The Princess Predicament (11 page)

She flinched as his brutal honesty struck her hard. “I’m sorry...”

“But now that it’s going to happen,” he said, “I’ll deal with it. I’ll figure out how to be a good parent.”

“Figure out?”

He shrugged. “I told you—that night on the water—I didn’t have good examples.”

“I know,” she murmured. The stories had been more about warning her than sharing with her.

“My mom took off when I was little,” he reminded her, “and my dad cared more about drinking than raising a kid.”

As it had when he had first told her about his upbringing, sympathy for him clutched her heart. “I’m sorry...”

“You didn’t have any better examples,” he reminded her—again with the brutal honesty. “Aren’t you scared?”

“Terrified,” she admitted.

“You don’t need to be,” he assured her, stroking a fingertip along her cheek. “You will be a wonderful mother.”

He had told her that before—on the water. And she hadn’t asked then what she should have. “How do you know?”

“Because you care about people,” he said. “You’re not selfish...”

“Like my father?” Would she be as controlling with her kid as he’d been with her?

“He wasn’t responsible for those men on the plane,” Whit said in his defense. “They weren’t following
his
orders.”

So he wasn’t a monster, just a bully. “I know,” she said. “That’s why I figured out we needed to jump.”

“You took a huge risk...”

Her heart flipped with fear even just remembering. So many things could have gone wrong.

“Take a risk on me,” he said, lowering his head to hers. He kissed her again—with passion and desire.

He had to be real. This couldn’t be a dream. But what did Whit want her to take a risk on? Loving him?

It was too late. She’d already fallen in love with him. Six months ago. And so many things had gone wrong...

Except for conceiving their child. And except for making love with him. That hadn’t felt wrong. That had felt as right as what he was doing to her now.

He made love to her mouth and then he made love to her body, kissing every inch of her. He teased her breasts with his tongue, tracing a nipple with his tongue before tugging the taut point between his lips.

She cried out as pressure built inside her body. She arched her hips up, silently begging for the release she knew he could give her. And he teased her with his fingers, sliding them gently in and out of her. Then he pressed his finger against the point where the pressure had built. And she came, screaming his name.

He moved away, dropping onto the mattress next to her. Sweat beaded on his brow and his upper lip, and the muscle twitched in his cheek.

“Are you all right?” she asked, concern chasing away the pleasure afterglow.

He groaned. “I will be. I just need a minute.”

His body betrayed him. He’d lost his towel, so she saw the evidence of his desire.

“Make love to me,” she urged him.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, and he pressed a hand to her stomach. “Or him...”

“We’re fine,” she assured him. But she wasn’t completely fine because the pressure was building again. “But I need you. I need to feel you inside me.” And because she was afraid that he would hold back, she took the initiative.

She straddled his lean hips and eased herself down onto his pulsing erection. She moaned as he sank deeper and deeper.

He clutched her hips and lifted her up. But instead of pulling her off, he slid her back down. Up and down. He thrust inside her. And as he thrust, he arched up from the mattress. He kissed her, imitating with his tongue what he was doing to her body.

The intensity of the pressure built and built...until he reached between them. He pushed against her with his thumb, and she came again.

He thrust once more and uttered a guttural groan, as he filled her with his pleasure.

Tears stung her eyes from the intimacy of their joined bodies and mutual ecstasy. Her heart swelled with emotion, with love. She had never felt anything as intense until she’d felt her baby’s first little flutter of movement.

She loved Whit with the same intensity that she loved their baby. And she wanted to share that love with him.

But when she opened her mouth to speak, he pressed his fingers against her lips. “Listen,” he said.

And she waited for him to speak, hoping that he was going to declare his feelings. Hoping that he loved her, too.

But he said nothing. Instead he cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. Then he asked, “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

“I think it’s a helicopter.”

“You think the owner is coming back?” Heat rushed to her face over the embarrassment of the homeowner finding them naked in his bed.

“I hope so,” Whit said, but his body had tensed again. And that muscle was twitching in his cheek.

“But you don’t think it is?”

He shrugged. “It could be. But my gut’s telling me that it’s not.”

“You think they found us?” She had almost hoped they would believe she was dead again and not look for her.

“I think we’re about to find out.”

Chapter Eleven

Earlier, when he’d awakened from his long sleep, Whit had checked out the house again. Instead of just searching rooms, he’d searched every drawer and cupboard. And he’d found something the owner had left behind that he’d worried might prove useful.

A Glock.

He pressed it into Gabby’s hand. “You take this,” he insisted. “And stay out of sight.”

They had dressed quickly, in clothes that were still damp from the washer, and Whit had retrieved the gun, before they’d slipped out of one of the many sliding doors of the house. That first day, he had found a little storm shelter close to the outbuilding that held the generator. But the cavelike hole was so small that they both barely fit inside its stone walls. That didn’t matter, though, since Whit wasn’t staying. He moved toward the cement steps that led back to the trapdoor like entrance.

Gabby clutched at his arm with fingers that trembled. “Don’t leave.”

“You’ll be safe here,” he assured her.

“Then you will be, too,” she said. “Stay here. Stay out of sight with me.”

He shook his head. “That might be help arriving on that helicopter.” It had probably already landed, but the generator was too close to the shelter and too loud for them to hear over the droning engine. “It could be Aaron and Charlotte.”

He doubted it, though. If the plane had crashed, there probably would have been no survivors—no one to share the news that they’d parachuted out. But before the plane had gone down, one of them might have called his boss—the one really giving the orders. That person might be aware that they’d gotten off before the crash.

And he might have launched a search party to make sure they hadn’t—or wouldn’t—survive.

“I’ll go with you,” Gabby said, anxious to see her sister now. How like Gabby it was to have already forgiven Charlotte for the secrets she’d kept...

“We don’t know for sure who it is,” he pointed out. Even if it was the homeowner, Whit wanted to meet him alone first and gauge the person’s trustworthiness before he revealed the princess of St. Pierre. “So I need to check it out first.”

“Then take the gun with you,” she said, pressing the Glock back into his hand, “in case it isn’t help arriving.”

“If it isn’t, you may need the gun,” he said. “It didn’t take me long to find the shelter—they could find it, too.” He intended to cover that door in the ground, though, with branches and leaves.

“You’ll need the gun more than I will, then,” she argued, “since you’ll be encountering them first.”

The woman was infuriating and beautiful and generous and loving. And Whit should tell her all those things. He had wanted to tell her earlier. Those words and so many others had been on the tip of his tongue, but then he’d heard the helicopter in the distance. And he had known that this was neither the time nor the place for him to share his feelings.

And if that wasn’t help arriving, there may never be a time and place for him to tell her that he was falling in love with her.

“You need the gun,” he said, “to protect yourself and our baby.”

She drew in a shuddery breath and finally stopped trying to push the gun on him. He knew that she wouldn’t have kept it for herself, but she wanted to protect their baby.

So did Whit. He would make sure that she wouldn’t need to use that gun. He would protect her and their baby no matter the cost—even if he had to give up his life for theirs.

* * *

G
ABBY
FLINCHED
AS
the baby kicked her ribs—hard. He was kicking her, too, like she was kicking herself for keeping the gun. She should have insisted Whit take it with him. She shouldn’t have let him leave the shelter with no protection.

Maybe she should sneak out and see who had arrived, see if Whit would need the gun. She climbed the stairs toward the trapdoor, and standing beneath it, she listened intently. But all she could hear was the generator and the sound of her own furiously beating heart.

The baby kicked again, and she pressed her free hand against her belly—trying to soothe him even as her own nerves frayed. If she really was safe where she was, why hadn’t Whit taken the gun?

Could she risk her child’s life to save his father?

Whit would never forgive her if she ignored his wishes and risked her own safety and their baby’s. But perhaps even being where she was would endanger them. If someone found them, inside the shelter, they would be trapped. She could get off a few shots, might hit one or two of them. But what if there were more than a couple of them?

No. She couldn’t stay in the shelter. It wouldn’t be safe if she were to be discovered hiding in the cavelike hole because there was only one way out—through the trapdoor. She tried to lift it now, but it was heavy.

She managed to raise it an inch and dirt and grass rushed in through the narrow space. Choking on dust, she dropped it back down. Whit had covered it, had tried to camouflage it.

His friends claimed that his instincts were legendary and had saved more than one life during their deployments. For him to hide her as he had, his instincts must have been telling him that it wasn’t help arriving.

They’d jumped out of a plane that had probably crashed. Why would anyone suspect they lived? Charlotte and Aaron were too realistic to believe in miracles. The only person who might know they’d survived was the one who’d hired the men, if the pilot or one of them had called him before the crash.

And if it was one of them, then Whit was disposable. He was only in the way of whatever plan that person had for her. Kidnapping or killing...

Whit, no doubt, had a plan to protect her and their baby. Like covering the hole to the shelter so no one would find her. But she worried that in order to carry out his plan he would have to sacrifice too much.

Perhaps his life...

* * *

W
HIT
HAD
WALKED
BACK
through the living-room slider before passing through the house to the front door. That way, hopefully, the person wouldn’t realize he had been outside.

He drew in a deep breath and opened it to a man he wasn’t surprised to see. The guy was bald with heavy black brows and more scars than Whit and far fewer morals. Zeke Rogers had accepted his demotion with even less grace than the other men. He had to be the one who’d been giving them orders—since that had been his job before Whit and Aaron had taken it from him.

Whit was glad that he’d given Gabby the gun because Zeke was smart. He would find her eventually—unless Whit could outsmart him.

“You’re like a cat with nine lives, huh?” Zeke remarked almost idly. He obviously wasn’t surprised to see Whit either, or to find him alive and on this island. “You just keep coming back from the dead.”

“I haven’t died once,” Whit corrected him. Yet. He had a feeling this man intended to change that.

“I heard about the bullet you took in Michigan,” Zeke said. “That’s why the king had me resume my duties at the palace, as his royal guard.”

“We agreed that would be best,” Whit admitted, “while Aaron and I concentrated our efforts on finding Charlotte and Princess Gabriella. But Charlotte has been found.” And Aaron should have resumed his duties as chief of security, dismissing Zeke again.

“The princess has been, too,” Zeke claimed.

Whit’s stomach muscles tightened as if he’d taken a blow. But he resisted the urge to glance toward the shelter and make sure Gabby wasn’t being dragged from her hiding place. Zeke could have other men searching the island. One of them could have found her.

But she was a fighter. He doubted she would have been taken without firing at least one shot, which he would have heard even over the drone of the generator engine.

Denying Zeke’s claim, Whit shook his head. “She’s gone...”

“The king sent you to retrieve her from Charlotte’s aunt’s orphanage.” The man had obviously been briefed—either by the king or by someone else. “You had her. You two were on the royal jet together before it went down.”

“It went down?”

Zeke nodded, but his face displayed no emotion. He didn’t give a damn that men he’d worked with had probably lost their lives. Probably while they’d been trying to carry out his orders...

“Were there any survivors?” Whit wondered.

Zeke shook his head now. “Just you and the princess.”

So he had been in contact with the men on the plane—obviously right up until the moment it went down. “Why would you think that?” Whit asked, trying to get the man to make the admission. Not that it mattered if he confessed...

Whit was convinced Zeke Rogers wasn’t there to help him or Gabby.

“Well, obviously you’re alive.”

Whit nodded. “Obviously.”

“You and the princess parachuted out of the plane.”

There was no point in denying what Zeke had apparently been told. “That’s true.”

“You weren’t easy to track down,” Zeke said, resentment flashing in his beady eyes. “I had to talk to some parachuting experts and some experts on ocean currents to figure out where the hell you might have washed up.”

Whit had a feeling the man had been hoping to find bodies rather than survivors. “It really was nice of you to go to all the trouble to rescue me.”

“I’m not here to rescue you,” the man ominously corrected him.

Whit lifted his arms, ignoring the twinge in his shoulder, and gestured around the empty house. “Well, I’m the only one here.”

Zeke chuckled. “Where are you hiding the princess?”

Whit forced a ragged sigh of regret and resignation. “She didn’t make it.”

“She wasn’t on that plane when it went down,” Zeke insisted. “She parachuted off with you.”

“Yes, but that was much too dangerous in her condition. There were complications...” He paused, as if choked up.

“With her pregnancy?” Zeke asked.

He was too superstitious to lie about that, not wanting to tempt fate. So he just shook his head. “She was weak and the water was just too damn cold. We were in the sea overnight.” He shuddered, for real, as he remembered the frigid water and how it had numbed his muscles and burned his skin. How the hell had they survived?

He shuddered again. “She didn’t make it...”

Zeke narrowed his eyes. His voice terse with skepticism, he asked, “You just let her die?”

“I couldn’t do anything to help her.” He really hadn’t. She’d fought for herself and for their child.

Zeke snorted, derisively. “So you’re not the hero everyone thinks you are.”

Whit shrugged. “I never claimed I was a hero.”

“You haven’t needed to—all those men you hired that you served with—they make the claims for you. That’s why the king made you his right-hand man.” Along with the resentment, there was hatred.

“You’ll probably get that job back now,” Whit said, “since I failed to protect what matters most to the king.” No matter how callously he’d treated his daughter, the man did love her. He had been so genuinely distraught over her disappearance that he had to care. And as Whit had learned for himself, the woman was damn hard not to love. He’d fought his feelings, but it was one of the first battles he’d ever lost.

“I thought she mattered to you, too,” Zeke remarked.

“Why would you think that?”

“Heard she was following you around like a puppy before she disappeared,” he said. And now there was jealousy. He was too old for Gabby. But hell, at thirty, with the life he’d lived, so was Whit. “And nobody missed the way you looked at her, too.”

“She’s a beautiful woman.”

Zeke arched one of those creepily bushy brows.

“Was,” he corrected himself, silently cursing the slip. “She was a beautiful woman.”

“She was pregnant, too,” Zeke said.

“Did you have a bug on that plane?” he wondered. The men wouldn’t have had much time to tell him everything. But the first man, the one Gabby had shot, would have had time to inform him of the princess’s pregnancy.

“I’m just thorough,” Zeke said. “I believe in doing a job well.”

Whit couldn’t argue with him. While Zeke had protected the king, the monarch had not been harmed. But Charlotte hadn’t trusted the former mercenary. She had suspected that his loyalty was for sale to the highest bidder, and that if someone paid him more than the king, that Zeke Rogers would do whatever they wanted. The man had no morals, no principles and no conscience. Obviously Charlotte had been right.

“Maybe you should have been sent to retrieve the princess then,” Whit said.

“I have been,” Zeke retorted. “Now.”

The skin on the nape of Whit’s neck tingled with foreboding. “It’s too bad that you’re too late.”

“It would be if I actually believed you.” The man pushed past Whit and strode purposely through the house, searching every room.

Feigning shock and offense, he asked, “You don’t take me at my word?”

Zeke snorted in reply and just continued to search.

Whit followed, breathing a sigh of relief that he’d stripped the bed in the room in which he’d awakened. It didn’t look as though anyone had slept in it. It didn’t look as though anyone had slept in Gabby’s bed, either. The sheets were tangled and damp.

But Zeke didn’t seem to notice. He checked under the bed and the closet and continued through the house.

“Satisfied?” Whit asked. “She’s not here.”

“I won’t believe Princess Gabby is gone,” Zeke replied, “until I see her dead body.” And if her body wasn’t dead, did he intend to make it that way?

“You’re not going to find it in the house.” Whit managed to furrow his brow with feigned confusion. “I’ve been checking the beach...”

“Waiting for her to wash up?”

He flinched at the agonizing thought.

“Give up trying to sell me on this line of bullshit, Howell,” Zeke said. “There’s no way in hell you lost her in the ocean.”

He nearly had—when her hand had slipped out of his. But he’d caught her before she’d slipped beneath the water.

“We didn’t land near each other,” Whit lied. “By the time I swam toward where she’d landed, the chute lines had pulled her under. She was gone...”

Zeke pulled his gun from the holster beneath his jacket. “You better hope you’re telling the truth, Howell, because if I find her...”