Buch lesen: «Nobody's Princess»

One

Alex Brennan had never considered himself a hero, but he believed that a good man lived his life by certain unshakable rules. The strong had a responsibility to protect the weak. A decent man never backed down from a principle. A guy without honor was lower than pond scum.

That code of values was so ingrained that Alex rarely even thought about it. Until recently.

Two weeks ago—specifically the day his bride stood him up at the altar—Alex had accidentally started noticing that a bunch of heroes throughout history had a common problem.

Good guys had notoriously bad luck with their girls—and it was never more obvious than in the movies. Bogart, for instance, was left standing alone at the end of Casablanca. Gable never did get Scarlett. Costner went through all that bodyguarding nonsense with Whitney and ended up with a song instead of the girl.

Late-afternoon sunshine speckled light and shadow on the dusty bookshelves of the public library. A winsome, whispery breeze redolent with magnolias drifted through the long, tall windows. The library was as lively as a morgue—which suited Alex’s mood to a T. No place on the planet beat Silvertree, North Carolina, on the first of May—every sane person in town had succumbed to the irresistible “spring fever” day and was out playing hookey. The deserted library offered him an ideal place to brood. He thumped a pencil end-to-end on the old, scarred oak table, as he further considered the problem.

Those old tales seemed...well, telling. Heroes might conquer dragons, build a couple of empires, save mankind from some horrendous evil. But being good guys didn’t seem to guarantee success with their best girls. Maybe honor wasn’t sexy. Good guys just didn’t seem to stir a woman’s heart the way the bad boys did. A taste of wicked not only seemed to appeal to the delicate female gender...but they seemed to find good guys downright boring.

A loud kerthump made Alex’s head shoot up. Someone had dropped a book in one of the nearby aisles. The thump was followed by a colorful expletive in a throaty female alto. Except for the librarians at the front desk, Alex had thought he had the place to himself. But beyond being temporarily startled by the noise, he paid no attention.

Research tomes were precisely stacked in an impenetrable blockade all around him. Technically he’d popped into-the library to prepare for tomorrow’s class. High school kids today hated learning history as much as he had—which was why he’d broken with all Brennan tradition and done a damn fool crazy thing. He’d become a teacher.

Alex never really felt he had a choice. Someone had to make history exciting to the kids. Someone had to convince them that history was more than dry dates, but a record of drama and courage and the power of the human spirit. Unless the kids understood how the human race screwed up, the next generation was just going to repeat the same mistakes. Teaching history was about making heroes come alive and serving them up to kids in the way of role models.

Of course, a teacher had to keep the bubble gum generation awake to instill any of that. It was challenging to keep a dog awake on the semester covering medieval history, but Alex theorized that he could spice it up with some King Arthur lore—hence the weighty research tomes piled on the table around him. The ideals in the Arthurian legend were the stuff that lifted mankind from the Dark Ages—honor, loyalty, justice, chivalry. Camelot was meant to be a land where fairness and truth were nurtured, where beauty thrived, where love was an ideal.

But Alex had barely opened the first text before the dark, broody mood kidnapped his attention. The problem was the legendary King Arthur. He was another blasted hero who’d lost his best girl. Another good guy who hadn’t done one thing wrong. But because honor couldn’t compete with a younger, sexier stud named Lancelot, Arthur had lost everything.

Alex wasn’t inclined to take the comparison too far. He was no King Arthur. Still, he knew that precise feeling of loss. Painfully, intimately well.

Another kerthump sounded from the next book aisle over. Then another. Followed by a trail of extremely loud and colorful curses from the same throaty female alto.

Alex shot an exasperated scowl in the general direction of Ms. Klutz. No one, but no one, ever hung out in the myths and legends section but him. And especially on this to-die-for spring day, he should have been guaranteed a private refuge in this back corner of the library. Couldn’t a guy wallow in a deep, dark case of self-pity in peace and quiet?

Apparently not. He’d barely thrown down his pencil before the lady abruptly charged around the corner, juggling a good dozen hefty books and heading for him at a dead run.

For a second Alex froze like the iceberg in the Titanic’s path. Not that the woman was so big—the tonnage of books teetering in her arms looked bigger than she did. But she was obviously hustling to get them to the table and set them down before they all toppled and fell. The mission was doomed. Alex caught a fleeting impression of flashing scarlets and wild silky hair before disaster struck.

She made it to the oak table, but not before the volumes started shifting and spilling. Her river of books crashed into the sea of his. Several sailed to the floor; one ended on his lap.

Curses followed. Not his. Being out of breath didn’t seem to limit her vocabulary, and totally incomprehensibly—once she got rid of her armload—she started laughing.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! You just can’t imagine the day I’ve had. It’s been one thing after another. ... Here, I’ll get that. You don’t have to help—”

Alex instinctively sprang to his feet. Helping a lady in trouble was second nature, an integral part of the Southern gentleman’s code he grew up with—but in this case, basic survival instincts were the far more powerful motivator. God knew how much more damage she could do if left to her own devices.

She was breathlessly huffing and puffing as she bounced down to pick up the fallen books. On one of her bounces back up, her elbow came mortifyingly close to a poke in his crotch. He opened his mouth, closed it faster than a fish and caught a noseful of some spicy, exotic perfume. By the time he’d rescued the last of the fallen books, she’d managed to knock over more of his meticulously neat research stack.

“I’ll get it, I’ll get it. Sheesh, I’m sorry—”

“Nothing to be sorry about. Accidents happen.”

“All I had to do was make two trips, but no, I was trying to save time and carry all the books at one time. It’s just that they were all so heavy—”

“I can see that.”

“I must have sounded like a bull in a china shop, but I never expected to find anyone else back here. I’ve come to think of this as my sacred spot because no one else is ever back here. My air conditioner at home went on the fritz, and I just needed to get in a couple hours’ work where it was cool—you don’t mind if I sit at the same table, do you?”

Mind? Alex craved peace. He needed quiet. The Silvertree Public Library had two stories of sprawling space for her to choose another table. And not that a gentleman would ever lift his territorial leg on a lady, but he was here first. Still, manners had been imprinted so deeply in the men in his family that his response was automatic.

“No problem,” he said, and then swiftly pulled a book in front of him and ducked his head.

Eventually she quit huffing and puffing. Eventually she sat down. Eventually she noisily rearranged her hodgepodge of books and clattered in her purse for a pen, and finally—there was a God—she settled down.

Alex couldn’t.

He vaguely recognized her. Typical of North Carolina small towns, Silvertree was a friendly place. Maybe they’d pulled into the same gas station, or he’d seen her in a grocery store or on the street. Alex couldn’t imagine a man younger than 105 who’d fail to notice her.

She was several inches shorter than his six feet, but her figure—delicately speaking—could inspire a guy to crash a car or two to get a closer look. Her hair was caramel brown, shoulder length, with silky scoops of curls all over the place. No order. No control. Which about summed up the rest of her as well, Alex mused.

A long sun-shaped earring dangled from one ear, a long moon earring from the other. Apparently they were a matched set. She was wearing a scallop-necked red T-shirt—snug enough to give a man a heart attack—and a long skirt that was a swirl of colors: fuchsias, oranges and reds all blurred together. Her sandals showed off red-painted toenails—about the same color as her strawberry lipstick. Bracelets dangling clanged every time she moved.

Alex wasn’t trying to sneak looks at her, but she moved a lot. And every time he glanced up, faster than bad news, he found her hazel eyes on him.

Her eyes were huge. Deep set and as lushly dramatic as the rest of her. She wasn’t precisely pretty, but her oval face had a complexion as pale and soft as vanilla, with high broad cheekbones and a full sensual mouth. Her face was unignorably striking, and her figure was downright dangerous. The skirt concealed her legs, but she didn’t appear to be carrying any spare pounds—except upstairs. The stretchy T-shirt made no secret of the lush, voluptuous curves above her waist.

She was...Alex searched his mind for the right descriptive term. Sexy shot to his brain faster than a bullet, but was swiftly, uneasily rejected. Hell, he hadn’t thought of a sexist term like that since he was a teenager. Alarming was more like it.

In fact, alarming seemed to describe her perfectly. There was nothing wrong with her haunting hazel eyes, flashy style or mesmerizing red mouth. But Alex’s taste in women had always been more like...well, like Gwen.

His fiancée had been petite. A lady, inside and out. Gwen was soft-spoken and soft-mannered, prone to wearing fragile feminine pastels that suited her blond-and-blue-eyed fairness. She’d been everything Alex had ever dreamed of in a woman. Everything he’d waited a lifetime to find.

Until she’d left him at the altar, and run off with a ten-years-younger, good-looking rogue named Lance.

“You look really caught up in sad thoughts.”

Alex’s head shot up. “Beg your pardon?”

Those huge hazel eyes were all over his face again, studying him as intrusively as a cop could frisk a suspect. “I don’t mean to pry. You just had this look, as if you were carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. Are you okay?”

No, he wasn’t okay. He wasn’t remotely okay. But he didn’t know the woman from Adam, couldn’t believe she would ask a total stranger such a nosy question. And for sure, he couldn’t imagine how to answer it.

His reticence seemed to fly right by her. The undauntable woman smiled...a slow, warm smile that crinkled those eyes into pinpoints of light. Impulsively she leaned over the table and extended a hand, offering him a view down the scooped neck of her T-shirt that turned his throat desert dry.

“I’m Regan. Regan Stuart. I know I’ve seen your face around town somewhere—do you teach at the college?”

“No. That is, I’m a teacher—but I teach high school history, nothing at the college level—”

“Well, I’m a teacher, too. I thought I might have seen you around the Whitaker College library before—I’m an assistant prof, teach women’s studies. And you’re—?”

“Alex Brennan.” He didn’t want to give up his name, any more than he wanted to shake her hand, but there seemed no way of avoiding either without being rude. Her palm clapped against his in an exuberant, pumping handshake, as forthright and blunt as she was. Her skin was soft, though, and warmer than sunlight.

She dropped her hand quickly enough, but his pulse was suddenly skidding down a slick, unfamiliar road At thirty-four, Alex was more than familiar with hormones, but it was one thing to recognize her attractiveness, and another to feel a kindling responsiveness to her. He loved Gwen. And Gwen had always inspired loving, sensual feelings in him, but not this strange, flash-fire kind of sexual awareness.

It made him feel guilty. And nervous. Quickly he stuffed his hands in his pockets and hoped she didn’t notice his sudden awkwardness.

She didn’t seem to. Nothing seemed to quell her gregarious friendliness. “Well, nice to meet you, Alex. It’s really rare I find anyone in the myths and legends section but me, and I couldn’t help but notice all your books. ... You’re preparing for a class?”

“Yes. And I’m afraid I really have a lot to do.” Thankfully, she took the hint. Her head ducked, then his head ducked. Pages turned. A spring-laden breeze whispered in the open windows. It was peaceful just like that.

For maybe two minutes.

“Do you like teaching?”

Hell. It was like trying to concentrate with a fire alarm going off next to him. He wasn’t sure why she kept ringing his personal fire alarm, but she was far too disturbing a woman to possibly ignore.

“Yeah, I love teaching,” he answered her, and heard the instinctive stubborn note in his voice. He got grief all the time—especially from his brother, Merle—on his choice of career. The Brennans were one of the old, landed families in Silvertree. Few in the community could fathom what the Sam Hill he was doing in a classroom. Alex didn’t care what anyone thought, but he was used to no one understanding.

“Me, too. I love working with young people. I even believe that corny line from the Whitney Houston song about ‘the children are our future.’ Can’t imagine doing anything else.” All animated, she leaned forward, giving him another throat-parching view. “You’ve really got me curious, though. I see all the books around you on Camelot and the Arthurian legend...but I thought you said you taught history?”

“I do. But we’re in the medieval stretch. The kids are in no big hustle to get excited about 1066 and the Battle of Hastings.”

“I’m with them.” Her eyes danced with teasing humor. “I can well imagine that King Arthur is an easier sell.”

“Anything’s an easier sell than the Dark Ages. And it’s not like I can’t teach them something from the Camelot legend. Half our political concepts about equality and democracy came from the ideals emerging in that time....” Alex suddenly frowned, startled to realize he was actually inviting more conversation with her.

She seemed at ease, as if they were old friends. “Yeah, I practically inhaled the Camelot story when I was a kid. I’m no believer in heroes, but Arthur seemed to be one of the true-blue good guys. It’s just a shame he was so brain smart and so life dumb.”

“Life dumb?”

“Uh-huh. All those brilliant ideas and ideals, but he didn’t seem to have a dog’s sense about people. I mean, look who he picked for his pals. He trusted Lancelot—who wooed away his wife right under his nose. And he fell for Guinevere—who had to be one of the shallowest nitwits of all times. All it took to impress her was a young guy in a pair of tights with a big sword. If she’d had a brain, she’d have recognized that Arthur was by far the better man.”

Temporarily, women taking off with other men was an extremely sore spot with Alex. So was the size of the other guy’s sword. He had no desire to pick that emotional scab around a stranger, but somehow he’d gotten embroiled in this conversation and he couldn’t just drop it now. “I think you may have misunderstood Arthur. There was nothing wrong with his judgment. He simply recognized that no one can help who they fall in love with. And he never blamed either Lancelot or Guinevere for being true to their feelings.”

“Sheesh. Don’t tell me you really believe all that poppycock?”

“Poppycock?”

He caught a dazzling sparkle of white teeth when she grinned again. Those dangerous hazel eyes of hers were still studying him. Alex couldn’t imagine why. Nothing in his mirror reflected anything unusual—he was an ordinary six feet, blue eyes, brown hair, and he wore a beard because he was too absentminded to remember to shave. Truth to tell, he tended to forget his looks altogether, but he really doubted there was anything in his appearance to attract a strikingly sensual woman like Regan.

At the moment Alex doubted his ability to attract a stone.

Yet she was leaning forward again, as if nothing on the planet interested her but talking with him. “Well, I’ve never taught King Arthur, but you’re not the only one teaching myths and legends. I’m teaching three courses this term on fairy tales.”

“Fairy tales,” he echoed.

“Fairy tales at the adult level. For women. In other words, all the poppycock lies we’ve sold ourselves through history...knights in shining armor, happily-ever-afters, heroes—all that humorous boloney.”

“You think heroes are boloney?”

“Did I, um, touch a nerve?”

Of course she didn’t. He didn’t even know her. He just felt compelled to tactfully correct the drastic misconception in her thinking. “You don’t believe in heroic behavior? That a critical part of the teaching job is to instill ideals and role models in young people?”

“Well, sure. But I also believe young women have been brought up for centuries, hoping to be dazzled by a knight in shining armor, and there is no such beast. Guinevere was a perfect example. Maybe Lancelot looked good in a pair of tights, but he betrayed his best friend and poached another guy’s woman besides. She suckered into a classic jerk parading as a hero. She’d have been better off understanding that there was no such animal...you’re looking much better.”

“Of all the one-sided, twisted interpretations of—um, excuse me?” Her last comment had seemed to come out of nowhere.

She cupped her chin in her palm, a thoughtful expression on her face. “You really are looking better,” she observed. “Color shooting up your neck. Life flashing in your eyes. You looked like you’d lost your best friend when I first sat down.”

“I did.”

“A love affair gone wrong?”

“As wrong as you can get. She didn’t show up at the altar, and I...” Alex’s voice died. Frustration clawed through him. She had everything so confused about the Arthurian legend that he’d gotten all riled up and just hadn’t been thinking. He couldn’t believe he’d mentioned anything about his ex-fiancée. A man took his blows on the chin. Until that instant, he’d cut off anyone who’d tried direct conversation or sympathy with him about Gwen. Something about Regan was mangling his mind.

And the terrifying woman suddenly reached her hand across the table to squeeze his. “Aw, hell, I was afraid it was something like that. What a painful thing to go through. I’m really sorry.”

A librarian wheeled a squeaky cart of books down a nearby aisle. A pair of teenagers jostled each other as they walked past. The magnolia-scented sunlight was still coming through the windows...nothing was new, nothing different. Except for his sudden disturbingly intimate awareness of Regan that made no sense at all.

She couldn’t possibly care about a man she didn’t know, yet he had the craziest feeling she understood. The warm empathy in her eyes radiated sincerity. He wasn’t expecting an emotional connection—not to her, not to anyone. And seeping through his nerves was the slow, alluring electric current flowing between her hand and his. For the second time he withdrew his hand and slammed the misbehaving appendage back in his pocket. “We were arguing,” he said awkwardly, swiftly.

Another one of those slow, mischievous smiles. “Yeah. I don’t believe in heroes. You clearly do. And I do love a good fight—especially on this subject—but I don’t usually pick an argument with total strangers. Even on Tuesdays.”

“Just the other six days of the week?”

She chuckled. “Only on days when I sense someone else likes a good, rousing debate. But besides that, you just looked like you could use a little distraction. Sometimes it helps to talk with an outsider, you know? It’s not like I know you. What’s the harm?”

That was the whole problem. There seemed no harm. She was unlike anyone in his life—or anyone who was likely to be—and she kept looking at him with those deep, soft eyes. And out it came. The whole corny story of a man who’d waited to marry, unwilling to settle for less than a soul mate, someone who seemed as compatible with him as two sides of the same coin. When he’d found her, his whole world seemed right. For the same reason, once she took off, his whole life seemed wrong. He couldn’t shake the feelings of loss. Nothing he’d ever believed in seemed sure anymore. He had never guessed she was unhappy. He couldn’t grasp how he’d failed her.

Regan listened. He didn’t know for how long. Every time he quit talking, she’d ask him another question in that whiskey-smooth alto of hers. Maybe her voice had him mesmerized. Hell, maybe she did. But she didn’t let up on those soft-voiced, nosy, prying questions until he was spent.

For a few moments after that, silence fell between them. Alex was suddenly aware the bright, afternoon sunshine had faded to the hushed stillness of twilight. He felt as if he was awakening from some fruitcake spell, where he’d been someone else for a few minutes—positively not himself, because Alex Brennan never spilled his private life in front of anyone.

Then, suddenly, it was over. Regan glanced at her bangle watch and yelped in surprise. She shot to her feet. “Good grief, I didn’t realize the time. I have to go!”

She grabbed her unwieldy purse and three books, then darted over to his side of the table, tilted her head and kissed him. If Alex could have guessed the kiss was coming, he might have flown for Tahiti. Or stopped her before it could happen. Or swung her into his lap and responded like a wild man who’d lost all his marbles.

He never had time to make any of those choices. The kiss was over almost before it began. He barely caught the sensation of her sun-warm mouth and the tease of a sweet, forbidden taste before she sprang upright again. She jogged back to the other side of the table, scooped up the rest of her research texts, dropped one, cursed, noisily scraped the chair...and then charged out of his life as fast as she’d charged in.

Alex sat immobile for several more minutes. His heart was slamming, his palms damp, his pulse skittery. The last time he remembered suffering the symptoms of shock, one of those female hurricanes had been terrorizing the North Carolina coast.

The hurricanes had been real. Alex wasn’t absolutely positive that Regan Stuart was.

There seemed some telling evidence that she was an illusion. He’d always been comfortable around women. Quiet women. Quiet, restful, peaceful women. Regan was as blunt, bold and sexy as a man’s definition of dynamite. No one he could conceivably have opened up to about his life. No one who could possibly have kissed him.

Spring fever addled men’s minds. Alex hadn’t slept well in weeks now. Losing Gwen had dominated his mind, the wound raw and unhealable, and he figured he wasn’t going to recover until he understood why she left him, jettisoned the self-pity and faced up to how he’d failed her.

Under those conditions, maybe any man could daydream up the magic of a witchy, wild Lorelei.

Alex shook his head and slowly started to neatly, efficiently gather up his research tomes. He could halfway buy the illusion thing. He wasn’t himself. He wasn’t thinking clearly. But Regan had definitely been real—and the proof of that was the one element in their encounter that nagged at Alex’s mind like a beesting. It had nothing to do with her intimidatingly earthy sensuality or her looks or anything like that. Alex couldn’t imagine a man alive who’d fail to notice those things—even if he were in love with another woman.

But Regan was a woman who didn’t believe in heroes.

From the time Gwen left him, Alex had felt as if he’d lost half his soul. Now, though, he couldn’t help but wonder how Regan had lost half of hers.

She hadn’t said one thing about herself...and as Alex exited the library and headed for home, he doubted that he’d ever find out the answer. In a town as small as Silvertree, it wasn’t that unlikely that he’d run into her. But a repeat of that strange, impossible, unsettling encounter couldn’t possibly happen again.