A Royal Mess and Her Knight To Remember

Only to have the goat do it again. Now the pig was squealing like a…well, pig. He was stuck on his side, his three little legs peddling the air ineffectively, like a bug on its back, while the goat nudged at it as if in apology.

Natalia’s heart tripped at the sight of the pig struggling. “Damn it.” She watched another moment. “I’m not going out there,” she said to no one. “I’m not.”

But the pig continued to struggle. She grabbed a bag of leftovers she’d been saving and went into the yard. For a long moment she stood in front of the pen, trying to breathe normally. This was a perfectly easy thing to do, she told herself. Perfectly easy. Just open the pen and walk in.

Slowly, she let herself into the pen and…stepped into something brown, squishy and distinctly stinky. “Uck!” She lifted her foot until it came free with a terrible suction noise, and with considerable less enthusiasm, stepped toward the still-thrashing pig.

“Hey.”

It didn’t respond. “Slow down,” she said. “Have you tried that?” Actually forgetting her fear, she hunkered at his side just as he got traction in the mud.

Coming to a stand at a run, he plowed into her on his way to run circles around the blind goat. Not for the first time, Natalia fell to her bottom, right in the muck.

Towering over her, the goat chewed on something green. Then suddenly the pig charged it, charged her, and her fear reinvented itself with a scream as she dived out of the way chest first.

The goat, still being charged by the pig, waited until the precise moment to nudge its head into the oncoming animal.

Who once again fell to its side.

“You.” Natalia pushed up to a sit. “Stop that.” Struggling to her feet, she tried not to feel the gross, icky stuff that was now on her hands as well as her bottom.

The pig was up now, and running circles around the goat, who bleated noisily, over the obnoxious squealing of the pig. The horse, old and crickety, just stood and watched the entire circus, slowly rotating her jaw as she chomped down on grass.

Fear had to take a back seat to the fact that Natalia couldn’t hear herself think. “Order,” she demanded in her most royal voice, but all she heard was very male laughter from behind her.

Tim, of course. Because apparently she hadn’t experienced quite enough humility.

He stood just outside the pen, his forearms resting on the wood, one leg bent at the knee, his boot on a fence rung. His eyes were crinkled with good humor at her expense, his mouth curved wide.

She refused to acknowledge the way her pulse tripped at the sight of him. “Did you know your goat is a bully? And she’s a fake blind? She’s torturing your pig, poor little guy.”

“First of all, he’s a she. And she’s a he. Should I show you how you tell?” He grinned that unbearably sexy grin of his. “And by the way, they’re the best of friends. They’re just playing. Pickles loves-”

“Pickles?”

He looked a little chagrined as he scratched his head. “Not my choice, the goat came with the name. And he’s nearly blind, but not completely. Mrs. Pig likes him, trust me.”

“They’re trying to kill each other.”

“No. Watch-” He opened the gate, and sure enough, Mrs. Pig gently nudged Pickles in the right direction, making sure she came out first.

“Want to pet them?” Tim asked as they mobbed him for attention.

“Of course not.”

“Right.” He managed to pet all of them equally. “Because you don’t like animals.”

“That’s correct.” Better he think she didn’t like them than to know she was afraid of them.

“Ah,” he said with a secret smile.

She put her hands on her hips, then remembered what was on those hands and hastily dropped them to her sides. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’re a big, fancy liar, Princess.” He leaned close, too close, so that she could smell soap and hay and horse, and warm, clean man.

“I never lie.” Rarely, anyway.

“Which is why, of course, you’ve been feeding these guys. Because you don’t like them.”

She glanced down at the bag of leftovers sticking out her pocket, but he just laughed softly, in that low, husky way he had that made her insides go all liquidy. “Is there a point to this conversation?”

He just lifted a brow, while her entire body had become so hyperaware of him that she had goose bumps and nipples standing at attention.

This attraction was getting the best of her.

“The point is,” he said patiently, “you act tough, you dress tough, but inside you’re just as soft as the rest of us.”

She tried to come up with some retort and failed.

“I can tell you’re not used to this world,” he said softly. “But you don’t seem big city, either, despite yourself.” From the other side of the fence, he slid a finger up her ear and all her silver hoops, then touched her hair, which she hadn’t spiked in two days. “Who are you, Natalia?”

Wasn’t that just the problem? She no longer knew. She’d been happy with her life, but these past few days, hard and difficult and different as they’d been, had showed her all she’d missed with her rather sheltered existence. “I’ve got to get back to work,” she said. “Nearly lunchtime.” She was out the gate and halfway across the yard before he called her name.

She stopped, but didn’t turn to look at him, afraid she’d weaken and let him do whatever he wanted, which a very bad part of her hoped was something sexual.

“Might want to wash your hands first,” he said. “Before you put lunch together.”

She looked down at her hands. So much for what he wanted, and so much for it being sexual. “It would serve you right if I didn’t,” she muttered and kept going.

BY DINNERTIME, it was raining. Natalia had discovered that the weather in Texas, whether sunny or raining or thundering or whatever, was…big.

Squinting out into the yard while shaping meatballs, She could see Pickles standing in the downpour. Alone. Looking wet and miserable and lost.

“Oh, you damn fool.” She set down a meatball and willed the stupid goat to find his way back to the others, who stood protected beneath a tree.

But no. The goat just stood there and let out a pathetic little bleat she could hear all the way in the house.

She shaped some more meatballs, refusing to look. “Not looking,” she said out loud. But she couldn’t help it.

He was still there.

More rain fell.

Pickles slowly tipped his head up and bleated louder. Sadder.

“Oh, for God’s sake, get under the tree!” she yelled out to him.

He didn’t budge.

Natalia washed her hands. Turned off the stove. Waited for the mentally challenged goat to get a clue. Finally, she stepped out into the pouring rain. “What do you think you’re doing?” she called from the porch. “Get under the tree! Scat! Run! Get moving!”

He lifted his head and stared blindly in her direction.

Damn. She ran toward him. “Go on!”

He just blinked in her general direction.

“Good goat,” she said, patting him awkwardly. “Don’t eat me.” She tried to pull him in the right direction. “This way.”

Instead of being grateful, he dug in his heels and refused to be moved. But at least he didn’t try to eat her. “I’m trying to help you here!” Under the drenching rain, she moved behind him instead, and shoved. “Pickles, move!”