A Royal Mess: A Royal Mess / Her Knight To Remember. Jill Shalvis

sure.” She forced a smile. “Just fine—”

      Jake’s large head swung around, and he leveled Natalia with a baleful stare. Food!

      Natalia staggered back from both man and horse, until the fence was at her back. “He’s…uh, really huge, isn’t he?”

      If he didn’t know better, this outwardly tough woman was trembling in her boots. “Not a horse person, I’m guessing?”

      Her eyes didn’t move from Jake. “Not an animal person.”

      Jake, oblivious, thrust out his neck and nosed at Natalia’s front pockets, which earned him a petrified shriek.

      Tim stepped between the nose and Natalia. “You must smell good.” Fact. “Don’t worry, he won’t hurt you.”

      “I’m…fine. I’m not afraid.”

      Uh-huh. She was only holding her breath. Trying to soothe, he ran a hand up her arm. “Natalia? Honey, breathe.”

      “Yes.” She gulped air. “Of course. Breathing.”

      He smiled at her attempt to be cool and calm. “What kind of pets did you have growing up?”

      “Actually, where I’m from, there are plenty of horses and cattle.” She managed to tear her gaze from Jake. “It’s me. My failing. It’s a silly little phobia.”

      “Nothing to be afraid of with Jake. He’s just looking for a snack. He thinks everyone loves him. Watch.” He turned to the horse and let out a soft whinny noise.

      The horse repeated it, and affectionately rubbed the side of his face on Tim’s arm. Tim looked at Natalia. “Want to try?”

      Before she could say no, before she could so much as let out a shriek, Tim had slipped an arm around her waist, pulled her against his side and let out that soft whinny again.

      Jake mirrored the noise and rubbed the side of his huge face against Natalia’s arm. It felt warm and damp. And terrifying. In fact, she would have screamed if she hadn’t just swallowed her tongue. She would have shrunk away, but she was plastered against Tim, and—

      And she was plastered against Tim. Oh my God. Heat, confusion, more heat. A noise escaped her and it had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with fear.

      “Okay?” he asked quietly, staring into her eyes, completely focused on her.

      It was the oddest thing—she’d been surrounded by people all her life, and yet for the first time she really felt as if she had someone’s one-hundred-percent-undivided attention focused on her. Totally and completely on her.

      It was intoxicating. He was intoxicating. “Not sure,” she whispered slowly.

      His gaze slid to her mouth, which fell open, just to get air to her suddenly deflated lungs.

      At that, his eyes darkened, and his arm tightened around her. “And now?” he whispered across her cheek.

      Senses on full alert, she leaned toward him, unable to resist his big, solid, warm body. Standing so close like this, feeling him react to her, surround her, it felt like coming in from the rain.

      “Natalia?”

      In anticipation her entire body tingled. She even licked her lips and…

      A sound escaped him, a near groan, and her eyes fell closed.

      Here it came…a kiss…a perfect kiss…

      Only it wasn’t a man’s hard, demanding lips that met hers. It was a horse’s demanding whinny in her ear, as Jake once again thrust his head between theirs.

      Her eyes whipped open just as Tim let out another groan. “Nice timing, Jake.” He pushed the horse’s big head away, but Jake was persistent, and finally Tim had to laugh. “Sorry, but the big lug here thinks he’s my baby.”

      Heart still pounding, Natalia pulled back. “Yeah. Baby.” The biggest baby she’d ever seen. “I…have to get back to work.”

      Tim looked at her, an easy smile on his lips, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to stand so close, to have blood racing through her body, to want him with all her being…. Unless he didn’t feel it.

      Of course he didn’t.

      “See you at dinner,” she managed, then walked out calmly, sedately, as if she had near-miss kisses every day of her life.

      Alone in the kitchen, she sagged against the sink and drew a deep breath.

      And wondered at the fact that she wished they hadn’t missed at all.

      THE NEXT DAY after breakfast, Natalia stepped out into the sunshine. Everyone had been in a huge hurry to be out and gone. Though they’d all smiled—well, except Sally—at what Natalia thought had been an incredibly inventive casserole dish made from bread, eggs and sausage, they’d still vanished the moment she’d turned her back.

      They were busy, she understood. It didn’t matter. She was having a great time. It felt almost wrong, this lovely rush of joy she got piddling around in the kitchen, and she didn’t want it to end.

      Feeling good and nice and sure of herself, she moved off the porch, lifting a hand to shield her eyes from the bright sun. She would have denied it to her dying day, but she stood there, a kitchen full of work to do, secretly hoping for a peek of Tim.

      Just a peek, mind you, just one, of his tall, built, wildly sexy self. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him since yesterday, when he’d touched her.

      Nearly kissed her.

      She hoped to catch him working, which meant she’d get a good look at all those muscles in action, stretching taut beneath his shirt. Maybe he’d be hot—hot enough to have removed said shirt, for an up-close-and-personal view.

      Something deep inside of her pitter-pattered at that, and she moved off the porch. When she did, the animals in the side stockade, the “pity pets” Sally had called them, all came to hopeful attention.

      Her heart stopped. Her palms went damp. It was ridiculous, this terror, and she knew it. She even knew where it came from. Every year in her hometown the royal family rode in the Christmas parade. When she’d been five, her father had deemed her old enough to sit on a pony by herself. How proud she’d been, forgetting to hold on to the reins so that she could wave to one and all.

      But then a pack of Labrador retrievers from the float behind her had broken loose, and startled her pony into rearing. In her velvet Christmas finery, Natalia had slid off the back and to the ground. She had still been sitting there when the pony had decided to let go of all it had eaten for a week.

      Covered in pony dung, which stuck nicely to her dress, the dogs had run in circles around her while the entire town…laughed.

      Yep, nearly twenty years and she still harbored this irrational fear of animals.

      She took another couple of steps and so did Tim’s animals—toward her. Actually, the little three-legged pig came running. Well…hopping, but he was good at it, moving as fast as three short legs would take him, his snout quivering with such velocity it nearly took him off the ground into flight. At the fence that separated them he pressed his snout against it and let out a series of frustrated snorts.

      Startled, Natalia stopped short, her heart pounding. But there was a fence between them. A good one. She was safe. Determined to get over herself, she took another step, even closer.

      The goat came, too, but it wasn’t until it bumped right into the pig that Natalia remembered the thing was blind. Which didn’t stop it from lifting its head over the fence and sniffling, searching…for food, she realized as she nearly fell backward to get out of the way.

      The ancient horse shuffled forward, too, stepping over the pig until all six eyes—four good and two not—waited expectantly.

      “But…I don’t have anything,” she