wads of paper littered the floor around Clint’s desk. He plucked another page off his printer, crumpled it up and lobbed it toward the wastebasket. It hit the rim, bounced off and landed on the floor amongst the rest of the rejected paper.

  “Seven out of seven,” he said. “Not bad.”

  “What’s this?” Wayne pulled up a chair, then propped his feet on Clint’s desk.

  “Basketball practice.”

  Wayne surveyed the mess. “Tell me that’s not the story I’m counting on running in tomorrow’s paper.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a piece of garbage.”

  Wayne leaned over and started picking it up and smoothing the pages flat. “I’ll be the judge of that. What’s eating you anyway?”

  C.J. Maxey. “Nothing.”

  “It doesn’t look like nothing to me. It looks like a plain old case of the blues.”

  “Even scoundrels get the blues.”

  The clock on his desk said half past nine, thirty minutes till doom. He kicked back, picked up his helmet and saluted his boss.

  “You off to cover the dairy princess?”

  That’s all it took to send his flag waving at full mast, just the mention of that vixen in demure pink panties. He turned sideways so Wayne wouldn’t notice.

  “Yep, I’m off to cover the princess.”

  Forget honor. Forget scruples. This time he would show no mercy.

  He stomped out of the office and jumped on his Harley, prepared to head toward the fairgrounds where members of the 4-H Club would be showing their dairy cows and the farmers would be gathered for a lecture on the rising costs of milk production.

  “Another fun-packed day in the life of an ace reporter.”

  The old blue tick that sometimes rode shotgun in Wayne’s pickup truck took one look at Clint, tucked his tail between his legs and slunk off.

  “Even dogs can’t stand me.”

  Clint revved his engine and was roaring toward his destination when he changed his mind and headed toward a little yellow cottage on the outskirts of town. If he was going to be in the same place as the indomitable Miss Maxey, he might as well throw her off-balance before she did it to him first.

  What would she be wearing today? Something provocative, no doubt, in spite of the fact that she’d be tromping around a dairy barn with its mine field of gifts from nervous cows.

  He parked his bike, then marched up her front steps to the beat of invisible war drums and rang the doorbell. He pictured C.J. coming to the door in a little outfit no bigger than a handkerchief.

  This time he’d show her what happened to a man provoked beyond his capacity to endure. He’d teach her that it was not nice to tempt a man to the breaking point, tease him to the brink of insanity and t
hen accuse him of being a cad.

  “Hello,” she said. “What brings you here?” She wore faded jeans and a white T-shirt.

  Her megawatt smile didn’t fool him, not for one minute.

  “I just dropped by for a conjugal visit. Do I need to take a number and wait?”

  There’s nothing like watching a feisty woman work up a head of steam. First her face turned pink, then her eyes got bright and next her body looked electrified. A storm was brewing, and it was all fixing to wash over him. Clint braced for the onslaught.

  And then she smiled, turning the tables so quickly he was left with his jaw hanging down and another smart remark dying on his tongue. The battle was only minutes old and already he was battered and bloody.

  “I guess I deserve that after the way I behaved the other night.” She smiled again, pouring salt all over his open wounds. “Or should I say misbehaved?”

  Where was her sharp tongue when he needed it? Where was her come-and-get-me dress? Where was her flash, her fire?

  Here he was standing on her porch disarmed, a man who made his living with words and who couldn’t think of a single biting word to say. One phrase was all he needed, one brilliant witty bit of repartee that would turn the winds of victory back in his direction.

  “I came to offer you a ride to the dairy expo, but I see you’re not dressed yet.”

  He couldn’t believe he’d said that. She had him so confused he was acting almost normal. If he didn’t soon get out of town she’d have him hogtied in button-down shirts and ties that featured navy-blue stripes. She’d have him civilized, sanitized and mortgaged. She’d have him reformed.

  Chapter Ten

  Clint strolled off her porch and mounted his big Harley. C.J. didn’t breathe till he’d roared down her driveway and was on the open road.

  She was on such an adrenaline high she could barely stand still. Any other time she’d have raced across the yard and through the hedge to tell Sandi, but too much misunderstanding stood between them.