His Convenient Royal Bride Read online

  What would he say, right now, if he were here and saw her in such a ridiculous state over a man she had only just laid eyes on, to whom she had not even spoken a single word?

  Something, she was sure, practical and homespun. Whoa, girl, go easy.

  But she did not hear her father’s voice, not even in her imagination. Instead, the pendant seemed to glow warm under her fingertips.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “LANCASTER DOES HAVE a military background, to be sure. What would you recommend from the menu?” It was Ward who spoke, his tone easy, but for the first time it seemed he would like to close the conversation with the young waitress

  “Does Scotland have an army?” Sophie asked, nonplussed. “I wouldn’t have thought—”

  “Sophie, would you please give those gentlemen their menus, and then I need to talk to you for a minute?”

  Ward turned and smiled at her and his smile was charismatic and sympathetic, as if he entirely got that training young employees was a little like trying to train an overly enthusiastic puppy.

  Sophie surrendered the menus in slow motion. “What brings you to Mountain Bend?”

  “We’ve come from a few days’ holiday in California,” Ward answered. “We’re finishing up our stay in America with the Ritz concert.”

  The Ritz were a world-renowned band. Kettle’s nephew, Sophie’s cousin, was the drummer. It had been Kettle’s idea for the band to officially open the summer season with a huge outdoor concert tomorrow night.

  The hope was, once they had sampled the pristine charms of Mountain Bend, the throngs of people who had purchased tickets for the concert would return. Plan vacations here. Buy some of the empty miner’s houses for summer cottages. Spend money on coffee and groceries and gas. Save the town.

  It was a long shot, at best, but Maddie baked a back supply of scones, and printed off dozens of business cards, just in case.

  “Well, the locals know the best sights,” Sophie declared. “I’d be happy to show you around.”

  “Sophie!”

  “After work,” Sophie amended reluctantly.

  Lancaster handed her his menu and folded his massive arms over his chest. “I’ll have the Bend-in-the-Road.”

  “I think you’d prefer the Mountain Man,” Sophie said sweetly.

  “Could I see you for a moment?” Maddie called sternly and urgently.

  Sophie ignored her. “Or maybe a few scones? That would make you feel right at home, wouldn’t it?”

  “If I wanted to feel at home,” Lancaster said coolly, “I would have stayed there. And it’s pronounced scone, as in gone, not scone, as in cone.”

  “I love a man who knows his scones,” Sophie said, not insulted.

  “I want the Bend-in-the-Road. I’m pretty sure I cannot get an edible scone in Mountain Bend, Oregon.”

  Maddie was pretty sure he was given a little nudge under the table with the other’s foot.

  “They happen to be the most delicious scones in the world,” Sophie said loyally. “Maddie could have had a shop in New York someday, but—”

  This was going seriously off the rails!

  “Sophie!” Maddie called again, before it developed into an argument or a tell-all about Maddie’s broken dreams and bad boyfriend.

  Still, she could not help but be annoyed. You couldn’t get a good scone in Mountain Bend? That was a challenge if she had ever heard one!

  Sophie gave her a disgruntled look, and the customers a reluctant one. “Sorry,” she said. “Duty calls.”

  But then, before duty asked too much of Sophie, she leaned both elbows on the table, put her chin on her hands and blinked at Lancaster.

  “So, do you ever wear a kilt?” she purred.

  The big man looked stunned. After an initial moment of shocked silence, Ward threw back his head and laughed. If he’d been gorgeous before, it was now evident that had just been the warm-up. His laughter was pure, exquisitely masculine, entirely sexy.

  Danger, Maddie reminded herself firmly.

  Before Lancaster could answer, Sophie giggled, straightened up from the table and headed over to Maddie.

  “What do you think?” she asked in a happy undertone. “Match, game and set to me?”

  What she thought was that she envied Sophie’s relative innocence. The younger woman thought you could play at this game with no one getting hurt. Both those men had a masculine potency about them that spoke of experience.

  No doubt both of them had a string of broken hearts in their pasts. She didn’t care if the assessment was completely unfair. It was better safe than sorry, and Sophie was a naive small-town girl.

  Just as she herself had been when she met Derek. Maddie felt, again, protective of the younger woman.

  “This is not how you interact with customers,” she said, firmly. “You do not flirt with them. These shenanigans will end now.”

  “Shenanigans?” Sophie asked.

  “A kilt?” Maddie demanded in an undertone.

  “Don’t say you don’t want to know the answer,” Sophie said, grinning impishly, unintimidated by the neighbor she had known her whole life.

  Maddie made to deny it. Her mouth opened. But her gaze, of its own accord, slid back to Ward. His strong, tanned legs were tucked under the table. A kilt? Good grief! She could feel herself beginning to blush!

  Sophie laughed knowingly.

  “Look,” Maddie said, pulling herself together, “you’re being way too inquisitive. They’re customers. They’re here for breakfast, not to exchange life stories. And they’re not Americans. They won’t appreciate your friendliness.”

  Sophie pursed her lips together, miffed at the reprimand, as Maddie had known she would be.

  “Or apparently your scones,” she said, pronouncing it as gone rather than cone as Maddie always had. Then she flounced through the swinging doors into the kitchen and gave Kettle the order.

  “We ain’t open yet.” This declaration was followed by a string of cusswords used creatively and representing a long military history. “I don’t make exceptions. And that includes the apron. And tie your hair back. We have standards.” He put enough curse words between have and standards to impress a sailor.

  Sure enough, Kettle himself stomped through the kitchen door. Despite the scowl on his grizzled face, Maddie felt a rush of affection.

  Kettle had been her father’s best friend, there for her and her mother when her father had been killed in a logging accident. He’d been there for her again as her mother, heartbroken, had followed on her father’s heels way too quickly, leaving Maddie an orphan at eighteen.

  Maddie’s fiancé, Derek, had not gotten it when she had felt compelled to return to Mountain Bend after Kettle’s accident, to manage the café. This was the code she had been raised with: you did right by the people who had done right by you.

  So Kettle’s stomp was a good thing. He was nearly back to his normal self after he had fallen off the restaurant roof while shoveling snow in the winter and had a complicated break to his hip that had required several surgeries.

  Kettle had spent a military career he would not talk about with Delta Force before returning to Mountain Bend. Now he skidded to a halt, surveyed the two men with a certain bemused expression, and then turned back to the kitchen in time to intercept Sophie, who was coming out behind him.

  “Maddie,” he said gruffly, “you handle them customers. Sophie, you can help me in the kitchen for now.”

  Sophie looked as if she planned to protest, but she knew better than to argue with her uncle, especially her first day of working for him. She cast one last longing look at the table before reluctantly obeying and going back into the kitchen.

  “I trust you to be sensible,” Kettle told Maddie in an undertone. In other words, he trusted she’d outgrown the kind of shenanigans that got small-town girls, like her an
d Sophie, in all kinds of trouble.

  Yes, she thought with a sigh, she was the sensible one now.

  “I’m sure you won’t be imagining anyone in kilts, or any other romantic nonsense, either.”

  So, he had heard something of that. She hoped she wasn’t blushing, again, but Kettle wasn’t looking at her, but watching their first guests of the day with narrowed eyes.

  “What did they say they’re doing here?” he asked quietly.

  “The Ritz concert.”

  “The big one’s security. Written all over him. Maybe doing an assessment before the band arrives.”

  “What about the other one?” Maddie asked, keeping her tone casual.

  “Well, that’s the odd part.”

  “In what way?”

  “He looks like the principal, to me.”

  “The what?”

  “Never mind. My old life creeps up on me, sometimes. I’m sure they are exactly what they say they are.”

  But he didn’t sound sure at all.

  “Like a school principal?” Maddie asked, unwilling, for some reason, to let it go.

  Kettle snorted. “Does he look like a school principal to you?”

  Maddie looked at him one more time, that subtle aura of power and confidence. “No,” she admitted.

  “Exactly. Someone who travels with a close protection specialist. Interesting.”

  Interesting enough to make Kettle stop from tossing them out before regular opening hours. He had definitely recognized something that had automatically given them his respect—generally hard earned—but that had also made him cautious about exposing his man-crazy niece to them.

  “A close protection specialist?”

  “A bodyguard in civilian terms. Never mind. I’m being silly.” Kettle shook his head and went back to the kitchen muttering, “Ah, once a warrior.”

  The ancient coffeemaker let out a loud hiss, announcing the coffee was ready, and Maddie went and grabbed the pot.

  She popped her head in the kitchen door. “Sophie, can you hand me some mugs from the dishwasher?”

  Sophie brought over the mugs. “I know what their car looks like,” she said in a hushed tone as she handed Maddie two thick crockery-style coffee mugs. “I’ll bet they’re staying at the Cottages. I’m going to go look as soon as I’m done with work.”

  She already was planning to thwart Kettle’s plan to protect her!

  “You will not,” Maddie said.

  Feeling uncomfortably in the middle of something, Maddie started to take the mugs and the pot over to the window table. Then she paused and picked up two scones from the display and set them on a plate.

  “Coffee?” she asked. She set down the scones. “Complimentary. The grill isn’t quite heated yet. Breakfast will be a few minutes.”

  While Lancaster eyed the scones with deep suspicion, and even prodded one with his finger, it was Ward who answered, and again she had a sense of him being in a leadership position.

  Did he do something that warranted a bodyguard? It seemed a little far-fetched for Mountain Bend. Poor Kettle just hadn’t been himself since he fell off that roof.

  “Thank you. I’m Ward and this is Lancaster. And you are?”

  She actually blushed, but kept her tone deliberately cool. “It’s Sophie’s first day. I hope she didn’t give you the impression it’s some kind of American tradition for staff at restaurants to introduce themselves to customers.”

  “It isn’t? Lancaster, didn’t we have that happen before? In Los Angeles? That fellow. Franklin! He definitely introduced himself. Hi, I’m Franklin, and I’ll be your server tonight.”

  “You’re right,” she conceded. “It is protocol at some of the big chains. But here in Mountain Bend, not so much.”

  “Thank you for clarifying that,” Ward said. “I find learning another country’s customs a bit like learning a new language. There’s lots of room for innocent error. But now you have us at a disadvantage. You know our names, but we are none the wiser.”

  She frowned. She was aware of needing to keep distance between her and this powerfully attractive sample of manliness. Still, she could not see a way out of it. Asking him to call her Miss Nelson would be way too stilted.

  “Madeline,” she said, and it sounded stilted anyway and somehow unfriendly. “Maddie,” she amended in an attempt to soften it a bit.

  “Maddie.”

  Just as she had feared, her name coming off his lips in that sensual accent was as if he had touched the nape of her neck with his fingertips.

  “I can’t help but notice your pendant. It’s extraordinary.” He reached up, and for a moment they both froze, anticipation in the air between them.

  Then he touched it, ever so lightly. The pendant suddenly felt hot, almost as though there would be a scorch mark on her neck where it rested.

  Maddie shivered, from the bottom of her toes to the top of her head.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “BEAUTIFUL,” WARD SAID SOFTLY. He withdrew his hand, his amazing sapphire eyes intent on her face.

  The pronouncement could mean the pendant. But it could also mean—

  “A gold nugget?” he asked her.

  Obviously, he meant the pendant! Maddie had to pull herself together! Good grief. She felt as though she was trembling.

  “Y-y-yes, my father found it and had it made into this piece.”

  “Lovely,” he said, and again, it felt as if he might be commenting on more than the pendant. “My name’s a diminutive, too. Short for Edward.”

  Did Lancaster shake his head, ever so slightly?

  Ward changed tack so effortlessly that Maddie wondered if she had imagined that slight shake of head.

  “Do you live up to it?” Ward asked in that sexy brogue. He took a sip of the freshly poured coffee and his laughing eyes met hers over the rim of the cup.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your name? Are you mad?”

  She wondered if, in her attempts to remain professional, she had ended up looking cranky! That was the thing to remember about men like this. Even simple things were complicated around them. She tried to relax her features as she realized he was deliberately trying to tease some of the stiffness from her.

  She remembered Kettle’s confidence that she would be sensible. But not stiff and uninviting, even if it was self-protective. And suddenly she didn’t feel like living up to Kettle’s stodgy expectation of her.

  “Mad, angry or mad, crazy?” Maddie asked him, returning his smile tentatively. It was an indicator of how serious everything in her life had become that she considered engaging in this banter and returning his smile living dangerously.

  “Obviously, neither,” he said, saluting her with his coffee cup.

  Was he flirting? With her? That certainly upped the chances of the mad, crazy. Especially if she engaged with him. Of course, she wouldn’t engage!

  Or any other romantic nonsense. Though she suddenly felt a need not just to defy Kettle’s impressions of her, but to have a moment of lightness.

  “And do you live up to your name?” she asked him.

  He raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Do you ward?”

  “Ward, protect?” he asked her. “Or ward, admit to the hospital?”

  They shared a small ripple of laughter, that appreciation that comes when you come across someone who thinks somewhat the same way you do. Their eyes met, and a spark, like an ember escaped from a bonfire, leaped between them.

  Maddie reminded herself that one spark, even that small, could burn down a whole forest. She’d had her moment, Maddie told herself, clinging to the sensibility Kettle was relying on her for.

  “Ward off pesky waitresses, I hope,” Lancaster said darkly, and then before she could take it personally, “Where’s your friend?”

  “Her
uncle needed her in the kitchen.”

  “Locked her up,” Lancaster muttered with approval. He took a scone off the plate and scowled at it. “Is this a flavor?”

  “Yes, it has a hint of orange in it.”

  “There’s no flavors in scones,” Lancaster said firmly. “Do you have cream?”

  “Cream? For the coffee? Of course. I’ll go get it.”

  “No, for the scones. Cornish cream?”

  “Sorry, I—”

  “Too much to hope for.” He took a gigantic bite. And then, to Maddie’s satisfaction, he sighed and closed his eyes. “That’s good. Even without cream. Try it,” he insisted to Ward.

  Ward picked up the other scone and took a bite. Even that small gesture spoke of refinement. There was that ultrasexy smile again. “You owe somebody an apology,” he told Lancaster. “Not only edible, but possibly the best scone this side of the Atlantic.”

  “Any side of the Atlantic.” Lancaster finished the scone in two bites and eyed Ward’s hungrily.

  “Who made these?” Ward asked, polishing it off.

  “I did.”

  “You did not. You’ve got to have a Celt hiding in that kitchen.” Again, Ward was teasing her, as if he sensed she took life altogether too seriously.

  Maybe it was weakness to engage, and to want to engage, but what the heck? The men would eat their breakfast and be gone. They might come back, or she might see them in the street and wave, but it was hardly posting banns at the local church. After the concert tomorrow night, they would disappear, never to be seen again.

  Unless they bought one of the old miner’s cottages. Unless they fell in love with Mountain Bend.

  She did not want to be thinking of falling in love, in any of its many guises, anywhere in the vicinity of the very appealing Ward!

  “It’s an old family recipe,” Maddie supplied. “My grandmother was English. And she pronounced it scone, as in cone.”