A Royal Mess and Her Knight To Remember

1

“DRESSES, and anything pink, should be outlawed,” she muttered while pulling on stockings. She hated stockings, but at least she’d purchased the thigh-high kind.

Her own little defiance.

Princess Andrea Katrine Fran Brunner of Grunberg specialized in defiance. At twenty-six, Annie considered herself a grown-up now, but she was a tomboy at heart, and always had been.

Wearing a dress felt like…wearing a straitjacket. She couldn’t run in a dress, couldn’t ride her mountain bike. She couldn’t plop herself down on the beach and watch the waves. She couldn’t climb the highest tower of her castle home and stare off into the neighboring country of Switzerland, contemplating life, wearing a stupid dress.

She couldn’t do anything worth doing.

But it wasn’t up for discussion on this particular day. A bridesmaid had to wear a dress, and as improbable as it seemed, she’d landed herself a bridesmaid position.

She could put it off no longer. With an anticipatory frown, she straightened, took a deep breath, and turned in the tiny dressing room to face the mirror, much in the same way a prisoner would face an executioner.

“Oh, dear God.” She slapped her hands over her eyes.

She shouldn’t have looked.

Ignorance had been bliss.

Oh, man, it was bad. But she was strong, looked life straight in the eye, so she lowered her hands and faced her fate. Pink satin hugged her from breasts to hips, then flared out in ruffle after ruffle, all the way to the floor. Pink, pink and more pink.

She’d landed in hell, wearing Little Bo Peep’s dress.

She actually felt weak just looking at herself, and she sank to the floor. Immediately her skirts, aided by no less than three hoops, flew up over her head.

The words that erupted out of her mouth were not the words of a nice little princess. Blinded by the horrifying fashion nightmare, she tried to shove down the skirts, but it was a feat of fabric magic and couldn’t be done.

Struggling to her knees took all the considerable strength she had, and by the time she managed to get upright again she was huffing and puffing, her irritation at an all-time high.

“So much for losing my misery in champagne at the wedding,” she muttered. She’d need all her wits about her to keep from suffocating.

Breath still heaving, she stared into the mirror. Nothing had changed, except now her skirts were crooked and one breast nearly was exposed. Oops. She righted the bodice and swore the air blue again just because she could, which felt good. But facts were facts.

She was still wearing the ugliest bridesmaid dress to ever grace the earth.

At this point, regrets were useless, and a waste of time. She’d come to the United States, to Taos, New Mexico to be exact, to be in Lissa’s-the daughter of her mother’s best friend-wedding, and that’s what she would do.

Even if she’d rather have her fingernails slowly ripped out one by one.

But this dress. Granted, any dress might have given her some qualms, but she wasn’t unbendable. She’d made the occasional exception. Hadn’t she worn a kilt to Uncle Seany’s eightieth birthday party just last winter? Uncle Seany had appreciated the gesture, even if the press hadn’t. She’d been highlighted as a big fashion don’t.

No biggie. She’d spent most of her life being a bit of an enigma to the press, her friends…her family. When all the other good little princesses had been happy wearing dresses and lace and learning their place, Annie had climbed trees and tore her clothing and generally made everyone’s life-but mostly her British nanny, Amelia Grundy-a living hell.

Now, years and years later, the tomboy image had stuck. So she was stubborn, strong willed and tenacious. So she knew her mind and wasn’t afraid to speak it. So she wasn’t likely to catch a husband that way, so what?

She didn’t care.

Okay, she cared. She knew she scared men away with her frankness. With her attitude. Or by just by being a royal. But she was who she was, and no way would she be anyone different.

But she did have to wear this dress. No way around that. And though they’d just laugh their butts off at the sight of her, she wished her sisters Natalia and Lili were right next to her.

“Just get it over with,” Annie told her reflection. Knowing Lissa would ask how she liked the dress, Annie attempted a smile. It came out more like a snarl, so she tried again. The glass didn’t crack. Good sign.

Lifting her skirts in two fistfuls so she could walk, she pivoted, took a step, put her foot down on her own skirt and…fell on her face.

“Damn it.” Struggling, she managed to get up. She grabbed more fistfuls of pink satin and, muttering ungraciously beneath her breath, exited the fitting room without further mishap.

The main room of the bridal store was nearly all mirrors, surrounded by white silk-flower arrangements and built-in closets opened to reveal rack after rack of dresses that Annie wouldn’t have been caught dead in.

When she got married, she-whoa. Stop the presses. She wasn’t getting married. She’d long ago realized there wasn’t a man out there for her.

But if she ever did get married-say when hell froze over-there would not be a single pink satin dress in sight.

With all Annie’s considerable theatrical talents-she’d been staging temper tantrums since she was two years old-she’d done her best to get out of coming here in the first place. She had work, didn’t she? Publishing A Child Affair, her monthly magazine on child care and development, took time.

But Amelia Grundy, former nanny, and current friend and companion, had happily stepped in for her, offering to cover until she returned.

Annie had then tried to plan events that only she herself could attend. So Amelia, with her strange and inexplicable ability to make things happen, had cleared those off her calendar with a wave of her pencil.

Damn her efficient, British-and seemingly magical-hide. Amelia always knew best, always.

How infuriating.

While Annie had packed for this trip, Amelia had come into her room and hugged her tight. “Try to keep trouble at bay, Annie,” she’d said. “Try real hard.”

Annie had laughed. Oh, yes, Amelia knew her well. “I’m grown-up now. Trouble doesn’t follow me as it used to.”

“No, it leads,” had been Amelia’s wry reply.

Now Annie took her mind off the home she missed with all her heart and looked around the store. The silence startled her. The place was surprisingly empty. Odd. She’d come from the Taos Mountain Inn, which Lissa had rented out for the entire wedding party. She’d come alone, but still, there had been customers in here only a few moments ago.

And again, Annie wished Natalia was here. Her middle sister wasn’t required to be in the wedding, and therefore didn’t have to show up until Saturday morning. Same for her younger sister, Lili.

Not fair.

Then she imagined the look on Nat’s face when she caught sight of Annie dressed up like a fairy-tale victim waiting to happen and decided she was better off by herself.

“Get out of here.”

Annie, startled by the rough command, turned around. Well, she turned, but it took the dress a moment longer, and then once it got momentum, it nearly took her in a full circle.

The voice came from her right, where a man in a black tux stood on a white platform in front of a triad of mirrors.

Not just a regular man, either. Oh, my, no. Surrounded by mirrors and the specially contrived lighting to make all brides beautiful, this man…well. He was huge, and built like a Greek god. Tall, dark and incredible, was her first thought. Probably the most amazing, sexy-looking guy she’d ever seen-even given the handicap of the tux.

Not that an amazing, sexy-looking guy turned her head. No sirree, she wasn’t that vain. She required more than a mouthwatering body-which he happened to have in spades-to turn her head.

He needed a brain. A sense of humor. A tough, I’m-in-charge attitude. Definitely the attitude. She’d never denied being attracted to the bad-boy type.

Only problem was, the bad-boy type didn’t readily make himself available to princesses. Nor was she available. She’d had her fair share of trying, and she was done. Amelia had agreed in relief, saying the male population just wasn’t ready for her.

Oh, well. There always were fantasies. And in her fantasy, her main requirement of a man…it was almost too embarrassing to admit, even to herself.

He had to dote on her.

“Get out of here now,” the man in the tux said through his teeth, his eyes dark with fury.

He couldn’t be talking to her. No man would dare speak to her that way.

“Lady, move it.”

Well, how rude. And he was trying to intimidate her. They’d never even met, so his boorish behavior was completely unwarranted. She squinted to read the name on the piece of paper pinned to his jacket and went still.

Moore.

As in Kevin Moore. None other than Lissa’s groom. Terrific. It was this big lug’s fault that she was weighed down with tons of pink satin. That fact made it easier to stand up tall and glare at him in return, because she did not take looking like Little Bo Peep lightly.

“Are you deaf?” he asked.

Annie had many, many faults, the foremost being a rather formidable temper when stirred. It definitely was stirred now. She stepped forward, fists clenched at her side.

“I am most certainly not deaf,” she replied with what she thought was remarkable dignity, given what a jerk he was. “I just refuse to listen to rude-”

“Stop right there.”

She could hear the danger in his voice, but dangerous, edgy men didn’t scare her. Nothing did.

So she took another step and heard something that sounded an awful lot like the sound of the bad guy cocking a gun in a movie.

Slowly, carefully, she craned her neck toward the second man in the room, the man she’d assumed to be the tailor, since he was standing below Mr. Tux. Only, this man looked far more like a thug, with his short, stocky body sporting a badly fitted suit.

And now that she was staring at him, she realized he had no pins sticking out of his mouth.

Didn’t all tailors have pins sticking out of their mouths?

Furthermore, he had short stocky fingers to go with his short, stocky body, and she couldn’t imagine them being agile enough to thread a needle, much less wield it.

But what he did wield in his hand caught her attention, and everything came to a screeching halt, including her heart.

He held a gun. Pointed directly at her.

She revised her earlier thought. She was afraid of something.

She was afraid of guns pointed directly at her.