The Princess Predicament (13 page)

Charlotte shook her head. “It wasn’t your fault. None of it was. Aaron found me.” The light inside her brightened again. “He rescued me.”

“He loves you.”

Charlotte smiled. “Yes. He asked me to marry him, and I accepted. I love him.”

Gabby flinched with jealousy and then was angry with herself for being so petty as to envy someone else’s happiness.

Charlotte reached out, pulling Gabriella into a close embrace—or as close as their pregnant bellies allowed. “And I love you,” Charlotte said. “That’s why I couldn’t tell you that I’m your sister. I couldn’t tell you about our mother.”

“But you knew how the queen hated me,” Gabby said, pulling free of her. “You knew how that bothered me.” Even after the woman had died. “You could have told me she wasn’t really my mother.”

Charlotte shook her head. “If I told you the truth, I would have been fired. It killed me to keep it from you, but it was better to keep the secrets and keep you safe.”

Whit had been right about her reasons. Tears stung Gabby’s eyes. “You—you wanted to tell me?”

Charlotte nodded, and the gesture had tears spilling from her eyes to trail down her face. “As soon as I found out I had a sister, I wanted a relationship with you. That’s why, when I found the letter in the things my mom left behind when she died, I quit the U.S. Marshals.”

“I thought you quit because of what happened with Josie and Aaron and Whit.”

Charlotte had had Whit help her fake Josie’s death so that she could relocate her. Making Whit keep the secret from Aaron had destroyed their business partnership and their friendship.

“Making Whit keep that secret...” Charlotte let out a shuddery breath. “I understood what it cost him...when I had to keep secrets from you.”

“It won’t cost you what it cost Whit,” Gabby assured her. “You won’t lose me.” She hugged Charlotte tightly. So tightly that their babies kicked in unison.

Charlotte laughed. “They’re already getting to know each other.”

“They’re going to be close,” Gabby said.

“And so are we now that we have no secrets.” Charlotte squeezed her. “Thank you for forgiving me.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Gabby said. “It was his...” Her stomach churned as she thought of him and how little he’d really thought of her.

“He apologized to me,” Charlotte said. “He wants to treat me as a daughter now. Not an employee. Aaron will continue to work for him and protect us all.”

What about Whit?
But only Whit could answer that.

“He wants to make up the past to me,” Charlotte said. “And I’m going to stay here and give him the chance.”

Her sister was more forgiving than she was.

“He wants to see you,” Charlotte said.

To control and manipulate her, no doubt.

She shook her head, wanting to put off the moment when she had to face her father, and all his disappointment. “I need to get ready first.”

“Sure, clean up.”

She didn’t need a shower. She needed to gather all her courage and resentment and tell her father that she was not one of his loyal subjects. She was his daughter, and he was finally going to treat her and her wishes with respect.

“Don’t keep him waiting too long,” Charlotte said. “He’s been through a lot these past six months. Thinking you were dead...” Her voice cracked with emotion as she added, “...and that I was dead, really changed him.”

“He’s not going to fire you over my finding out that you’re my sister?”

Charlotte shook her head. “No. He acknowledged me as his daughter.”

Maybe that was because he was about to disown Gabriella for letting him worry for six months and for getting pregnant with the baby of a man who wasn’t royalty—except for being a royal bodyguard.

Whit had risked his own life to protect Gabby. But before she could romanticize his actions, she had to remind herself that he’d only been doing his job. She meant nothing to him.

“I’m glad I’m not the only princess now,” Gabriella said. “But be careful that he doesn’t try to run your life as he has mine.”

“Talk to him,” Charlotte urged.

Was it possible to talk to someone who had never listened to her? She nodded, acknowledging that she had to at least try.

Charlotte smiled as she headed for the door. “I’ll let him know that you’ll be meeting with him soon.”

As soon as she could gather her courage and control her anger over all the secrets he’d kept from her. To splash some water on her face, Gabby stepped into her bathroom and gasped in shock.

Scrawled across her mirror in scarlet red lipstick was a note even more ominous than the letter left under her pillow. “You should have stayed dead!”

Chapter Fourteen

“I want to see her now!” Prince Tonio Malamatos commanded Whit as he paced the front salon of the palace. It was the most public parlor, the one farthest from the royal quarters and the royals.

Whit’s head was still pounding from his struggle with Zeke Rogers. But he wasn’t above fighting another man, and this tall thin man would be easily beaten. If only Whit had that right...

Gabby carrying his child wasn’t enough—not when she was still engaged to this man. An engagement he apparently had every intention of seeing through to his wedding day—even though his ex-fiancée had arrived at the palace with him. Damn Aaron for hurrying off to find Charlotte as soon as they arrived, leaving Whit alone to deal with this royal pain in the ass.

He wasn’t the only one demanding to see her. King Demetrios had also requested an audience with her, to extend his apologies for the behavior of his son, and, Whit suspected, to introduce her to his other son. The young man followed his father like a puppy, like the ex-fiancée followed Prince Malamatos. Whit had had other men follow them back to their rooms. Men he trusted stood guard to make sure they wouldn’t leave their rooms undetected.

“She needs to rest and recover,” Whit told the prince. “She’s been through a lot.”

King Demetrios had accepted that excuse the first time Whit had offered it, and he and his son had retired to the guest rooms King St. Pierre had offered them. Prince Malamatos was much more stubborn.

“Whose fault is that?” the woman asked, her tone as waspish as her thin face. Honora Del Cachon, with her pale face framed with thin, dark hair, was a brittle and bitter woman—some distant relative of the queen. The queen had already been dead when Whit started working for the king, so he’d never met her. But meeting this woman gave him some indication of what Gabby had dealt with, and how she’d grown up with disapproval and resentment and cruelty.

Whit was hurting too much and too tired to worry about protocol. Hell, he didn’t remember what she was anyways—a princess? A duchess? He figured she was just a royal bitch. “I could give you a list of names of men who were trying to hurt her.”

But still one name eluded him. He and Aaron had found nothing of Zeke’s—not even his body. While they’d been searching the island, they had had the guards they trusted searching Zeke’s apartment. They had found nothing there to indicate who had hired him—if anyone even had. There had been nothing to link him to anyone else. Maybe he had been acting on his own—out of vengeance.

“You are not going to take any responsibility for the princess’s condition?” the woman demanded, her tone as imperious as the king’s.

She was not a queen; Whit knew that much about her. Obviously she did not realize that herself. And how the hell did she know that Gabby was pregnant?

Aaron had said that only he, Charlotte and,
damn it,
the king knew.

“What do you mean?” he asked her.

“Are you not a royal guard?” the woman said. “Is it not your duty to protect her?”

“I am her fiancé,” Prince Malamatos declared. “I will protect her from now on.”

“She’s been hiding for six months,” the woman said, turning now on the man to whom she’d been engaged. “She does not want to marry you.”

“She was frightened,” the prince stubbornly defended Gabriella. “I will hire many royal guards, men who can be trusted, and she will feel safe in my palace.”

“She is pregnant,” the woman said, betraying that she did know a secret.

Prince Malamatos didn’t react to her news; obviously it wasn’t news to him. Who had already told him? This woman or Zeke Rogers?

“How do you know?” Whit asked her.

The woman’s shoulders lifted in slight shrug. “I saw her and the one who looks just like her as they arrived,” the woman explained. She leaned closer to Whit, as if ashamed that she was about to gossip. “They are both the king’s daughters, you know. The queen, my dear cousin, revealed to me on her deathbed that they are both his children by a former mistress. He bought her Gabriella like one would buy a doll or a puppy.”

The prince betrayed no surprise. Obviously he already knew that, too.

“Why are you really here?” he found himself asking the man. Did he want to marry Gabby or punish her for betraying him during their engagement? St. Pierre wasn’t that far away in geography or culture from the places that practiced honor killings. Was Prince Malamatos’s country such a place?

“That’s impertinent of you,” the prince replied. “But as I told you, I want to see my fiancée. I want to set a date for our wedding.”

“You still want to marry her?” the woman asked. “Even though she is pregnant with another man’s child.” From the arch glance she cast at Whit, it was apparent she knew which man.

The prince shrugged. “To merge my country with the resources of St. Pierre, I will claim the royal bastard as my own. After all, I will be marrying a royal bastard.”

Whit wasn’t tired enough to ignore what the man said. Or maybe he was too tired to summon the control it would have taken him to ignore that comment. For he swung and smashed his fist into the prince’s weak jaw.

The man crumpled to the ground, the woman screaming and hovering over him.

“Whit!” Aaron yelled as he walked back into the salon. “What the hell!”

“Did you hear what he said about the princess?” Whit demanded.

“It was all true,” the woman replied. “You are a barbarian.”

He was a man in love. But all he could offer Gabriella was his protection, of her life and her reputation...

“The king wants to see you,” Aaron told Whit.

Whit’s stomach knotted with dread at the look on his friend’s face. He couldn’t meet his gaze. Obviously the king was furious with him. Someone must have told him about the baby.

“He’s going to fire you for your impudence,” the woman said.

If he was going to get fired for it, he might as well tell the king exactly what he thought of him and the way he’d treated the sweetest woman Whit had ever known. He stormed past Aaron, heading toward the king’s private rooms.

* * *

G
ABBY
ROSE
UP
on tiptoe and tried to scrub at the mirror with a tissue. She scrubbed so hard that the mirror actually cracked from the pressure she applied—and probably from age, as well. It was an antique with a gilded frame.

Perhaps she should have called Charlotte back and shown her the message on the mirror. But Gabriella had chosen to ignore it—at first. She’d showered and changed into a gown. Since it was evening, formal dress was protocol even if there hadn’t been guests in the palace. Fortunately she’d found a dress with an empire waist and a skirt billowy enough for her pregnant belly. Wearing a tiara was also protocol, so she’d turned to the mirror in order to see where to pin the diamond-encrusted jewelry into her hair.

And she hadn’t been able to ignore the message any longer. Because the shower steam had smeared the lipstick and sent it running down the glass in rivulets, Gabby couldn’t see beyond it.

And she wasn’t certain she wanted Charlotte to see it. The last time she’d shown her a threat, her bodyguard had whisked her away and they’d both disappeared for six months. Gabby wouldn’t have minded going back to the orphanage, but she couldn’t now that people knew she’d been there.

Was there any place for her to be safe? She thought of Whit’s arms, wrapped tight around her, her head on his chest with his heart beating strong and steady beneath her ear. She would be safe with him—only with him.

The door creaked open, and she lifted her gaze to the mirror to see who’d come up behind her. Her heart filled with hope that it was Whit—that he was back and had come to see her the moment they had landed.

It was probably Charlotte though, prodding her because she’d kept the king waiting too long. Keeping him waiting was never wise. But then she peered around the lipstick blocking the image in the mirror and realized that he would probably be waiting longer.

“Hello, Honora...” She turned to greet the woman holding a gun on her.

“You are not surprised to see me.”

She gestured behind herself at the mirror. “I figured out that was your shade. It certainly isn’t mine.”

“Of course not,” Honora snapped. “You wouldn’t wear something so stylish.”

“I was thinking...” Garish. But it wasn’t wise to provoke the lunatic holding a gun on her. “...exactly that.”

“You’ve always envied me,” Honora said.

“I have...” Given her very little thought over the years. The queen’s cousin had always been unpleasant to Gabby—even when they were children.

“You’ve always wanted what I have.”

A nasty disposition? Dissatisfaction with everything in life? Hardly.

“That’s why,” Honora continued, “you had your father arrange your engagement to my fiancé. You have to have everything I have.”

For years Gabriella had just thought her cousin was nasty; she hadn’t realized that the woman was actually delusional and paranoid and possibly mentally ill. “I’m sorry...”

“You should be—you will be—for trying to ruin my life!” Honora raised the gun so that the barrel pointed at Gabby’s heart.

“I’m sorry that my father manipulated all of us,” Gabby said. “It was him. Not me. I didn’t ask him to break my engagement to Prince Linus.”

“You would have married that psychopath?”

She shouldn’t throw stones, but Gabby wasn’t about to offer her that advice. “I had no idea my father was going to arrange an engagement with Prince Malamatos.”

“Of course you did,” Honora scoffed. “Of course you put him up to it. And of course your father will give you whatever you want. He has spoiled you rotten, just as my cousin the queen complained.”

Gabriella snorted in disgust. “The queen constantly complained.”

“Do you blame her?” Honora asked, obviously outraged on her dead relative’s behalf. “She was forced to raise her husband’s bastard as her own. That was cruel.”

No, how the queen had treated Gabriella had been cruel. She hadn’t cared that she’d been an innocent child, unaware of her parents’ duplicity.

“As cruel as it will be if you were to try to force Tonio to raise your bastard as his own.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Gabriella insisted.

“You won’t have to,” Honora said. “Tonio is an honorable man. He intends to claim your bastard, which is more than I can say for that barbarian that actually fathered your kid.”

“Barbarian?”

“The American,” she said, her lip nearly curling with disdain. “The golden-haired one. I can understand why you would bed him...” She gave a lusty sigh. “But you should have been more careful than to become pregnant with his child. But then, of course, your father was careless too when he got his mistress pregnant with first your sister and then you.”

Apparently Gabriella had been the only one not privy to the secrets of her family. She pressed her palms to her belly in which her child moved restlessly. “I don’t regret this baby.”

“I regret you,” Honora said. “I wished you had never been born. So I will fix that now.” Her finger twitched along the trigger.

“You don’t want to kill me,” Gabby bluffed. “You just don’t want me to marry Prince Tonio. And since I have no intention of doing that, there is no reason to hurt me.” Or her child.

Honora chuckled bitterly. “You would be a fool to break that engagement. Not only is he a handsome, powerful man but he is the only one who’d be willing to marry a woman carrying someone else’s bastard.”

“I don’t want to marry anyone,” Gabby insisted. She wanted to punch this woman in the face for the horrible name she kept calling her baby. She drew in a deep breath and reminded herself that Honora was sick.

“You’re lying!”

She expelled the shuddery breath she’d just drawn. “Yes. I am.”

The gun trembled in Honora’s hand. “I knew you were lying. I knew you wanted Tonio—because he’s mine!”

“He is yours—all yours,” Gabby assured the deranged woman. “I don’t want to marry
him
. But I do want to marry someone.”

The woman stared at her through eyes narrowed with skepticism and faint curiosity. “Who do you want to marry?”

Gabby stroked her hands over her belly, and she couldn’t stop her lips from curving into a wistful smile. “The father of my baby.”

But Whit marrying her was about as likely as Gabriella being able to talk Honora out of shooting her. She had to try...getting through to Honora. She’d given up on Whit. He’d faced death dangling from a cliff, and even that close scrape hadn’t lowered his guard enough for him to let his feelings out. Maybe he really didn’t have any feelings—for her or anyone else.

* * *

“T
HAT
BARBARIAN
?” Honora scoffed. “He has nothing to offer you.”

Whit couldn’t argue with her—even if he dared let his presence be known to either woman.

He had been on his way to see Gabriella and say goodbye when he’d noticed that royal bitch slipping into Gabby’s private rooms. His first thought had been to turn around and leave without saying goodbye. But then he’d noticed the glint of light off the metal object Honora gripped in her hand.

A knife? A gun?

She wasn’t sneaking into Gabby’s room for girl talk. For revenge for her broken engagement? Was she the one who’d paid Zeke to make sure Gabriella never returned to St. Pierre?

He slipped into the room behind her. But before he could grab her, she’d pulled the gun. If only it had been a knife...

He could have pulled his trigger and killed her before she got close to Gabby. But with the gun, even if he shot her, she might reflexively pull the trigger. She might kill Gabby—or the baby—even as she was dying.

“Whitaker Howell,” Gabriella saying his name drew his attention back to her, “is twice the man that Tonio Malamatos is. I don’t want your prince, Honora.”

The woman gasped in shock and horror. “Do you really expect me to believe that you would prefer a bodyguard over a man who will soon rule his own country and, according to the deal he made with your father, this country, as well?”

If Malamatos thought King St. Pierre was about to step down as ruler of the country named for him, he had gravely misunderstood their deal. Or was that just the reason he’d given his crazy fiancée for breaking their engagement?