Lone Star Prince

The unthinkable hadn’t ended there. Neither had the surprises. In the past months since she’d been hiding out in Royal as Annie Grace, she’d not only played the part of Annie Grace, she’d been having the time of her life.

One of the reasons for all that fun grinned at her from behind the grill as she elbowed up to the cook’s counter to place an order.

A pair of coal-black eyes met hers, sparkling flirtatiously. “You have a need, Annie-mine?”

“I have a need for a short stack, two eggs over easy, a side of bacon, wheat-no-butter, please, Manny.”

“Sure thing, Annie sweetheart, darlin’ dear. Anything else I can do for you while my fire’s hot?”

Anna tried unsuccessfully to hide a smile. Even if she hadn’t caught the meaningful waggle of Manny Reno’s dark brows, she’d have known he wasn’t referring to the fire under his grill. Manny, a beautiful Chicano bodybuilder and part-time cook, was an incorrigible and accomplished flirt. And like most of the hardy Texans she’d met since Gregory had eased her quietly into Royal four months ago, he was also about as dangerous as a slice of his coconut cream pie.

Grinning, she clipped the order to the revolving wheel above the counter and reached for the coffeepot. “Give me a break, Manny. It’s 6:00 a.m. It’s Monday. I haven’t built up the strength yet to spar with you.”

“Well, you see now, beautiful girl...” Manny’s black eyes danced from the rich caramel backdrop of his face. “...that’s all part of my strategy. Get’cha while you’re not awake enough to fight this intense attraction you feel for me.”

“Well...there is that.” She shot him a coy smile then sobered abruptly. “Oh, wait.” Bracing a hand to her forehead, she closed her eyes. “I feel something—yes. Here it is now. My better judgment just arrived to save the day. Whew. That was close. For a minute there, I almost lost my head. Sorry, Manny—and we were going to have such a good time, too.”

“Oh, maaan.” Manny groaned, heavy on the theatrics, as he poured batter onto the griddle, then expertly flipped an omelette. “You are breaking my heart here.”

Sheila Foster sidled up to the counter just then, hooked an order on the clip. She sliced Anna a quick, conspiratorial wink before firing her own shot at Manny. “You gotta have a heart to get one broken.”

Sheila was currently single, twice divorced and fighting a size twelve for all she was worth. The fact that she had a hard and heavy case on Manny wasn’t lost on Anna. Neither was it lost on Manny, who, after almost two months of drooling over Sheila, hadn’t worked up the courage to do something about it.

“Who’s callin’ the kettle black, little Sheba?” Manny accused with a grin so sweet Anna could almost taste the honey.

“It’s Sheila, you big ape, and I’ve got a heart. I just don’t see any point wasting any extra beats over you.”

“You know you’re nuts about me, my little chili pepper.”

“The only one nuts around here is you. Now is my number five up yet or did you have to run down a chicken and squeeze the eggs out of her?”

Laughing at their good-natured sniping, Anna headed for the booth where Homer Gaffney sat. Homer smiled when she approached, causing deep creases to dig even deeper grooves into the wizened old face that looked up at her from beneath the dusty brim of a stained and dented straw cowboy hat.

“Here’s your juice, Homer. And you’re drinking regular, not decaf this morning, right?”

“Gotta have the high octane this mornin’, Annie. Full day ahead a’ me. Movin’ the herd. From the sound of things we’ll be bucking stout sou’west winds and a boatload of dust. I’m gonna need all the caffeine I can get.”

As she filled Homer’s cup, she felt that little prickle of unease that sometimes crept up on her when someone looked at her in that I’ve-seen-you-before-kind-of-way. The way Homer was looking at her now.

“I just can’t get over how much you look like that fancy princess woman. Oh, what is her name, anyway?”

“Fergie?” she suggested and worked hard at manufacturing a teasing smile.

“Naw. That other one—the one from some foreign sounding place. You sure you ain’t some long lost twin got switched at birth?”

“Homer, Homer.” She forced a playful, chiding tone. “Last week you said you thought I looked like a movie star. I’ll tell you what, though—if you can figure out some way to make me into a princess, I’ll figure out a way to make you my prince.”

Homer laughed, blushed and tugged on his hat brim. “I’d be more frog than prince—and I don’t allow my Martha would much go for me running off with you. It’s a nice thought, though, huh?”

“You bet, Homer.” She laid a hand on his shoulder then walked away. “It’s a very nice thought.”

It was also a thought that, thankfully, didn’t occur too often. When it did, she generally handled it the same way as she had with Homer just now. She’d laugh, joke and walk away. So far it had worked. Yet the possibility always loomed that the day might come when her luck on that count would run out and someone would recognize her.

Refusing to think about that now, she answered Manny’s ding—he signaled with a little silver bell when an order was up—and delivered an omelette and a sweet roll. Then she quickly bussed two tables and raked in two dollars and some odd change in tips. As she headed back for Homer’s short stack and eggs, she was completely oblivious of the diner’s shortcomings when compared to the grandeur that had once been her life at Obersbourg Palace.

The Royal Diner was your basic greasy spoon café, nonalcoholic watering hole, town meeting place and coffee klatch all wrapped up in one. Just as unlikely as Anna becoming adept as a waitress was the fact that the diner had also become her refuge. She loved every inch of the place—from the worn and cracked dull-gray linoleum floor tiles to the faded red plastic on the booth seats to the scratched chrome strips edging the tabletops and the counter with its dozen stools.

She loved the steamy warmth of it. The smell of it. The sinfully juicy hamburgers that Manny cooked on his grill, the decadently thick chocolate malts that she had learned to make on the ancient malt machine. She even loved the thin film of smoke and grease coating the plate glass windows that Hazel, the owner, had tried to pretty up with muslin curtains.

She knew it wasn’t supposed to work like this. She knew that Gregory had set her up with this waitress ruse because he thought she would consider it menial and beneath her. A princess wasn’t supposed to mingle with, let alone wait on, the common folk. It was his subtle way, she supposed, of paying her back for what she’d done to him years ago.

She understood his motives. She even forgave him. Just like she forgave him for making himself as scarce as a snowstorm in West Texas. Even though his deliberate absence hurt, she figured he was entitled. He’d known she would be forced to take the waitress job—as he’d put it, hiding in plain sight—rather than risk having undue attention focused on the reclusive young woman and child in The Royal Court Complex, apartment 3B.

What Gregory hadn’t understood was that while she had been apprehensive at first, it was because she had been afraid she couldn’t do the work, not because she didn’t want to do it. Another thing Gregory hadn’t understood was that while normal little girls dreamed of castles, servants and knights in shining armor, Anna had dreamed of walking barefoot in the grass, of playing hide-and-seek after dark with the village children, of a best friend to share secrets with.

What she had always wanted was to be a part of something as an equal, not set apart as elite. As Princess Anna von Oberland, she’d done elite. She’d lived elite. Elite was lonely and isolating. She’d lived lavishly, surrounded by rare artwork, gilded mirrors and armies of servants. She’d slept in platform beds beneath satin sheets. And yet everything she’d ever wanted had been out of her reach: the ultimate excitement of the absolutely mundane.

As Annie Grace, the waitress, she’d found that—in an austere two-bedroom apartment and, of all things, an alarm clock. She loved her alarm clock. Like William, it gave her purpose. It gave her a reason to get up and be useful on the most basic level.

Here, in Royal, she was a small part of a whole, and despite everything that had happened, it felt wonderful. She was a single mom, working for a living. And she felt, for the first time in her life, as if she belonged. It was another of life’s strange ironies that as she played the role of a waitress, she felt more real than at any other time in her life.

Even better, since arriving in Royal, she was seeing things in William that she had always yearned to see. While he was still reserved and slow to trust, he smiled more. He even laughed sometimes without fear of reprisal. Harriet Sherman, her next door neighbor and volunteer baby-sitter, had been responsible for much of that.

Manny hit the bell again, snapping her head up. She hurried to pick up a morning special and remembered how difficult it had been to leave William in Harriet’s care that first morning. Even with Gregory’s assurances that Harriet was his employee and that he’d positioned her next door to Anna’s apartment for the sole purpose of looking after both her and William, it had been hard leaving him.

Now it was hard to think of taking him away from here, away from Harriet and her loving arms and oatmeal raisin cookies. But she knew she must eventually return to Obersbourg and face her obligations.

She squared her shoulders, drew a bracing breath. Ivan wouldn’t call off his dogs. He would not give up on trying to strong-arm her into marriage. And as much as it hurt to acknowledge it, her parents would continue to offer her up to Ivan as the prize to save Obersbourg’s sovereignty.

Even accepting all this, she knew she must return. Obersbourg was her country. Her birthright. Her obligation. Hopefully, she would be stronger for her time here in Royal. Hopefully, she would come up with a solution to her country’s grave dilemma that didn’t require marriage to a man she had despised even before she’d begun to suspect he was involved in Sara’s death.

For all of those reasons, the thought of leaving Royal haunted her. Soon, though, she would have one less reason to stay. As of Sunday, her final tie to her sister, Sara, would be severed. One more link with Ivan would be broken. And while Gregory would never be hers again to lose, one more reason for his protection would also be negated.

Her sunny mood of moments ago was as lost as the sun that had disappeared beneath the dust inspired by a tenacious and sustained wind. Reality encroached severely on Annie Grace’s fantasy world. Like an unyielding and vengeful enemy, it deposited the weight of obligation and the cold hard facts of duty back into the hands of Anna von Oberland—all to the relentless tick of the clock as time slowly ran out on her.

The King and Queen of Obersbourg’s entire existence exemplified saving face at all costs, celebrated the triumph of appearance over reality. So it was sadly ironic, Anna thought, that in her boldest act of defiance yet, she had resorted to practicing the ruling principle of her parents’ lives—a principle she abhorred.

This Sunday, however, she played their game to the letter. She watched the happy celebration unfold before her in the grand salon of the Texas Cattleman’s Club with a plastic smile in place when the reality was that her heart was breaking. She murmured the appropriate words when her only triumph was in the knowledge that no one knew how much her actions had cost her.

As promised, Miranda and Edward, her sister’s twin babies, had been rescued by Gregory’s brother Blake. They were safe—thank God they were safe here in Texas—but as of today, they were no longer hers to protect. As of today, they were no longer hers at all.

In one of the hardest decisions of her life, she had given them up. She had given them over to the loving arms of Blake and his new bride, Josie.

It was the right thing to do, she told herself, just as she had told herself repeatedly since Blake had brought the babies to Texas. Blake and Josie loved them. They would ensure that Anna’s promise to Sara would be fulfilled.

“Promise me, Anna. Promise me,” Sara had pleaded shortly after the twins were born. “If anything happens to me...promise me you won’t let mother and father raise them. Promise me you’ll get them out of Obersbourg and find someone who will love and nurture there.”

Anna had smiled back then at her little sister’s dramatic plea. Sara had always been the actress of the two of them. The rebel. The wild little princess who thumbed her nose in the face of tradition, laughed at the rigors of royal protocol.

Bracing against a fresh wave of pain, Anna drew herself erect. It was because of Ivan Striksky that Sara would never laugh again. The final proof had arrived yesterday. Gregory had sent the damning evidence over to the diner via messenger.

She was still trying to come to grips with the words in the fax sent by the attorney who had handled the estate of Marcus Dumond, Ivan’s horse trainer. Marcus had been much more than a horse trainer, as it turned out. Anna had known he had once been Sara’s lover. She hadn’t known that Marcus was the father of the twins. And now, because Gregory had ferreted out the truth, she had proof that the car crash that had killed both Sara and Marcus had been arranged by Ivan.

The rumble of deep, masculine laughter dragged her away from her thoughts of that devastating news and back to the reason for today’s celebration. Today was the day she had agreed to officially release the twins for adoption. Today was the day she severed her last tie to Sara.

She made herself shut out the ugly string of events that had brought her here and focused on the happiness around her. Blake was a good man. Josie a good woman. Both were all smiles as they stood side by side, each of them cradling one of the babies in their arms. And while she had agonized about her decision, in the end she knew she’d had no choice. It had been Sara’s wish.

Just like she’d had no choice but to attend today’s celebration. Thank God for Harriet, she thought, as she so often had in the past months. Sensing intuitively that Anna would need to draw on all her resources to keep herself together, she had volunteered to take William to a movie today.

“Anna?”

She blinked, automatically set a smile in place even before she realized it was Josie who had walked up beside her and lightly touched her arm.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine. I’m fine.” She broadened her smile, and even though her heart was breaking, opened her arms to little Miranda when Josie held her out to her. Tears filled her eyes as Miranda reached up and tangled her little fingers in Anna’s hair.

Life was so strange, she thought, smiling down at the happily gurgling baby. When Blake had finally managed to smuggle the babies out of Europe and into Texas, he’d run into the storm of the century while driving across the state with them. Josie had spotted his car in a washed-out ravine. Blake had been unconscious, the babies crying and hungry. Josie had managed to get them all home to her farmhouse, and during Blake’s recovery, while he’d struggled to regain his memory that had been temporarily lost in the crash, they’d fallen deeply in love—with each other and with the twins.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Josie murmured, breaking into Anna’s thoughts.

“Yes,” Anna agreed softly. Relishing the warmth and the sweet scent of the baby in her arms, she held her closer. “She’s very beautiful.”

The silence that followed rang hollow with the unspoken pain of her loss.

“You will always be her aunt, Anna.” Sensitive to Anna’s regrets, Josie’s eyes, when Anna met them, were kind and reassuring. “You will always be Edward’s aunt. They’re your family. Please, don’t doubt that. We won’t ever take that away from you.”

Anna blinked hard, gave Josie a genuine smile as Blake, with Edward sleeping soundly in his arms, joined them.

“I know,” she said. “Just like I know they’ll have a far better home and life with you than if I were to take them back to Obersbourg.”

She didn’t doubt that for one moment. Even as William’s mother, she had difficulty exercising authority over how he was raised. As the twins’ aunt, her influence would be even more limited. She couldn’t bear to have happen to them what happened to Sara. She couldn’t let two sweet, precious lives be ruled by the iron fist of her father and the apathetic blind eye of her mother. If subjected to her parents’ strict code of discipline, like Sara, they might eventually rebel. Like Sara, they might turn to a wild and destructive lifestyle—like the one that had played a part in ending her life.

Her next words were spoken as much to herself as to Blake and Josie. “They have a chance for a normal life now. I have to believe that.” She stopped, braced and deliberately met Josie’s concerned gaze, then Blake’s. “I do believe that. Just like I believe Sara would have approved. You’re very special. Both of you.”

Blake’s warm brown eyes, so different from his brother Gregory’s distant blue, probed hers. “No regrets.”

She kissed Miranda lightly on the cheek and handed her back to Josie before answering with conviction. “I have many regrets in all of this—the decision to give up the twins to you is not one of them.”

Josie embraced her then, her own eyes brimming with tears.

“Oh, no.” Anna managed a shaky laugh. “Don’t you dare start. I’m lost if you cry—and this is a party, remember? Go. Go party.”

“You’re okay then?” Blake touched a hand to her arm.

“I told you. I’m fine. Now go. I saw your father looking for you.”

As she watched them walk away, a bittersweet ache in her chest, someone accidentally bumped into her, then apologized profusely. For the first time today, her smile was spontaneous. Since Gregory had brought her here to Royal, she had grown to appreciate the Texas style of gallantry, the open friendliness of its people.

She made herself focus on the gathering, recognized many of the faces, faces’ of people who knew her as Annie Grace, just a waitress at the diner. Aside from Blake and Josie, only Gregory and Harriet and the three men who had assisted him on the Alpha mission to rescue her last September—Hank Langley, Sterling Churchill, Forrest Cunningham—knew her true identity. They too, had joined the celebration. So had their wives, Callie, Susan, and Becky.

She had taken special notice of Gregory and Blake’s parents, Janine and Carson Hunt. She wasn’t certain how much Gregory’s parents knew about the twins’ situation—or about hers. She only knew that they looked at her through kind eyes that made her yearn for something she’d never received from her own parents. Carson was a robust bear of a man with crinkled brown eyes and a thick head of silver hair. Janine was lovely. Diminutive in stature, yet obviously her own woman, her blue eyes, so like Gregory’s, were warm, bold and full of life as she welcomed Edward and Miranda to the family with loving arms.

The only person noticeably absent was Gregory. True to form, since that September morning when he’d settled her into the apartment, he had made it a point to be absent if she was anywhere in the vicinity. His influence had been known in many other ways, however. It was Gregory who had expedited the adoption process by calling in some markers, taking advantage of his connections with both the bar and the bench. And it was the respect he’d earned in the community that had kept public speculation about the twins’ parentage to a minimum. There was acceptance that they now belonged to Blake and Josie—a simple fact.

It was for the best all around that he maintained his distance from her, she knew. It saved her from answering questions for which he would eventually demand answers. Still, there was regret associated with the knowledge. Just as there was a sudden, chest-tightening anticipation when, on the heels of those thoughts, Gregory walked in the door.

Her heart clenched, as it always did, when she saw him. His dark good looks and impressive presence set him apart even m this room full of men who were unequaled among men. Above all else, though, the tension strung tight around his mouth, the intensity in his eyes held her riveted as he walked unerringly toward her.

When he took her hand in his, relayed the need for silence through a quick, firm squeeze, she was filled with a sudden, intuitive awareness that what he was about to tell her would change her life forever.

Her heart skipped several beats. “Gregory... what is it?”

She searched his face with a heightening premonition of dread as he shook his head then sought and found his brother and the men who had been in on the Alpha rescue mission. With a clipped lift of his chin, he signaled them to follow him.

Her heart plummeted to her stomach as he led her in suspended silence to a small room off the main salon. Langley, Churchill, and Sterling, along with Blake and Josie, who had handed off the twins to Gregory’s parents, followed then shut the door behind them.

“What’s happened?” Panic had become a valid and violent contender for the apprehension that clogged her throat.

After a moment’s pause, Gregory captured her gaze with the same strength as his firm grip on her hands.

“Ivan Striksky is dead.” The softness of his voice was no cushion for the shock of his announcement.

The jolt weakened her knees. With Gregory’s solemn arrival, she’d expected news of Ivan. But this...

She felt suddenly as if she’d fallen into a vacuous tunnel, where sound, shape and texture blended together in a numbing, surreal kaleidoscope of confusion.

“Dead?” she heard someone ask and knew on a peripheral level that someone was her.

A circle of concerned faces closed supportively around her. She heard Josie’s soft voice whisper her name and urge her to sit down as Hank settled a protective hand to her back.

“What...how?”

A hush filled the room as the four men and one woman who were privileged to the specifics of Anna’s true identity and her midnight flight from Obersbourg listened in stunned amazement as Gregory related what details he had managed to find out about Prince Ivan Striksky’s suicide.

Two

She was running... running through maze after maze. Long bony hands grabbed at her. Chased unrelentingly. She was so tired. Her legs wouldn’t support her. She stumbled, searched, desperate to find a light that never came. For a haven that never opened to her. Then she was trapped And the hands. Hundreds of hands grabbed at her...

Heart racing, Anna bolted wildly up in bed, wrestled with tangled sheets. Stumbling blindly to the window, she threw it open, swallowing a scream. Even in the grips of the nightmare, her concern was for William. She didn’t want to frighten him. He’d been through enough.

A reassuring rush of arid, West Texas air hit her full in the face as she braced her palms on the sill. She dragged it in—deep, hungry drafts—and willed herself toward lucidity.

Clinging desperately to the reality that was now, she reached for the presence of mind that would assure her it was over. They were safe.

Even after months of haunting her nights, when the nightmare hit, it still took Anna by surprise. Tonight it was worse than the other nights. Tonight it had grabbed her by the throat. Had her heart slamming in her chest, her breath catching. The hideous grip of it had strangled her as darkness enfolded her in cloying, suffocating isolation.

Calmer now, she opened her eyes, felt a cool breeze feather across her perspiration-drenched skin and sagged in weary relief against the open window frame. Then she made herself recount the last four months in her mind to cement the fact one more time that it was really over.

She and William were safe.

The twins were safe with Blake and Josie.

And Ivan was dead.

Ivan was dead.

She shivered and drew away from the window as the memory of his suicide and the December breeze rustling her damp nightgown combined to pebble her skin with gooseflesh. Dragging a hand through her tousled hair, she sank back down on the edge of the bed, dug her palms into the blanket at her hips and forced several steadying breaths.