The Cowboy and the Princess by Lori Wilde Read Free Book Online Page B

in and saved her from the unsavory character in the parking lot?
    He had been hurt protecting her, this cowboy hero who could have stepped from an old Western movie. Her stomach reeled, listed.
    She caused his pain. Yes. This was her fault. She admitted it. She acted rashly out of character. Her world was byzantine, but out here, in the unknown, well, she was stumbling around wreaking havoc on Brady’s simple life. He was a good man. He should not have to clean up her messes.
    She thought of Princess Ann from Roman Holiday and how enchanted the character had been with the way the Romans lived. How her innocence had gotten her into trouble and Joe Bradley had rescued her.
    Brady was her Joe Bradley, and Annie was making the same mistakes. She felt the same enchantment for Texans, and in that enchantment, loneliness tugged at her. She wanted so badly to belong here: to be part of this world she had vividly imagined for years, but no matter how much she wished it, she did not belong. She would never belong anywhere ordinary. She was royalty. A birthright she could never leave.
    Annie had been six years old when she first realized how truly different she was from everyone else and it had all happened because her mother would not allow her to visit the carnival.
    Vividly, she remembered watching the carnival crew set up the rides and displays. They had unloaded animals from train cars—elephants hooked together trunks to tails, tigers in cages, prancing horses. She recalled the posters plastered all over town, featuring fire eaters, contortionists, chain-saw jugglers, and sword swallowers. Rosalind regaled her with tales of sideshows and thrill rides and delicious food. The servants’ children whispered in the hallways about the amazing experiences to be found at the carnival.
    From her bedroom window, Annabella could see the lighted Ferris wheel circling high into the sky, and before she fell asleep on those long summer nights, she would rest her hands on the windowsill, nestle her chin on her stacked hands, and stare wistfully out at the boardwalk.
    Excited voices filled the air along with tempting scents of portable food—cotton candy and funnel cakes, turkey legs and caramel apples, corn dogs and French fries. Foods that Annabella was never, ever allowed to taste, much less eat, but it made her mouth water. The delighted shrieks of children on roller coasters reached her ears, the colored lights on the rides dazzled her eyes.
    Then the queen would come into the room, close the window, draw the curtains. “Nasty things. Nasty people. You have everything you could possibly want. Why are you so fascinated by the lowest common denominator, Annabella?”
    Why couldn’t Mamman understand how bright lights beguiled? Annabella was expected to stay behind the iron gates, the stone walls of Farrington Palace, and gaze longingly at the world that went on without her. She wanted to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl with the village children. She longed to walk into the House of Mirrors and see her body distorted first tall, then short, fat then thin. She yearned to play games of chance—toss rings over the necks of bottles, throw a ball through a hoop, blow up balloons with a water gun until they popped.
    Night after night, she gazed through the window at all that she was missing, a prisoner in her luxury. How disappointing to play checkers with Rosalind when she wanted to have her palm read by a Gypsy fortune teller with rings on all fingers and cheap jangly bracelets at her wrists. How frustrating to eat fresh strawberries dipped in sugar when she wanted to gorge on strawberry ice cream and buttery popcorn. How unsatisfactory to fall asleep on a goose down pillow when she wanted to win a giant teddy bear at the midway and go to bed with it clutched in her arms.
    By the last day of the carnival, Annabella was sick with longing. After tonight the carnival would vanish for an entire whole year. But it just so happened this night was Rosalind’s