A Royal Mess and Her Knight To Remember (14 page)

“D
RESSES
,
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 im
probable 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 behav
ior 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.

“T
HAT DOESN'T LOOK
like a needle and thread,” the woman in pink said slowly. “Because I really need a needle-and-thread person here. Take a look at me in this dress, would you?” She lifted her arms and Kyle had to give it to her, her hands shook only slightly.

“I told you to get out of here,” he said beneath his breath.

“I thought you were just being rude,” she said beneath her breath right back, her eyes never leaving the gun still trained on her.

“Rude?”
He might have laughed, if this wasn't a nightmare waiting to happen. “I was trying to save your sorry ass.”

“Hey, now, that's no way to talk to a lady.” This from the guy holding the gun.

Why had Kyle bothered to get out of bed that morning? It wasn't enough to be forced into a tux. No, he had to be killed while doing it.

Well, damn it, he didn't plan to go easy, and he sure didn't plan to go while looking like a penguin, arguing with an insane lady in the most godawful dress he'd ever seen.

But when Jimmy the thug had turned his gun on her, every muscle within Kyle had tensed. This was
his
battle, and he refused to let anyone else get hurt, especially innocent bystanders. “Jimmy, remember who your target is here,” he said in quiet warning.

“I remember.” The gun didn't waver from the Lady In Pink. “But maybe I'll take a detour from killing you and have some fun first.”

Kyle heard the woman's gasp, but he kept his eyes on Jimmy Tarintino, nephew of Joseph Tarintino, the local mobster Kyle had put away just last week for one hundred and ten years plus three consecutive life sentences. “Don't get greedy now.”

“Greedy?” Jimmy's hand shook slightly, making Kyle's heart stop. The idiot was going to pull the trigger without even meaning to. “You're calling
me
greedy?” Jimmy asked incredulously. “You're the one who took my uncle down for the glory of it.”

Glory. Yeah, right. Glory was barely making enough money to keep him in a postage-stamp-size
condo. Glory was risking life and limb on a daily basis being a cop, only to be taken down in a bridal shop.

Wearing a tux.

Kyle would have given just about anything to have his gun on him right now. But when Kevin had seen Kyle's gun tucked in the back of his jeans, he'd about blown a gasket.
No guns in a bridal shop,
he'd said.

Someone had forgotten to tell that to Jimmy.

Jimmy trained his gun back on Kyle but kept his eyes on the woman. He licked his lips. Grinned. “Just a little detour, I think. You don't mind waiting to die, do you Kyle? I'll let you watch.”

Yeah, his gun would be good right about now. “Jimmy—”

Jimmy took a sidestep toward the woman, the gun still on Kyle.

Ah, hell. Blood was not going to go well with his pink cummerbund, but he took a step forward anyway. He was still on the platform, with Jimmy below him. Three wide steps down was where the woman stood. Kyle figured if he could get close enough, he could take a flying leap and tackle Jimmy.

“Come here, pretty thing,” Jimmy coaxed the
woman with a lecherous grin that revealed a missing tooth. He'd lost it in an infamous fight with his brother, who'd lost an ear when Jimmy had bitten it off. “Come on, sweet cheeks. Come here and show me your pretty dress.”

“If you think this dress is pretty, you need your eyes examined,” the woman said in an icy cultured voice. “And if you think I'm going to let you lay one sweaty, beefy paw on me, you need your head examined.”

Perfect. A back talker. She couldn't just stand there all meek and compliant-like and let Kyle save the day. No, she had to egg on a crazy man, when anyone in her right mind could see that's exactly the type of fight Jimmy was looking for.

Jimmy's gun hand shook more noticeably now, and his eyes gleamed as he took another step, then another.

Two more and Kyle would be able to leap from the pedestal and jump him. End of crisis. “Jimmy, remember how you let the store clerk and the two other customers go outside? Why don't you do the same for her?”

“No.” Jimmy licked his lips. “Look, Pinkie, I said get over here—”

“And I said—” But she broke off with a scream
of outrage as Jimmy tripped off the first of three white satin steps toward her. Then she screamed again as Kyle leaped into the air.

Kept on screaming as she threw herself on top of Jimmy first, fists out and pummeling.

In midair Kyle let out one concise and particularly vicious oath. His original target was now covered with pink satin. He might have landed anyway—he didn't care about crushing her—but he did care about the gun going off accidentally. He cared about that a lot, as he was rather fond of his own hide.

So he pulled back and landed painfully next to the now rolling duo. For a long, terrifying second he couldn't see anything but obnoxious pink satin, so he reached out and pulled it free.

It came with a woman inside of it, fists flailing. Jimmy was coming to his feet and grappling to right his gun, so Kyle was forced to get a better grip on the screaming pile of satin and shove them both behind a counter. He took a fist to the chin for his efforts, and might have taken more if he hadn't manacled her wrists with his hand.

“Cool it, I'm the good guy.”

A gunshot echoed directly above his head, and he swore again—silently this time—before grab
bing the fumbling bundle of satin and crawling as fast as he could along the bottom of the counter.

“Let. Me.
Go,
” demanded the pink satin. She kicked out, nearly unmanning him.

“If I do, you're going to get yourself killed. Now stop—
Damn it!
” She'd freed her face enough to lean in and bite him on the shoulder. With not a little amount of grim satisfaction, he shifted her, tossing her over that shoulder in a fireman's hold, one hand hard on her backside, the other aiding his crawling efforts.

When she wriggled, trying to get into position to bite him again, he simply tightened his grip on her butt, which he could feel through all her layers, and it was a very nice butt indeed. Finally, with considerable effort, and no thanks to her, he got them to the other side of the room, where he paused, listening.

Dead silence.

Not good. Then, suddenly, another gunshot rang out, halfway between where he held the Lady In Pink and where they had started out.

Good, he thought grimly. Jimmy had no idea where they were. Behind them, and only five feet away, were aisles upon aisles of long, flowing
white wedding dresses, behind which he hoped and prayed was a back door.

Crouching down, he dumped his load on the floor, staring in fascination as the satin righted itself and a face appeared. A very furious female face. Her mouth opened, and at the speed of light, he put his hand over it, not wanting her to risk their lives by lighting into him right now.

But oddly enough, she didn't try to speak.

Her eyes however—the most interesting shade of gold he'd ever seen—spit daggers at him. He held her utterly still and looked away, trying to figure out Jimmy's location. He could hear nothing, except Pink's movements. He knew she wanted to tell him something.

Too bad. She could wait.

He cocked his head and listened again. Where could Jimmy have gone? There was no sign of him.

If he lived through this, he was going to kill Kevin.

Then pain erupted in his fingers.

Pink had bitten him! Whipping his head toward her, he fought the urge to bite her back.

She pointed to the opposite side of the store, where he just caught a whisper of a footstep.

Jimmy. Probably figuring they'd gotten all the
way across. He was blocking their exit out the front door, but they weren't going to go out the front door. Ignoring his throbbing fingers, he nudged the woman, directing her with a toss of his head toward the rows and rows of dresses.

She shook her head.

He pointed firmly.

Again, she shook her head.

Unbelievable. Unused to being disobeyed—much less being bitten
twice
—he glared at her and jabbed his finger into the air again. A scary jab. A follow-my-lead-without-question jab. A jab that would have had any of the men he worked with quaking in their boots.

Not this lady.

Instead, she lifted her chin so far he thought she'd get a nosebleed and gave the air her own jab, to her right. Beyond the counter was a discrete elevator door.

The service elevator. Damn, she had a point.

With a stiff nod, he went to lift her to her knees but she shoved him away. Nose still thrust in the air, she pushed back her wild hair and started to crawl under her own steam.

Only to get tangled in the hoops making up her skirt. She would have tumbled to the wood floor,
making a racket that would have gotten them both killed, but he hauled her against his side. Suddenly, he was blinded as her skirt raised up like a damn flag, right over both of their heads.

Jerking the skirt down with one hand and holding her tight against him with the other, he made his awkward way toward the elevator, feeling her breathing down his neck the entire way. “I can save myself,” she said, her mouth to his ear.

Uh-huh. Right. He'd never imagined it coming to this, crawling on the floor, holding a bossy woman against him, praying for his life. Man, he was tired of this job. Of this city. Of his life.

If he lived—and he intended to live, thank you very much—he was ready,
past
ready, for a new venue. A few feet from the elevator he heard something behind him—or maybe it was just instincts—and one jerk of his head revealed Jimmy, climbing over the counter.

Forget being quiet, it was hustle time. With a last flying leap, he got them to the elevator. “Open, open,
open,
” he muttered, hitting the button over and over.

For the first time today, fate was actually on his side and the doors swished open. He tossed Pink
into a corner, then followed, reaching for the close button and starting a new prayer.

Close, close, close.

“Who do you think you are? Robo Cop?” Pink snapped, fighting to untangle herself from her dress.

“Gotcha,”
Jimmy cried, falling off the counter to the floor. But he recovered quickly and aimed his gun.

Kyle dove over Pink, covering her body with his.

The doors closed.

Several rounds hit the steel doors, leaving an indention, but not quite penetrating all the way through.

“Get off of me!” She shoved at him for emphasis.

Kyle, sweating, sank back against the wall. “You're welcome.”

“What for?”

“For saving your life.”

She let out a shocked laugh. “Saving
my
life? You should be thanking
me.
”

“Why? I just saved your pretty little hide.” Kyle opened his eyes and for the first time leveled them right on her. She didn't look terrified, or in shock, as he might have expected. Just angry.

“You saved my hide.” She laughed again, though it was a weak one. Sinking next to him, her head thunked back against the wall. “I saved yours, buster.”

“Buster?”

“Who do you think managed to track the gunman?” she asked. “Who found the elevator? Who—”

Another gunshot shut her up. Again, it didn't penetrate, but the elevator jerked to a stop.

“What—”

“Terrific.” Kyle tipped his head back. The light for the second floor hadn't come on. “We're between floors. Sitting ducks.”

“Why is that?”

He looked at her again, taking in the lightest, most arresting golden eyes he'd ever seen, the most amazing matching gold hair tumbling past her shoulders and the impossibly useless pink dress. No use sugarcoating it. He told her the truth. “We're dead.”

“Not until we stop breathing, we're not.”

He couldn't believe she wasn't hysterical by now, or in shock. And in spite of the added com
plication she'd been, he felt a reluctant admiration for her. “Yeah, and we're still breathing, aren't we.”

“That's right. Thanks to me.”

Okay, she was being a pain in the butt. But now that he'd had a moment to catch his breath, he had to admit she was a beautiful pain in the butt. As disastrous as the pink was on her, the dress did hang nicely from shoulder to low on her hips. And everything in between. For the first time, he saw everything in between. Her slender throat, her breasts thrust up and nearly out by the cut of the dress, her waist…she was pretty damn mouthwatering. He'd give her this, she wasn't a hardship to look at it. “Move back.”

She'd come up to her knees, and was inspecting the control panel. “Why?”

“Because I said.”

She rolled her eyes and poked at the panel.

Another gunshot rang out, and directly in front of her the control panel buckled out toward her. Clearly not made of the same strength of steel as the doors, the bullet tore through.

Kyle grabbed her and tugged hard, so that she fell back against him.

The bullet hit the back wall, a foot above their heads.

Kyle's momentum had tumbled them both down with a jerk. And though he attempted not to notice, the jarring movement nearly freed a breast.

Until she hit the floor, that is, because that's when the skirt of the dress—buoyed by the hoops—once again flew up and over both their heads.

With a savage sound of frustration, she tugged both of them free and glared at him as if it was
his
fault she had horrible taste in clothes.

“Maybe now you'll listen,” he said, gallantly swallowing a cocky I-told-you-so.

“The panel is dust,” she said, ignoring him. “We'll have to figure out something else.”

She was cool as a cucumber. He'd never met a woman like her.

“I can handle this.”