The Princess Predicament (4 page)

“We have to get the hell out of here,” he said.

Or the man’s friends were liable to finish what he’d started—abducting Gabriella. And Whit with his shoulder wound and his borrowed gun were hardly going to be enough protection to save her.

She must have seen the men, too, because she was already turning and moving toward the street. Whit kept between her and the men. But they saw the guy on the ground, and they saw the gun in Whit’s hand.

And they began to fire.

* * *

“W
HAT
’
S
WRONG
?” Charlotte asked anxiously. “What did Whit say?”

It wasn’t so much what he’d said as what Aaron had overheard when he’d been on the phone with his friend. But Charlotte was already worried about Princess Gabriella; he didn’t want to upset her any more.

She settled onto the airplane seat across from him. After her trip to the restroom, her eyes were dry and clear. She’d composed herself. But how much would it take for her to break again?

She’d already been through so much—kidnapped and held hostage for six months. And she was pregnant, too, with his baby.

Aaron’s heart filled with pride and love. But fear still gripped him. He wasn’t like Whit; he couldn’t hide his emotions. Whit usually hid them so well that Aaron had often doubted the man was even capable of feeling. But he’d heard it in his voice—his fear for Princess Gabriella’s safety—once he’d realized she was also where the shooting was.

“I know something’s wrong,” Charlotte persisted, but she pitched her voice low and glanced toward the back of the jet where the king had retired to his private room. “Tell me.”

Aaron uttered a ragged sigh of resignation and admitted, “I heard shots...”

Charlotte’s eyes widened. “Someone was shooting at Whit? He wouldn’t have had time to get a gun yet. He won’t be able to defend himself.”

On more than one occasion, Aaron had seen Whit defend himself without a gun. But he hadn’t been injured then. “Whit wasn’t the one getting shot at.”

She gasped. “Gabby? Was it Gabby?”

“I don’t know,” he said. But from the way Whit had reacted to the news that the princess was pregnant, too, he was pretty sure that it was her. “It’s a dangerous country. It could have been rebel gunfire. It could have been anything...”

“Call him back!” She reached across the space between them and grabbed for the cell phone he’d shoved in his shirt pocket.

But Aaron caught her hand in his and entwined their fingers. “He won’t answer,” he told her. “He needs to focus on what’s happening. And there’s nothing we can do from here anyway.”

That was why he hadn’t wanted to tell her. She would want to help, and that wasn’t possible from so many miles away. That feeling of helplessness overwhelmed Aaron, reminding him of the way he’d felt when Charlotte had been missing. He’d been convinced that she was out there, somewhere, but he hadn’t been able to find her.

Now Whit needed help—Whit, who’d so often stepped in to save him—and Aaron was too far away to come to his aid.

Panic had tears welling in her eyes. “We can have the pilot change course—”

“We’re almost to St. Pierre,” Aaron pointed out. “We’ll be landing soon.”

Panic raised her voice a couple of octaves. “Once we drop off the king, we can leave again—”

“No,” he said. “There’s a doctor meeting us at the palace. You need to be checked out.” Even after he’d rescued her from where she’d been held hostage, she’d been through a lot.

She shook her head, tumbling those long tresses of golden brown hair around her shoulders. “I need to protect Gabby.”

He knew it wasn’t just because she was the princess’s bodyguard. But he had to remind her, “You need to take care of our baby first.”

“We shouldn’t have let Whit go alone,” she said. “He’s hurt too badly to protect her.”

“We hadn’t thought she would need protecting,” Aaron reminded his fiancée.

“We did,” Charlotte insisted, squeezing his fingers in her distress. “Six months ago someone left her that note threatening her life. That’s why I sent her into hiding.” And set herself up as a decoy for the princess. Her plan had worked. Too well.

“But nobody knows where she is.” Or the paparazzi would have found her, no matter where she’d been. And there would have been photographs of Princess Gabriella on every magazine and news show, as there had always been.

“If those shots were being fired at her,” Charlotte said, her beautiful face tense with fear, “then someone must have figured it out.”

“How?” he asked. “Nobody but you and I and Whit know where she is.”

She glanced to the back of the plane. “After I talked to my aunt and confirmed that Gabby was actually still with her at the orphanage, I told the king. I thought he had a right to know.”

“Was he furious?” Aaron asked. Charlotte had done much more than just violating protocol as a royal bodyguard.

“He called St. Pierre and sent out another plane with a security team as Whit’s backup.” She drew in a deep breath, as if trying to soothe herself. “They should be there within a few hours.”

Aaron had heard the shots. He wasn’t reassured. In fact he was disheartened. He had wasted so many years being mad at Whit for something that hadn’t been the man’s fault. Had he repaired his friendship only to lose his friend?

If Princess Gabriella had been involved in the shooting, then Whit would have stepped in and done whatever was necessary to try to save her life—including giving up his own.

By the time the security team made it to where Whit and Gabriella were, they would probably be too late to help. With Whit injured and unarmed, it was probably already too late.

Chapter Four

Gabby pressed her palms and splayed her fingers across her belly, as if her hands alone could protect her baby from the bullets that began to fly around the airport—ricocheting off the metal roof and cement floor. She wanted to help Whit, but she had no weapon—nothing to save him. So she ran.

He returned fire as he hurried with her to the entrance. Keeping his body between her and the men, he used himself as a human shield. She would have been moved—if she hadn’t known that it was bodyguard protocol to put themselves between their subject and any potential threat.

These men weren’t potentially a threat; they were definitely a threat. To Whit more than to her. They probably wouldn’t want to risk fatally injuring her—if they intended to kidnap her. It was hard to collect a ransom on a dead hostage. But if they’d been hired by whoever had left her that letter, then she was in as much danger as Whit was.

Maybe more.

She ran out of the building, but the street was as deserted now as the airport was. All the people had scattered and left. It was no safer out here than it had been in the deserted metal building.

But she had Whit. He’d stayed with her, his hand on her arm—urging her forward—away from the danger. But the danger followed them. Shots continued to ring out. Whit’s gun clicked with the telltale sound of an empty magazine. He cursed.

Panic slammed through Gabby. The men chasing them were not about to run out of bullets—not with all the guns they had. Should she and Whit stop and lift their arms in surrender and hope they were not killed? Before she could ask Whit, he made the decision for them.

He lifted her off the ground and ran toward the street. Gabby didn’t wriggle and try to fight free as she had six months ago. Instead of pounding on him, she clutched at him, so that he wouldn’t drop her. He leaned and ducked down, as if dodging bullets.

Gabriella felt the air stir as the shots whizzed past. But with the way he was holding her—she wouldn’t feel the bullets. They would have to pass through Whit’s body before hitting hers. Again, it was bodyguard protocol, but she couldn’t help being impressed, touched and horrified that he might get killed protecting her.

He ran into the street, narrowly avoiding a collision with a Jeep. The vehicle screeched to a halt, and Whit jerked open the passenger door and jumped inside. He deposited her in the passenger seat and forced his way into the driver’s seat, pushing the driver out of the door.

The man scrambled to his feet and cursed at him. Then he ducked low and ran when the gunmen rushed up behind him, firing wildly at the vehicle. Whit slammed his foot on the gas, accelerating with such force that Gabriella’s back pressed into the seat. She grabbed for the seat belt, but there wasn’t one.

“Hang on tight,” Whit advised.

She stretched out her arms and braced her hands on the dash, so that she wouldn’t slam into it and hurt the baby. “Please, hurry,” she pleaded. “Hurry—before they catch up to us.”

“Where the hell am I going?” he asked. “Which way to the orphanage?”

Panic shot through her, shortening her breath as she thought of the danger. “No. No. We can’t—we can’t risk leading these men back to the orphanage.” Those children had already lost so much to violence; she wouldn’t let them get caught in the cross fire and lose their lives, too.

“I’ll make sure we’re not followed,” Whit assured her. “But we have to hurry.”

She hesitated. She’d been uncertain that she could trust anyone again, let alone him. But this wasn’t her heart she was risking. It was so much more important than that. Whit was good at his job. Charlotte wouldn’t have had the king hire him if he and Aaron hadn’t been good bodyguards. So she gave him directions, leading him deeper and deeper into the jungle.

The Jeep bounced along the rutted trails, barely passing between the trees and the other foliage that threatened the paths. Gabby left one hand on the dash and reached for the roll bars over her head with the other, holding tight, so that she didn’t risk an injury to her unborn child. She also kept turning around to check the back window and make certain that they had not been followed.

“No one’s behind us,” Whit assured her with a glance at the rearview mirror. “I’ve been watching.”

She uttered a breath of relief that they wouldn’t be leading danger back to the orphanage. At the speed that Whit was driving, they arrived in record time at the complex of huts and larger wood-and-thatch buildings that comprised the orphanage.

“This is it,” she said with a surge of pride and happiness, which was the polar opposite from the way she’d felt when she’d first seen the complex six months ago. When she’d accepted that it was really where Charlotte had sent her, her heart had been heavy with dread and her pulse quick with panic. “We’re here.”

Whit stepped on the brake but didn’t put the transmission into Park. Instead he peered through the dust-smeared windshield at the collection of crude outbuildings that made up the orphanage complex.

“This is it?” he echoed her words but his deep voice was full of skepticism.

“This is it,” she confirmed. Now that she knew how hard it was to build in the jungle, she was even more impressed with what Lydia had achieved—and with what Gabriella had helped her manage during her stay. “Pull around the back of that hut. That’s mine.”

He followed her direction, parking the Jeep where she pointed. But before she could open her door, he reached across her. His hand splayed over her belly. He leaned close, so close that she felt his breath warm her face when he asked, “Is this mine?”

She shivered at his closeness and the intensity in his dark eyes. But she couldn’t meet his gaze and lie to him. So she glanced down and noticed the blood that trickled down his arm. And she gasped in shock and horror. “You were shot!”

Perhaps it had only been his duty as a royal bodyguard, perhaps it had been his concern for the child he suspected might be his—but he’d taken a bullet that had been meant for her. And after being hit, he’d driven the Jeep over tough terrain to get them to safety.

“We need to get you inside,” she said, fighting back her panic and concern. During her time at the orphanage, she’d learned to not let the children see her anxiety when they were hurt because it only upset and hurt them more. “And I’ll have Lydia call for the doctor.”

She opened the door and slipped out from under his hand. Then she hurried around to the driver’s side and opened his door.

In addition to the blood trailing down his arm and turning the shoulder of his shirt an even darker black with wetness, he had sweat beading on his brow and upper lip. It was hot and humid in the jungle. But she’d heard the other guards talking about Whit’s deployments to the Middle East—usually because she had asked them to tell her about the blond bodyguard—and they had always said how he had never perspired—not in the heat—not under pressure.

Was he hurt that bad?

She lifted his arm and slid beneath it, in order to help him from the driver’s seat. But he didn’t lean on her. With a short grunt of pain, he unfolded himself from beneath the wheel and stepped out of the Jeep to stand beside her. Close beside her, his tense body nearly touching hers. He leaned down, so that their gazes met and locked.

“I don’t need a doctor,” he said, dismissing her concern. “I need the truth.”

She had given up denying her identity to him. She’d only been able to fool him once, but he obviously had no doubt about who she was now. So what did he mean? “The truth about what?”

His throat moved, rippling, as if he swallowed hard. And after clearing his throat, he asked, “Is that baby you’re carrying mine?”

The baby shifted inside her, kicking at her belly, as if he, too, wanted to know the answer. She placed her palms over her stomach again, protectively. And because she felt so protective, she wasn’t willing to share her baby with anyone.

Not even the baby’s father.

Whit moved to lift his arms—probably to grab her and maybe shake the truth out of her—but the movement had his handsome face contorting with a grimace of pain. And a groan slipped from between his gritted teeth.

“Doctor first,” she insisted. “Then we’ll talk...”

Maybe by the time she had Lydia summon the doctor from the clinic in the more populated town close by, she would have figured out if she was going to tell Whit the truth.

* * *

W
HIT
GLANCED
DOWN
at the dirt floor beneath his feet and peered up at the thatched roof. The hut was primitive and small. There was only enough space for the double bed that stood in the middle of the room, enshrouded in a canopy of mosquito netting. He sat on the edge of that bed, so he had a clear view out the window and the doorway. To make sure no one had followed them from the airport.

There was no screen or glass in the window; it was just a hole to the jungle. There was no door either—just the threshold through which Gabby passed as she returned from wherever she’d gone to summon a doctor.

Her bodyguard had sent her here to keep her safe? Anger at Charlotte Green coursed through him. Any animal—two-legged or four-legged—from the jungle could have come inside and dragged her off never to be seen again. After he had learned all the secrets about Gabriella St. Pierre, he’d begun to question Charlotte’s motives. Now he questioned them again.

“This is where you’ve been staying?” he asked, still shocked that the princess of St. Pierre would have spent one night in such primitive conditions let alone six months.

Gabby glanced around the tiny hut, and her lips curved into a wistful smile. “Yes...”

Not only had she stayed here but she seemed to have actually enjoyed it.

“I’m sorry I was gone so long,” she said, “but Lydia was with a class. My class, actually.” Her smile widened. “And the children were so thrilled that I came back...”

“You’ve been teaching here?”

“Yes, it’s a school as well as an orphanage.” She peered through that hole in the wall as if checking the jungle for threats. “Are you certain that no one followed us?”

“They would have been here already,” he pointed out. Because they would have had to follow them directly from the airport in order to find this place. But he looked out the window, too. “You’re safe.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about...” Her palms slid over her belly, as if protecting or comforting the child within. “Those kids have already been through so much...”

When he had first met Princess St. Pierre, he had been impressed that someone as privileged and probably pampered as she must have been seemed to actually care about people. She had showed genuine interest in the lives of the palace staff. But here she had taken that interest to a whole other level, sacrificing her own comfort to care for others. She wasn’t just a princess; she was a saint.

He had nothing to offer a princess; he had even less to offer a saint. All he could give Princess Gabriella St. Pierre was his protection. He stared at her belly. Unless he’d already given her something else...

He opened his mouth to ask again the question that had been burning in his mind since the minute he had realized the pregnant woman from the bus was Princess Gabriella. Was that baby his?

But before he could ask, she hurriedly said, “The doctor should be here soon. The clinic is just a mile away.”

“I don’t need a doctor.”

“You’ve been shot,” she said, moving her hands from her belly to his arm.

Blood still trickled slowly from the old wound in his shoulder, over his biceps, down his forearm, over his wrist to drip off his fingertips onto the dirt floor.

“Yes, I was shot,” he admitted with a wince of pain as he remembered the burn of the bullet ripping through his flesh. “But not today.”

Her brow furrowed in confusion. “But you’re bleeding...”

He shrugged and then winced again as pain radiated throughout his shoulder and his fingers tingled in reaction. “The wound must have reopened.”

“When you carried me...”

Despite the men chasing them, firing shots at them, he had enjoyed carrying her. He had savored her slight weight in his arms, the heat of her body pressed against his, her hands clutching at him—holding him close. It had reminded him of that night—that night he had taken on the responsibility of guarding her.

But he hadn’t really protected her...not if that child was his. He groaned.

“You are hurting,” she said and commanded him, “Take off your shirt.” But she didn’t wait for him to obey her royal order. She lifted his T-shirt, her fingers grazing his abdomen and then his chest as she pulled the damp fabric over his head. Expelled in a gasp, her breath whispered across his skin.

Despite the oppressive heat, he nearly shivered in reaction to her touch. For six interminable, miserable months he’d thought she was dead. He had thought he would never see her again. That he would never touch her...

Was she real? She was so beautiful that he doubted it, as he had the first time he’d met her. She couldn’t be real. Maybe he had been shot again, and this time he’d died and found an angel. He snorted in derision of his ridiculous thought. As if he would ever make it to heaven...

“This wound isn’t very old,” she observed, her teeth nibbling at her bottom lip with concern. “When were you shot?”

“Five or six days ago...” He couldn’t remember exactly; everything had happened so quickly and then it had taken him so many days and flights to reach her. Maybe he should have waited for one of the royal jets to be available. But the king had needed to return to St. Pierre so he had taken his, and Whit hadn’t wanted to wait for one to come in from St. Pierre. He hadn’t wanted to wait another minute to see Gabriella and make sure she was safe. He had never imagined he’d find the Princess of St. Pierre like this...

Literally barefoot and pregnant.

“You should be in the hospital,” she admonished him, as she rose up on tiptoe and inspected his wound.

“I saw a doctor already,” he assured her. “I’m all stitched up. I’m fine.” So they could talk. And maybe he would have insisted on it already if he wasn’t worried about what she would tell him. Several years ago he had sworn he would never become a father. Or a husband. He’d had no intention of ever attempting a long-term relationship.