The Princess Predicament (7 page)

“Then why does it matter where I was going?” she asked with a slight shrug.

He fought an internal battle between following the rules and following his gut, between betraying friends and betraying her. His shoulder throbbed, as if his struggle had been physical as well as emotional. Or maybe it was infected. He really should have let Dr. Dominic examine it. But he ignored the pain and mimicked her shrug. “Because I want to know where we’re going when we get to the airport.”

She gasped in surprise over his admission. “You’re not taking me to St. Pierre?”

He couldn’t. Even before she’d told him the baby was his, he doubted he could have brought her back to the people who’d betrayed her—who’d manipulated and lied to her for her entire life. She deserved better than that.

She also deserved better than him.

Maybe he should leave her here with the doctor and Lydia—people who were able to love and already loved her. That would be the right thing to do, but Whit rarely did what was right. Because even if it was right, it wasn’t safe to leave her in a country where a man had already tried to abduct her and had nearly shot at her.

“No,” he replied. “But we can’t stay here, either.”

“Because everyone knows where we are,” she said, as if she’d read his mind again. But she continued to stare up at him, as if debating whether or not to trust him.

After discovering how many people had lied to her and for how long, she shouldn’t trust anyone. Ever. Again.

He could figure out another place for them to go. During his years in the service, he had traveled so much that he had discovered some places where a man could hide. But a pregnant princess?

“I was going to Michigan,” she said.

“Michigan? How did you know that’s where Charlotte was held for six months?” Had she already forgiven her sister and wanted to check on her?

Her brow furrowed with confusion. “I didn’t. Where in Michigan was she held?”

“At a private psychiatric hospital called Serenity House.” He nearly shuddered as he remembered the place that had been Charlotte’s prison for six months and had nearly been where Whit had breathed his last.

She flinched with obvious regret and embarrassment. “I told Linus about Serenity House.”

“How did you know about it?” he asked. She was inquisitive by nature; his men had told him that she’d often asked them about him. But he hadn’t realized how knowledgeable she was.

“Someone told me about it,” she replied, evasively avoiding his gaze.

Nothing had been less serene than a pregnant woman being held captive there for six months, restrained to a bed. It was also where Whit had been shot and would have been killed had it not been for Charlotte. He owed her his life. Could he keep her sister from her?

“Who did you talk to?” he asked, more worried than curious.

She shrugged. “Just somebody who lives near there.”

“Did you meet her through Charlotte?”

She nodded. “Charlotte met her while she was still a U.S. Marshal. I think it was on her last assignment that they met.”

And Whit’s last assignment as Aaron’s partner before they dissolved their business and their friendship. “Josie Jessup?”

Gabby shook her head. “That’s not her name.”

“It probably isn’t now,” he said. “But I bet it sure as hell was. I know who she is. And I’ve always known where she was in northern Michigan—not that damn far from Serenity House.”

He had betrayed Aaron to make sure that Josie stayed safe, when he’d helped Charlotte fake his and Aaron’s former client’s death to put her in witness relocation. So to make sure she was safe, he’d found out where the U.S. Marshal had hidden her.

Gabby nipped at her bottom lip and then nodded. “Charlotte called her JJ.”

“Charlotte shouldn’t have told you anything about her.” A man had been killed trying to find out where the woman, heiress to a media mogul’s empire, was hiding. Whit had been forced to kill the man in order to save Aaron’s life and Josie’s. His shoulder throbbed just thinking about the danger her knowledge put Gabriella in.

“Why the hell would Charlotte tell you where she is?” he asked. “Nobody should know.” Maybe that was why the man at the airport had tried to grab Gabby—not because of who she was but of what she might know. It was information that someone had already killed for—information over which Whit had nearly died. Before he’d killed the man, the man had had gunmen try to kill him and Aaron. That was when Whit had taken the hit to the shoulder.

“She trusts her,” Gabby explained. “And if anything happened to Charlotte, she trusted JJ and me to help each other.”

While he’d been protecting her over three years ago, Whit had figured out that Josie Jessup was a smart, resourceful woman. What he hadn’t realized was how smart and resourceful Gabriella St. Pierre was.

“We can’t go there,” he said.

“Of course not now,” she agreed. “Charlotte would look for me there. That would have been a stupid place to hide.” She shook her head, apparently disgusted with herself for considering it.

Gabby had yet to realize how intelligent and capable she was. She must have read and believed too much of what was printed about her. Whit knew, intimately, how wrong the media had always been about her.

“If Charlotte was still missing, you would have been smart to go to Josie,” he admitted.

With the former U.S. Marshal’s help, Josie had learned how to disappear. And maybe that was what Gabby needed to do—not just for six months but for the rest of her life. It might be the only way she would escape her father’s archaic insistence on ruling her life like he ruled his country—as a sole dictatorship.

“Why didn’t you go to Josie earlier?” he asked, wondering why she hadn’t the minute she’d discovered Charlotte had been keeping secrets from her.

Gabby glanced around that primitive hut. “I didn’t want to leave here.”

It obviously wasn’t the conditions that had made her want to stay. So it was either the orphans, her aunt or Dr. Dominic. He hoped like hell it wasn’t the doctor.

* * *

W
HAT
DID
HE
think about becoming a father?

Gabriella kept studying Whit’s handsome face, but he revealed nothing of his feelings—after the initial shock. Maybe he was still in shock. But that could have been from the gunshot wound more than over what she’d told him.

“You really should have had Dominic examine you,” she admonished him.

Whit shook his head. “I don’t need a doctor. I need to get you out of here. Did you have all your stuff packed up?”

She nodded. Everything she needed was in her big backpack-style bag. She could no longer wear anything she’d brought with her six months ago. The clothes either didn’t fit or hadn’t stood up to the elements or how hard she had worked.

“Then we need to go,” he said, heading toward the doorway.

But Gabriella stayed where she was, standing next to the bed, fingering the edge of the mosquito netting. “Can I really trust that you’re not going to bring me back to St. Pierre?”

She had debated with herself before telling him about Michigan. While Charlotte hadn’t trusted her with the secret that affected her own life, she had told her all about Josie Jessup and how Whit helping her relocate the woman had ruined his friendship with Aaron. So she knew he was very familiar with Josie’s situation. Gabriella had no intention of putting JJ in danger. She’d only wanted to put herself and her unborn baby somewhere safe.

But apparently Michigan wasn’t safe, either. But at least in Michigan, no one would make her marry someone she didn’t know, let alone love.

He uttered a ragged sigh. “I’d like to think that you’re wrong about your father—that he won’t force you to marry Prince Malamatos...”

“You don’t know my father like I do,” she said.

After what she’d learned about her biological mother, she had to accept that she didn’t know her father very well, either. Not that she didn’t believe he would have cheated on the queen but she didn’t believe he would have fallen for a con artist. Then again he hadn’t fallen for the woman or he wouldn’t have stayed with the queen. Or would he—just for the sake of propriety? Hell, the only thing she knew for certain was that nothing mattered to him as much as his country—certainly not either of his daughters.

Whit nodded his head in agreement. “That’s why I can’t risk it.”

“Why do you care if I’m forced to marry the prince?” she asked.

He clenched his jaw again, so tightly that he had that muscle twitching in his cheek.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I know you haven’t suddenly developed feelings for me.” When he had so obviously not given a damn about her before now. “I know it must be because of the baby.”

“I don’t want another man claiming
my
child,” Whit said, his voice gruff.

“So
you’re
claiming your child?” she asked.

His chest lifted, pushing against his black T-shirt, as he drew in a deep breath. Then he nodded. “I believe you—that the baby’s mine.”

“But that doesn’t mean you have to claim him,” she pointed out, especially since he’d reacted to the news as if she’d shot him.

His already dark eyes darkened more with anger and pride. “You think I could walk away and pretend I don’t have a child growing inside you?”

“So if I wasn’t carrying your baby, you could walk away?” She needed to know that—needed to face the fact that it didn’t matter that they were having a child together. They had no future together.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to,” she said. She grabbed up her bag from the bed and headed toward the doorway.

But he caught her arm, turning her back toward him.

“What?” she asked. “I thought you were in such a hurry to leave that you couldn’t even take a minute for the doctor to examine you.”

“Forget the damn doctor!” he snapped.

“I think you mean that.” Literally. That he wanted her to forget about Dominic. Did he think she’d been involved with the flirt?

“I spent six months thinking about you,” he said, almost reluctantly as if the admission had been tortured from him, “thinking that you were dead and blaming myself for letting you go to Paris.” His anger turned to anguish and guilt that twisted his handsome face into a grimace. “So, no, I couldn’t walk away—even if you weren’t carrying my baby.”

Now the guilt was all hers. When she’d gone into hiding, she hadn’t thought that anyone would miss her. Least of all Whitaker Howell.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I never meant for you to feel responsible.”

Whit groaned, as if he were in pain. But was it physical or emotional? “I don’t like feeling responsible. I don’t like feeling...
anything
.” He tugged her closer. “You make me feel all kinds of emotions I don’t want to feel.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again, in a breathy whisper as attraction stole away her breath.

He was so close, with such an intense look of desire in his dark eyes. Then he was even closer, as he lowered his head to hers. His lips skimmed across hers, gently, only to return with hunger and passion.

Gabby reeled with the force of emotions so intense that her head grew light and dizzy. She clutched at his shoulders, holding tightly to him as her world spun out of control.

Six months had passed but she wanted him as desperately as she had the night of the ball, the night they’d conceived their child. Maybe she wanted him even more because now she knew what to expect.

Ecstasy.

But he tensed and stepped back from her. There was no desire on his face anymore—just shock and horror.

Then she heard it, too—the sound of engines, revving loudly as vehicles sped toward the compound. It wasn’t just the doctor returning. There was more than one vehicle—more than one man.

They had waited too long. They’d been found, and if it were the gunmen from the airport coming, they had put the lives of everyone in the compound at risk.

Chapter Seven

Whit cursed. How had he let himself get so distracted? He would like to blame his gunshot wound. But he knew the real reason was Gabriella and all those feelings she made him feel that he didn’t want to.

Like guilt. It pummeled him.

“If the guys from the airport found us, we can’t let them hurt the children,” Gabby said as she rushed toward that open doorway.

Whit stepped in front of her so she wouldn’t run outside. “I won’t.”

She shook her head. “You can’t protect them against all those men. I’ll just let them take me. It’s the only way to keep everyone safe.”

She was serious—and more self-sacrificing than anyone he’d ever met. If he survived this, he might personally track down every paparazzi who’d called her a spoiled princess. A shallow ditz. They had no idea who Gabriella St. Pierre really was.

Whit wrapped his arm around her and rushed her toward the Jeep. He turned the key in the ignition and shifted into Drive. “We’ll lead them away from here.”

It was the only way to keep the children safe. They wouldn’t destroy the compound looking for them—if they saw them leave.

“Hang on tight,” he ordered her. If only the damn vehicle had seat belts...

And if only the road between the compound and town was more than a narrow path cut through the jungle...

He’d barely made it down that path when there had been no other vehicles on it. He really had no room to pass the Jeep and truck that were barreling down the track toward the compound. But he barreled ahead, and metal scraped metal, the driver’s side of the Jeep scraping along the pickup.

Men filled the truck, inside the cab and standing in the box with long guns slung over their shoulders.

“Get down!” he shouted at Gabby.

“No!” she yelled back—even as bullets pinged against the metal of Whit’s side of the vehicle. “They need to see me so that they know I’m not at the orphanage!”

As if to prove her point, she lifted her head higher and peered around him. And the windshield exploded as a bullet struck the glass. It continued into the rearview mirror, cracked the plastic and shattered the mirror.

“Get down!” he shouted again. But instead of waiting for her to comply, he reached across the console and pushed her lower.

Then he focused again on the road—just as a Jeep steered straight toward them. He clutched the wheel in tight fists, holding his own vehicle steady on the trail. And he trusted that the guy driving the other vehicle would give in to impulse—the impulse to jerk the wheel at the last moment.

Whit resisted his impulse even when Gabby lifted her head and screamed. But he didn’t turn away. Metal ground against metal again, but the impact was lessened as the other driver twisted his wheel and turned the tires. Whit pressed hard on the accelerator, careening past, as the other vehicle bounced off trees and rolled back onto the trail—on its roof.

Shots rang out, continuing to break glass and glance off metal. Whit wouldn’t have looked back even if the rearview mirror hadn’t been broken. He kept speeding along the winding trail, widening the distance between him and the men who would have grabbed Gabby had they not escaped in time.

And, because his feelings for her had distracted him, they nearly hadn’t escaped. For her sake, he could not succumb to emotion again.

* * *

G
ABBY
COULDN
’
T
STOP
looking back—at the men who stood on the trail firing at them. And at the compound beyond the men. “Are you sure they won’t go to the orphanage?”

“They saw you,” he reminded her. “They know you’re not there.”

“But they might go to the compound,” she said, her stomach churning with worry. “They might question Lydia to find out where we’re going.”

Whit snorted derisively. “They know damn well where we’re going.”

“The airport?”

“We have no other option,” he pointed out. “We can’t stay here.”

“So once they get the Jeep moved and it is no longer blocking the trail, they’ll come after us?” She had to know, had to make certain...

Whit nodded.

She exhaled a breath of relief. “So they won’t go back to the compound.” That was her most pressing concern—making sure the others were safe from the threat against her.

“Like I said, they know where we’re going,” Whit repeated. “Once they get that Jeep out of the way, they’re going to be hurrying to catch up with us—not going back.”

And Lydia would have heard the shots and the vehicles; she would have taken the children to the hiding place they’d built into the ground beneath the floors of one of the schoolrooms. They would be safe.

She wasn’t so certain about Whit and her and their unborn child. While they’d lost the men—temporarily—he was driving so fast that it was possible they would crash, too, just as the men had.

“They want you,” he continued. “You’re the one the king will pay for...”

The king had already done it once—when he’d bought her mother’s parental rights. It was no wonder so many others had tried to kidnap her over the years. They knew her father would pay their ransom.

But that was back when she had been blindly obedient. Now that she’d hidden from her father for six months, now that she’d become pregnant with the baby of a man who had nothing to offer him politically or monetarily...would he pay for her release? Or was she completely useless to him?

Whit’s brow furrowed as he stared through the shattered windshield. “But if they wanted him to pay a ransom, why did they shoot so closely to you? Why risk it...?”

Her skin tingled with foreboding—the same way it had when she had found that crumpled letter under her pillow six months ago. Maybe they didn’t want to kidnap her. Maybe they wanted to kill her as that note had threatened.

She braced one hand against the dashboard again and wrapped her other around the roll bar in the roof. She implored him, “Please, hurry.”

Not that she needed to urge him to speed; he was probably already traveling too fast on dangerously curved, narrow roads.

“I’ll protect you,” he assured her.

She believed he meant it, but she wasn’t necessarily convinced that he could. “I thought you were going to kill me when that vehicle was heading straight toward us...” And he hadn’t backed down.

That was what his men had said about him; that he had never retreated from a fight—in battle or in the barracks. When he and Aaron Timmer had taken over as royal bodyguards, they had brought in their own men as backup. And she had quizzed all those men about their blond superior.

“I had it under control,” he said. “You shouldn’t have been scared.”

She was afraid but not for herself; she was concerned for the child she carried.

And she was scared for the safety of the baby’s father, as well.

* * *

S
HE
SHOULD
NOT
have trusted him. Whit had had no right to make her promises or offer her assurances that he had no idea if he would be able to carry out.

But he hated that her usually honey-toned complexion had gone pale with fear, her voice trembling with it. Her earlier scream echoed yet inside his head.

He didn’t want her scared but he wanted her hurt even less. He had to protect her.

How? By taking her back to St. Pierre? He’d also promised that he wouldn’t do that. But did he have a choice?

His shoulder was throbbing. His gun was out of bullets. He needed backup—backup he could trust: Aaron or Charlotte or any of the ex-military security guards he’d brought on board at the palace.

What had those armed men wanted with her? Were they working for Prince Linus’s dad, or whoever the corrupt U.S. Marshal had been working for who had tried to find out where Josie was?

Were they intent on carrying out a kidnapping for ransom or a murder for hire?

Finally they neared the airport, and he slowed down to pull the Jeep off the road. Gabby reached across the console and grasped his arm. “Where are we going?”

Whit needed backup. But he didn’t want her at the mercy of her father’s royal commands. “We’ll figure it out when we get inside. We’re getting on whatever plane is taking off first.”

He didn’t give a damn where it was going. He just needed to get them the hell out of this place. After the earlier shooting, the airport should have been swarming with police. But he noticed no marked cars. No yellow caution tape...

Why hadn’t the police come? Had they been called? Was there even a police force or military presence in this primitive country?

Gabby had a question of her own. “What about the royal jet?”

“We’re not getting on it.”

But the moment they stepped from the Jeep, men surrounded them. They weren’t dressed in police or military uniforms but expensive suits. And like the men who’d stormed the compound, these guys, with jackets bulging over shoulder holsters, were armed.

And vaguely familiar. They had been royal bodyguards. But he and Aaron had relegated them to perimeter palace guards when they’d taken over as co-heads of security for the king.

“Hey, Bruno. Cosmo,” he awkwardly greeted the couple of guys whose names he hoped he correctly remembered. These men had been loyal to the king and to the former head of security, Zeke Rogers. Whit hadn’t trusted that they would be as loyal to him and Aaron. It had actually been his call to move them out of the palace. Did they know that? Did they hold a grudge because of it?

“You kept us waiting,” the one named Bruno remarked, his beady eyes narrowed even more with suspicion—especially as he studied the princess.

Did he suspect she was an imposter? Charlotte?

Or was he just as stunned as Whit had been to find her not only alive but pregnant?

“You should have given up on us and returned to St. Pierre,” Whit advised them.

But no matter that Zeke was no longer their boss, they would remain loyal to the king and their country—probably out of respect and fear.

“We have orders,” Cosmo added.

“Plans have changed,” Whit said with the tone he used for giving orders in the field and on the job. And for the past several months, he had been giving these men their orders. To guard the gates of the palace. “It’s too dangerous to take the princess back to St. Pierre.”

Bruno pushed back his jacket and showed the Glock he carried inside the holster. “We have protection.”

Whit didn’t, and a strong foreboding warned him that he needed it. These men weren’t acting like they did on St. Pierre. They weren’t acting like he was their superior anymore. Had he been demoted? Zeke had been temporarily reinstated when he’d followed Aaron to Michigan to rescue Charlotte. But that reinstatement was only to have been temporary.

“Did you not hear me?” he asked, in his best no-nonsense boss tone. “I said that plans have changed. We are not going back to St. Pierre.”

“We don’t have to listen to you anymore,” Cosmo said. “We take our orders from someone else now.”

Damn. He had been demoted. Or fired.

They had protection, obviously. But he felt like he was the one who needed it now. Could he bluff them into thinking the gun he carried was loaded yet?

As Cosmo grabbed it from him, he realized it was too late. He shouldn’t have trusted these men; he shouldn’t have trusted anyone—just like Gabriella shouldn’t have trusted him.

He couldn’t keep any of his promises to her.

* * *

A
ARON
’
S
HEART
POUNDED
slowly and heavily with dread. “Who did you send as Whit’s backup?” he asked the king.

Rafael St. Pierre sat behind his desk in the darkly paneled den in his private wing of the palace. The past six months had added lines to the man’s face and liberal streaks of gray to his thick hair. St. Pierre shrugged shoulders that had once been broad enough to carry the weight of his country, but in recent months they had begun to stoop with a burden too heavy—concern for his daughters’ lives and safety. “I do not know the names of the men who went.”

Neither did Aaron. And that worried him. “The men that Whit and I brought on are all still here in St. Pierre. They were told that Whit did not want them as backup.”

“Then that is why they were not sent,” the king replied.

Aaron shook his head. “Whit didn’t know you were sending that jet after him. If he had known, he would have requested the men that he and I brought on to the security team.”

“Are you certain?” the king asked. “I do not believe Whitaker Howell is as loyal as you believe he is.”

Just a week ago, Aaron would have agreed with the king. He’d thought Whit had betrayed him when he’d let Aaron believe that they had failed to protect their last client. Whit had actually helped Charlotte, in her previous position as a U.S. Marshal, fake the woman’s death and relocate her. Neither of them had thought Aaron would be able to stand the client’s dad’s suffering as he mourned her; they’d worried that Aaron would give up the secret.

Maybe they had been right to worry. Because the secret he had now was on his lips, threatening to slip out. The king should be warned that Princess Gabriella was pregnant.

“If Whitaker Howell was loyal, he would not have gotten my daughter pregnant while she’s engaged to another man!” the king shouted, anger exploding with his fist slamming against his desk.

Aaron didn’t have much room to talk; he had gotten the king’s other daughter pregnant. Charlotte hadn’t been engaged, though.

“How—how did you hear that?” Aaron wondered. Charlotte hadn’t told her father yet, and Aaron had managed to keep the secret until now. “Who—who told you?”

“A man who is actually loyal to me,” King St. Pierre replied. Coldly.

He obviously wasn’t too happy that Aaron had claimed Charlotte—as his fiancée—before the king had even claimed her as his illegitimate daughter and heir.

Aaron’s head began to pound as realization dawned. “This isn’t good...”

“No, it’s not,” the king agreed. “I trusted you and your partner. I believed the recommendations that Charlotte had given you both as exemplary chiefs of security. Yet you two were barely on the job a couple of months before my daughters both went missing.”