The Princess Predicament

by Lisa Childs

  “They would have been here already,” he pointed out. Because they would have had to follow them directly from the airport in order to find this place. But he looked out the window, too. “You’re safe.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about…” Her palms slid over her belly, as if protecting or comforting the child within. “Those kids have already been through so much…”

  When he had first met Princess St. Pierre, he had been impressed that someone as privileged and probably pampered as she must have been seemed to actually care about people. She had showed genuine interest in the lives of the palace staff. But here she had taken that interest to a whole other level, sacrificing her own comfort to care for others. She wasn’t just a princess; she was a saint.

  He had nothing to offer a princess; he had even less to offer a saint. All he could give Princess Gabriella St. Pierre was his protection. He stared at her belly. Unless he’d already given her something else…

  He opened his mouth to ask again the question that had been burning in his mind since the minute he had realized the pregnant woman from the bus was Princess Gabriella. Was that baby his?

  But before he could ask, she hurriedly said, “The doctor should be here soon. The clinic is just a mile away.”

  “I don’t need a doctor.”

  “You’ve been shot,” she said, moving her hands from her belly to his arm.

  Blood still trickled slowly from the old wound in his shoulder, over his biceps, down his forearm, over his wrist to drip off his fingertips onto the dirt floor.

  “Yes, I was shot,” he admitted with a wince of pain as he remembered the burn of the bullet ripping through his flesh. “But not today.”

  Her brow furrowed in confusion. “But you’re bleeding…”

  He shrugged and then winced again as pain radiated throughout his shoulder and his fingers tingled in reaction. “The wound must have reopened.”

  “When you carried me…”

  Despite the men chasing them, firing shots at them, he had enjoyed carrying her. He had savored her slight weight in his arms, the heat of her body pressed against his, her hands clutching at him—holding him close. It had reminded him of that night—that night he had taken on the responsibility of guarding her.

  But he hadn’t really protected her…not if that child was his. He groaned.

  “You are hurting,” she said and commanded him, “Take off your shirt.” But she didn’t wait for him to obey her royal order. She lifted his T-shirt, her fingers grazing his abdomen and then his chest as she pulled the damp fabric over his head. Expelled in a gasp, her breath whispered across his skin.

  Despite the oppressive heat, he nearly shivered in reaction to her touch. For six interminable, miserable months he’d thought she was dead. He had thought he would never see her again. That he would never touch her…

  Was she real? She was so beautiful that he doubted it, as he had the first time he’d met her. She couldn’t be real. Maybe he had been shot again, and this time he’d died and found an angel. He snorted in derision of his ridiculous thought. As if he would ever make it to heaven…

  “This wound isn’t very old,” she observed, her teeth nibbling at her bottom lip with concern. “When were you shot?”

  “Five or six days ago…” He couldn’t remember exactly; everything had happened so quickly and then it had taken him so many days and flights to reach her. Maybe he should have waited for one of the royal jets to be available. But the king had needed to return to St. Pierre so he had taken his, and Whit hadn’t wanted to wait for one to come in from St. Pierre. He hadn’t wanted to wait another minute to see Gabriella and make sure she was safe. He had never imagined he’d find the Princess of St. Pierre like this…

  Literally barefoot and pregnant.

  “You should be in the hospital,” she admonished him, as she rose up on tiptoe and inspected his wound.

  “I saw a doctor already,” he assured her. “I’m all stitched up. I’m fine.” So they could talk. And maybe he would have insisted on it already if he wasn’t worried about what she would tell him. Several years ago he had sworn he would never become a father. Or a husband. He’d had no intention of ever attempting a long-term relationship.

  “You were shot!” she snapped at him, temper flashing in her eyes. “How did that happen?”

  He shrugged and then cursed as the movement jostled his wounded shoulder, sending pain radiating down his arm until his fingers tingled.

  Damn it…

  He shouldn’t be the one to tell her any of this. He was only supposed to retrieve her from her hiding spot and bring her back to the opulent palace on St. Pierre Island. Then her father and her bodyguard could explain everything…

  The king and the others had probably landed on St. Pierre by now, so they could send the royal jet here. And Whit could bring her home where she belonged—with her family and her fiancé. He grabbed his cell phone from the front pocket of his jeans, but the screen was illuminated with a disheartening message. No service.

  “That’s not going to work,” she informed him. “You’re not stalling…”

  “Stalling?” he scoffed. “I’m trying to call the palace.”

  Her breath caught, and her eyes widened with panic.

  And he realized something. “You weren’t in that airport to take a flight home.”

  “Home?” she repeated.

  “The country of which you’re the princess,” he reminded her. “Where you grew up, where you live…”

  “I grew up in a boarding school,” she said. “And I’ve been living here.”

  At another boarding school/orphanage. Was that how she’d felt growing up? Like an orphan? Or was that feeling new because of what she might have learned about herself and all those secrets he’d uncovered?

  “You know what I mean,” he said. “You weren’t heading back to St. Pierre.” She’d been running again. And that was probably why she had worn the disguise and tried to deny her identity to him. She hadn’t wanted him to bring her back to St. Pierre.

  Instead of denying his claim, she changed the subject. “Tell me why you were shot,” she urged him. “I know Charlotte was kidnapped. The telephone connection was bad but Lydia understood that much.”

  And knowing that, she hadn’t intended to go back to St. Pierre? Charlotte’s concern that Gabby was upset with her might have been warranted.

  “I know Charlotte’s safe now,” Gabriella said, as if she’d read his mind.

  Or his expression, which would have been odd given that everyone—even those to whom he’d been closest—always claimed that he had a poker face, that they could never tell what he was thinking or feeling. Or if he even felt anything.

  “The kidnapper was caught,” she continued. “Did you get shot rescuing Charlotte from him?”

  “Aaron rescued her,” he said. Because his fellow royal bodyguard was madly in love with Charlotte. “I got shot when we went back to where she’d been held captive and tried to discover who was behind the kidnapping.”

  She drew in a quick, sharp breath. “But he was caught, right?”

  He nodded, wishing again that he’d been part of the takedown. But he’d been knocked out cold from the painkillers the doctor who’d stitched up his gunshot wound had given him.

  “Who was it?” she asked, her eyes wide with fear. She must have figured out that she—not Charlotte—had been the kidnapper’s intended hostage.

  He drew in a deep breath, hoping to distract her. He was only responsible for her safety, not a debriefing. “We need to get back to St. Pierre, and the others can explain everything.”

  Anger flashed in her eyes again, and she narrowed them. “If you’re not going to tell me what I want to know, why should I tell you?”

  Debriefing wasn’t part of his job, but he hadn’t made any promises to lie to her. Only to keep her safe. “The kidnapper was Prince Linus Demetrios.”

  She gasped at the name of her ex-fiancé. “No. Linus wouldn’t h
ave shot you. He would never hurt anyone. He’s not capable…”

  As sheltered as her life had been, she had no idea of what desperate men were capable. He hoped she never found out.

  “He actually wasn’t responsible for my gunshot wound,” Whit admitted. “But he was responsible for Charlotte’s kidnapping.”

  “He thought she was me?” she asked, her voice cracking with emotion and those dark eyes filling with guilt.

  He didn’t want to tell her, didn’t want to make her feel worse. But he wouldn’t lie to her, as everyone else had. So he just nodded.

  “But why would Linus want to kidnap me?”

  “He didn’t want to lose you,” Whit said. While he didn’t appreciate the man’s methods, he understood his reasoning.

  “How was kidnapping me going to keep me?” she asked. “Did he intend to never let me go? To hold me captive forever?”

  Whit sighed and figured he might as well explain the man’s twisted plan as best he understood it. “He intended to get you pregnant, so he would have a claim to St. Pierre through an heir.”

  Hurt flashed across her face. “Of course he didn’t really want me. He wanted my country.” Her eyes widened with shock. “Did he…hurt Charlotte?”

  “No. He was going to go about it artificially, but she was already pregnant—”

  “Charlotte’s pregnant, too?”

  “Yes,” he said. “With Aaron’s baby.”

  Her pain and indignation forgotten, she smiled. “That’s wonderful. And the baby is all right despite her being abducted?”

  “Fine,” he assured her. “She’s fine. You can see for yourself soon enough.”

  She shook her head. “No…”

  Was she refusing to return or was she denying something else entirely? “What do you mean?”

  “That plan couldn’t have been Linus’s alone. He wasn’t that clever or that conniving,” she said. “But his father…”

  “His father?” At the ball, he’d been warned to be especially vigilant of King Demetrios after Gabby’s father made his announcement changing her engagement. The man had been enraged, but he hadn’t spoken a word, just left in a blind fury.

  “King Demetrios was determined to join his country to St. Pierre,” she explained. “He could have masterminded the whole plot.”

  And if that plot had been thwarted, would he have stepped in again with the help of the man who tried grabbing Gabby in the airport? Maybe his son’s arrest hadn’t stopped his machinations.

  “Is everything all right?” a woman’s voice—as soft and sweet as Gabby’s—asked.

  Whit turned toward the doorway, toward the woman who, except for having white hair instead of golden brown, looked exactly like Gabby. He glanced from her to the princess and back—just in confirmation of what he already knew.

  And seeing the look of understanding and betrayal on Gabriella’s face, she realized that he’d known. And anger chased away her guilt.

  *

  THE SENSE OF betrayal overwhelmed Gabriella. She’d told herself that Whit wouldn’t have known—that he might not have been keeping secrets like everyone else in her life had. But when he’d looked from her to Lydia and back, he hadn’t been surprised by their uncanny resemblance.

  He’d known that they were related. He’d known that Charlotte Green was more than Gabby’s bodyguard; she was her sister, too—an illegitimate princess.

  But then so was Gabby. Just like the baby she carried was an illegitimate royal. She pressed her palms over her belly as the baby shifted inside her, kicking so hard that Gabby’s stomach moved. Her sister was also pregnant, her baby probably conceived the same night that Gabby’s had been.

  Gabriella was happy for her, but she didn’t want to be with her. Not yet. Six months hadn’t been long enough for her to come to terms with how she had been betrayed—by her father. By her sister…

  She hadn’t thought of Charlotte as just her bodyguard; she’d considered her a friend. She’d been such a fool…

  Whit had gone with Lydia back to her office, so that he could use the landline phone—so that he could call for the royal jet to take her back to St. Pierre. He’d saved her from a kidnapper only to kidnap her himself—to take her somewhere she didn’t want to be.

  She glanced out through that open window to where he’d parked the Jeep. The keys dangled from the ignition. During the past six months, she’d learned to drive a manual transmission.

  She grabbed up her backpack from the bed and headed out to the Jeep. It would take a while for Whit to get his call through, and even longer for him and whoever he called to understand what each other was saying. By the time he finished with his call, she would be almost back to the airport.

  Authorities must have been called. Someone would have reported the shooting and Whit stealing the Jeep. With the local police swarming the airport, nobody would try to kidnap her again. She would probably be safer there than here with Whit.

  But her hand trembled with nerves as she lifted the handle and pulled open the door. She stepped up into the Jeep and slid beneath the wheel. But before she could swing the door shut behind herself, a strong hand jerked it from her grasp.

  She didn’t look to confirm her fear of being abducted. But that hand couldn’t belong to Whit. He couldn’t have returned to the hut yet.

  Had the men actually followed them but stayed out of sight until they’d found her—alone and vulnerable?

  Chapter Five

  Whit had left her alone and vulnerable. Some damn bodyguard he was.

  And when he had stepped inside her hut and found it empty, he’d felt every bit as sick as he had when he’d seen that trashed hotel suite in Paris. The walls had been riddled with bullets, the rug and hardwood floor saturated with blood. He’d thought her dead then.

  He didn’t think her dead now. He thought her pissed off. So he wasn’t surprised to find her trying to take off in the Jeep.

  But she was surprised to see him. Her lips parted in a gasp when he stopped the door from closing. Then he reached for her.

  She slapped at his hand and then turned, kicking out with her leg. Her foot connected squarely with his kneecap, which caused his knee to buckle and nearly give beneath his weight.

  “Damn it!” he cursed her. And Charlotte. Her bodyguard had taught her some self-defense moves—in addition to teaching her how to shoot.

  If the guy in the airport hadn’t been trying to abduct her, Whit might have felt sorry for him taking the bullet in his shoulder. He knew too well how that felt. His throbbed with pain, but he ignored the discomfort as he tugged her from the vehicle. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  “Whit?” She finally focused on him, her eyes widening with surprise. She stopped fighting and allowed him to guide her back inside the hut. “I thought you were calling St. Pierre.”

  St. Pierre. Not home.

  Whit could relate. He’d never really had any place he had called home. After his mom had left, he and his dad had moved around a lot—his dad following the seasonal work of construction. Then Whit had joined the marines, going from base to base, deployment to deployment. And becoming a bodyguard had brought Whit into other people’s homes without ever giving him a chance to make one of his own.

  “Your aunt is making the call for me,” he said. He had asked her to the moment he’d realized he shouldn’t have left Gabby alone—because of her safety both physically and emotionally.

  “You know who she is.” Her usually sweet soft voice was sharp with resentment, and her eyes darkened with anger. “You were just like everyone else keeping secrets from me and using me.”

  Not only was she angry, she was in pain, too. He reached for her, trying to close his arms around her to offer comfort and assurance. “I didn’t—”

  But she jerked away from him, as if unable to bear his touch. But then she touched him, pressing her palms against his chest to push him back.

  “How could you…” her voice cracked with emotion �
�…how could you be with me that night and not tell me what you knew?”

  If anyone had used anyone that night, she had used him—probably to get back at her father for humiliating her at the ball. She must have figured having his daughter sleep with the hired help would shame the king.

  “I didn’t know, that night, that you and Charlotte were related,” he said. But he should have noticed the resemblance sooner since he’d known the U.S. Marshal before her plastic surgery; the surgeon hadn’t had to change much to make her Gabby’s virtual twin.

  She stared at him, her eyes still narrowed with skepticism. She probably thought he should have known, too.

  He continued, “I didn’t find out until after you’d disappeared.” And remembering his anguish over that, his temperature rose and his blood pumped faster and harder in his veins. She’d let him and her father and her fiancé believe she was dead. She was hardly the saint he’d painted her to be. “How could you?”

  “How could I what?” she asked, her brow furrowing with confusion.

  Images of that hotel suite flashed through his mind again, bringing back all those feelings of fear and loss and…

  “How could you just take off?” he asked. And leave everyone behind worried sick about her.

  “I had a threat,” she replied. “That person who hit you over the head that night left something under my pillow.”

  “A letter threatening your life,” Whit said. If she hadn’t distracted him from doing his job that evening, he would have been the one to find the note. Or if he’d followed his instincts and locked down the palace, he might have found the person who’d left the threat. “I know.”

  “Then you must know why I disappeared,” she said, as if he were an idiot unable to grasp a simple concept. “I was in danger.”

  “Still are.” His gut tightened with dread at the thought of that man pointing the gun at her and her unborn baby.

  She shook her head. “The kidnapper was caught.”

  “Then who were those men at the airport?” he asked. “They sure as hell looked dangerous to me. Then again I didn’t get a good look at them—I was too busy dodging the bullets they were firing at us.”