The Princess Predicament (5 page)

“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 have 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.

* * *

T
HE
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.”

“They probably thought we’d killed their friend,” she said, making excuses for the men. “I shot him, and you knocked him out.”

Whit nodded. “Yes, because he was threatening your life—just like the person who’d left the note. So you are definitely still in danger.”

She shrugged, apparently unconcerned. “The man who grabbed me was an opportunist. He recognized me, saw that I was unprotected and tried to take advantage of the situation.”

“Why was he here?” Why? Had he followed Whit right to her? And if he’d followed him from the place Charlotte Green had been held captive in Michigan, then he could have followed him to the orphanage.

“This country is a war zone full of rebels and mercenaries,” Gabriella said.

“Then why the hell would your bodyguard send you here?” Maybe his doubts about Charlotte’s motives had been right. Maybe she hadn’t been trying to protect Princess Gabriella when she’d had plastic surgery to look just like her; maybe she had been trying to take her place as the legitimate heir to the country of St. Pierre and the fortune of the king.

But Charlotte had seemed to genuinely care about her assignment. About her
sister.
Then he realized the answer to his own question. “She couldn’t tell you. The king had sworn her to secrecy with the threat of firing her if she told you the truth.”

Gabriella gasped and then blinked furiously as tears pooled in her eyes. “My father wouldn’t allow her to tell me?”

He had begun to appreciate Charlotte Green when she’d saved his life four or five days ago. But he really appreciated her now, for finding a way around the king’s royal decree. “So she showed you. She had to know that once you met her aunt you would figure it out.”

Charlotte had found a way around the king, but with the way she’d handled the situation, Gabriella had been alone when she’d learned the truth. Even though Lydia was related to her, she was a stranger. There had been no one there for Gabby who could have held her, who could have comforted her.

His arms ached, not from the gunshot wound, but with the need to hold her, to have been the one who comforted her when her world had turned on its axis. And when everything that she had believed to be true had become a lie.

She expelled a shaky breath. “I figured out that my father, that
my family,
” her voice cracked as emotion overwhelmed her, “has made a fool of me my entire life.”

He reached for her again, and this time she didn’t fight him off. Instead she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and clung to him. And his arms, which had ached to hold her, embraced her.

He ignored the twinge of pain in his shoulder. He ignored everything but how warm and soft she was and how perfect she felt.

Then, even as close as they were, there was a movement between them. The baby shifted in her stomach, kicking him as he or she kicked Gabby. While it was only a gentle movement, Whit felt the kick more violently than he had the princess’s when she’d tried to fight him off at the Jeep.

This baby inside her could possibly be his. He could be a father?

* * *

G
ABBY
FELT
HIM
tense, so she pulled back—embarrassed that she had clung to him. More embarrassed that she’d wanted to keep clinging to him. She had missed him, missed his touch—his strength. That night he’d guarded her he had made her feel safer than she’d ever felt. He’d made her feel
more
than she had ever felt.

Even now, her tumultuous emotions were all mixed up about him. She had to remind herself that, like that night, he was just doing his job. She meant nothing more to him than a paycheck from her father. She’d realized that when she’d woken alone the next morning and even more so when she’d left for Paris and he hadn’t tried to stop her.

She’d felt like such a fool for throwing herself at a man who really hadn’t wanted her. And then she had come here...and discovered exactly how big a fool she’d been.

“I could never figure out why my mother—the queen—hated me so much,” she admitted.

The woman had never shown Gabby an ounce of affection or approval. On her deathbed, she had even refused to see Gabriella—not wanting hers to be the last face she ever saw. She had never been able to tolerate even looking at Gabby. That was why she’d sent her off to boarding schools when she’d been scarcely more than a toddler.

“But she wasn’t really my mother,” Gabriella said. She had actually been relieved to learn that; it had explained so much. It wasn’t just that she was so unlovable her own mother hadn’t been able to love her. The queen hadn’t been her mother. But then her biological mother hadn’t loved her either since she’d so easily given up her baby.

“The queen couldn’t have any children,” she continued. He undoubtedly already knew this, but she needed to say it aloud—needed to bring the secrets to light since she had been left in the dark too long. “So the king had his mistress give him another baby—one he intended to claim and make the queen pretend was hers. Unlike Charlotte, whom he never claimed.”

“He has now,” Whit said, as if it mattered.

The king had denied the paternity of his eldest for thirty years. And for twenty-four years he’d denied Gabby a relationship with her sister and her aunt. Gabriella would never be able to forgive him that—let alone having traded her from one fiancé to another like livestock. But, as things had turned out, he had been right to break her engagement to Prince Linus. Despite her friendship with him, he hadn’t been the man she’d thought he was.

Even if he hadn’t masterminded the kidnapping plot, he had gone along with it. He’d put Charlotte’s life and the life of Gabby’s future niece or nephew at risk. But he hadn’t done it out of love. He’d done it so he could make a claim on her country.

Nobody in her life had actually been the person she’d thought he or she was.

As if on cue, Lydia Green stepped through the doorway and entered the hut. Her gaze went immediately to Gabby, as if surprised to find her still there and emotionally intact.

Gabby was surprised, too. But then if Whit hadn’t caught her, she might have been halfway to the airport by now.

“Did the call go through?” Whit asked.

Gabby held her breath, hoping that it hadn’t. She didn’t want the royal jet being sent for her—because she knew there was only one place that jet would bring her. Back to St. Pierre.

But Lydia nodded. Her gaze still on Gabby, her eyes filled with regret. She knew this wasn’t what Gabriella wanted. She was the first one who actually cared what Gabby wanted.

“When are they going to send the royal jet?” Whit asked.

Her aunt still wouldn’t look at him, continuing to stare at Gabby—much as she had the first time Gabriella had shown up at the orphanage. When her sister had signed off her parental rights to her youngest child, Lydia had thought she would never see the baby again. She had been elated when she’d realized who Gabriella really was.

Gabby had been devastated. Her biological mother had basically sold her. Unlike Lydia who’d followed her parents into missionary work, Bonita Green had resented never having material possessions. She’d spent her life conning people out of theirs until one of those marks had cut her life short.

Gabby would never have the chance to meet the woman—not that she ever would have wanted to. The queen and a former con artist were her only maternal examples. Gabby rubbed her belly, silently apologizing to her baby. It wasn’t really a question of if she would screw up; it was more a question of how badly.

“Are they going to send it?” Whit anxiously prodded Lydia for a reply.

Her aunt continued to focus on Gabby. “They already sent it—several hours ago actually. It should be here soon.”

She obviously wondered if Gabby still wanted to go. Gabby had actually never intended to go back there. But she wasn’t going to put Lydia in the awkward position that Charlotte had when she’d sent Gabby here. So she nodded her acceptance and forced a smile.

Her aunt released a soft sigh, but Gabby couldn’t tell if it was of relief or disappointment.

“Before you leave for the airport, come say goodbye,” Lydia said, “again.”

“We will,” Whit answered for them both.

Once her aunt had gone, Gabby admonished him, “You shouldn’t have spoken for me.”

His jaw tensed; perhaps he clenched his teeth in response to her imperious tone. But he didn’t apologize or argue. He only headed for the doorway, as if she were going to blindly follow him.

“I’m not leaving,” she explained. She had no intention of going where she couldn’t trust anyone.

* * *

T
HE
WOMAN
INFURIATED
him. From the moment he’d met her, he hadn’t been able to figure her out. She was unlike anyone else he’d ever known. “If you’re not leaving, why the hell did I just stop you from taking off in the Jeep?”

“I was trying to get away from you,” she said dispassionately, as if her words weren’t like a knife plunged in his back.

“Why?”

“Because I can’t trust you,” she said—again so matter-of-factly that it was obvious she had never considered trusting him at all.

But before he could defend himself, she continued, “I can’t trust anyone on St. Pierre. That’s why I’m not going back.”

He understood her reasons. But he had a job to do—protect her. And after the close call at the airport, he wasn’t convinced he could do that alone. Especially not here. He had a gun but no bullets, a shoulder throbbing with pain and a possible infection. “You can’t stay here.”