The Boss and His Cowgirl (17 page)

Clay attempted to speak, but the words came out mangled, his voice a rusty saw on metal pipe. He cleared his throat, spoke again. “Georgie? What's wrong?” His insides twisted as he second-guessed the gift. Maybe it was too soon. Or too much. Or maybe he was the world's biggest idiot. “Sweet pea?”

Her fingers again fussed with the tissue, her shoulders slumping as her chin tucked against her chest. “Why did you buy this?”

Her question was whispered from between chapped lips, and he was torn between kissing her or passing her the water glass with the bent straw. “Because I wanted you to have it.”

“But it's red lingerie.” She looked up, her eyes holding some emotion he wasn't sure he wanted to identify.

“You were wearing red lingerie in my bathroom in Scottsdale. And you wore red lingerie the first time we made love.” He cupped her cheek in his hand. “Red is your color.”

Her tears caught Clay by surprise. He settled next to her on the hospital bed, gathering her close. Brushing them away with a gentle swipe of his thumb, he kissed her forehead. “You're beautiful, Georgie, and I love seeing you in sexy lingerie.”

She pushed against him ineffectually and the scarf on her bald head slipped off. “No, I'm not. I'm not beautiful. I'm not sexy.”

“Look at me, sweet pea. You will always be beautiful to me because I love you.”

“Even sick?” She flicked a hand toward her bandaged chest. “Even without these?”

“You're alive. That's all that matters.” He kissed her then, deep and sweet, to prove his point. That she was alive and that he loved her. Always.

Epilogue

G
eorgie floated down the gentle slope on her father's arm. Clay waited for her at the base of the golden path across the placid lake that led to the setting sun. His family waited with him—his cousin Boone and his brothers Cord, Chance, Chase and Cash. His nephew CJ, clutching a satin pillow with their wedding bands tied to it, stood on his right. Opposite them, her best friend and maid of honor, Jen, and her soon-to-be sisters Cassie and Jolie smiled at her.

Clay's father was notably absent. Her mother was notably not, standing on the left in her designer mother-of-the-bride dress. Ev and her husband were there, as were other friends, including Miriam Davis, the reporter from the
Washington Post
. The Tate brothers surrounded their mother. Deacon Tate stood at the back of the congregation, strumming an acoustic guitar, the song soft and romantic and perfect.

Clay stepped forward to meet her, accepted her hand when her father took it from the crook of his arm as he kissed her cheek. “I love you, baby,” her dad murmured. “Take care of my little girl, Clayton.”

“Always.” No hesitation. No regret. The word filled with the promise of the rest of their lives. The news from her doctor, received that morning, guaranteed the future. Cancer-free. Follow-ups, but she was clear of the disease.

The ceremony was traditional. Clay's eyes were warm and moist as he said the words, “For better, for worse, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish until death do us part.”

She added her own promise to his.

When the minister pronounced them man and wife, Clay kissed her, deeply, thoroughly and with tongue before scooping her into his arms, still kissing her, much to the amusement of their audience. He didn't put her down but carried her up the hill to the backyard of her dad's house. The caterers had been busy.

Photographs. Hugs. Kisses. Well-wishes. Toasts. Cake. More toasts. And then she was in Clay's arms as Deacon and the Sons of Nashville sang Clint Black's “When I Said I Do” for their first dance. Clay held her close and moved with the music while she let the words wash over her. This wasn't the song she'd picked, but it was perfect.

Clay twirled her out and reeled her in only to bend her into a dip. He kissed her arched throat and whispered, “Are you wearing it?”

She blushed but nodded, thinking about the bridal tradition. She wore her grandmother's pearls for her something old. The blue satin ribbon garter on her right thigh got the color right. She even had a real sixpence in one of the white cowgirl boots she'd borrowed from Cassie. Clay, however, was not referring to any of those things.

“Yes,” she sighed before her breath caught at the sexy glints in his eyes. Clay owned her heart.

Beneath the silk organza and lace of her full-skirted wedding gown, she wore a red satin bustier and panties—the same lingerie he'd gifted her with that day in the hospital. She hadn't worn the ensemble until she slipped into it that afternoon as she dressed for their wedding. She'd saved it for the moment he'd hold her in his arms, when he kissed her and made love to her for the first time as man and wife. This was her something new—the promise of the new life he'd given her there in her hospital room.

“Good,” he murmured against her lips. “Red is definitely your color.”

* * * * *

If you loved this novel, pick up all the books in the
RED DIRT ROYALTY
series from Silver James

COWGIRLS DON'T CRY
THE COWGIRL'S LITTLE SECRET

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TWINS FOR THE TEXAN
by
USA TODAY
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TAKE ME, COWBOY
by
USA TODAY
bestselling author Maisey Yates

THE RANCHER'S MARRIAGE PACT
by Kristi Gold

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ARRANGED MARRIAGE, BEDROOM SECRETS
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Arranged Marriage, Bedroom Secrets

by Yvonne Lindsay

One

“I
sn't that you?”

Mila shoved an unruly lock of her long black hair off her face and looked up in irritation from the notes she'd been making.

“Is what me?” she asked her friend.

“On the TV, now!”

Mila turned her attention to the flat screen currently blaring the latest entertainment news trailers that so captivated her best friend and felt her stomach lurch. There, for all the world to see, were the unspeakably awful official photos taken at her betrothal to Prince Thierry of Sylvain seven years ago. Overweight, with braces still on her teeth and a haircut that had looked so cute on a Paris model and way less cute on an awkward eighteen-year-old princess—especially one who was desperately attempting to look more sophisticated and who had ended up, instead, looking like a sideshow clown. She shuddered.

“I know it doesn't look completely like you, but that
is
you, isn't it? Princess Mila Angelina of Erminia? Is that really your name?” Sally demanded, one finger pointing at the TV screen while her eyes pinned Mila with a demanding stare.

There was no point in arguing. Hiding a cringe, Mila merely inclined her head. She looked back down at her notes for a thesis she'd likely never be permitted to complete, but her concentration was gone. How would her friend react to this news?

“You're going to marry a prince?”

Mila couldn't be certain if Sally was outraged because Mila was actually engaged to a prince, or because she'd never thought to let her best friend in on the secret of her real identity. She sighed and put her pen down. As an uncelebrated princess from a tiny European kingdom, she'd flown under the radar in the United States since her arrival seven years ago, but now it was clearly time to face the music.

She'd known Sally since their freshman year at MIT and, while her friend had sometimes looked a little surprised that Mila—or Angel as she was known here in the States—had a chaperone, didn't date and had a team of bodyguards whenever she went out, Sally had accepted Angel's quirks without question. After all, Sally herself was heiress to an IT billionaire and lived with similar, if not quite as binding, constraints. The girls had naturally gravitated to one another.

It was time to be honest with her friend. Mila sighed again. “Yes, I am Mila Angelina of Erminia and, yes, I'm engaged to a prince.”

“And you're a princess?”

“I'm a princess.”

Mila held her breath, waiting for her friend's reaction. Would she be angry with her? Would it ruin the friendship she so treasured?

“I feel like I don't even know you, but seriously, that's so cool!” Sally gushed.

Mila rolled her eyes and laughed in relief. Of all the things she'd anticipated coming from Sally's rather forthright mouth, that hadn't been one of them.

“I always had a feeling there were things you weren't telling me.” Sally dropped onto the couch beside Mila, scattering her papers to the floor. “So, what's he like?”

“Who?”

It was Sally's turn to roll her eyes this time. “The prince of course. C'mon, Angel, you can tell me. Your secret's safe with me, although I am kind of pissed at you for not telling me about him, or who you really are, any time in, oh, the last seven years!”

Sally softened her words with a smile, but Mila could see that she was still hurt by the omission.

How did you explain to someone that even though you'd been engaged to a man for years, you barely even knew him? One formal meeting, where she'd been so painfully shy she hadn't even been capable of making eye contact with the guy, followed by sporadic and equally formal letters exchanged by a diplomatic pouch, didn't add up to much in the relationship stakes.

“I...I don't really know what he's like.” Mila took in a deep breath. “I have Googled him, though.”

Her friend laughed out loud. “You have no idea how crazy that just sounded. You're living a real life fairy tale, y'know? European princess betrothed from childhood—well, okay, the age of eighteen at least—to a reclusive neighboring prince.” Sally sighed and clutched at her chest dramatically. “It's so romantic—and all you can say is that you've
Googled
him?”

“Now who sounds crazy? I'm marrying him out of duty to my family and my country. Erminia and Sylvain have hovered on the brink of war for the last decade and a half. My marriage to Prince Thierry is supposed to end all that—unite our nations—if you can believe it could be that simple.”

“But don't you want love?”

“Of course I want love.”

Her response hung in the air between them. Love. It was all Mila had ever wanted. But it was something she knew better than to expect. Groomed from birth as not much more than a political commodity to be utilized to her country's greatest advantage, she'd realized love didn't feature very strongly alongside duty. When it came to her engagement, her agreement to the union had never been sought. It had been presented to her as her responsibility—and she'd accepted it. What else could she do?

Meeting the prince back then had been terrifying. Six years older than her, well-educated, charismatically gorgeous and oozing confidence, he'd been everything she was not. And she hadn't missed the hastily masked look of dismay on his face when they'd initially been introduced. Granted, she hadn't looked her best, but it had still stung to realize she certainly wasn't the bride he'd hoped for and it wasn't as if he could simply tell everyone he'd changed his mind. He, too, was a pawn in their betrothal—a scheme hatched by their respective governments in an attempt to quell the animosity that continued to simmer between their nations.

Mila rubbed a finger between her eyebrows as if by doing so she could ease the nagging throb that had settled there.

“Of course I want love,” she repeated, more softly this time.

She felt Sally's hand on her shoulder. “I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't joke.”

“It's okay.” Mila reached up and squeezed her friend's hand to reassure her.

“So, how come you came here to study? If peace was the aim, wouldn't they have wanted you two to marry as soon as possible?”

Again Mila pictured the look on Prince Thierry's face when he'd seen her. A look that had made her realize that if she was to be anything to him other than a representation of his duty, she needed to work hard to become his equal. She needed to complete her education and become a worthy companion. Thankfully, her brother, King Rocco of Erminia, had seen the same look on the prince's face and, later that night, when she'd tearfully appealed to him with her plan to better herself, he'd agreed.

“The agreement was that we'd marry on my twenty-fifth birthday.”

“But that's at the end of next month!”

“I know.”

“But you haven't finished your doctorate.”

Mila thought of all the sacrifices she'd made in her life to date. Not completing her PhD would probably be the most painful. While her brother had insisted she at least include some courses in political science, the main focus of her studies had been environmental science—a subject that she'd learned was close to the prince's heart. After years of study, it was close to hers now, too. Not being able to stand before him with her doctorate in hand, so to speak, was a painful thought to consider, but it was something she'd just have to get over. She certainly hadn't planned on things taking this long, but being dyslexic had made her first few years at college harder than she'd anticipated and she'd had to retake a number of courses. As Mila formed her reply to her friend, Sally was suddenly distracted.

“Oh, he's so hot!”

Mila snorted a laugh. “I know what he looks like. I've Googled him, remember.”

“No, look, he's on TV, now. He's in New York at that environmental summit Professor Winslow told us about weeks ago.”

Mila looked up so quickly she nearly gave herself whiplash. “Prince Thierry is here? In the US?”

She trained her gaze onto the TV screen and, sure enough, there he was. Older than she remembered him and, if it was humanly possible, even better looking. Her heart tumbled in her chest and she felt her throat constrict on a raft of emotions. Fear, attraction—longing.

“You didn't know he was coming?”

Mila tore her eyes from the screen and fought to inject the right level of nonchalance into her voice. “No, I didn't. But that's okay.”

“Okay? You think that's
okay
?” Sally's voice grew shrill. “The guy travels how many thousand miles to the country where you've been living for years now and he can't pick up a phone?”

“He's obviously only in New York for a short while and I'm sure he'll have a strict timetable set in place. I'm over here in Boston—he can't exactly just drop in.” She shrugged. “It's not like it matters, anyway. We're getting married in a little over four weeks' time.”

Her voice cracked on the words. Even though she played at being offhand, deep down it had come as a shock to see him on the TV. Would it have killed him to have let her know he was coming to America?

“Hmph. I can't believe you're not seeing each other while he's here,” Sally continued, clearly not ready to let go of the topic yet. “Don't you even want to see him?”

“He probably doesn't have time,” Mila deflected.

She didn't want to go into what she did or didn't want when it came to Prince Thierry. Her feelings on the subject were too confusing, even for her. She'd tried to convince herself many times that love at first sight was the construction of moviemakers and romance novelists, but ever since the day of their betrothal, she had yearned for him with a longing that went deep into the very fabric of her being. Was that love? She didn't know. It wasn't as if she'd had any stellar examples during her childhood.

“Well, even if he hadn't told me he was coming here, I'd certainly make time to see him if he was mine.”

Mila forced herself to laugh and to make the kind of comment Sally would expect her to make. “Well, he's not yours, he's mine—and I'm not sharing.”

As she expected, Sally joined in with her mirth. Mila kept her eyes glued to the screen for the duration of the segment about Prince Thierry—and tried to ignore the commentary about herself. The reporters were full of speculation as to her whereabouts, which had been kept strictly private for the past several years. Though she realized, if Sally had put two and two together as to who she was, what was to say others wouldn't, also?

She clung to the hope that no one would think to connect the ugly duckling of her engagement photo with the woman she had become. No longer was she the timid young woman with a mouth too large for her face and chubby cheeks and thighs. Somewhere between nineteen and twenty she'd begun a miraculous late-blooming transformation. The thirty extra pounds of puppy fat had long since melted from her body—her features and her figure fining down to what she was now, still curvy but no longer overweight. And her hair, thank goodness, had grown long and straight and thick. The dreadful cropped cut and frizzy perm she'd insisted on in a vain attempt to look sophisticated before meeting the prince was now nothing more than a humiliating memory. And she'd finally developed the poise that had been sadly lacking when she was just a teenager.

Would her soon-to-be husband find her attractive now? She hated to think he'd be put off by her, especially given how incredibly drawn
she
was to
him
.

Sally had been one hundred percent right that Prince Thierry was hot. And all through the broadcast she saw evidence of that special brand of charisma that he unconsciously exuded. Mila watched the way people in the background stopped and stared at the prince—drawn to him as if he was a particularly strong magnet and they were nothing but metal filings inexorably pulled into his field. She knew how they felt. It was the same sensation that had struck her on the day of their betrothal—not to mention since, whenever she'd seen pictures of him or caught a news bulletin on television when she was home on vacation back in Erminia.

She'd return there in just a few weeks. It was time to retrieve the mantle of responsibility she'd so eagerly, even if only temporarily, shrugged off and reassume her position.

She should be looking forward to it. Not only because of the draw she felt toward the prince, but because of what the marriage would mean to both of their countries. The tentative peace between her native Erminia and Sylvain had been shattered many years ago when Prince Thierry's mother had been caught,
in flagrante delicto
, with an Erminian diplomat. When both she and her lover had died in a fiery car crash fingers had pointed to both governments in accusation. Military posturing along the borders of their countries ever since had created its own brand of unrest within the populations. She'd understood that her eventual marriage to Prince Thierry would, hopefully, bring all that turmoil to an end—but she wanted something more than a convenient marriage. Was it too much to hope that she could make the prince love her, too?

Mila reached for the remote and muted the sound, ready to turn her attention back to her work, but Sally wasn't finished on the subject yet.

“You should go to New York and meet him. Turn up at the door to his hotel suite and introduce yourself,” Sally urged.

Mila laughed, but the sound lacked any humor. “Even if I could get away from Boston unchaperoned, I wouldn't get past his security, trust me. He's the Crown Prince of Sylvain, the sole heir to the throne. He's important.”

Sally rolled her eyes. “So are you. You're his fiancée, for goodness' sake. Surely he'd make time for you. And, as to Bernadette and the bruiser boys,” Sally said, referring to Mila's chaperone and round-the-clock bodyguards, “I think I could come up with a way to dodge them—if you were willing to commit to this, that is.”