by Lisa Childs
“We will discuss this another time,” the king imperiously announced—which meant that he never intended to discuss it.
Because he had been wrong and would not admit it. And he compounded that arrogance when he continued, “You have kept your fiancé waiting long enough.”
She shook her head. “Prince Malamatos is not my fiancé. He’s yours. You chose him. You can marry him. I’m not.”
“Gabriella!” The king shot up from his chair, anger turning his face a mottled red. “You are impudent.”
“No,” she said. “But I should have been before now. I should have made it clear to you that while you rule this country, you do not rule my life. I will make my own decisions from now on.”
He pointed to her belly. “Being a single mother is what you choose?”
No. But she couldn’t force the baby’s father to love her. Too weary to deal with her father, she turned toward the door.
“Prince Malamatos will claim the baby.”
“Like the queen claimed me?” she asked. “I won’t take the risk of his treating my baby the way I was.” She wanted to give this child two parents who loved him. And Honora had already shared Tonio’s opinion of Gabby’s baby; it was an inconvenience but he would adjust to include it in his plan of ruling two countries.
“You need to talk to your fiancé,” he persisted, “and let him discuss your future.”
Another man telling her what to do? Disrespecting what she wanted?
She shook her head. “No one talked to me about this engagement. You didn’t. Tonio didn’t. I don’t even know the man. Why would I even consider marrying him?”
“You have always been so naive and idealistic, Gabriella, believing in fairy tales of love and happily-ever-after,” her father said with a snort of disdain. “That is why I have had to make your decisions for you.”
She turned back to him and met his gaze and decided to share with him the real struggle between them. “I want to hate you, Father.”
He sucked in a breath, as if she had struck him in the stomach. Or perhaps the heart…
“But I can’t,” she assured him. “I feel too sorry for you.”
Pride lifted his chin. “You feel sorry for me?”
She gave him a slight smile, one full of pity for all he had missed experiencing. “Because you have never been in love.”
“What makes you think that?” he asked, but he didn’t rush to deny her allegation either.
“Because if you had ever felt love—true love—yourself,” she explained, “you would not try to force me to marry someone I don’t love…”
He studied her face as if he were truly seeing her, as if he had really heard what she’d told him. Perhaps it was a first for them. Then he cleared his throat and asked, “You love Whitaker Howell?”
“Yes.”
He dropped heavily back into his chair. “He did not stay,” he said, as if warning her. “He did not fight for your hand in marriage.”
She flinched as if he’d struck her now. And he had aimed directly for her heart. “It doesn’t matter whether he stays or goes.” It did not change the fact that she loved him. That her heart would belong to him and no other—certainly not any fiancé her father found her.
The king chuckled. “You were never able to lie. I could always tell whenever you tried to be less than truthful with me.”
“If only I had been able to tell the same,” she murmured. It would have saved her from all the years she’d spent in the dark, oblivious to all his secrets and lies.
He heard her. His skin flushed again. But he ignored her comment and continued, “You are lying now. Whether Whitaker Howell stays or leaves, it matters to you. Greatly.”
She shrugged. “But I don’t matter to him. Even you said that he wouldn’t fight for me.”
“He fought for you,” the king reminded her. “He fought to save your life. He fought to find you these past six months.”
“He was just doing his job,” she told him, as she’d kept telling herself.
The king shook his head. “Not just his job. He cannot say enough good things about your caring and your selflessness.”
“He can’t?” Hope flickered, warming her heart.
The king grinned and nodded. “He loves you.”
Gabby’s head pounded with confusion. “Then why would he leave?”
“Because you are a princess and he is a bodyguard. He thinks he has nothing to offer you.” The king’s brief grin faded. “And he’s right.”
“If he loves me,” she corrected her father, “he has everything to offer me.” Because love was all she had ever wanted…
She turned toward the door. But her father made a sound, something akin to a sniffle, that had her turning back to him. He lifted his gaze to hers, and his eyes were wet with emotion. “I have loved you,” he said, as if he’d read her mind, “I have always loved you.”
She had waited her entire life for her father to declare his feelings for her. But suddenly how he felt didn’t matter so much to her anymore. “I have always loved you, too,” she said. It was why she had always tried so hard to please him. But now she wanted to please herself. So she headed for the door.
“He’s probably already gone,” her father warned her.
Probably. But she would not be deterred now. “Then I will find him.”
“It took us six months to find you,” he said. “It’ll take you much longer to find Whitaker Howell if he doesn’t want to be found.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Stop!”
The shout reverberated off the walls of the corridor leading away from the wing of employees’ rooms. Just as he had earlier, Whit automatically obeyed. He froze in place, his suitcase clutched in his hand.
“That’s the second time today that you’ve told me to stop,” he said, turning toward her.
Gabriella’s eyes were bright with anger—an anger so intense that she trembled with it. She wasn’t the only angry one.
He kept flashing back to what had happened with Honora, and in his head, it ended differently—it ended badly, with Gabriella bleeding on the floor. “You could have gotten yourself killed the first time.”
“She wasn’t going to hurt me,” Gabby insisted.
He dropped the suitcase, so he could reach out and shake some sense into her. But he only closed his hands around her bare shoulders. Then he had to fight the urge to pull her closer. And never let her go…
But first he had to deal with other emotions—with the helplessness and fear that had raged through him when he’d stood in the doorway watching that madwoman threaten the mother of his unborn baby—the woman he loved.
“She hired Zeke and those other men to kill you,” he reminded her. “She didn’t intend to just hurt you—she intended to kill you!”
“She intended for them to kill me,” she agreed—maddeningly. “Them—not her. She isn’t capable of personally killing someone—it made it real for her. And she realized that it was wrong.”
He tightened his grip on her shoulders, tempted again to shake her. She was so sweet and innocent, so hopeful that there was goodness in everyone. “Murder is wrong no matter if you do it yourself or hire someone else to do it for you.”
“She’s not well,” Gabby defended the woman who’d nearly killed her.
“And neither are you,” he said, “for taking the risk you did with yourself and our baby.”
“Our baby?” she asked, her eyes widening with shock. “You’re claiming him now?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “I already have. I never doubted that he was mine.”
She narrowed her eyes back at him. “Not for a moment? Not even when you met Dr. Dominic?”
“I hate that guy,” he admitted, barely resisting the urge to grind his teeth with the jealousy that shot through him. He had never been jealous before—had never cared enough to be jealous of anyone else.
Her lips curved into a slight smile. “Of course,” she agreed. “He move
d to a third-world country to offer his services free to take care of orphaned children. He’s a horrible, horrible person.”
A grin tugged at Whit’s lips, but he fought it. He knew how ridiculous he was being. “Yes, a horrible person.”
“And ugly, too,” Gabby said, her brown eyes warming and twinkling as she teased him back.
His heart pounded harder with excitement; the woman attracted him more strongly than any other woman ever had.
“I’m glad you see that, too,” he said.
“I always thought he was hideous,” she said with a girlish giggle.
“A regular Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Whit added.
Her amused smile faded. “No. That would be you.”
He chuckled at the illogical insult. “How’s that?”
“One minute you’re this sweet, funny guy and the next you’re acting like my father,” she accused him, “bossing me around and unilaterally making decisions that affect both of us.”
“What decisions have I made?” he asked. She and Aaron had both really read him wrong. But then it wasn’t their fault when he’d been afraid to make himself clear before now.
She pointed a trembling finger at the suitcase. “You decided to quit. To just take off and leave me and your baby behind without another thought.”
He chuckled at how wrong she was. “You’re more like your father than I am,” he argued. “You’re the one who keeps shouting out orders at me.”
“Is that why you quit?” she asked. “You’re sick of getting bossed around?”
Aaron had already told him he was a damn fool for quitting. But Whit didn’t want to do this as her father’s bodyguard—as a member of the staff or even as the baby’s father.
“By your father, yes,” Whit agreed. “But I think I’m getting used to your bossing me around.”
He slid his hands from her shoulders, down her bare arms to grasp her hands. Once their fingers were entwined, he dropped to his knees. “And just so you know…I could never not think about you. For the past six months every thought I had was about you.”
She sucked in a sharp breath, pulled her hands free of his, and touched her belly.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “You’re not having contractions or anything?”
She bit her lip.
He pressed his hands over hers on their baby. “Gabby, are you all right?”
She nodded. “I just…” Her voice cracked with the tears that pooled in her eyes. “I can’t believe this… I thought you were leaving. Or that you might already be gone. And I didn’t know if I could find you…if my father was right and you didn’t want to be found…”
She was chattering as nervously as she did for reporters until Whit reached up and pressed a finger across her lips. “Shhh…”
She stared down at him, her eyes so wide with fear and hopefulness.
“I had no intention of leaving without you,” he said, still on his knees. “I know you never wanted to come back here. That’s why I quit. I didn’t want to force you to live where you’ve never been happy.”
Now the tears fell with such intensity she trembled as uncontrollably as she had when they’d been freezing in the sea. “I will be happy wherever you are.”
“So you’ll marry me?”
She threw her arms around his neck and clung to him, too choked with sobs to answer him.
Was she saying yes? Or sorry? He couldn’t understand her. “Gabriella?”
She loved him; he knew it. But was love enough to overcome their differences?
*
“YOU HAVEN’T answered me,” Whit said, his voice gruff with impatience as he closed the door to her suite behind them.
“I will answer your question,” she said, “after you answer mine.”
“What question can you have?” he asked. “I thought my proposing said everything.”
Of course he did. He was a man. He didn’t understand that she needed more of an explanation. That she needed more…
“Why did you propose?” she asked, her heart beating frantically with equal parts hope and dread. “You haven’t told me yet why you proposed.” But she had a horrible suspicion she knew the reason, that she carried it in her belly.
His brow furrowed with confusion. “I thought my reason was obvious.”
She touched her belly. The baby moved restlessly inside her. “I hope it isn’t…”
His mouth dropped open with shock, and then his jaw tightened and a muscle twitched in his cheek. He was obviously offended and angry. “You think the only reason I want to marry you is because you’re pregnant?”
That was her fear—that he only wanted her for what she was—the mother of his child—and not for who she was.
Too choked with fear to answer him, she simply nodded.
He chuckled. “You and I are quite the pair, aren’t we?”
“What do you mean?”
“I would have told you how I felt earlier,” he said, “but I didn’t think you could love me.”
Shock and sympathy for the pain that flashed across his handsome face had her gasping. “Why not?”
His broad shoulders lifted and dropped in a heavy shrug. “I didn’t think I had anything to offer you.”
“Didn’t you hear what I told Honora about you?” she asked, pretty certain that he had been there at least long enough to have overheard some of what she’d told the deranged woman. “About all the reasons I love you?”
He nodded. “I heard, but I thought you were lying—that you were tricking her into thinking that you didn’t want her fiancé.”
“You thought it was all a ploy? Everything I said to her?” Was it that he thought that little of himself or that much of her? “You think I’m that smart?”
“I know you’re that smart,” he said. “And you’re loving and caring and forgiving. You’re so damn beautiful inside and out that I couldn’t even believe you were real. I thought you were just some fairy-tale princess until that night…”
Her face got hot with embarrassment. She had been unbelievably bold that night. He had tried to be all business—just a royal bodyguard. But she had undressed in front of him…
“I’m talking about earlier that night,” he said, as if he’d read her mind. Maybe he had noticed that all her skin had flushed with desire and her pulse was leaping in her throat. “About when you got so angry you actually pounded on me.”
She laughed. “You like abuse?”
“I like everything about you. Your sweetness and your fire. Your patience and your passion…”
“Like?” she asked. “I need more to say yes.” She needed love.
“I love you with all my heart,” he said. “That’s the only reason I want to marry you.” He laid his hand on her belly. “This baby is just a bonus—like the prize in a box of Cracker Jack.”
“Cracker Jack?”
“I forget that you’re not American,” he said. “Cracker Jacks are—”
“I know what Cracker Jacks are.” She wrinkled her nose at his less than romantic compliment. “Sticky popcorn.”
“Sweet.” He leaned down and brushed his mouth across hers. “And I love sweets…”
“And I love you,” she said. She lifted his hand from her stomach to her arm and then she squeezed his fingers together. “Pinch me to prove this isn’t just a dream.”
He moved his hand from her arm to her butt and pinched.
She squealed—with shock and delight. Then she reached around and pinched his butt.
He laughed out loud. “I can’t believe this is real, either,” he said. “You make me happier than I thought it was possible to feel. You make me feel.”
And so many people had warned her that he couldn’t—that the man didn’t have a heart. But as his arms closed around her, she laid her head on his chest and heard his heart beating strong and fast. For her…
His hands cupped her face and tipped it up for his kiss. His lips brushed across hers. But then he deepened the kiss. His tongue sli
d inside her mouth, tasting and teasing her.
Gabby didn’t want to be teased anymore. She wanted to make love to the man she loved. So she unbuttoned his shirt and unclasped his belt. Whit helped her discard his clothes. Then he reached for her and the zipper at the back of her gown. He fumbled with the tab before tugging it down. Her dress slid down her body—leaving her naked but for a bra that barely covered her full breasts and a thin strip of satin.
He did away with her underwear, too, and then—despite her extra weight, he easily lifted and carried her to the bed. “You are even more beautiful now than you were that night,” he said, his hands stroking over her more generous curves.
“I’m huge,” she said, pursing her lips into a pout.
He kissed her mouth. “You’re beautiful.” He kissed her cheek. “Breathtaking…” He kissed her neck.
She moaned as desire quickened her pulse so that it raced. And her skin tingled.
“You’re beautiful,” she said.
With his shock of blond hair and dark eyes, he was beautiful—and strong with muscles rippling in his arms and chest. And his back.
She dug her fingers in, clutching him close. “I am so in love with you.” She had fallen for him at first sight and then she had fallen harder and deeper the more she’d gotten to know him. “You are an amazing man.”
He touched her intimately, stroking her until she writhed beneath him. Pressure wound tightly inside her, making her body beg for release.
He lowered his head and kissed her breasts, tugging one nipple between his lips. He nipped gently at it.
And she came, screaming his name.
The man gave her pleasure so easily—so generously. She pushed him back onto the mattress and reciprocated. Her lips moved from his mouth, down his throat, over his chest. And lower. She loved him with her mouth, until he tangled his fingers in her hair and gently pulled her away.
“You’re killing me,” he said, his chest rising and falling as he struggled to catch his breath. “I can’t take any more.”
“You’re going to have to get used to it,” she warned him. Because she intended to spend the rest of her life loving him.
Whit couldn’t believe how happy he was—how happy Gabriella made him. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close as he rolled her onto her back.
