Plain-Jane Princess

An elderly gentlemen who hired handsome, protective, all-American male electricians?

Ah. She’d wondered how long she’d be able to stave that one off.

My goodness, she’d had quite a reaction to Steve Koleski, hadn’t she? But why? Why now? And, for heaven’s sake, why him? It wasn’t as if she’d been locked in a convent her entire life.

Exactly.

Well…what did she see in him?

Green eyes flecked with gold and mischief, that’s what, his short-cropped hair the innocent blond of a child’s, a startling contrast to tanned skin stretched taut over lean, sharp features that were anything but childlike. An expressive mouth that a woman—well, this woman, at least—ached to touch, just to see if it was as soft and smooth as it looked. To see if it was real. A mouth that twitched, she noticed, just before it burst into a rather endearingly slanted smile.

She saw—felt—kindness. Protectiveness. Trustworthiness.

All nicely packaged in enough muscles to make one’s mouth go dry.

Twirling a hunk of her butchered hair around her finger, she stared outside at the little flower garden below, her brows tightly drawn. What was it about the man that produced that tingling sensation in the odd body part whenever he grinned at her? Lust? Perhaps. After all, she didn’t suppose she was immune to the things like that, strange and unfamiliar though they might be. But it was more than that. It was…she bit her lip in concentration, then let out a sigh. It was more like…excitement. Anticipation. The sudden, euphoric feeling a child gets when she sees a bicycle in a shop window and realizes she wants it more than anything in the world.

Except it was like wanting the plain, sturdy, reliable three-speed model instead of the flashy ten-speed.

Oh. Oh…dear.

She grabbed the tote, unloading the paperbacks onto the nightstand, her eyes burning.

Popular opinion to the contrary, being a princess didn’t mean she could do whatever she wanted, even in disguise. In fact, just the opposite was true. She couldn’t even take that nice, reliable three-speed out of the window, could she? Not even for an innocent—yes, innocent—little test drive?

No. She didn’t think so.

She heaved another sigh, stacked the books on the nightstand, then dropped onto the bed, looked up at the light fixture Steve Koleski had just fixed.

There went the tingling again.

She sat up again to yank off the blasted shoes, tossing them across the room. Rubbing one aching instep, she fought—with remarkably little success—the memory of how Steve had smelled when they’d tangled in the doorway, all spicy-musky and just plain good, and how she’d let her ego out of its cage just long enough to let herself think that, just maybe, he was flirting with her. But in a slightly panicked kind of way, as though he wanted to but thought he shouldn’t, for whatever reason.

But then…even if he was attracted to her, he wasn’t attracted to her, but to the blowsy blond product of a weary princess’s brush with hysteria. In two weeks, perhaps less, Lisa Stone would vanish into the same nothingness whence she’d been spawned.

And Princess Sophie would resume her tidy, orderly, dull life, one which held no place for ingenuous, handsome, protective American electricians.

She flopped onto her side, her head propped in the palm of her hand, just as the sun shifted enough to glance off something shiny peeking out from underneath the dresser. Curiosity lured her off the bed, then across the floor to pick up what turned out to be a screwdriver. Steven Koleski’s screwdriver, no doubt.

For the briefest of moments, she was tempted to stab herself with it.

Fortunately, things seemed remarkably more clear the next morning. Plainly, her reaction to Steven the day before had been due to nothing more than an adrenaline overload, a sense of danger heightening her sensory awareness. What she’d felt hadn’t been attraction—on any level—but simply reaction. Stimulus/response, nothing more.

However, in all the excitement of actually carrying out her harebrained plan, she’d forgotten a fundamental fact of life in a small town: strangers’ appearances begat curiosity. So it behooved her to offer some sort of explanation in order to prevent inevitable, and tiresome, speculation.

At least, as far as the people in her “real” life were concerned, she was accounted for. Perhaps few of them understood, much less approved of, her actions, but nobody was worrying about her well-being. Her physical well-being, at least. Her mental state was something else again.

As far as those in her temporary hideaway went, however, best to tell just as much of the truth to satisfy inquiring minds and hopefully bore the nosy into forgetting all about her. And she figured she might as well start with her host, who, in his position as the town’s music teacher, undoubtedly had a direct feed into the main gossip artery.

Sophie found Mr. Liebowicz deadheading early roses in his sun-speckled, lushly planted back garden, laughably quaint in bright red plastic clogs and a big-brimmed straw hat secured with a cord underneath his flabby chins.

“Oh! Good morning, my dear,” the old man said with a short wave. “Are you ready for breakfast?”

“No, no…no hurry.” She tucked her thumbs in the pockets of her white cotton Capri pants, inhaled the perfumed, early morning air. “I’m rarely hungry this early. Besides—” she grinned “—you weren’t supposed to feed me last night.”

“I was doing the roast anyway, it was no trouble.” He took his clippers to a climbing rose spanning a latticework archway. “But whenever you’re ready, just let me know.”

Still not sure how best to broach her subject, Sophie reached out to cup an exquisite rosebud the color of fresh butter. “You coax life from the ground every bit as well as you coax music from your violin.”

That merited her a bright, surprised grin from underneath the enormous hat. “You are very kind, my dear,” Mr. Liebowicz said. “But how did you know it was I who was playing?”

She shrugged. “You had several students yesterday. It wasn’t difficult to tell when the teacher was demonstrating for the student.”

The old man sighed, eyeing his liver-spotted hands. “These poor old things aren’t very reliable these days, I’m afraid. But I suppose they still have their moments.”

Sophie laughed, then bent to smell another rose, this one fully open, an intense, deep pink tinged with coral. “I’m sure you must be dying to know why I landed on your doorstep yesterday,” she said quietly.

A finch warbled overhead. Then: “As someone forced from my own home in Poland fifty years ago by a certain German dictator’s policies, I understand that people often have valid reasons for keeping secrets. But I will admit wondering about your accent…?”

Smiling, she straightened, then folded her arms across a light blue cotton sweater, watching Mr. Liebowicz clip and prune and coddle his precious flowers. “I was raised in Europe,” she said, remembering her vow to herself to lie as little as possible. “But my father was English. As was my schooling.”

“I see.” He turned to her, his expression partially muted by the hat’s shadow. “But—” his thin lips twitched into a kindly smile “—nobody comes to Spruce Lake without a reason, Miss Stone. We have no tourist attractions, no views to speak of, nothing to lure someone seeking excitement, or even diversion. Nothing except…sanctuary, perhaps?”

All she could do was stare at him.

“You came with little luggage, and the clothes you have are obviously new. You are in hiding, Miss Stone. If that is indeed your name.” The old man shrugged, then returned to his task. “Are you running from the law?”

Her laugh was startled. “No.”

“Then it is of no concern of mine why you are here.” He moved on to the next bush, squinting at a bud, from which he removed a layer of aphids. “Although you may find me a good listener…?”

She hesitated, then said, “It’s nothing, really. I just suddenly realized I desperately needed to take some time for myself. To relax. To perhaps think through a few things.”

“Ah. One of those, what do they call them? Workaholics?”

“I suppose, yes.”

He tilted his head, resembling a flower himself in the silly hat. “Too busy to take time to smell the roses?”

She laughed again, then, hugging herself, made her way over to a small wooden shed tucked away in one corner, the stupid shoes clumping on the brick path. “Except,” she tossed over her shoulder, “I find I really don’t know how to relax. I’ve already gone through two novels, just since yesterday.” Like a small child, she peered inside the darkened shed which smelled of damp wood and earth and other vague, gardeny things. “I do need the time away, but—”

“What you need is a change, then. Not a rest.”

She turned then, one hand on the door frame. “Yes. Yes, I suppose that’s it.” On a sigh, she added, “I find idleness doesn’t suit me very much.”

The old man waved his clippers at her in agreement, and she chuckled. Then her gaze lit on the bicycle, leaning against the shed’s back wall. “Oh! Does the bicycle work?” she called out to him, already halfway inside.

“It was my daughter’s,” Mr. Liebowicz said, closing in on her. “It’s been years since anyone’s ridden it. Here—” He motioned for her to bring it out. “Let’s have a look.”

So she did, divesting the poor thing of its cobweb shroud. The tires were flat, but otherwise it looked in decent condition. “Would you mind if I borrowed it while I was here? After I got it fixed up, of course.”

“No, not at all. There’s a bicycle shop not six blocks away, in town, that can fix those tires for you. I’ll be happy to pay for getting it in shape—”

“Nonsense. If I’m going to use it, the least I can do is foot the repair bill.”

“Well, then—take it, with my blessings. The countryside is beautiful, this time of year. And a half hour in that direction—” he pointed west “—takes you to a stretch of woods and farmland that may remind you of home.”

She blinked at him, questions fluttering like moths in her brain.

“Your accent may be English, my dear,” Mr. Liebowicz said with a smile, “but your features are pure central Europe.”

After a moment, she hugged the dear old man, clearly startling him, then knelt by the bike, checking the chain. “Perhaps a few nice, long bike rides will clear out the old brain, you know?”

Mr. Liebowicz stroked the dulled silver handlebars, then nodded. “Perhaps so, my dear. Perhaps so.”

Chapter 3

“Mrs. Hadley—please.” Steve did some fancy shuffling through several half-dressed kids and a dog in order to plant himself in front of the bulldozer of a woman headed for his front door. “If you could just stay until—”

“Mister Koleski.” A pair of frigid blue eyes smacked into his. “I only took this job because the agency said you were desperate, so you knew from the beginning I was only here on a trial basis. Well, the trial’s over!” A pudgy hand swept him out of the way as the woman tromped through the old farmhouse’s uncarpeted living room, tugging her pale blue blouse down over hips that conjured up images of large, scary beasts.

Steve’s peripheral vision caught the six-year-old standing by the doorway, his eyes wide with confusion and fear. “For crying out loud, Mrs. Hadley—it wasn’t like Dylan meant to do it!”

The housekeeper spun around. “No six-year-old should still be wettin’ himself, Mr. Koleski!”

Dylan ran from the room, sobbing; frustration flared into a fury. Steve felt no compunction about turning on the woman standing in front of him with her chin jutted out to Wisconsin. Thank God Mac was out feeding the chickens. The fourteen-year-old was fiercely protective of his younger siblings, and he tended to fly off the handle if he even suspected that someone was hurting one of them. At the moment, Steve understood all too well how the teenager felt. “It’s only been eight months. And Dylan’s only six, in case you missed it. Six. He can’t help it if he still has nightmares.”

Now he noticed the twins, both still in their nightgowns, Bree with rollers in her short hair, sidling out to see what all the commotion was about. Mrs. Hadley turned again to leave; Steve caught her by the arm. “Just wait one blessed minute, all right?” he said in a low voice, then turned to the girls. “Guys, I know you hate to do this, but I really, really need you to get Dylan cleaned up and dressed this morning.”

Courtney, her long, dark hair a tangled mass around her slender face, groaned first. But Steve cut off her protest with a pointed glare he’d learned from his mother, and the two of them trudged dejectedly down the hall, calling for their little brother, while George—the brown-and-white half hound, half whatever mutt that had come with the house—trotted along happily beside them.

He turned back to Mrs. Hadley. “If you leave me in the lurch like this,” he said softly, “don’t expect me to give you any recommendations.”

Mrs. Hadley’s jaw dropped, closed, then flew open again. “I did my job, Mr. Koleski, you know darn well I did! You’re spoiling these kids, is what. Just because they went through a rough patch don’t mean they don’t need discipline and limits! They got you so tied up around their little fingers, it’s a wonder they haven’t set the place on fire!”

Her word choice couldn’t have been more deliberately cruel. Steve jerked one hand up to halt the tirade, then jumped slightly when he felt a tug on his jeans leg. Without even looking, he swept three-year-old Rosie and her lovey—the heart-patterned, and very ratty, crib quilt she always carried around with her—up onto his hip, swallowing hard when she tucked her head into his collarbone and poked her thumb in her mouth, conveying a trust both implicit and explicit that this big man would protect her almost as much as her lovey did.

A trust Steve took extremely seriously.

Bug-eyed and now dressed in nearly identical bell-bottomed jeans and scoop-necked tees, the twins, with a cleaned and dressed Dylan in tow, crept back into the living room, Bree with her arms locked around her ribs, Courtney twisting a lock of hair around her finger. Three sets of dark brown eyes all fixed on the scene, three already mangled hearts subjected to yet more stress.

“And that one’s far too big to be sucking her thumb, too,” the dour-faced woman in front of him said, and Steve lost it. Calmly, but he lost it.

“Mrs. Hadley?” he asked, smoothing a tangle of dark brown hair away from the baby’s face as she nestled more closely against him.

“What?”

“Why on earth do you hire out to care for children when you obviously dislike them so much?”

Thin lips pressed together until they nearly disappeared. Then the woman whirled around, banging back the screen door on her way out. Everybody including the dog wandered out onto the porch to watch her leave, which she did in a spectacular fashion, tromping down the drive to that old blue bomb of hers. She hurtled her impressive body inside and slammed the door, then gunned the car down the rutted dirt driveway in a cloud of dust, as if petrified the kids were going to turn into ten-foot monsters and eat her alive.

As her car sped toward the end of the driveway, though, Steve caught movement out of the corner of his eye—a cyclist coming down the road from the main highway. The road curved a bit, right before it got to the foot of his drive, the entry partially obscured by a forest of volunteer elms he’d been meaning to take out ever since he bought the place. His heart bolted into his throat when he realized the cyclist and Mrs. Hadley, who clearly wasn’t even thinking about slowing down, might not see each other in time—

“Hey!” he shouted, taking off down the steps and out toward the road, Rosie laughing and bouncing in his arms, the other kids hot on his heels, George barking his damn fool head off. “Hey! Slow down! Slow down!”

But of course, the older woman couldn’t possibly hear him. And he doubted she was looking at her rearview mirror—

Oh, hell! Steve ground to a halt, his heart hammering painfully at the base of his throat while the twins and Dylan jumped up and down beside him, shrieking and waving. And now he saw Mac streaking toward them from the back, making more noise than any of them. Steve silently swore at himself for letting them out, because if anything happened, if they saw—

His stomach heaved as Mrs. Hadley took the turn at full throttle, spinning out onto the road at the same moment the cyclist rounded the curve. The kids screamed even louder as car and bicycle swerved to avoid each other, the car quickly straightening out and rocketing down the road. The bicycle, however, wobbled for a second or two, then toppled over into the brush.

The word that rang out a moment later from the bushes was one he regularly gave Mac hell for using.

Sophie was reasonably sure she’d live. Whether she wanted to was something else again.

The ground seemed to vibrate beneath her battered body—pounding footsteps, she realized, intermixed with a dog’s frantic barking. A second later, she found herself surrounded by a herd of short people, all with brown hair and eyes, all shouting, “Are you all right?” and looking both extremely worried and extremely relieved to find her conscious. The dog, a large, rather smelly mongrel, got to her first, whimpering in her face as if to ask where he—at this level, his gender was not in question—should kiss first to make it all better.

“For the love of Pete…! George, kids—get out of the way!”

Oh, dear God in heaven. Tell her it wasn’t…

After judiciously determining her arm wouldn’t fall off if she moved it, Sophie shielded her eyes from the early morning sun and looked up into a pair of familiar gold-flecked green eyes set above a shocked grimace.

It was.

“Judas Priest, lady!” Steven carefully untangled limbs from bicycle, letting it fall with a loud clatter off to the side before squatting beside her. “What the Sam Hill are you doing way out here at this time of the morning?”

She thought, briefly, of sitting up, decided against it. “Are you always this solicitous when people land in a heap in your bushes?” She tried moving the other arm, peered up at him. “Or aren’t these your bushes?”

“These aren’t anybody’s bushes. They’re squatters. Lie still, for godssake.”

Sophie suddenly realized Steven’s brusqueness stemmed from concern, not rudeness. He’d transferred the youngest child, an adorable little thing with long dark hair and bangs that practically fell into her equally dark eyes, to a taller, more slender girl on the cusp of adolescence, then set about gently feeling for broken bones. Or so she assumed.

All four children, she realized, looked remarkably like each other. And absolutely nothing like Steven.

“These your children?” she asked.

His glance was nearly as brief as his answer. “For all intents and purposes.”

She angled her neck to watch his deft progress down one leg, determined not to react. Right. The sexiest man she’d ever met with the strongest, gentlest, most efficient hands she’d ever felt was taking his time skimming those hands over her flesh and she wasn’t going to react? A bit worse for wear, she might have been, but she wasn’t dead, and the parts that weren’t shrieking in agony were very aware that this man in a white, tight T-shirt was something definitely worth waking up the hormones for. Just to look, unfortunately, but it had been a looooong time since her eyes had been anywhere near such a feast.

Perhaps focusing on his face would distract her from his hands.

Oh, all right—so it had been a long shot.

His expression was earnest and focused, she was reasonably sure, solely on her skeletal structure. So she followed suit. Cheeks. Jaw. High, broad forehead. His brows and lashes were as pale as his hair, which for some reason she’d always found off-putting before this.

“I suppose—” She swallowed, tried to reestablish saliva flow. “I suppose you know what you’re doing?”

“Well enough.” Apparently satisfied, he started in on the other leg.

“The lady gots lots of boo-boos,” the littlest one pronounced in a voice that, in twenty years or so, was going to rival Greta Garbo’s.

“She sure does, honey,” Steven said, never taking his eyes off Sophie’s leg.

“C’n I give her some of my bandy-aids?”

“Sure thing…what?” This last was directed at Sophie, who’d feebly raised one hand.

“I realize I might regret dispensing this tidbit of information, but I didn’t land on my, um, legs.”

His hands stilled as he slowly twisted to face her, allowing her to see that, judging from his terrible attempt at keeping his expression blank, he understood. “I see.” And then the smile blossomed, wicked and sweet and just this side of cocky. And if she hadn’t already had the wind knocked out of her, the smile would have done it for sure. “And I don’t suppose I need to check that out for broken bones, huh?”

Oh, dear, but that grin was deadly.

And just like that, her imagination conjured up a very brunette woman with remarkably dominant genes who’d undoubtedly helped create all these children.

“A very astute observation,” Sophie said, deciding the time had come to haul herself upright and be on her way.

“Wow, lady—” This from an older child she hadn’t noticed before, a youngish teenager with close-cropped, nearly black hair. Which meant there were five children. And also meant that Steven had gotten a very early start in the reproductive phase of his life, since the kid looked at least fourteen or so, and Steven, she surmised, couldn’t be more than in his mid-thirties. The kid was inspecting her bicycle, which she could tell, even from this angle, wasn’t going to be transporting anyone, anywhere, anytime too soon. “You like totally demolished this.”

She silently swore, then began the arduous task of gathering together assorted body parts and convincing them to work together just long enough to get upright. She’d tackle actual movement at a later date.

“What are you doing?”

Clutching the splintery post-and-rail fence for support, Sophie shot Steven a glance, then decided, no, she needed every scrap of effort she possessed to accomplish this one task. “Standing up, if everything will cooperate long enough to accomplish my objective.”

The initial excitement over, the children had begun to drift back toward the house. Steven crossed his arms over his chest, clearly waiting.

“Hold on, hold on,” she said, feebly swatting in his direction. “I’m working on it.” She tried not to let him see her grit her teeth as she forced Leg One in front of Leg Two. Oh, for heaven’s sake—she wasn’t seriously injured. So why did it hurt so bloody much?

“Got any idea when you might be planning on taking a second step, here?”

She fought down the urge to laugh, if for no other reason that she was sure that would hurt, too. “Oh, you are just a paragon of patience, aren’t you?”

“Got me a bumper sticker that says just that,” he said without missing a beat, then announced, “Let me carry you to the house—”

“Like bloody hell!”

“Lady, if this is part of your I-gotta-be-me routine, I don’t have time, okay? I’ve got four kids to get to school, my housekeeper just drove away in her huff—”

She swatted a hank of hair out of her face. “That was your housekeeper who nearly did me in?”

“Up until ten minutes ago, yeah. Number four in a series. Which means now I’m going to have to sweet-talk my mother into baby-sitting for the little one so I can go to work. So, right now, I’m not in the best mood, okay?”

“Baby-sitting?” Sophie blinked, confused, then said, “Oooh…your wife works, too, then?”

A frown pleated his brow for a moment, as if he was wondering how she’d made such a bizarre leap in the conversation. “Wife?” Then his expression cleared. “Oh. Because of the kids. I get it.” Then he shook his head. “Nope. No wife. Now let’s go.”

He took a step toward her; her hand shot up even as her brain tried to force this latest information into a slot marked Of No Consequence. “Mr. Koleski, it’s not that I don’t appreciate your situation, really. It’s just that—” She bit her lip. “It’s going to hurt.”