“Why should you have known?” she asked.
He had to tell her. He just hoped she wouldn’t laugh as she had at her old partner. Or worse yet deny that it had ever happened. “I should have known who you were right away because we were lovers.”
*
LOVERS.
Those images—of his naked skin rippling over hard muscles—flashed through Charlotte’s mind again. He wasn’t lying to her. But maybe he didn’t know the truth. “How can you be sure?” she asked.
He chuckled. “No one hit me on the head. I haven’t lost my memory. We made love.” He glanced down at her stomach, as if trying to gauge if the child she carried was his.
Was he the father? Another man claimed the baby was his. But she couldn’t be any more certain that he was right than she could be sure of anything in this crazy situation.
“Why would Princess Gabriella’s bodyguard have plastic surgery to look exactly like her?” she prodded him. This was one answer she knew but needed to draw him to the same conclusion she had.
“To protect her,” he automatically replied, probably thinking she was stupid in addition to having amnesia.
“How?” she persisted. “By fooling someone into thinking that she was the princess even though she wasn’t? By stepping in for the princess in the case of danger?”
He gave a slow nod, his blue eyes narrowing.
“Well, then,” Jane said, bringing home her point, “when the bodyguard is pretending to be the princess, isn’t the princess pretending to be the bodyguard?”
His jaw dropped open, as if he were appalled at the thought of being fooled into making love with the wrong woman. “No. I would have known. You’re very different from the princess.”
“You told the other guy that Charlotte taught the princess how to act like her.”
“Just how to shoot and defend herself,” he clarified, “but you’re not Princess Gabby.”
“How can you be so certain,” she wondered, “when I don’t know which woman I am?”
A muscle twitched in his jaw as if he was clenching it. “I wouldn’t have gotten involved with a client.”
“I thought you weren’t the princess’s bodyguard.”
“I wasn’t. I’m her father’s bodyguard, so I wouldn’t have gotten involved with his daughter.” His gaze dropped from hers as he made this claim.
She’d struggled to trust him before, but now she knew she shouldn’t. “You’re lying to me.”
“Not lying—leaving something out.”
Somehow she suspected she could relate—that she’d kept secrets of her own and had kept them so well that she couldn’t even remember them now—when she so desperately needed to remember.
“What are you leaving out?”
“Something that happened before I met you.” He uttered a ragged sigh. “Something that has nothing to do with you.”
He sounded as if he believed that, but still she doubted him. He might not be aware of it, but she felt as though she had had something to do with it—something to do with whatever had his shoulders slumping even now with a heavy burden of guilt and regret. Guilt and regret overwhelmed her now. Her legs weakened and began to shake.
He reached for her, his hands on her arms steadying her. “Sit down,” he advised, as he helped her settle onto the couch on which he’d laid her earlier. “You’re probably starving. Let me get you something to eat.”
“I don’t need food,” she said even as her stomach growled and the baby shifted inside her.
He headed back to the box and ripped open a plastic bag and then passed it to her. “It’s just crackers. But there’s soup in here, too. I can see if the stove works or heat it over the fire.”
More out of reflex than hunger, she ate a couple of crackers. “This is fine,” she assured him. “What I really need is my memory back. Since you didn’t know for certain if I was Charlotte or the princess, you didn’t know where either woman was.”
“No,” he said. “You’ve been missing for the past six months.”
“I disappeared in Paris?”
“You remember?”
She shook her head. “You mentioned it in the car. It sounded ominous.”
His jaw tensed again. “The hotel suite was trashed. There was evidence of gunshots. And blood. You must have been attacked.”
She touched her swollen temple. “This isn’t six months old.”
“Do you have other scars or bruises?”
“Lots of them,” she said. Either she’d been assaulted or tortured…maybe from someone trying to find out where the princess was. She had to be Charlotte. How would a princess, no matter how good her teacher, know how to shoot as she had? And the very thought of her being a princess was really utterly ridiculous…
He grimaced as if feeling the pain she must have felt when she’d gotten all those marks on her body. “You had some scars and bruises before you disappeared.”
“I did?” She lifted her hand to her cheek, but the skin was smooth. It hadn’t always been. She could almost remember running her fingertips over the ridge of a jagged scar.
He reached out and ran his fingertips along her cheekbone, as well. “You remember the scar…”
Her skin tingled from his fleeting touch. And she involuntarily leaned closer, wanting more—wanting to be closer to him. “I don’t know if it’s memory or instinct,” she admitted. “Like with the gun, I didn’t necessarily remember how to shoot—I just knew.”
“That’s how I know you’re Charlotte. You can be sure of that, too,” he said. “Princess Gabby has never even been in so much as a car accident. She would have no scars.”
“We don’t know that anymore,” she said. “We don’t know what happened to her.” She could be dead, and that horrible thought overwhelmed Charlotte with grief. The princess must have been her friend. “How could I have failed to protect her?”
“You don’t know that you failed her. You don’t know that she’s gone,” he said, trying to offer her hope—which she feared might prove false. “Until the hotel in Paris called about the damaged suite, we thought that you two had run away.”
She snorted derisively. “I must be at least thirty years old. I doubt we would have run away like teenagers.” Then she remembered what Aaron had said when he’d first come into her room at the psychiatric hospital. “You thought I would be mad at you about some announcement the king had made…?”
He contorted his mouth as if biting the inside of his cheek—as if trying to grapple with what he’d done. Or what he’d allowed to be done. “The king is old-fashioned.”
“He’s a king—that’s pretty archaic.”
“To us Americans, yes,” he agreed, “but in St. Pierre, he is the absolute authority. The ruler. He treats his daughter the same way he does his country. From the day she was born, she was betrothed to the prince of a neighboring island.”
Anger flared inside her. “That is barbaric.”
“I think she was resigned to marry Prince Demetrios,” Aaron said. “But then the night of the ball…” His pupils enlarged, darkening his pale blue eyes, as he remembered something.
The night they’d made love?
“What happened the night of the ball?” she asked.
“The king cancelled Gabriella’s betrothal to Prince Demetrios.”
“That’s great—”
“And promised her to another,” Aaron continued as if she hadn’t spoken at all. “He changed her engagement to Prince Malamatos, whose country has more resources and wealth.”
A curse spilled from Jane’s lips—a curse she doubted a princess would know. “The king sounds like a selfish son of a bitch. Why would anyone work for him?”
“He’s a powerful man who’s used to getting what he wants.”
“But his daughter disappeared before he could arrange her marriage,” she said. “He must be furious.”
“At first he was,” Aaron admitted. “But then when the hotel notified us, he was devastated. He love
s his daughter.”
She snorted in derision of a man claiming to love someone he tried so hard to control. Jane’s heart swelled with sympathy and concern for the princess. “But if Gabriella was alive, wouldn’t you or her father have found her before now?”
“It took me six months to find you,” he said with a heavy sigh of frustration.
“But you weren’t looking for me,” she said. “You were looking for the princess.”
“The king and his other bodyguard—they’re looking for the princess—I was always looking for you.”
Her pulse stuttered and then raced. “Because we were lovers?”
“I know that blow you took gave you amnesia, but…”
“It bothers you to think that I forgot.” She needed to tell him the truth—that one of the few memories she had was of him.
“And I haven’t been able to get you—and that night—out of my mind.” He reached out again, to touch her belly.
The baby shifted, kicking against his palm. If she believed the conversation between the guard and whoever he’d called, this baby wasn’t Aaron’s. She belonged to another man. She needed to tell him—needed to be honest with him about the little she did remember. But before she could open her mouth, his lips pressed against hers.
And whatever thoughts she’d had fled her mind. She couldn’t think at all. She could only feel. Desire overwhelmed her. Her skin tingled and her pulse raced.
He deepened the kiss, parting her lips and sliding his tongue inside her mouth. He kissed her with all the passion she felt for him.
She moaned, and he echoed it with a low groan. Then his palms cupped her face, cradling the cheek she’d touched looking for a scar. And he pulled back.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized, and his broad shoulders slumped as if he’d added to that load of guilt and regret he already carried. Or, actually, she had added to it. “I shouldn’t have done that…”
“Why did you?” she wondered aloud. With a bruised face and ugly scrubs stretched taut over her big belly, she was hardly desirable.
Those broad shoulders lifted but then dropped again in a slight shrug. “I wanted you to remember me—to remember what we once were to each other.”
Confession time had come. “I remember,” she admitted, “that we were lovers.”
“You remember me?”
“I remember making love with you.” And after that kiss she wanted to do it again—wanted to cling to the one good memory she had of her life before waking up in that horrible hospital.
Desire heated his blue eyes. “I haven’t been able to forget—not one single detail of that night. But you have amnesia—”
“That’s all I remember. You—just you…” She pulled him back to her and kissed him desperately. He was the one connection to her past—to who she was. She needed him close—as close as a human being could get to another.
He kissed her, too—with his lips and his tongue and with a passion that matched hers.
Putting aside her weapon, she slid her hands over him—as she had in that vivid memory. In the dreamlike vision, he had worn a tuxedo. She’d undone his bow tie and all the studs on his pleated shirt. Now she had only to pull his scrub shirt over his head and push down his drawstring pants.
But he groaned and pulled back again. “We can’t do this…”
“Why not?” she asked and then teased him. “Worried that I might get pregnant?” Or was he disgusted that she was? To find out if that was the case, she pulled off her shirt.
But the passion didn’t leave his face. Instead his pale blue eyes softened with awe, and he reached out trembling hands, running his palms over her belly.
She needed to tell him that the child probably wasn’t his. But before she could open her mouth, he was kissing her again. His hands moved from her stomach to her breasts. When his thumbs flicked over her nipples, she cried out with pleasure. Her desire for him was so intense that she lost all control—lost all sense of time and place as she had lost her past. He was that one link to who she was—her anchor in a storm of emotion and doubt. She needed him like she needed air.
She pushed him back onto the couch. Then she wriggled out of her pants and straddled him, taking him deep inside her. She cried out again, passion overwhelming her.
“Charlotte,” he said with a deep groan. Muscles tensed in his shoulders and arms as he held her hips. He thrust gently, as if trying not to hurt her.
But she was beyond pain. Pleasure was all she felt in his arms, with him buried deep inside her. And finally he joined her in ecstasy, groaning gruffly as he filled her. She collapsed onto his chest, which heaved with pants for breath. But instead of relaxing like she had, his body tensed.
“Someone’s here.”
She tensed, too, as she heard gravel crunching beneath footsteps on the driveway. “It’s probably that Marshal coming back.”
“No. We have a signal he’s supposed to give if it’s him. Someone else is here.”
“Maybe the owner of the cottage…” But she doubted it. They’d been found. And they might not even have time to get dressed and armed before the person, who rattled the door now, caught them.
Chapter Seven
Damn it. Damn him!
Aaron cursed himself for doing it again—for letting his emotions distract him. And his emotions for Charlotte were stronger than he’d ever had before. For anyone else. After helping her pull on her clothes, he pressed her down in front of the couch, even though the thin fabric and wooden frame would provide little protection from a barrage of bullets.
But he wouldn’t give the intruder time to aim his gun. The minute the door opened he vaulted over the couch and tackled the dark figure, dragging him to the floor. He threw a punch, eliciting a grunt of pain. But the man swung back, striking Aaron in the jaw.
To block more blows, he locked his arms around the intruder’s. Trying to break free of Aaron’s hold, the guy bucked and rolled them across the floor toward the fire. The wood floor was hard beneath Aaron’s bare back, scratching his skin. He’d only had time to pull on his pants before the stranger had broken the lock on the door. As they wrestled, Aaron’s bare foot struck the hearth. Pain radiated up his leg, distracting him so that the man loosened his grip and swung his fist again.
In the light of the fire, Aaron recognized him. But just as he said his name, “Whit,” his former partner’s dark eyes widened with shock before closing completely as he slumped forward—collapsing onto him.
Charlotte stood over the man, clenching the barrel of her gun in her hand. She’d struck Whit’s head with the butt of the weapon, just as she had probably been struck when she’d lost her memory. “Who is he?”
“You don’t recognize him?” Even if she had amnesia, Princess Gabriella probably would have. The young woman had seemed fascinated by her father’s other bodyguard.
She studied the man’s face before shaking her head. “No. Should I?”
“You’ve known him as long as you’ve known me,” Aaron said, trying to prod her memory. But if making love hadn’t brought it back…
“And how long is that?” she asked. Maybe the heat from the fire flushed her face or maybe she was embarrassed that she didn’t remember how long she had known her lover.
“We met you just a couple of months before you and the princess disappeared,” he replied. “His name is Whit Howell.”
“And who is he?”
Aaron got up from the floor and stood over his old friend’s unconscious body. “He is also one of the king’s bodyguards.”
“You work with him?”
He had sworn to himself that he never would again. But he had needed a real job—something more challenging than guarding white-collar secrets for corporations or vaults for banks. Choking on the self-disgust welling up in his throat, he just nodded.
“So we can trust him?” She dropped on her knees beside Whit and felt for his pulse. Her breath shuddered out in a ragged sigh. “I didn’t kill him.”
“Good.” Relief eased the pressure he hadn’t even realized was squeezing his chest. No matter what he had become, Whit Howell had once been his friend. “But we really shouldn’t trust him.”
“Why not?”
Aaron shrugged. “It’s kind of like your former partner—nothing I can prove—”
“If I could remember, I probably could prove that I can’t trust that man,” she said, glancing through the open door. “Your friend has a car out there. Grab his keys and let’s get the hell out of here before the other guy comes back.”
Aaron shook his head. “We can’t leave yet.” Maybe she was wrong about Trigger and the guy would come through with a subpoena for Serenity House’s records. But he needed another answer right now and only one man could give him that. “I want to talk to Whit and find out how the hell he found me.”
“If you two work together, didn’t he know where you were going?”
“No. I made sure he didn’t know,” Aaron said. He had used a family emergency as his reason for leaving St. Pierre. Maybe Whit had checked out his story and discovered his lie. But how the hell had Whit tracked him down—not just to Michigan—but to this very cabin?
She glanced again out the open door. But darkness enveloped them in the impenetrable cocoon of night; morning was hours away yet. “We can take him with us and question him when he wakes up.”
Aaron lifted Whit from the floor but just to drop his heavy body onto the couch. “I don’t want him coming along with us. I don’t want him to know where we’re going.” He already knew too much about Aaron’s whereabouts.
She expelled an unsteady breath. “You really don’t trust him.”
“Not as far as I can throw him.” He pointed toward the box. “There’re some smelling salts in there. Can you find them?”
“Smelling salts?” She arched a golden-brown brow, as if offended. “You planned on me fainting?”
“You did,” he retorted.
“Not for real.”
The thought flitted unbidden into his head: What else had she faked? Amnesia? Desire? He shook off the idea; he didn’t have time to deal with the consequences.
Protecting the Pregnant Princess Page 7