Princess In Denim
Authors: Jenna McKnight
PRINCESS IN DENIM
By Jenna McKnight
First Published By Harlequin Books
Copyright 1998 by Virginia Schweiss
E-book and Cover Formatted by Jessica Lewis
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
Dear Reader,
When Chloe Marshall met Princess Moira back in college, she never dreamed they'd one day be trading places. Imagine small-town girl Chloe in a 130-room castle with a maid, a stretch limo and a gorgeous king — hers for the asking!
And where has the real princess been all this time? You can find out in
Cowgirl in Pearls,
when Moira hooks up with the sexiest cowboy in the West. I hope you enjoy this fun duet!
A special thank you to Emma Jensen for her patience and generosity, to Bonnie Crisalli for seeing the possibilities, to Debra Matteucci for understanding and, last but not least, to Huntley Fitzpatrick for jumping in.
I enjoy hearing from readers. You can reach me through my website at
http://www.jennamcknight.com
or through my blog at
jennamcknight.wordpress.com/contact
.
Happy reading!
Jenna
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chloe Marshall tugged a dirty tank top out of the hamper, sniffed it to make sure it wasn't totally unacceptable for wear, then slipped into it. One had to make concessions when the washing machine broke down. Again. It seemed all she'd done lately was make concessions.
She pulled her sun-bleached ponytail through the back of her Dodgers cap, grabbed a pair of toaster pop-ups for breakfast and her keys, then whistled up Friday, her black-and-white Australian shepherd. "Go for a ride?"
The dog tore through the run-down apartment in order to get to the door before Chloe could change her mind, as if she would. They'd been inseparable since they first laid eyes on each other at the dog pound three years ago; Chloe had learned not to take another job where she'd take home more than her paycheck.
Friday, stubby tail wagging and tongue hanging out, hogged the driver's seat of Chloe's army-surplus jeep.
"Move over. You know you can't drive."
Chloe slipped in behind the wheel, coaxed the vintage vehicle to start one more time, whispered a quick "Thank you" to the powers that be and headed north, away from Santa Barbara. Friday kept her brown eyes steadfastly on Chloe until she'd devoured all but the last crumb of her strawberry pop-ups, which she shared.
Rancho Santa Ynez, a quaint, private little rancho with low stucco buildings and red-tiled roofs, nestled snugly in the Santa Ynez Mountains. Chloe couldn't afford to keep a horse there herself, but she bartered her equine skills for riding time.
She tapped her horn to warn the barn cats that she'd brought their worst enemy, then parked next to her best friend Moira's limo. Friday leaped out and took up her vigilant post as man's best friend and feline eradicator. Though if the dog ever caught one, Chloe wasn't sure just what she'd do with it.
"Morning, John."
Moira's driver paced a slow circle around the princess's shiny black limo. He had a rolled up newspaper in one hand, and he tipped his head respectfully in Chloe's direction. "Miss Marshall."
It was John's job to drive Moira to the rancho and wait for her. It was his passion to prevent the cats from adorning the limo's spotless sheen with pawprints. Now that Chloe was here and Friday had sent the cats scurrying for the rafters, John could take a break.
"Have you been here long?"
"Twelve and a half minutes, to be exact"
John was always exact. Moira's whole staff, as a matter of fact, was exact. Unequaled. Perfect in every way.
Which only highlighted the foibles in Chloe's everyday existence. The broken washing machine. The cranky Jeep. The dented front bumper that hadn't been her fault.
"Chloe!" Moira yelled from inside the barn. "Come get this mutt away from me."
"See you later, John."
Everyone else steered clear of Chloe's dog, and vice versa. Moira, however, was a princess for real, in spite of being Chloe's best friend. And Her Royal Highness, the Princess Moira of Ennsway, didn't have it in her to give the shepherd a wide berth and ignore the perpetual growls.
"Hi, Moira." With a simple wave of her hand, Chloe dispersed Friday to the other end of the barn before Moira had a hissy fit.
"Who're you riding today?"
Chloe didn't get her pick of whom she rode; it was determined by the number of hours she'd worked. And the drudge scale. Graining at dawn bartered a better mount than, say, graining in the evening. And a week of mucking out stalls gave her two hours' use of the owner's prize stallion.
Chloe hadn't earned anything this week. "Bum's Henry."
Moira snickered. "Really, Chloe, Doc's wasting a good equestrian like you on Hank."
"Yeah, I know, but I had a test in geology
and
a paper in psych this week, so you know I didn't get much real work done. It's okay, though. Hank reminds me of the first mustang I caught and broke."
Moira got a dreamy look on her face. Chloe suspected it had nothing to do with the fact that some poor lackey was tacking up Moira's Lipizzan for her. A princess, after all, didn't have to do anything on a drudge scale. She got to sit cross-legged on a bale of sweet alfalfa and wait patiently. Now, if a genie suddenly appeared and granted Chloe three wishes, that one sounded like a pretty good start. But that was about as likely to happen as her lottery numbers all coming up on the same day.
"A real mustang?"
"Uh-huh." In the stall, Chloe had to squeeze into a corner with Hank, a bay gelding, just to get the halter on the opinionated beast. She started to lead him out, and Friday ran in to nip at his heels, just in case he didn't feel up to a workout today. No one was surprised when Hank bolted through the door, barely missing Chloe's feet, which was entirely due to her quick reflexes and not his sparkling personality.
"You're so lucky," Moira said.
Chloe tripped over her own feet. "Excuse me?"
"Well, look at you."
Chloe checked out her unwashed tank top, her faded jeans, and her cowboy boots, which were so old, they had stories to tell. "Yeah, so?"
Moira lowered her voice. "You live by yourself. You drive by yourself. You can cover a bad hair day with a ball cap
"I always wear a ball cap."
Moira smiled apologetically. "I know. I didn't mean anything by it. I just meant if you
had
a bad hair day, no one would notice."
"Uh-huh." She'd never heard her friend quite like this. "And this is leading where?"
Moira sighed as Chloe hooked Hank in the cross ties and applied the mud scraper and a good deal of elbow grease to his coat. "I dreamed about the castle last night."
Chloe perked up. Moira used to tell such wonderful stories about the castle where she'd grown up in actual bailey, a great hall, a staff that outnumbered a small city, birthday parties with elephants to ride...
"I'm surprised I dreamed about it. I don't miss it at all."
Chloe did, and she'd never even set foot in Ennsway, or any other part of Europe for that matter. "Tell me about it," she begged.
"My dream?"
"Your castle."
And so, while Chloe scraped crust off Hank, Moira rewove fairy tales about her childhood—a stable full of prize horses, Christmas gifts of porcelain dolls and diamond bracelets from heads of state, a canopied bed in a room big enough to house an orchestra....