The Princess

by Jones, Lisa Renee

  Eric helps me out of the SUV, and into the cold night air, I don’t want to escape nearly as much as I do this night. Savage takes his position in front of us and Smith behind, which reminds me again of that assassin that I didn’t even question Eric about again in the vehicle. I never got the chance. We reach the side entrance of the hospital, some sort of service entrance, and Savage enters the building first. Eric and I join him only to have two police officers step in front of us, crowding Savage and forcing him to step aside.

  “Any word on my father?” Eric asks, the question his only greeting to the officers. One mid-fifties with what looks like an oddly fitted toupee on his head and crinkles at his eyes. The other younger, thirties maybe, with curly brown hair.

  “He’s in ICU,” the older man states. “They’re running tests, but it appears it might be a heart attack.” The man’s words drip with accusation, as if the heart attack was a product of Eric’s making.

  Eric’s hand flexes ever so slightly against mine, but his expression is unreadable, unchanged. His tone is steady, unaffected, as he asks, “And the man my security team found on the security footage?”

  “We’re looking into it,” the younger officer announces, his keen eyes falling on our connected hands and then on me. “Perhaps your stepsister might recognize him.”

  And there it is. The next slap and attack this night has to offer and it’s all I can do not to flinch with the first of the many accusations certain to follow.

  We’re a tabloid party.

  The implication that two step-siblings have come together for sex, scandal, and murder.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Eric

  The stepsister comment is getting really fucking old. I don’t directly reply to the asshole cop who made it. I don’t defend mine and Harper’s relationship by reminding him that she’s the stepsister I never lived with or even knew until we were adults and years after our parents married. Too often in high-profile cases, and this will be one, law enforcement tries to take the heat off themselves and put it on other people. The incestuous headlines they’re already starting to frame would do that—if I let them get away with it.

  I drape my arm around Harper’s shoulders, making it clear that I won’t cower and neither will she. In fact, I plan to make it clear that I’ll attack. I glance at the cop’s nametag. “You know, Officer Marks. I admire a cop as much as I do my former SEAL teammates,” I say dryly, my gaze meeting the gaze of the cop that just goaded us. “Bravery and sacrifice are qualities to admire. Unfortunately, there are those who serve who find power trips feed their egos. Like you, officer. You might inspire me to file a harassment charge and I have to tell you, our firm would enjoy taking on a case against the bad eggs on the force. They put the good cops in danger.”

  He arches a brow. “Are you threatening me?”

  “Quite the opposite. I’m trying to protect the many good men and women you put in harm’s way. Now if you’ll step aside, I need to go check on my father.” I guide Harper around the two men and we’ve made it all of a few steps, with Savage and Smith framing us, when Officer Marks smarts off again. “Why?” he demands. “Why go check on him at all? Word is that you hate him.”

  I stop walking and rotate to face both men. “And yet I still saved his life.”

  “That’s still to be determined,” Officer Marks says. “He could die.”

  “Which is why I need to get to talk to the doctors.” I turn away and pull Harper closer, kissing her temple as we turn a corner. “Don’t freak out,” I whisper sensing she’s doing that and more. “We had to control them, not the other way around.”

  “Fuckers,” Savage grumbles. “Talk about a couple of bitch cops and I like cops. I like cops a lot. Just not those two assholes.”

  “Amen to that,” the normally silent Smith chimes in. “Amen to that.” He points to an elevator and we all pause while he punches the call button.

  I turn to Harper and press my hands to her shoulders, lowering my voice. “If this was a professional hit, there will be no poison in his system and this is over, at least from law enforcement’s standpoint.”

  “And if there is?”

  “There won’t be,” I assure her. “Act like you have nothing to fear. You don’t and weakness to those cops is like blood to a coyote. It draws them in and makes them attack.”

  She nods. “Right. Got it. Play the game.”

  “Play it our way, not theirs. Our way. Own every conversation with them. Got it?”

  She inhales and lets it out, calmness sliding over her beautiful face. “Yes.” She sounds stronger now. Even stronger as she adds, “No fear.”

  “No fear, sweetheart. Exactly.” The elevator dings and the doors open. “Come on.” I lead her into the car, looking forward to the day I can just be with her, minus this damn family. And I’m determined to make that day come sooner rather than later.

  Savage and Smith follow us into the car and right before we’re sealed inside, the two officers step in front of us, the older one catching the door to keep it open. “Is there a reason you need two bodyguards?” he asks.

  “You’re assuming they aren’t our friends?” Harper asks. “Because we have no friends?”

  “Exactly,” Savage says. “You think I can’t have friends? I’m a good friend.” He runs a hand down the scar on his cheek. “Saved a friend’s life getting this.” He scowls at the officer’s hand on the elevator. “Why the fuck are you holding the door?”

  Smith pulls his phone from his pocket and holds it up. “Recording. Is there a reason you’re holding the elevator door?”

  The officer holding said door curses and releases it. The minute we’re sealed inside, I lean in close to Harper, my lips by her ear as I whisper, “My hero.”

  “They’re really starting to piss me off.” She rotates in my arms. “What happened to reassuring us and protecting us?”

  “Exactly,” Savage snaps, the giant brooding man himself adding, “We need protecting like everyone else. We have real feelings.”

  We all laugh and I kiss Harper while the car halts and the doors open. I lean in to Harper’s ear again and whisper, “I’ll show you how real my feelings are when we finally get home.”

  She doesn’t laugh or smile. She presses her hand to my cheek. “Yes. You will.” It’s a promise, that isn’t about playful flirtation. She’s talking about what’s going on with my father. She’s talking about how real this is about to get. He could be dying. I have to face that and she thinks that’s going to be brutal, which means when it’s not, she’ll think I’m brutal. It’s not a good thought, but I am who I am, and I’ve already decided that Harper has to face that reality. A savant and a bastard. That’s who I am and with that comes baggage.

  We exit to the hallway and Smith and Savage assume guard posts there at the entrance to the floor which is open to a waiting room. Davis, Grayson, and Mia are in that small room and immediately greet us, all wearing casual clothing and worried looks. “He’s in ICU,” Mia says. “And they won’t release further details to us. What’s going on?”

  Grayson eyes me. “Get an update and then let’s talk.”

  Davis and I exchange a look in which Davis tells me he can’t hold Grayson back. He tried. There is no damage control. Grayson won’t have it. I look at Grayson again. “The part where I told you to stay out of this—”

  “Landed on deaf ears,” he replies. “We’re friends. You’re in this, I’m in this.”

  “I didn’t do this,” I tell him. “You need to know that, but the press—”

  “Check on your father,” he says. “We’ll deal with the press later, together.”

  My lips thin and I eye Savage and Smith. “Protect them. Keep them the hell away from the police and the press.” I give the entire group my back, and start walking toward a nurses’ station.

  Harper is by my side in a flash, her hand on my arm, her steps matching my steps and it feels right. Like she belongs b
y my side. Like she has always belonged by my side. “Stubborn man,” I bite out.

  “Stubborn friend,” she whispers. “And friends are hard to find.”

  “Which is why I was trying to protect him.”

  “Which is why he wants to protect you,” she reminds me.

  I grunt at that and flag down a nurse who turns out to be an aide who leads us toward ICU. In a few short minutes, she’s left to find us a nurse, and we’re standing outside a glass-enclosed room where my father lays in a bed and monitors track his breathing and heart rate, which is too slow. “And there he is,” Harper whispers, glancing at me. “How do you feel?”

  “I don’t,” I say honestly. “Not a damn thing.”

  “There you are,” a fifty-something nurse with bright red hair greets, stopping beside us. “I heard his son had arrived and wanted an update. I’m Kasey. I’m your father’s nurse. He’s stable. The police aren’t allowing me to offer more details.” Someone calls her. “Sorry. I have an emergency. We’ll tell you more when we can.” Kasey rushes away and leaves us alone again.

  “That didn’t sound good,” Harper says, hushing her voice and stepping closer to me. “I think we need an attorney. A criminal attorney and a good one.”

  Savage joins us before I can reply and I don’t ask how he got back here. He’s resourceful. “Interesting update,” he says. “Isaac called Gigi and told her about your father, Eric. She immediately rushed to the airport, but she didn’t get on a plane to New York City. She got on a plane to Italy. She’s running.”

  Gigi.

  The wicked witch herself, but wicked enough to have her own son killed?

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Harper

  Gigi ran? She ran away to Europe with her son in the hospital? My hand goes to my neck, the sterile smell of the hospital suffocating me, when moments before it had not. This makes no sense. That woman loves her son. He was the king of the empire that she created. A million thoughts charge through my mind, and I can barely make sense of them. I wonder if this is how Eric feels when he’s attacked by numbers, if he reaches for one piece of reason the way I do now.

  I turn to face him and focus on that one piece now. “I know you hate her. I know this makes sense to you because of that hate, but it doesn’t make sense to me. Why would she run? She didn’t order a hit on me or her son. And if she did, which I don’t believe she would, running would make her look guilty. It does make her look guilty.”

  “Or afraid. She’s running for her life, Harper.”

  “She thinks she’s next. She thinks everyone in the family is going down. She thinks someone is coming for them. Or us. For all of us.”

  “I’m not convinced we’re involved at all. I’m still of the mindset that we were the fall guys for something this family has gotten into.”

  “You think Isaac and Gigi were the ones setting us up? Not Gigi and your father?”

  “My father’s in a hospital bed. That doesn’t spell guilt to me though there’s no question, he was here to protecting himself. Maybe that means he was turning on the family. As for Isaac, my first instinct is always to blame that little prick but he has limits. He’s not smart enough to plan any of this alone. And I keep going back to the night he came to your house. He warned me to leave before I burned everyone. That’s not someone who wants me to stay and take the fall. I know him. He was afraid. He was terrified I’d stir the wrong pot.”

  My eyes go wide with a memory. “Gigi made a comment about you getting your brains from her.”

  “Nothing about me came from that woman but the bottom line here is I do believe she knows exactly what’s going on. I believe she needed an out for the family and took it. But right now, I need to talk to Davis and get us out of here. I need your help. Talk to Mia. Make her understand how dangerous this is for Grayson. She’ll get him out of here. Just get them away from this. Even if it means you leave with them.”

  “I can’t leave. I’m not leaving you, and as you said—if we don’t deal with the police, they’ll come to us. We need legal counsel.”

  “I’m an attorney surrounded by attorneys,” he argues.

  “But you don’t want Grayson close to this. A Bennett attorney pulls him in.”

  “If we need a criminal law expert, outside the firm, we’ll get one, but there is nothing to protect ourselves from right now. It’s a heart attack.”

  “They didn’t say it was a heart attack.”

  “They will.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  He kisses me, a hard press of our mouths. “Trust me.” His voice is low, rough, a demand and question all at once that only Eric could make possible. “I’m asking you to trust me to protect you and us. Help me protect the only other people other than you that matter to me. Grayson and Mia.”

  My heart squeezes with the realization that they are all he has, or they were. He now considers me a part of a small, intimate group of people he allows in his life. “I so need to be right here with you right now, but yes. I trust you and I’ll come through for you.”

  His eyes darken, warm, seem to soften and then harden again. “Go now. I need to know they’re out of this.”

  I press to my toes and kiss him. “I’ll ask Mia to have coffee, but Grayson will—”

  “Be right by my side. I know. And Davis will be, too, and he, like me, protects Grayson.”

  “Because he’s a friend?” I ask, wondering why he denies Davis that title.

  “He’s not Grayson.” His reply is flat and curiously hard.

  I don’t know what that means, but I don’t push. Not now. I’ll understand at some point. “I’ll get Mia to help.” I turn away and all but walk right into Savage.

  “Just a wall hanging out,” he says, when I stop dead to avoid blasting into him. “I’ll keep him safe while you’re gone.”

  Yes, please, I think, ridiculously relieved to have Savage stay by Eric’s side. Eric can take care of himself.

  I step around the beast and head toward Mia and Grayson, who are standing in a waiting area just around a corner, and in deep conversation with Davis. “What’s happening?” Mia asks the minute they spy my approach.

  “He’s stable,” I say, joining them. “That’s all they’ll tell us.”

  Davis discreetly steps away, headed toward the ICU, but Grayson fixes his attention on me. “How much trouble is he in?”

  “He didn’t do this,” I say. “I’m certain of it.”

  “Who did?”

  “I’ll let Eric share his theories on that,” I say, “but Grayson, as long as you’re here, he won’t think his way out of this.”

  “As long as I’m here, he’ll be forced to think beyond his damn family, and find a way out.”

  My brow furrows. “I don’t understand.”

  “When a Kingston is involved, that brain of his goes swimming in shark-infested waters where any productive thought dies. He needs reasons to think outside those waters. That’s me and that’s you. You’ll stay close to him and so will I.” He starts to walk away to follow Davis, and I catch his arm.

  “Wait.” He turns to look at me. “His thoughts aren’t the only thing that goes swimming in those shark-infested waters. If you force his hand, if you put yourself in harm’s way, he’ll find a way to end this and I’m not sure either of us want to know where that leads him. You don’t know—”

  His jaw clamps down. “I might not know the entire situation, but I do know him. I know him far better than you think I know him. He won’t go to that dark place when I’m with him. He won’t go there when you’re with him either. Keep him close. I damn sure am.”

  “You said he was fine at the apartment.”

  “His father wasn’t lying in a hospital bed, either.” He pulls away from me and starts walking, and it’s clear to me that Grayson does know Eric. He knows a dark side of Eric that I have sensed, but rejected. He knows that side of him to the point that he doesn’t want to l
et him out of his sight or mine.

  “Coffee?” Mia suggests.

  I force myself to turn to her. “Yes,” I say, battling a need to go to Eric, but remembering my commitment to him as well, to use Mia to get Grayson out of here, though I’m not certain that’s smart right now. I manage a weak smile. “Coffee is good.”

  “I know where the coffee shop is. I was here for a client’s mother a while back.”

  I don’t move. I don’t want the coffee. Damn it, I have to talk to her. “Great,” I say. “Lead the way.”

  “Of course,” she says and we start walking, but suddenly I just know Eric is near. I stop and turn to find he, Davis, and Grayson, entering the waiting room we just left. They huddle up and start talking and as if he senses me looking at him, his attention shifts, and suddenly I’m captured in his intense stare.

  Seconds tick by and I can’t explain it, but the world just shuts down, it shrinks, and pulls us together. There is so much between me and this man, so much to learn, to know, to experience. So much to lose and I have a horrible feeling that’s where this is headed.

  Pain.

  Loss.

  Goodbye.

  I need to do something I’m not doing.

  What? What do I need to do that I’m not doing?

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Harper

  Eric and I are still staring at each other from across the hospital hallway with the world fading into the distance. Eric’s eyes narrow on me, a question in their depths and apparently he doesn’t like the answer he finds in mine because he starts walking toward me. I don’t know what he saw in me but suddenly, I just need his arms around me. I need to feel him close and I start running toward him. If he’s swimming in shark-infested waters as Grayson proclaimed, I’m right there with him.

  I hurry forward, closing the space between me and him before we collide and my arms wrap around him, my head resting on the solid wall of his chest. He holds me close, and for seconds, I wish could be hours, there is nothing but me and him. No Kingston family. No hospital. No assassin, but the world screams around us, and we pull back in unison to look at each other. “We will get to the other side of this,” he promises.