“That’s why you put her in your unofficial relocation program,” Whit said with sudden understanding.
“I wanted her safe and happy.” And now she wasn’t sure she was either anymore.
“So are you going to track her down and make certain she’s all right?” Whit asked with an eagerness that revealed his true feelings for the princess.
“No,” she said.
He jerked with surprise. “I thought you cared about her?”
“I do,” Charlotte insisted. “But I’m not going to track her down, because you are.”
He nodded. “Of course, in your condition, you shouldn’t be doing a lot of traveling.”
She could have pointed out that her condition was a lot healthier than his at the moment. But she skipped it. “I’ll tell you where I sent her, and you’ll find her and make sure she’s all right.”
“I’m probably the last person she wants to see,” Whit admitted with a heavy sigh of regret.
Charlotte wasn’t so sure about that. “Just find her and keep her safe.” She pressed a paper into his hand with Gabriella’s last itinerary.
Whit clutched the piece of a paper in a tight fist. “If I hadn’t already told Aaron he was a lucky man, I’d tell him again.”
“Why is Aaron lucky?” she asked.
“Because he has you,” Whit said. Without waiting to talk to his employer or friend again, the man turned and headed out the front door.
Before Charlotte had a chance to point out that in order for Aaron to be lucky, he’d actually have to want her. And he’d already said that he couldn’t be with someone he couldn’t trust.
The door to the den opened, but only one man stepped out. Her father. She braced herself for his anger. For his demands.
She hadn’t braced herself for a physical confrontation, for the man throwing his arms around her and pulling her close.
“I thought you were dead,” he murmured, his voice cracking with emotion.
Tears stung her eyes at his seemingly genuine and heartfelt relief that she was alive. “I’m fine.”
“And I will be forever grateful for that,” her father said. “I never should have let you become Gabriella’s bodyguard.”
She flinched. Here was the rejection she’d expected. The firing she’d anticipated.
“I shouldn’t have allowed you to put yourself at risk,” he said. “I should have had protection for you, too. But I have remedied that situation. You now have your own bodyguard.”
“Who?”
“Me,” Aaron said, as he joined them in the hall.
She laughed. “I don’t need a bodyguard.”
“Then consider him a bodyguard for my heir,” the king said.
Charlotte clasped her hands to her belly, as if to protect the child. “You haven’t claimed me. How can you claim my baby?”
“That’s something else I’m going to remedy,” he promised. “I’m claiming you as my daughter. As my firstborn.”
She nodded with sudden understanding and soul-stealing disappointment. “Of course. Having me as your legal heir will take Gabriella out of danger.”
The king groaned with frustration. “This isn’t about her. This is about you—about my finally doing right by you.”
“Then don’t lie to me,” she said. “Don’t claim feelings you don’t have.”
“I’ve always had the feelings,” he said. “I just denied them—for the sake of my wife while she was alive and then for the sake of my honor and my kingdom. But I realized, when I thought you were dead, that none of that mattered anymore.”
His wife had been dead for years. But for him to say his honor or kingdom didn’t matter…
Could he be telling the truth? Could he actually care about Charlotte?
“Maybe you shouldn’t publicly claim her,” Aaron said. “As her bodyguard, I think we can keep her safer if no one else knows she’s related to you.”
The king turned to Charlotte. “I don’t want to wait another day to declare you as mine. But I don’t want you in danger, either.”
“Or is it your heir you’re worried about?” she asked. “I think she’s a girl. You still won’t have that boy you want.”
The king shook his head and turned back to Aaron. “I can’t get through to her. She’s too stubborn.” His voice cracked with more of that emotion that seemed to overwhelm him. “I wish you luck with her.”
“What did my father mean by that?” Charlotte asked once she and Aaron were alone again in the room they’d shared. “Is he talking about you being my bodyguard? Because that’s ridiculous. I don’t need a bodyguard.”
She needed Aaron though. She needed him for her lover, her friend—her soul mate. But if she couldn’t have him as those things, she wouldn’t settle for less.
“No, you don’t need a bodyguard,” Aaron agreed with a slight chuckle. “You need a husband.”
“Why? Because I’m pregnant?” She snorted derisively. “That’s archaic—kind of like a man arranging a marriage for his daughter.” She groaned with sudden realization of the conversation that must have taken place in that den. “He arranged for you to marry me, didn’t he?”
“He gave his blessing,” Aaron admitted.
And now Charlotte fully understood Gabby’s horror at being auctioned off, like a side of beef, for money and power. Aaron could give the king neither of those for her hand, though. But then she had never been the daughter that mattered. He must have been bluffing about claiming her. Maybe he had prearranged with Aaron to reject that idea under the ruse of keeping her safe.
They could keep her safe from danger. But not from pain…
“What did you promise him in exchange for his blessing?” she wondered aloud. Because the king was too shrewd and too mercenary to give up something without receiving something in return—just like her mother had been. No wonder Bonita had been his mistress for so many years—after they’d met at a charity ball at which her missionary parents had been guest speakers.
“I did make him a promise,” Aaron admitted, “that I would love you and cherish you the rest of our lives.”
Her heart shifted, kicking inside her chest like the baby kicking inside her womb. Her legs trembled and she dropped onto the edge of the bed. “Why would you make a promise you can’t keep?”
Why would he give her foolish heart such hope when he couldn’t possibly really want to marry her?
*
AARON DROPPED TO his knees in front of Charlotte and took her hand in both of his. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” he said. “You know that. You know me. If you accept my proposal, I will spend the rest of my life loving you. Will you marry me, Charlotte Green?”
“No.”
He felt as though she’d kicked him. But as her father had warned, she was stubborn—and totally convinced that she was unlovable.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not the nineteenth century,” she said. “And we don’t need to get married just because I’m pregnant.”
“I don’t want to marry you because you’re pregnant,” he said. “I want to marry you because I love you.”
She still refused to believe him, to believe in herself. “No, you don’t.”
“Have I ever lied to you?” he asked.
She stilled and shook her head. “No, but…I’ve lied to you. And you said you wouldn’t be with someone you can’t trust.”
“You lied or kept secrets to protect people.” And maybe to protect herself if Whit was right and she actually loved him, too. “Except when you told Trigger where to find Josie. Why did you do that?”
“I told you that I couldn’t risk your life.”
“Why not?”
She groaned as if in pain, as if she were being tortured for information. And then she made the admission in the same way—begrudgingly, resentfully. “Because I love you.”
He fought the grin that tugged at his mouth. He wanted to rejoice in her love. But he couldn’t accept it until she co
uld accept his—his love and his proposal. “You can love me but I can’t love you?”
“You love Josie Jessup,” she said.
“As a friend.” He’d already told her this. But it was easier for her to believe that he loved Josie than that he loved her.
“You mourned her like a lover.”
“I mourned her because I felt guilty,” he admitted. Then, with sudden realization, he repeated, “I mourned her. But I didn’t mourn you.”
She flinched with pain, and he realized that this had been her problem all along, why she had fought to hide or probably even admit to her feelings for him. She had believed him in love with another woman. She’d felt second best again, like she had to her sister.
“I didn’t mourn you because I knew you weren’t dead,” he explained. “Everyone else tried to convince me that you were. Whit—”
“My dad?”
He nodded.
“You have more respect for my skills,” she said.
He shook his head. “You’re amazing, but that wasn’t the reason. I knew that I would have felt it if you had died. Because there’s this connection between us—this bond that I’ve never had with anyone else—not Josie. Not Whit.”
He entwined his fingers with hers. “I knew you were alive because I could feel your heart beating. Thousands of miles separated us, but I could feel your heart beating in my heart. We are that connected.”
Her breath caught, and her beautiful eyes shimmered with tears. “Aaron…”
“Do you feel it, too?” he asked. “Do you feel this connection between us? Between our souls?”
She nodded. “You are my soul mate.”
“So I am going to ask you again,” he warned her. “Will you marry me? Will you make me the happiest man in the world for the rest of our lives?”
“Yes, I will,” she said with a smile of pure joy.
She wound her arms around his neck and pulled him close. And just as he’d said, her heart pounded against his—inside his, as if they were one. He felt her happiness, too, as it filled him with the warmth of joy and love and relief that she had finally accepted his proposal. But more important, he knew that she had accepted his love.
Her mouth pressed quick kisses to his lips and his cheek and the side of his nose. “I will marry you,” she clarified, as if he could have mistaken her intentions. “And I will spend the rest of my life making you happy.”
“You already have,” he said. “By giving me your love and our child.”
“Our child…” Those tears shimmered even more brightly in her eyes. “You gave me our child,” she said. “You gave me the family I never had. You have already made me the happiest woman in the world.”
A thought occurred to him and Aaron chuckled with sudden amusement.
“What?” she asked, her smile still full and bright. She looked more like her sister now—younger and more carefree and optimistic.
“It’s a good thing Whit didn’t hear any of this,” he shared his thought. “He would tease us mercilessly for being hopeless romantics.”
She chuckled, too, but then she said, “We might not be the only ones.”
“Whit? A hopeless romantic?” He snorted at the ridiculous notion. He had never met a more cynical person—until he’d met Charlotte. If she could let herself fall in love…
Maybe it was possible that Whitaker Howell could find happiness, too.
“Since I will no longer keep any secrets from you,” she vowed, “I need to tell you that I sent him to find Gabriella.”
Aaron tensed with concern for his fiancée’s sister. “Do you think she’s in danger?”
“As the king’s daughter, she’s always in danger,” she reminded him.
It was why Aaron preferred that the king not acknowledge her now or maybe ever. He hated the thought of people coming after her because of her father. But then Trigger had already come after her because of who she was. Charlotte could take care of herself though. Despite what she had taught her sister, he wasn’t so sure that Princess Gabriella could protect herself.
In that interest of full disclosure to which she now endearingly subscribed, she warned him, “Going to her may put Whit in danger, too.”
“He can handle himself.” Even after a bullet had ripped through his shoulder, the man had saved their lives.
“He can handle armed gunmen and thugs,” she agreed. “I’m not sure he can handle Gabby. She might hurt him. I don’t know that she can go against her father’s wishes to marry another man.”
It hadn’t occurred to him that Whit might have been so concerned about Gabby because he’d developed feelings for her. For so long he had believed his friend hadn’t possessed any feelings. “Well, I don’t know if Whit can protect himself from a broken heart.”
Aaron hadn’t been able to protect himself from that pain—when he’d thought Charlotte could never trust him and therefore never love him.
As if she’d felt that pain, sadness momentarily dimmed her eyes. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” she said, “with all my secrets.”
“You had your reasons.”
“Not anymore,” she said and repeated her earlier vow. “There will be no more secrets between us.”
There would be nothing between them anymore but love.
*
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Chapter One
Three months later
“Dugan is out.”
Miles’s fingers tightened around his cell phone as he wheeled his SUV around and headed toward the station. “What?”
His superior, Lieutenant Hammond, didn’t sound happy. “Based on the Kelly woman’s murder and some technicality with the chain of evidence when they’d searched the man’s place, Dugan’s lawyer got his conviction overturned.”
The past few weeks of tracking down clues and false leads day and night taunted him. He released a string of expletives.
Hammond cleared his throat. “If we’d found evidence connecting Dugan to a partner, maybe things would have gone differently, but…”
Hammond let the sentence trail off, but Miles silently finished for him. If he and Mason had found such evidence, Dugan would still be in a cell. And the world would be a safer place.
But they’d failed.
The day Dugan’s verdict was read flashed back. Dugan’s threat resounded in his head—you’ll pay.
“Now that he’s back on the streets—”
“I know. He’s going to kill again,” Miles said. And he’s probably coming after me.
His cell phone chirped, and he glanced at the caller ID. Marie’s number.
Damn, she was probably on his case for working again last night and missing dinner with Timmy. He’d thought he might have found a lead on the copycat, but instead he’d only chased his own tail.
The phone chirped again.
You’ll pay.
Panic suddenly seized him, cutting off his breath. Dammit…what if payback meant coming after his family?
“I have to go, Hammond.” Sweat beaded on his neck as he connected the call. “Hello?”
Husky breathing filled the line, then a scream pierced the receiver.
He clenched the steering wheel with a white-knuckled grip. He had to clear his throat to speak. “Marie?” God, tell me you’re there….
<
br /> But the sudden silence sent a chill up his spine.
“Marie, Timmy?”
More breathing, this time followed by a husky laugh that sounded sinister, threatening…evil.
Dear God, no…
Dugan was at Marie’s house.
He pressed the accelerator, his heart hammering as he sped around traffic and called for backup. The dispatch officer agreed to send a patrol car right away.
A convertible nearly cut him off, and Miles slammed on his horn, nearly skimming a truck as he roared around it. Brush and shrubs sailed past, the wheels grinding on gravel as he hugged the side of the country road.
Images of the dead women from Dugan’s crime scenes flashed in his head, and his stomach churned. No, please, no…Dugan could not be at Marie’s house. He couldn’t kill Marie…not like the other women.
And Timmy…his son was home today with her.
The bright Texas sun nearly blinded him as he swerved into the small neighborhood where Marie had bought a house. Christmas decorations glittered, lights twinkled from the neighboring houses, the entryways screaming with festive holiday spirit.
Somehow they seemed macabre in the early-morning light.
He shifted gears, brakes squealing as he rounded a curve and sped down the street. He scanned the neighboring yards, the road, the trees beyond the house, searching for Dugan.
But everything seemed still. Quiet. A homey little neighborhood to raise a family in.
Except he had heard that scream.
His chest squeezed for air, and he slammed on the brakes and skidded up the drive. He threw the Jeep into Park, and held his weapon at the ready as he raced up to the front door.
Cop instincts kicked in, and he scanned the outside of the house and yard again, but nothing looked amiss. He glanced through the front window, but the den looked normal…toys on the floor, magazines on the table, TV running with cartoons.
Only the Christmas tree had been tipped over, ornaments scattered across the floor.
He reached for the doorknob, and the door swung open. His breath lodged in his throat, panic knotting his insides. No sounds of holiday music or Timmy chattering.
Gripping his weapon tighter, he inched inside, senses honed for signs of an intruder.
Protecting the Pregnant Princess Page 18