Protecting the Pregnant Princess

by Intrigue Romance

  Her mother had resented their concern for other children—had resented that they’d spent all their time and money trying to take care of everyone else in the world. At least her aunt had understood, and after her grandparents died, Aunt Lydia had taken over their good work.

  And in her own way, Charlotte had thought she was honoring her grandparents, too—by taking care of people in trouble, by protecting them like they’d wanted to protect all those underprivileged children.

  The plane engine cut out. “We are not leaving here until we find her,” the man ordered the guard. He stomped down the steps to the ground. He wore a silk suit, and his hair was as oily and slicked back as the creepy guard who worked for him.

  A breath whistled between Aaron’s teeth as he recognized the guy the same time Charlotte did. Prince Linus Demetrios had been promised Princess Gabriella’s hand in marriage. They had been betrothed since the day she’d been born—until the king had rescinded that promise. The day of the ball at the palace—the night she and Aaron had made love—the king had promised Gabriella to another man, a wealthier, more influential prince from another neighboring country.

  And sometime during that night, someone had slipped a note under Gabby’s door that she would die before she would ever marry Prince Tonio Malamatos. That was why Charlotte had whisked them off to Paris the next morning—under the ruse of meeting with designers to begin work on the princess’s wedding gown.

  “She could be anywhere,” the guard protested. “Surely she must have contacted the authorities by now. They’ll be looking for us!”

  “Princess Gabriella is mine,” the prince said. “We’re not leaving without her and my baby.”

  Despite Aaron’s arm on her shoulder, trying to hold her down, Charlotte jumped up. “This baby is not yours!”

  “Gabby!” The prince hurried forward, his arms outstretched as if to hug her close.

  She lifted the gun and pointed it directly at his chest. He had to be the one who’d threatened her sister as well as kidnapping Charlotte. “I am not Gabby, either.”

  “Yes,” the prince insisted. “You are my sweet, sweet Gabriella.”

  She shook her head. “’Fraid not.”

  “She kept saying that,” the guard related. “Kept saying that we’d grabbed the wrong woman.”

  Prince Demetrios shook his head, but his swarthy complexion paled in the bright lights of the airstrip. “No. That’s not possible.”

  “I’m Charlotte Green,” she said. “You know that—now that you see me.”

  His voice lacked conviction even as he continued to insist, “It can’t be…”

  “You’ve seen us together,” she reminded him, “at the ball.” Because Gabriella had thought she could trust him. As well as being engaged since birth, they had been friends that long, too. She’d felt horrible over what her father had done.

  One of his heavily lidded eyes twitched as anger overwhelmed him. “I prefer not to remember that night and all its betrayals.”

  Now she wanted to calm him down, to make him see reason. If he hadn’t kidnapped her, she might have almost felt sorry for him. In one night he’d lost the life he’d known—the one he’d planned—just like she had when she’d lost her memory. “Gabby and I had nothing to do with the king changing his plans.”

  “Suddenly my country—my wealth—was not sufficient for his daughter,” the prince griped with all wounded pride. “For you…”

  “I am not Gabriella,” she said again, her voice sharp with irritation. “I am her bodyguard.” And her sister. “You know we look exactly alike. I had plastic surgery to look like her, so that I could protect her from situations like this, from her getting abducted.”

  “Where is she?” Aaron asked the question. “What have you done with her? You must have mistaken her for Charlotte. Did you kill her?”

  “Of course not! I would never kill anyone,” he protested. “That was not part of the plan.”

  “What was the plan?” Aaron asked. “To kidnap and rape a woman?”

  That eyelid twitched again. “I would never harm the woman I love. I was helping her. Her father put her in an impossible situation, and I gave her a way out. Since she’s carrying my baby, the king cannot possibly make her marry another man.”

  “She’s not carrying your baby,” Aaron said. “She’s carrying mine.”

  The prince sucked in a breath of outraged pride. “That is not possible.”

  “She was already pregnant when you grabbed her in Paris,” Aaron explained. “She’s carrying my baby.”

  Charlotte’s heart warmed with the possessiveness in Aaron’s voice. He had claimed her baby. If only he would now claim her…

  “It doesn’t matter whose baby I’m carrying,” she said. “I’m not Gabriella.”

  The prince turned toward his guard. “Could it be? Did you grab the wrong woman in Paris?”

  The guard shook his head. “There was only one woman in that suite.”

  *

  ONLY ONE WOMAN. Aaron couldn’t even consider the implications of that claim. “There was so much blood, so much destruction,” he said. “The authorities believe someone died there.”

  The guard nodded. “I lost a friend because of this woman. I could not hurt her then…because I had my orders to not harm the princess.” He lifted the gun he clutched in his nonbandaged hand. “But if she’s really not the princess…”

  “I’m not,” she said, “but I am the woman holding a gun on your boss. And I’m not so sure that you’re going to be all that accurate shooting with your left hand. So if your bullet misses, mine won’t.”

  The prince shuddered at her cold pronouncement and so did Aaron. She would have no qualms about pulling that trigger—about taking the life of an unarmed man.

  “You’re not my sweet Gabriella,” the prince said, his voice choked with disappointment. “Where is she?”

  “Where you will never get to her,” Charlotte vowed with a conviction that had disappointment clenching Aaron’s heart in a tight fist.

  He realized that she had known all along—or at least as soon as her memory returned—exactly where Princess Gabriella was. Obviously because she had stashed her there…

  Charlotte pushed the barrel of her gun against the prince’s skinny chest. “You’re going to be locked up for the rest of your life.”

  Maybe she didn’t know—maybe that was simply what she meant—that he wouldn’t be able to get to Gabriella through the prison bars he would be behind.

  “I told you that I harmed no one,” Prince Demetrios insisted.

  “You were the one who killed my friend,” the guard said, clutching that gun tightly. The murderous intent in his eyes revealed how much he wanted to pull that trigger, how much he wanted to take Charlotte’s life—after having already taken her freedom and her memory.

  “There are a stack of bodies back at Serenity House,” Aaron said, “thanks to you.”

  The prince turned toward his employee. “Mr. Centerenian? What are they talking about?”

  The guard tensed. With guilt? But he claimed, “I have killed no one…yet.”

  “That nurse was killed.” Charlotte addressed the prince instead of his employee. “The one you hired to take care of me. Sandy…”

  “And the young reporter the nurse tipped off about your kidnapping,” Aaron added. “And the administrator you paid to impregnate the princess with your sperm.”

  “She didn’t do it,” Charlotte hastened to add when the prince’s dark gaze lowered to her stomach. “Is that why you ordered her and the others killed? To cover your tracks?”

  “Bullets were flying everywhere,” Aaron said. “It was a wonder that Charlotte wasn’t hit, too.” Or him. It was bad enough that Whit had been.

  The prince shook his head—his pride appearing every bit as wounded as it had over losing his fiancée. “I am not a killer,” he said.

  “You didn’t pull the trigger yourself,” Charlotte agreed.

  “But you mu
st have had your goon do it,” Aaron finished for her.

  The prince glanced toward his guard again. Even he must have begun to suspect him. “I told you to take her and to keep her safe.”

  Aaron gestured toward the bruise on her head. “He did that to her. He nearly killed her—despite your orders. You don’t think he could have hurt anyone else?”

  The prince glared at his employee. “I did not tell you to kill anyone.”

  “You are a fool,” the guard remarked with pure disgust. “You will spend the rest of your life in prison. You do not understand that you can’t leave loose ends.”

  “So you shot them?” Charlotte asked. “You killed all those people.”

  “The reporter and that stupid nurse,” the guard agreed. “And now all of you. I will not spend my life in prison for some lovesick fool.”

  And he raised his gun and fired.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Nice shot,” Charlotte remarked, as the guard clasped his other hand. Aaron had used a bullet to knock the gun from the guard’s hand.

  But the man didn’t stop—he charged at Aaron and tackled him to the cement floor of the hangar. His breath audibly whooshed out of his probably almost crushed lungs. Mr. Centerenian was much larger than Aaron but more fat than muscle. Aaron was the more experienced fighter. He tossed him off with a kick and a punch. Then the guard swung back. But Mr. Centerenian screamed in pain when his bloodied fist connected with the cement floor since Aaron had rolled out of his line of fire.

  The two men continued to grapple with each other. But another man made his move, stepping back from Charlotte and heading toward the plane.

  She caught him by the back of his jacket. “You’re not going anywhere…except behind bars.”

  The tall man turned slowly toward her. Then he moved, as if to lunge at her.

  But she lifted her gun and pressed it into his chest again. “I told you that I will shoot you,” she said. “Given what I went through—the months I lost—because of you, I really should kill you.”

  “I thought you were Gabriella…”

  “And that makes me want to pull this trigger even more,” she said. Anger and dread surged through her with the thought of Gabby enduring what she had. The pain. The confusion.

  First her father had betrayed the princess. And now the man she had considered a lifelong friend had betrayed her, too. Despite Gabby having grown up with the palace and the money, Charlotte was really more fortunate; she had learned early to count on no one. To trust no one.

  She’d also learned that it was safer to love no one. But she’d messed up there. First she’d fallen under the spell of her sister’s sweetness. And then Aaron’s irresistible charms…

  “Is she all right? Is she safe?” Prince Demetrios asked, his pride forgotten as he pleaded for information.

  Gabby had considered him a friend when it seemed obvious now that he’d been more of a stalker.

  “I need to know,” he asked, his voice cracking with emotion. “I have loved her my whole life. I need to know that she’s all right.”

  Whatever sympathy she’d fleetingly felt for the man was gone. She cared only about making sure Gabby was safe now. “And I need to know everything you know. I need to know every damn thing that you were behind.”

  “I told you,” the prince said, his voice rising so that he sounded more like a whiny child than a grown man. The king had been right to end this betrothal—for so many reasons. “I only wanted Gabby—wanted us bound together for life.”

  “And instead so many people lost their lives,” she mused and glared at him with condemnation.

  “I didn’t know that Mr. Centerenian shot the nurse and a reporter.”

  “And the administrator,” Charlotte added.

  “And my friend.” Aaron jerked the beaten guard to his feet and shoved him toward the prince. “Make him tell us everything.”

  “I did,” Mr. Centerenian insisted. “I told you that I cleaned up the mess he left. I killed the nurse and the man she kept sneaking away to meet. I did not kill anyone else.”

  “Then you hired those men to kill the administrator,” Aaron said. “And try to kill us.”

  “No,” the guard protested. “I knew Dr. Platt would not talk. And she had promised to get rid of any evidence that could lead back to the prince or me.”

  “Someone killed her,” Aaron said. “So you didn’t need to worry about that evidence after all. Or about her testifying against you.”

  “I told you—she would not talk.”

  Charlotte believed that—the woman had seemed quite stubborn. But she’d obviously had her price. Prince Demetrios had found it; someone else might have been able—if they’d had deep enough pockets. “I don’t know about that. But I do know that, with all those bullets flying in that office—” she patted her stomach “—we could have been killed, too.”

  The prince gasped in horror. He was a sick man. But apparently he was not a killer.

  “I had orders to not harm you,” Mr. Centerenian said, “or I would not have been paid.”

  She touched the bruise on her temple now.

  “Kill you,” he amended himself. “I could not kill you. But had I known who you really were…”

  She would have been dead. But even with all those bullets flying, none had come close to her. Maybe the shooters had just had qualms about killing a pregnant woman. Or maybe they’d had orders. At any rate, she believed someone other than Mr. Centerenian and Prince Demetrios had hired them.

  Why?

  *

  “WHAT ABOUT THE parking lot?” Aaron asked the guard as an officer loaded him into the backseat of a state police cruiser.

  He had called the authorities from the phone they’d found in the hangar. And the only reason he and Charlotte weren’t being loaded into cruisers themselves for questioning was because of the threats of Stanley Jessup’s influential lawyer. They had called the media mogul, too.

  The older man had gone above and beyond all the favors Aaron had asked of him. Well, except for telling Whit where he was. But he had only confided in the other man because Whit had convinced him that Aaron was in danger.

  Stanley Jessup was a hell of a lot more forgiving than he would have been. If someone had failed to protect his daughter, Aaron wouldn’t have cared if the guy put himself in danger. Hell, he would have preferred it. Instead Stanley kept helping them—with doctors, lawyers and a safe place to stay.

  But no place would ever be really safe if there was another shooter out there.

  He asked the guard again, “You shot at me in the parking lot, right?”

  Mr. Centerenian shook his head and then boasted, “I would not have missed had I been shooting at you.”

  Aaron could have pointed out that he had missed him in the hall. That he’d hit a vase instead of him. But this man didn’t matter anymore. He apparently wasn’t behind the shooting in the administrator’s office.

  So who was?

  The prince was being loaded into the back of a separate police cruiser. Charlotte stood beside him, facing the prince instead of Aaron.

  “You said that you’d tell me where Gabriella is,” the prince implored her. “We had a deal…”

  “The deal was,” she corrected him, “that you would tell me everything you know—”

  “And I did,” he interjected.

  “And I would tell you that she was all right—not where she is,” Charlotte reminded him of the details of their agreement. “She’s all right.”

  “But you won’t tell me where she is?”

  She shook her head, and the long waves of golden-brown hair rippled down her back. “I won’t tell anyone where she is.”

  But she knew. Aaron heard the certainty in her voice. All this time he and Whit had been concerned about Princess Gabriella and Charlotte had known exactly where she was.

  Whit was right. Again. When was he going to learn that he couldn’t trust Charlotte Green?

  “Don’t ask me,”
she said as she stood beside him, watching the police cars leave the airstrip.

  “I know better than to think you’d tell me anything,” Aaron admitted. “But you should tell the king. He’s been out of his mind worrying about her.”

  “Of course he has.”

  Aaron winced at his insensitive remark. “I’m sure he’s been worried about you, too,” he amended himself. “It’s just that I didn’t know then that you’re his—”

  “Bastard?” She shrugged, as if she didn’t care, but he suspected she cared a lot. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t matter. Only the legitimate heir matters. Gabriella is the only child he can profit from—using her to further his empire with money and power. That’s why I won’t tell him where she is.”

  “But aren’t you using her, too, then?” Aaron pointed out her double standard. “To get back at him for never acknowledging you?”

  Her eyes, the same golden-brown of her hair, darkened with anger. “I wouldn’t use Gabby. I only want to keep her safe.”

  “Is she?” Aaron wondered. “We don’t know who’s behind the shooting in the administrator’s office.”

  “If we believe Mr. Centerenian and the prince’s claims that it wasn’t one of them,” she said.

  “We shouldn’t,” Aaron agreed. “We shouldn’t believe or trust anyone.” That fact had been driven home to him time and time again—with every lie and omission Charlotte had uttered.

  Charlotte nodded. “And that’s why I won’t tell the king where Gabby is.”

  “That’s the reason you’re telling yourself,” Aaron agreed. “To justify not telling him. But we both know that’s not the real reason.”

  “Let’s forget about my reasons,” she said, “and focus on the reason that someone would have been shooting at you in the parking lot—”

  “So I wouldn’t be able to come back for you,” he pointed out. That was what he’d figured at the time. Now he wasn’t so certain…

  “The guard said he didn’t do it.”

  “And we trust what he said?”

  She shrugged. “He admitted to two murders. Why wouldn’t he admit to trying to kill you? What difference would it make at this point?”

  “It would answer the rest of our damn questions,” he said. “Well, not all of our questions.”