Plain-Jane Princess

“Excuse me?” She bent over to speak to the driver, swiping a collapsed spike of hair out of her eyes. “Do you know how to get to Spruce Lake?”

The driver, the human equivalent of a bulldog, eyed her for a moment, obviously taking in her lack of luggage, her jitters, her getup. Her accent, which, due to a number of factors, was more English than Prince Charles’s.

“You from Australia or somethin’?”

“Or something. Well?”

“Yeah, I know Spruce Lake,” the driver said. “Had a cousin lived out that way some years ago.” He adjusted his ample form in the seat, scratched his chin. “Takes close to an hour to get out there, though. And then there’s my time gettin’ back…I dunno…”

“Name your price.”

He squinted at her. “A hundred bucks.”

“Done.” She yanked open the door and scrambled into the back. Even Sophie knew a gouge when she heard one, but haggling could wait until the other end of the journey.

Where she’d be free.

Steve Koleski could feel the music teacher’s worried gaze through the back of his denim shirt. “It’s okay, Mr. L.,” he said, frowning himself at the tangle of wires that had vomited forth the instant he’d removed the plastic cover from the outlet behind the refrigerator. Whoever had done this job—he used the term loosely—should be shot. “It looks worse than it is.”

“I may be old, Steffan, but I am not blind. That is too many wires for such a small area, yes?”

“Shoot, Mr. L.—this is too many wires for Detroit. Damn good thing that outlet sparked on you when it did.” Steve pulled out the mass, which reminded him uncomfortably of his brain that morning, began untangling it. “Coulda been a lot worse.” A shaft of sunlight sliced across the all-white room, warming a shoulder stiff from far too much yard work the day before, as low music with a lot of violins trickled in from the living room. At his feet, one of a trio of fat, black cocker spaniels whined for attention.

Mr. L. snapped his fingers. “Susie, come over here and stop bothering the man.” Then to Steve, “Could I get you a cup of tea while you work? It’s a good forty-five minutes before my next student.”

Steve stopped the grimace just in time. “Yeah. Sure. That’d be great.”

As the old man shuffled to the other side of the kitchen, Steve pulled his wire cutters from his belt, then set to work sorting out the mess as his thoughts drifted, for the hundredth time that morning, to the near blowup he’d had with his housekeeper before he’d left. No matter how many times he explained that things in aquariums go hand in hand with fourteen-year-old boys, Mac’s latest acquisition had nearly sent Mrs. Hadley off the deep end. Nor did he suppose Rosie’s penchant for falling asleep in strange places was sitting any too well, either. The poor woman nearly had apoplexy when she’d turned on the basement light and seen the three-year-old curled up at the foot of the stairs, fast asleep. Of course, she’d assumed she’d taken a tumble and that it would be all her fault and she just couldn’t take that kind of pressure at her age….

So why’d you take the job? Steve had wanted to ask the pinch-faced woman. But he didn’t dare. He needed Mrs. Hadley, even if he—or the kids—didn’t exactly get all warm and fluttery thinking about her. She was the fourth housekeeper they’d had in eight months at a time when the kids desperately needed stability. Something was going to have to give, and soon.

Steve frowned at the wire cutters in his hand. Trying to make everybody happy was a real bitch, you know?

He swiped his forearm across his eyes to sop up a bead of sweat: the instant the rain had stopped, the temperature had begun to climb. “You want a regular two-gang outlet, or four?”

“Four, I think,” he heard over the sound of water thrumming into a teakettle. “A kitchen can’t have too many places to plug things in.” The pipes groaned when Mr. L. turned off the water. “Plumbing’s next, I suppose,” he said on a sigh. The old man’s boiled wool slippers scuffed across worn linoleum; the kettle clanked onto the old gas stove. Then he made a sound that was a cross between a chuckle and a wheeze. “This house and I, we’re a lot alike, you know? Keep patching things up, get another couple years out of us. Speaking of which…after you finish in here, would you mind taking a look at the ceiling fixture in the guest bedroom? I think it’s coming loose.” The kettle’s shrill whistle was cut off nearly before it began. “You like sugar?”

“No. Thanks,” Steve said, taking the mug of steaming tea from the prim little man in his gray slacks, white shirt and brightly patterned bow tie quivering at the base of a chicken-skin chin. “The guest room, huh?” He took a sip of the tea, just to be polite. “You got a taker?”

The old man laughed. For fun, he’d registered his spare room with the local bed and breakfast association last year, although, since tourism wasn’t exactly Spruce Lake’s claim to fame, he rarely had guests. Every once in a while, though, somebody’s cousin needed a place to stay while in town for a wedding, or some family would find his listing on the association’s Web site on the Internet and spend a night in town on the way from somewhere to somewhere else. “Yes, Steffan, I got a ‘taker,’ as you put it. A nice young woman who called yesterday, said she needed someplace quiet for a few days, maybe longer.”

A mild tremor of curiosity moseyed on through but didn’t stop. “It will be nice,” the old man continued, “having a little company, especially at night. During the day, I have my students, I can go out…but at night…” He shook his head. “The nights are hard.”

Refusing to believe that sharp right hook to his midsection was some sort of agreement—it wasn’t as if he was ever alone at night—Steve looked down to discover he’d finished off his tea. So he walked over and rinsed out his mug.

“This young lady,” Mr. L. went on. “She sounded maybe…a little lonely?”

Steve shook his head, swallowing down a weary laugh. Honest to Pete—one drawback to living in a small town was that everyone knew your business. Ever since the divorce, no less than a half-dozen people had tried to steer him in the direction of assorted cousins, unmarried daughters, and best friends’ sisters. A half grin tugging at his mouth, he turned around, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “Mr. L.? Just for the record? If things get so bad I’m reduced to being fixed up with a total stranger, just shoot me, okay?” Over the old man’s chuckle, he added, “And how the devil does someone sound lonely?”

A pair of exuberantly bushy brows lifted over the tops of Mr. L.’s glasses. “Just listen to yourself, Steffan. Then you’d know.”

Steve went rigid for a moment there, then traipsed back across the kitchen to the nest of wires jeering at him from the wall, yanked out a pair to tape them off, crammed them back in, then slapped the outlet plate into place and screwed that sucker back on so hard, he cracked the plastic and had to go get a new one from his truck.

“Something the matter, Steffan?” Mr. L. asked when Steve returned.

“Not a blessed thing,” Steve grumbled, screwing on the new plate. Then, scowling, he gathered his toolbox and headed up the stairs, fighting off a herd of wriggling cocker spaniels…and even the slightest suggestion that the old man was right.

Like he didn’t have enough stress in his life, what with worrying about the kids, trying to figure out how to balance a million and one obligations. The last thing he needed was some woman who wanted him to make her happy, too. And no, he didn’t feel this way just because love had dragged him into a back alley and left him for dead. He was over Francine. Had been for some time. It was just…well, he just didn’t have time for lonely.

Let alone the aggravation that invariably accompanied the opposite.

“Steffan?” wafted up the stairwell a few minutes later, “I need to run to the store. I should be back in plenty of time for my student, but if I’m not, would you mind letting her in?”

“No problem,” Steve called back, watching out the window a minute later as, like an overfed hamster, the old brown Datsun stuttered out of Mr. Liebowicz’s driveway and crept down the street.

He’d just finished changing out the fixture when the doorbell’s chime made him jump. Before he could move, though, it rang again, accompanied by a faint, frantic, “Hello? Mr. Liebowicz? It’s Lisa Stone!” followed by the bell being leaned on until Steve thought his head would explode.

He barreled down the stairs and jerked open the door, only to be nearly knocked over by a streak of overly perfumed blonde shrieking “Bathroom!” on her way past.

“Straight back, first door to the—”

“Found it!”

The bathroom door slammed hard enough to shake the whole house.

Chapter 2

Steve and the dogs stood in the open door, staring down the hall, waiting until the aftershocks died down. The blonde wasn’t the only thing that had to go. So did that perfume. Whew.

“Hey!”

Distracted, Steve finally noticed the taxi waiting at the curb, the mastifflike driver glowering at him from his window. In what could only be called a daze, Steve wandered out onto the porch, allowing an oblique, disinterested glance at the stuffed shopping bag and canvas tote lolling against one of Mr. Leibowicz’s Kennedy rockers. “You payin’ the fare?” the driver asked.

But before he could answer, the blonde whooshed back past him and down the porch steps, trailing the scent of about a million flowers in her wake. Shoot, Steve didn’t know a woman could use the bathroom that fast.

“Of course he’s not paying the fare! Keep your shirt on!”

For some reason, Steve became transfixed with the way her short hair, like feathers, shifted and twisted in the breeze as she sailed past. The way the soft, sparkly sweater and black pants molded to her figure without strangling it.

The way she was about to fall off her shoes.

She glanced over her shoulder at Steve, then blinked a pair of the deepest blue eyes he’d ever seen on a human being, the color of the evening sky just before it swallows the sunset…

“Miss?”

“What?” Her head jerked back to the waiting driver. “Oh, right.” She shifted, clumsily, to balance the tote on her knee—when had she picked it up?—in which slender hands, tipped in ruby red fingernails, rummaged for several seconds before extracting a wallet.

Hel-lo…major ephinany time: long red nails made him hot.

He felt his brows do that knotting thing again.

For crying out loud, she wasn’t even pretty, not in any conventional sense—deeply set eyes with thick, natural brows, a high forehead, squarish jaw with a dimpled chin, a wide mouth. But what Steve saw—underneath several strata of makeup—were the unapologetically strong lines of good, solid peasant stock, a handsomeness he’d seen innumerable times in the faces of the women with whom he shared a common ancestry. He told himself the hitch of interest in his midsection stemmed purely from aesthetic considerations, a desire to photograph her, to catch the light playing across those compelling features.

She yanked out a wad of bills, then crammed the purse between her arm and her ribs. “Now…how much did you say?”

The driver glanced at Steve, then the blonde, knuckling up the bill of his ball cap. He cleared his throat, then mumbled something. Unfortunately, the man hadn’t counted on Steven having hearing like a hound dog.

“A hundred?” Steve was down the stairs in two seconds flat, in full macho protective mode. “Where’d you pick her up? Cincinnati?”

“It doesn’t really mat—” whatever-her-name-was began, but the suddenly obsequious driver stepped in with, “Ya know, come to think of it…it wasn’t as hard to find the place as I thought. Whaddya say we make it—”

“Fifty,” Steve supplied, just for the hell of it. For all he knew, maybe the man had picked her up in Cincinnati. Judging from the driver’s reaction, however, he’d apparently called the man’s bluff. There were, at times, definite advantages to having been a linebacker in a previous life.

A bunch of folds rearranged themselves into something like a smile. “Just what I was gonna say. How ’bout that?”

The woman looked from one to the other, her mouth open. When it finally snapped shut, Steve noticed her narrowed gaze had come to rest on him.

Huh?

Her mouth twisted, she peeled off five tens and handed them to the driver, who, with a wave and a impressive squeal of the tires, left.

Steve turned to introduce himself, extending his hand. “Hi, I’m—”

“Excuse me, but do I strike you as being a complete air-head?”

Somehow, Steve figured pointing out that she wasn’t exactly dressed like the CEO of a Fortune 500 company wouldn’t go over so good. “Hey—that guy was about to take advantage of you!”

“And you don’t think I knew that?” One hand swiped back a feather. Underneath five-pound eyelashes, heat smoldered. And what was with that accent? “I knew what the taxi should cost.”

“Then why—?”

Oh, he’d seen that look before. His mother was a master at it.

“Look, Mr. Liebowicz—”

Steve shook his head. “Koleski. Steve Koleski. Mr. L. had to go to the store. I was doing some electrical work for him.”

A flicker of what Steve could only assume was relief passed over her features before she wagged one hand, dismissing his unwanted explanation. “Look, Mr. Koleski, it was no easy feat finding a taxi willing to come all the way out here, so when I finally got this one, I would have bloody well promised the man my firstborn child if it meant getting me where I wanted to go. But I’m not stupid, believe it or not. The plan was, I’d pretend to agree with this man’s ridiculous fee, wait until I was here, then tell him he was full of it.”

The laugh fairly burst from his lungs. “Full of it?”

She glared at him for a millisecond before twirling around, unsteadily, then taking off toward the house, feathers bobbing, fanny twitching.

“Hey!” Steve bounded after her and up the porch steps just as she made a grab for the listing shopping bag, inertia propelling him into her as she attempted to shoulder her way inside. Bodies and bags tangled for a sizzling two or three seconds, during which Steve found himself seriously reconsidering his earlier position on women and loneliness and aggravation.

“Do you mind?” she said, wrenching herself, and the bags, inside.

“I was only trying to help, for the love of Mike! Why on earth are you so fired up about this?”

The woman’s gaze glanced off his, as fleeting as an electric spark, before she twisted around and noticed the dogs. With a soft oh!, she dropped the bags and fell to her knees in one motion, burying herself in unbridled canine euphoria.

Steve, on the other hand, was doing well to simply catch his breath.

“Oh! Aren’t you the most wonderful things!” she said to the panting, licking creatures, laughing as each one in turn tried to crawl into her lap. After a moment, she hauled herself back up, wiping dog spit off her face with the heel of her hand as she took in the high-ceilinged entryway, the sunlight-drenched living room off to the left. She wasn’t exactly smiling as much as she simply seemed…pleased.

“So—Mr. Liebowicz isn’t here?” she suddenly said, not looking at him.

“Uh…no.” At some point, he was going to have to figure out why watching this overly cosmeticized, perfume-marinated, smart-mouthed stranger wallowing in dog slobber was doing all the wrong things to his libido. “He had to go to the store. He didn’t expect you until later.”

She shrugged, but there seemed to be something oddly nervous about the gesture. “I wasn’t sure, when I talked with him, what my…schedule would be like.” She hesitated, as if about to say something else, then turned, picked up the bags again. “Do you know where my room is?”

Eyes locked. Bad move.

Bad, bad move.

“Uh, yeah,” Steve said at last. “Upstairs.”

She nodded, then clomped up the stairs, chattering to the dogs. Steve followed, frowning at the sea of undulating dog butts in front of him. “First door to your left,” he said when she paused at the landing. “What did you say your name was?”

“Lisa Stone,” she said after a beat or two, then disappeared inside the room, followed by her entourage. “Oh…were you working in here?”

“Oh, right.” Steve hustled inside the room and squatted to gather up his things, clanking them into the metal toolbox. “I’d just finished up when you knocked on the door. Since it sounded urgent—” he glanced up at her, fighting the urge to grin, not fighting the urge to tease “—I figured cleaning up could wait.”

A blush swept up her neck. Then that generous mouth stretched into a breath-stealing smile that was completely at odds with the globbed-on makeup and the awful perfume and the hideous shoes. And something snapped between them. What, he didn’t know, didn’t want to know, but damned if the tension didn’t just evaporate.

“I, um, didn’t realize I had to go until I got into the taxi.”

One kind of tension, anyway. Another kind—more insidious and five times more deadly—mushroomed between them so fast he nearly choked.

Ordering everything to back off, cool down, and generally get a grip, he stood, letting the grin win out. “Bet that was the longest ride of your life, huh?”

Something like startled delight lit up her eyes before she laughed, and if he thought the smile knocked him for a loop, the laugh just about sent him into another realm entirely.

Psst. And she likes dogs, too.

Right. And maybe he should check his head for faulty wiring. For one thing, he had no idea who this woman was, where she was from, why she was here, or when she was leaving. For all he knew she was married. Or had a boyfriend. Or was on the lam.

And the perfume was making him dizzy.

And—and—for another thing, his life was more crowded than a Tokyo subway. He had kids to raise. Crises to avert. Gardens to tend and chickens to feed and about a million photos to develop and wounds to help heal.

If his heart were a neon sign, it would be flashing NO VACANCY.

Lisa was holding out her hand. “I do apologize for my earlier behavior. I get cranky when I’m overtired.” And Steve, not wanting to be rude, heaven knows, took her hand into his, grateful that—their brief, earlier tango notwithstanding—electricity didn’t shoot up his arm from her touch. That only happened in those books his sister used to hide in her sweater drawer, anyway. But it had been a long time since he’d held a woman’s hand in his, and he had to admit, it felt pretty damn good. Warm and soft and all that nice stuff.

And, boy, did he like that smile.

And, boy, did he have to get the hell out of there.

“I thought I heard voices!” Panting a little, Mr. L. came into the room, extending a knotted hand. “Miss Stone, yes?”

Lisa nodded, the feathers wafting around her face. One of those non-hairdos, like whatsername wore in You’ve Got Mail. “Thank you for taking me on such short notice,” she said.

“It was my pleasure. The room will be suitable, I hope?”

“Oh…” She looked around the sunny, airy room, nodding enthusiastically. “It will be perfect.”

“And you won’t mind my music students?”

“Oh, no! Not at all! I adore music, almost any kind, really…”

Well, all this was just too copasetic for words, but Steve had other things to do with his life than just stand around and watch Lisa Stone grin.

He picked up his toolbox, muttering, “I’ll just be going, then,” while backing out of the room, only to startle the be-jesus out of himself when he banged the box on the doorjamb. Chagrined, he steadied the box, then turned to leave before he gave any further demonstration of his poise and grace.

“Mr. Koleski?” he heard behind him. Now, he knew damn well what would be there, when he turned around, waiting to trap him…yup. There it was. That smile. And a wistfulness—that’s what it was, he realized—that prevented the smile from fully reaching her eyes. She speared her hand through her hair, then said softly, “Thank you for playing the White Knight earlier.”

He cocked his head. “Even though you didn’t need it.”

An eyebrow lifted. “But that wasn’t the point, was it?”

Oh, hell. No, that wasn’t the point. Nor did he have any intention of trying to figure out too hard about what the point was, because he doubted he was going to like what he came up with.

“Hope you enjoy your stay,” he muttered, then left before she had a chance to toss another one of those smiles his way.

She’d shooed the sweet old man out of her room shortly after Steve’s exit, citing the need to unpack and rest. And shower, rid her skin of that horrendous perfume that had seemed innocuous enough in the department store. Instead, her thoughts spinning, she simply sat on the edge of the double bed, fingers skimming the hobnailed bedspread, and stared out the second-story window at the profusion of flowering fruit trees in Mr. Liebowicz’s tiny backyard. It had been spring then, as well, she remembered, when she’d last visited the Detroit area with her parents, more than twenty years ago—

On a moan, she cupped her face in her hands. Never, ever before had she done something so…so illogical. Crazy. Rash.

Her hands dropped to her lap.

Exhilarating.

Not that her sense of responsibility had completely deserted her. Once safely away from the airport, she’d made the driver stop somewhere so she could call and leave a message on her grandmother’s private voice mail—Carpathia might be small, but technology-wise, it was cutting edge—telling her she was safe and not to blame Gyula, who had been undoubtedly tearing apart the airport by that point, and that if Baba needed her, to contact her via e-mail.

She spotted the phone jack on the opposite wall where she could plug in her modem. So she could check her e-mail anytime she liked….

Sophie blew out a sigh. She truly loved her country, as well as the power for good her position gave her. It wasn’t that she wanted to give up what she had. She didn’t. It was just…just that, somewhere along the way, she’d lost herself in the process. And then had come Jason Broadhurst’s proposal, which had muddled everything even more.

Not that there was anything wrong with Jason. Quite the contrary. In fact, he and Sophie served on the boards of several charities together, so she knew his sympathies even lay in the same direction as hers. And she truly ached for the loss of his wife so soon after their son’s birth two years ago.

And, frankly, Jason’s offer was by far the best she’d ever had. Oh, to be sure, there’d been suitors aplenty, from the time she was sixteen. But she wasn’t a fool: her mirror told her, quite bluntly, that most men were only enamored of her position or money, or both. At least she and Jason got on together well enough. And she had to respect his honesty in proposing the alliance.

But it still came down to the same thing, didn’t it? Men had pursued her because she was royal, because she was wealthy, or because she was convenient, but not one man had ever pursued her because he loved her.

Her future loomed in front of her, both a yawning void and a mountain of “musts”—her appointment as Director of the World Relief Fund was all but assured, a responsibility she both anticipated and dreaded—and she blinked back tears of what she realized were stark terror. She would do what she had to do, she knew that. Her sense of responsibility was far too ingrained for her to do otherwise. But what if this didn’t work, this stealing of a few weeks for herself? What if, at the end, she was still as conflicted as she was right now? What if she couldn’t reconcile her needs with those of the people who depended on her?

Shoving aside whatever this anxiety was, Sophie forced herself to stand and begin to put away her few new belongings in the paper-lined chest of drawers that smelled faintly of lavender sachet, her gaze flitting around the simply furnished room. She’d be anonymous here. And what could be safer than staying with an elderly gentleman?