Protecting the Pregnant Princess

by Intrigue Romance

  “She loves you,” Whit said.

  “What?” he asked. Whit must have heard Trigger’s claims and believed the madman.

  Whit slapped his shoulder again. “Is that one more thing she kept from you? Her feelings?”

  “She doesn’t love me,” Aaron insisted. “She doesn’t even trust me.” And how could you love someone you couldn’t trust? The thought made his heart ache with loss.

  Whit blew out a ragged breath. “She gave up Josie’s whereabouts for your life.”

  Aaron shook his head. “No. She must have made up that address she gave him—just to buy us all some time to get Trigger under control.”

  Whit shook his head. “No. That is really Josie’s address.” Whit must have had the window cracked when he’d crouched down in the backseat of Trigger’s car.

  “No one but Charlotte knows where she stashed Josie,” Aaron reminded him. That was why the U.S. Marshal had gone to such extremes to get the information from her. “So how would you know if she told me the truth or not?”

  “I followed her the day that she moved Josie,” Whit admitted.

  “You really cared about her?”

  “Not as much as you did, but yeah,” Whit said. “She was an amazing lady.”

  “Is,” he corrected him even though he was still getting used to the idea himself of Josie Jessup being alive. He’d wasted more than three years on guilt and anger.

  “You never acted on your feelings for her,” Whit said with absolute certainty. They hadn’t taken shifts but had watched her together.

  “She was a client,” Aaron reminded him. “We were paid to protect her.” And he would never cross that line.

  “Her protection was why I followed Charlotte that day—to make sure that no one else followed them.”

  And that was why Aaron had struggled to understand why Whit had talked him into leaving the safe house the day it had exploded. Because he had always been vigilant about protecting their clients.

  Whit nodded. “I had to make sure that Josie would be safe.”

  “Charlotte made sure of that,” Aaron pointed out. So he could no longer resent her for keeping that secret from him. She’d just been doing her job. Actually she’d gone above and beyond because Josie had become a friend of hers. No matter how tough and independent she acted, Charlotte allowed herself to get close. To be vulnerable…

  “Charlotte was kind of a client, wasn’t she?” Whit asked, as if testing his former partner. “Being the king’s daughter and all.”

  “I didn’t know that she was,” he reminded Whit and himself of another secret to which he hadn’t been privy. And his resentment returned.

  “Doesn’t matter if you knew that or not, I guess,” Whit continued. “As the princess’s doppelganger bodyguard, she was still part of the job detail.”

  Wondering where his friend was heading with his comments, Aaron only nodded his agreement.

  “And yet you acted on your feelings for her,” Whit said.

  Aaron arched a brow, wondering how Whit knew.

  “Her kid is yours, right?”

  Aaron nodded and then grinned with overwhelming, fatherly pride. “Yes.”

  “So your feelings for her are obviously stronger than your feelings were for Josie,” Whit concluded.

  “Josie was a friend,” Aaron said.

  “And Charlotte?”

  His everything. “I don’t know what she is. Or how she feels.”

  “She loves you.”

  Aaron’s heart warmed with hope, but he didn’t dare believe Whit’s declaration. He wouldn’t believe it until Charlotte herself told him her feelings.

  But he suspected that was another secret she wasn’t willing to share.

  *

  GABRIELLA HADN’T ANSWERED. But the phone hadn’t rang and rang, either. Instead Charlotte had heard a message that the number she’d dialed was no longer a working exchange. It probably meant nothing more than that the minutes had run out on the disposable cell Charlotte had given her.

  But who had Gabriella been calling? No one else knew where she was. And the few who’d thought they had, had actually mistaken Charlotte for the princess.

  Unless Gabriella had used those minutes trying to reach her. When the men had burst into the hotel suite in Paris, she had destroyed her phone—making certain that there had been no way those men could track down the real princess. “Where are you?” she asked aloud, her voice echoing in the eerie quiet of the bedroom where she and Aaron had made love just hours before. The sheets were still tangled and scented with the sexy musk of Aaron’s skin. Of their lovemaking…

  She trembled with need. But it was a need she suspected would go unanswered. He was probably already on his way to Josie.

  “Here you are,” a deep voice murmured.

  She glanced up to find him in the doorway, leaning against the jamb and studying her. “You were looking for me?” she asked and then realized his probable reason why. “Are the police here?”

  “On their way,” he confirmed. “So is someone else.”

  So instead of going to her, he was bringing Josie to him? That was even more dangerous.

  “You called her? You can’t do that,” she said. “Someone could have traced the call. You could have put her in danger.”

  “Her who?” he asked, his brow furrowing with confusion. He still bore the round mark of the barrel of Trigger’s gun on his temple. “I don’t know where Gabriella is.”

  “Not Gabby,” she said, “Josie. You can’t call Josie.”

  “Of course I can’t,” he agreed. “I don’t have her number,” he said.

  Relief shuddered through her, and she hated herself that she wasn’t just relieved her friend was safe but relieved that Aaron hadn’t immediately tried to contact her. She hated this petty jealousy. It had to be the pregnancy hormones making her so emotional and crazy—because she had never acted like this before. But then she had never been in love before, either.

  “I didn’t even know I really had her address until now,” he said.

  She waited for him to leave then—to rush off to the woman he really loved. But he stayed where he was, staring at her so intently it was as if he was trying to see inside her.

  “What?” She self-consciously lifted trembling fingers and ran them across her cheek. But the scar wasn’t there anymore. She had nothing to run her fingertips along like she used to.

  “Why did you give him her real address?” he asked, all narrow-eyed curiosity.

  She shrugged, but the tension didn’t leave her shoulders. She knew why she had. “I couldn’t risk your life.”

  “But by telling him, you risked hers.”

  Guilt and regret clutched at her. She hated that she’d done that—hated that she’d been so weak.

  “Why would you do that?” he asked.

  “I—I shouldn’t have done that,” she regretfully admitted. “I shouldn’t have told him.”

  “Trigger is dead,” he assured her—a slight shudder moving his broad shoulders as he must have relived that moment when Whit had shot the man holding a gun to Aaron’s head. “It doesn’t matter now what you told him.”

  She released a shuddery breath. “True. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Except it does,” he said. “To me.”

  He was asking a question she was too afraid to answer. Earlier she’d thought that she should tell him her feelings—that she should because if something had happened to him, she would want him to know that she loved him.

  But Trigger was dead. The prince and his henchman arrested. Nothing was going to happen to Aaron. But something bad could happen to her. She could tell him she loved him, and he could reject her.

  So she cast around for any reason that she could keep her feelings to herself, like the fact that he loved another woman. “Now that you know where she is, are you going to go see her?”

  “And risk someone following me?” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t put a friend’s life at risk.”
<
br />   Like she had.

  “A friend?” The question slipped out, and she hoped it didn’t reveal her jealousy. “Is that all Josie is to you?”

  He nodded. “We were friends when she died.”

  “Just friends?” she asked. “You gave up your business because of what happened to her.”

  “What I thought happened to her,” he said. “I didn’t think I was too good at my job then so giving it up seemed like the right thing.”

  “And Whit?”

  “I guess, subconsciously, I knew he was keeping something from me,” Aaron said. “So I didn’t trust him. I didn’t want anything to do with someone I couldn’t trust.”

  And that was her reason for not telling him her feelings. He didn’t trust her. After all the secrets she’d kept from him, she didn’t blame him; she wouldn’t trust her, either.

  Since she had given up a witness’s location, no one could trust her. Maybe it was good that she hadn’t gotten in touch with Gabriella. The princess was safer without Charlotte knowing exactly where she was.

  Sirens in the distance drew her attention. And she remembered something else he’d said. “Who, besides the police, is on their way?” she asked. “Stanley Jessup’s lawyer?”

  They would probably need him to help clean up and explain the mess they’d made in this small Michigan town. She doubted anyone would believe their convoluted tale of doppelgangers and kidnappings and amnesia and royalty.

  “King St. Pierre is on his way,” Aaron said.

  Panic struck her. She was in no condition to deal with that man. Not now. Maybe not ever again. “What?”

  “I called him,” Aaron explained. “He needs to know what’s going on.”

  “Why?” she asked. “So he can fire all of us?”

  “You’re his daughter.”

  She laughed. “Not to him, I’m not. I’m just an employee—like the two of you. You two were hired to protect him, and instead you came here—”

  “He wanted us to find the princess,” Aaron said. “He was all right with using his old security detail again. Why did you want them replaced?”

  “I wanted you and Whit to work together again,” she said. But she couldn’t take all the credit with a clear conscience. “Actually Josie suggested it. She felt bad that her needing to disappear caused a rift in your friendship.”

  He grinned with obvious affection for the other woman. Just friends? Really?

  “But I didn’t entirely trust his current people, either,” she admitted. “Especially Zeke Rogers.” The former mercenary had given off a bad vibe. “The king hadn’t done a very good job vetting them.”

  Kind of like how he hadn’t done a very good job of vetting future sons-in-law—putting Gabriella and Charlotte in danger.

  “Rogers headed up the king’s security detail for years,” Aaron said.

  “That’s why he should have had them more thoroughly checked out,” she said. “He didn’t know their backgrounds—their vulnerabilities.”

  “He knows ours now,” Aaron said with a heavy sigh. “Guess that Whit and I can start up our business again if he fires us.”

  “He will,” Charlotte warned him. “You found him the wrong daughter.”

  Just like she was the wrong woman for Aaron. She couldn’t tell him her feelings. But it was okay. She had her baby. She would give her all her love.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Aaron waited for it but the words didn’t come. So he asked the older man point-blank, “You’re not firing me?”

  Using Whit’s gunshot wound as an excuse, Aaron had taken the meeting alone with the king. The gray-haired man paced the den of Stanley Jessup’s rental home. His gaze kept going to the blood smeared on the leather couch. “Why would I fire you?”

  “I followed this lead on my own,” he sheepishly reminded him. He’d put himself in danger because he’d trusted the wrong people and hadn’t trusted the right ones.

  The king absolved him of any culpability, just as Stanley Jessup had. “You didn’t think you could trust anyone.”

  “But shouldn’t I have trusted you?” Aaron asked. Maybe he wanted to get fired. Because if Charlotte wasn’t working at the palace, he had no reason for being there.

  The king shrugged but even that had a regal edge to it. “Charlotte doesn’t trust me.”

  “She probably won’t tell you where Gabriella is,” Aaron admitted. “But it’s just to keep her safe.” He believed that now, where before he’d thought it might have been out of spite that she wouldn’t tell her father where his chosen daughter was.

  But given how the first man to whom Rafael had promised his daughter had nearly killed Charlotte, he didn’t trust the man’s judgment. Even if arranging marriages was fine in his realm, Aaron hated to think of anyone marrying for any reason but love.

  That was why he hadn’t already asked Charlotte. He didn’t want to marry her just because they were about to have a child together. He wanted to marry her for the reason his own blissfully happy parents had married—true love.

  “You are a loyal man,” the king praised him. “I will not fire you or Whit Howell. I believe it is my good fortune to have you as part of my security detail.”

  “And what about Charlotte?” he asked. Would he fire her as she suspected?

  “She is not just a bodyguard,” the king said. “She is my daughter.”

  Aaron was surprised by the man’s admission. “You’re claiming her now?”

  Rafael St. Pierre’s shoulders sagged with his heavy burden of guilt and regret. “I should have always claimed her.”

  “You should have,” Aaron wholeheartedly agreed. “You don’t deserve her.”

  “Do you?” the king asked, calling him on his hypocrisy. “I’m assuming you’re the father of her baby?” No matter how busy the man had been ruling his country, he must have remained aware of what was going on with his daughters.

  Aaron nodded. And now he realized the purpose of this meeting. Today the king was just a father asking a man his intentions toward his pregnant daughter.

  It didn’t matter that Aaron, like Charlotte, was in his thirties. Heat rushed to his neck, and nerves mangled his guts—and he was every bit as nervous as a teenager who’d gotten his young girlfriend pregnant.

  “I love her,” he said. “And I’d like to marry her. But I don’t know if she’ll have me.”

  The king was not going to get away with arranging a marriage for his oldest daughter. But if he were to do that, he would undoubtedly choose someone with more wealth and means than Aaron had.

  But no one could offer her the love that Aaron could. “I don’t know if she can trust anyone to love her.”

  “Because of me.” The king readily took the blame, his shoulders sagging even more with the additional burden. “I will talk to her for you.”

  Aaron flinched. “Championing me may not help my situation at all.” If that had even been the man’s intentions…

  “She will not listen to me,” Rafael agreed, “because she hates me.”

  Aaron shook his head. “If she hated you, she wouldn’t be so hurt that you rejected her.”

  “I had more reasons for treating her how I did,” the king said in his own defense. “But I really had no excuse for putting my country before my child.”

  Aaron couldn’t absolve the man of his guilt—not when his actions had so badly hurt the woman he loved.

  “Charlotte deserves to come first,” he admonished the man.

  The king studied Aaron’s face through narrowed eyes. His eyes were a darker shade of brown than his daughters’ warm golden brown. “Does she come first with you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” he answered from his heart.

  “Does she know that?” the king wondered.

  Given the way she’d treated him earlier, Aaron doubted it.

  “Not yet.” But he would make certain that she would have no doubts that she was the only woman for him.

  *

  CHARLOTTE WAITED OUTSI
DE the door to the den where the two most important men in her life were locked inside together.

  “Are you worried?” Whit asked and pointed toward the closed door. “About what’s going on in there? Do you think your daddy is getting out the shotgun to force Aaron to the altar to make an honest woman of you?”

  At the outrageous thought, she uttered a short, bitter chuckle. “I doubt that’s happening.”

  “You don’t think your father would defend your honor?” Whit asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you want me to defend your honor?” Whit offered sweetly. “I could rough up Aaron for you.”

  “Since you only have one arm working right now,” she reminded him, “I don’t like your chances.”

  He shrugged then grimaced at his own gesture. “Well, I offered. So what do you think they are talking about in there?”

  “Gabriella.” That was the only daughter the king would worry about and rightfully so. “I’m worried about her, too,” she admitted. “I couldn’t reach her on the phone earlier.”

  All his teasing aside, Whit anxiously asked, “But she should be fine, right?” He nodded in response to his own question. “Of course she’s fine. We neutralized all the threats against her.”

  “She’s Princess Gabriella,” Charlotte said. “There will always be threats against her.”

  A muscle twitched in his cheek as he tightly clenched his jaw.

  “People will want to kidnap her for her father’s money or his power,” she said. “She’s always in danger. And then there was that note shoved under her door the night of the ball.”

  “What note?” he snapped, as if he should have seen it himself. As if he’d been with Gabby…

  “It threatened her life,” she said. “It promised that she would die before she would get the chance to marry Prince Malamatos. It was why we left for Paris the next morning.” When Charlotte would have rather stayed and explored her burgeoning feelings for Aaron. But then those feelings had burgeoned even when she’d been away from him.

  He expelled a ragged sigh. “That was why you left? It wasn’t because she was excited to get a dress for her wedding?”

  Charlotte chuckled again—this time with real mirth over Whit’s ignorance. “Gabby had no intention of marrying either man her father promised her to.”