Protecting the Pregnant Princess

Chapter Two

A sigh of disappointment came from the man standing next to Aaron. “It’s not Charlotte,” he said.

The guy wasn’t Whit Howell. Aaron had managed to leave him behind on St. Pierre Island. But this man had met him at the airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Once Aaron had dealt with his anger over the guy flagging his passport to monitor his travel, he had made use of him…for the fake credentials that had gotten Aaron on staff at Serenity House. Problem was that the U.S. Marshal had insisted on coming along.

Jason “Trigger” Herrema pushed his hand through his steel-gray hair. “Damn, I’d really hoped she was still alive.”

“You and me both.” The only difference was that Aaron wasn’t entirely convinced that this woman wasn’t Charlotte. Through the small window in the door of hospital room 00, he couldn’t see much more than her perfect profile: slightly upturned nose, delicately sculpted cheekbone, heavily lashed eye.

Charlotte’s partner didn’t think it was her because Charlotte Green hadn’t had a perfect profile…until she’d taken on the job of protecting the princess and had plastic surgery to make herself look exactly like the royal heiress. Because they had already shared the same build and coloring, it hadn’t even taken much surgery to complete the transformation.

Aaron had seen a before photo of Charlotte; she’d had one of her and her aunt on the bedside table in her room in the palace in St. Pierre. She’d had a crooked nose from being broken too many times and an ugly, jagged scar on her cheek from a wanted killer’s knife blade. It was no wonder her old partner didn’t recognize her now.

But it had to be Charlotte.

Aaron couldn’t look away from her; he couldn’t focus on anyone but her, which was exactly how he had reacted the first time he’d met the tough female bodyguard. Even more than her beauty, he’d been drawn to her strength and her character. And even lying in that bed, she was strong—she had to be to have survived the attack in the hotel room in Paris.

“I need to talk to the princess,” Aaron said. Obviously Charlotte hadn’t told her old partner about her surgery, so neither would Aaron. If she had wanted the U.S. Marshal to know about her physical transformation, she would have informed him already. Maybe she hadn’t trusted this guy. And if she hadn’t, Aaron didn’t dare trust him, either. “Someone needs to keep an eye out for the goon that was guarding her door.”

They’d waited until the muscular man had slipped outside for a cigarette. “And maybe check around to see if Charlotte’s been visiting her.” He doubted it. If this was the princess and Charlotte knew she was here, she would have broken her out of this creepy hospital long ago.

Unless Charlotte wasn’t who Aaron had thought she was. Unless she was the one keeping Gabriella here…

The Marshal nodded in agreement. “I can ask some of the nurses about her visitors and keep an eye out for the big guy.”

“The princess knows me,” Aaron said, “so I’ll talk to her.”

Trigger glanced inside the room again. “Just because she knows you doesn’t mean you’re going to get any information out of her.”

“Maybe not,” Aaron agreed. “But maybe she can shed some light on what happened in Paris—”

Trigger interrupted with an urgent whisper, “And what happened to Charlotte!”

“Exactly,” Aaron said with a nod. “I have to try to find out what she knows.”

Trigger’s shoulders drooped in a shrug of defeat, as if he was already giving up. “Don’t expect much. I doubt that girl knows anything. I worked with Charlotte for four years, and I never knew what was going on with her.”

“I had a partner like that, too,” Aaron muttered beneath his breath as the U.S. Marshal headed toward the nurses’ station.

Was it possible that Whit had sold out? Was he the one behind what had happened in Paris?

And what about Charlotte? Had he been wrong about her, too? Maybe she’d had her own agenda where the princess was concerned.

Only one way to find out…

He clutched his fake ID badge and swiped it through the security lock beside the door. After a quick glance around to make sure no one was watching him, he slipped inside the room and shut the door at his back.

She didn’t awaken; she didn’t even stir in her sleep or shift beneath the thick blankets covering her. Was she all right? Or heavily sedated?

If she was Charlotte, then whoever had brought her here would have had to keep her subdued somehow. Drugs made sense.

He stepped closer, checking for an IV, but there was nothing. However, her arms were strapped to the bed railings.

“Are you all right?” he whispered, reaching out to touch her. He tipped her face toward him. He’d been able to tell the women apart—because Gabriella was younger with a wide-eyed innocence. And because Charlotte had made his heart race. But now his heart slammed against his ribs when he noticed the angry bruise marring her silky skin. “Oh, my God…what the hell happened to you?”

This injury was not from the struggle in the hotel room. Much of the bruise was still brilliant with color; it was a recent wound.

Despite his hand cupping her face, she didn’t react to his touch. Her lids didn’t flicker; her thick lashes lay against her high cheekbones. He ran his fingertips along the edge of her jaw toward her throat to check for a pulse. But as he leaned over her, his arm brushed against her stomach and beneath the blanket, something shifted, almost as if kicking him.

It wasn’t just her body beneath the heavy blankets. Or at least it wasn’t the shape of her formerly lithely muscled body; it had changed due to the rounded mound of her stomach.

“Oh, my God!” He felt as if he had been kicked—and a hell of a lot harder than that slight movement against his arm.

This woman was pregnant. So she couldn’t be Charlotte, who had been adamant about never becoming a mother. She had to be the princess. But he hadn’t known…he hadn’t realized…that the princess must have already been carrying a royal heir when she and Charlotte disappeared.

While he stared down at her stomach, she moved. Suddenly. Her hands wrapped tight around his throat, pushing hard against his windpipe. Despite the pressure he managed to gasp out one word, “Charlotte.”

He had no doubt now—he had found Charlotte. And if her death grip was any indication, she wasn’t happy that he had.

“CHARLOTTE…” she whispered the name back at him. It felt familiar on her lips. Was it her name? Or had she used it for someone else?

She wanted to ask the man, but for him to reply, she would have to loosen her grip. And then she wouldn’t be able to overpower him. She’d caught him by surprise, playing possum as she had; otherwise she never would have managed to get her hands on him.

He was nearly as big as the other guard. But his body was all long, lean muscle. His hair was dark, nearly black, and his eyes were a startlingly light blue. His eyes struck a chord of familiarity within her just like the name he’d called her.

Did she know him? Or had she just seen him before in here? He had one of those name badges clipped to what was apparently a uniform shirt. It was a drab green that matched the drawstring pants of what looked like hospital scrubs. So he obviously worked here.

She needed that badge to escape. She needed to escape even more than she needed to know who the hell she was. But her grip loosened, as his hands grasped hers and easily pulled them from his throat. She cursed her weakness and then she cursed him. “You son of a bitch!” She wriggled, trying to tug her wrists from his grip. But his hands were strong. “Let me go!”

“I’m trying to help you,” he said, his voice low and raspy—either from her attack or because he didn’t want to be overheard.

“Then get me the hell out of here!”

“That’s the plan.”

Her breath shuddered out in a gasp of surprise. “It is?”

“It’s why I’m here, Charlotte.”

“Why—why do you think I’m Charlotte?” The question slipped out, unbidden. And now she silently cursed herself. If Charlotte was the woman he’d intended to free, then she should have let him believe she was Charlotte.

Hell, maybe she was.

His eyes, that eerily familiar pale blue, widened in surprise. “You’re not?”

God, now he wasn’t sure, either.

She should have kept her mouth shut, but maybe she had done that as long as she had physically been able. Her voice was raspy, as if she hadn’t used it much lately. Or maybe someone had tried choking the life out of her, too.

She needed to get the hell out of this place. But should she leave with a stranger? Maybe he posed a bigger threat than the man with the Glock.

He studied her face, his gaze narrowing with the scrutiny. “Princess Gabriella?”

“Pr-princess?” she sputtered with a near-hysterical giggle. “You think I’m a princess?” Maybe it wasn’t that ridiculous a thought, though. It was almost as if she had stumbled into some morbid fairy tale where the princess had been poisoned or cursed to an endless slumber.

Except she wasn’t sleeping anymore.

“I don’t know what the hell to think,” the man admitted, shaking his head as if trying to sort through his confusion.

Maybe it wasn’t the blow to her head that had knocked out her sense since he couldn’t understand what was going on, either.

“Please,” she urged him, “get me out of here.” She glanced toward the window in the door, where the burly Mr. Centerenian usually stood guard. “Now.”

“I need to know,” he said. “Who are you? Gabby or Charlotte?”

Gabby? The name evoked the same familiar chord within her that Charlotte and his eyes had struck. It must have been a name she’d used. “Does it matter?” she asked. “Would you take one of us but leave the other?”

And why couldn’t he tell the difference between the women? Was she a twin? Was there someone else, exactly like her, out there? Hurt? In danger? As freaking confused as she was?

He shook his head. “No, damn it, I wouldn’t. You know I wouldn’t leave either of you here.”

Either of you…

Where was the other woman? Locked in another room in this hellhole? Jane’s breath caught with fear and concern for a person she didn’t even know. But then she didn’t even know herself.

“But why won’t you be honest with me?” the man asked, and hurt flashed in his pale blue eyes. “Don’t you trust me?”

It was probably a mistake. But the admission slipped out like her earlier question. “I don’t even know who you are.”

“Damn it, you have every right to be pissed, but it was the king’s decision to make that announcement at the ball. He wouldn’t listen to me…” he said then trailed off, and those pretty eyes narrowed again. “You’re not talking about that. You’re not just mad at me.”

Maybe she was.

He definitely stirred up emotion inside her. Her pulse raced and her heart pounded hard and fast. Her mind didn’t recognize him, but her body did as even her skin tingled in reaction to having touched his. An image flicked through her mind, of her hands sliding over his skin—all of his skin, his broad shoulders bare, his muscular chest covered only with dark, soft hair.

Then her fingers trailed down over washboard abs to…

Her head pounded as she tried to remember, but the tantalizing image slipped away as a ragged breath slipped between her lips. Despite the pounding, she shook her head and then flinched with pain and frustration. “No. I really don’t know who you are.”

He sucked in a sharp breath, as if her words had hurt him even more than her hands wrapped tightly around his throat had.

“Don’t feel bad,” she said with a snort of derision. “I don’t know who I am, either.”

“You don’t?” His dark brows knitted together, furrowing his forehead. “You have amnesia?”

She jerked her head in a sharp nod, which caused her to wince in pain again. “I don’t know who I am or why I’m here. But I know I’m in danger. I have to get the hell out of here.”

Even if leaving with him might put her in more danger…

The door rattled. And she gasped. “You waited too long!”

While this man was probably stronger than the one who usually guarded her, this man was unarmed. He would be no more a match for the Glock than she had been.

The door creaked as it swung open. The man spun around, putting his body between hers and the intruder—as if using himself as a human shield.

“Timmer, we gotta go,” a male voice whispered. “He’s coming back.”

A curse slipped from Timmer’s lips. “We have to bring her with us.”

“There’s no time.”

Anger flashed in those pale blue eyes. “We can’t leave her here!”

“If we try to take her out, none of us will be able to leave.”

The man—Timmer—nodded.

She grabbed him again, clutching at his arm. “Don’t leave me!” she implored him.

“I’ll be back,” he promised.

“Hurry!” urged the other man, who hovered yet outside the room. “He’s coming!”

Timmer turned back toward her, and taking her hand from his grasp, he quickly slipped her wrists back into the restraints and bound her to the bed.

He obviously hadn’t intended to help her at all. Maybe it had all been a trick. Some silly game to amuse a bored guard…

As her brief flash of hope died, tears stung her eyes. But even in her physically weak state, she was too strong and too damned proud to give in to tears. She wouldn’t cry. And she damn well wouldn’t beg.

“I will come back,” he said again, so sincerely that she was tempted to believe him.

But then he hurried from the room. Before the door swung completely shut behind him, she heard a shout. Voices raised in anger. Maybe even a shot.

She flinched at the noise, as if the bullet had struck her. As if they had sharp talons, fear and panic clutched at her heart. She was scared, and not just because if he were dead, he wouldn’t come back and help her.

She was scared because she cared that he might be hurt, or even worse, that he might be dying. She’d had only a faint glint of recognition for him—for his unusually light eyes and for his skin…if that had been his body in that image that had flashed through her mind. However, she didn’t remember his name or exactly how she’d known him.

She had known him very well; she was aware of that fact. Her stomach shifted as the baby inside her womb stirred restlessly, as if feeling her mother’s fear and panic.

Or her father’s pain?

AARON HAD STEPPED into it—right into the line of fire. The burly guard had caught him coming out of the room. The door hadn’t even closed behind him yet, so he couldn’t deny where he’d been—where he had been ordered never to go. Only a few employees were allowed into the room of the mysterious patient. Room 00.

Since he probably couldn’t talk his way out of the situation, especially with the guy already reaching inside his suit jacket for his gun, Aaron tried getting the hell out of the situation. He ran away from the guard, in the direction that Trigger Herrema had already disappeared.

Some help the U.S. Marshal had proven to be…

With that guy as her partner, it was no wonder that Charlotte had left the U.S. Marshals and become a private bodyguard.

Was she now, despite her adamant resolve not to, about to become a mother? Or was that pregnant woman actually Princess Gabby?

He needed to know. But even more than that, he needed to get her the hell out of this place. He couldn’t do either if he were dead.

Shouting echoed off the walls, erupting from the guard along with labored pants for breath. But he was either too far away, or the guy’s accent too thick, for Aaron to make out any specific words. But he didn’t need to know what the man said to figure out that it was a threat.

He skidded around corners of the hospital’s winding corridors, staying just ahead of the lumbering guard. With a short breath of relief, he headed through the foyer to the glass doors of the exit. He would have to slow down to swipe his name badge through the card reader in order to get those doors to open.

But he never made it that far. Shots rang out. That was a threat he understood. He dropped to the ground. But he might have already been too late. Blood trickled down his face and dropped onto the white tiled floor beneath him.

He’d been hit.

Chapter Three

“You could have killed him,” the woman chastised the guard, her voice a hiss of anger. “You could have killed other employees or patients. You were not supposed to use that gun. Again.”

Through the crack the door had been left open, Aaron spied on the argument. Despite the man’s superior height and burly build, he backed down from the woman. She was tall, too, with ash-blond hair pulled back into a tight bun. The plaque on her desk, which Aaron sat in front of, identified her as Dr. Mona Platt, the hospital administrator.

“That man is not an employee,” the guard replied, his accent thick.

Aaron tried to place it. Greek? St. Pierre Island was close to Greece.

“He’s a new hire,” she replied, “who passed all the security clearances.”

She had checked. She’d used her computer to pull up all of his fake information. He needed to know what other information was on her system, like the identity of the woman in Room 00. Or if not her identity, at least the identity of the person who had committed her to Serenity House.

Keeping an eye on the outer office where the two of them argued, Aaron moved around her desk and reached for her keyboard. He needed to pull up the financials. A place like this didn’t accept patients for free. Someone had to be footing the bills.

Dr. Platt hadn’t signed off her computer before leaving the room. And not enough time had passed since she’d left her desk that the screen had locked. He was able to access the employee records at which she’d been looking. But he needed patient records. However, he didn’t know the patient’s name. And if she was telling the truth, neither did the patient.

“He’s not a nurse aide,” the guard argued. “He could be a reporter.”

“Not with those credentials,” the administrator argued. “They’re real. He passed our very stringent background check.”

“Then he’s not a reporter,” the man agreed with a sigh of relief.

“That isn’t necessarily a good thing,” she warned him. “Since he had a legitimate reason for being here, he’s more likely to go to the sheriff’s office to report your shooting at him.”

Aaron couldn’t involve the authorities—couldn’t draw any media or legal attention to the woman in Room 00. No matter who she was, it was likely to put her in more danger if her whereabouts became widely known.

“He can’t go to the police if he can’t leave,” the man pointed out.

Aaron suppressed a shudder. Maybe instead of looking for information, he should have been looking for an escape. There was a window behind the desk, but like every other window in the place, it had bars behind the glass.

“We can’t hold him here,” she said. “Someone could report him missing, and we don’t want the state police coming here asking questions. Or worse yet, with a search warrant.”

“It is too dangerous to let him go,” the man warned. “He could still go to the police.”

“Yes, because you shot at him,” she admonished him. “That was dangerous—for so many reasons!”

“I couldn’t let him get away!” the man replied. “He was in her room.”

“And she couldn’t have told him anything,” the administrator assured him. “She doesn’t know anything to tell.”

“But he must have recognized her…”

Aaron had but he still wasn’t certain which woman she was. Her trying to strangle him had convinced him she was Charlotte. But part of Charlotte going above And beyond, besides plastic surgery, to protect the princess had been teaching the royal heiress how to protect herself. And Princess Gabby had never needed more protection than she did now.

So as not to draw their attention back to him, he lightly tapped the computer keyboard. But he wasn’t certain what to enter. To pull up patient records, he needed the patient’s name.

“All our employees sign a confidentiality agreement,” the administrator reminded the guard. “He can’t share what he saw with anyone without risking a lawsuit from Serenity House. Shooting at him was totally unnecessary.”

“I still need to talk to him.”

“You will only make the situation worse,” she said. “If he does go to the authorities, I will be informed.”

So she had a contact within the sheriff’s office.

“Will you have enough warning for us to get her to a more secure location?”

“I don’t know.”

“You were paid handsomely to keep this location secure,” the man said, his already gruff voice low with fury. “And since you have failed, I will handle this, and him, in my own way.”

The guard wasn’t going away. Instead of punching keys in the computer, Aaron needed to figure a way out of Serenity House—first for him and then for the patient in Room 00.

Room 00. He typed it in and the screen changed, an hourglass displaying while the computer pulled up records. He was almost in…

“What the hell are you doing?” the woman demanded to know as she slammed open the office door with such force it bounced off the wall and nearly struck her.

Aaron hit the exit key as he leaned across the keyboard, reaching for the box of tissues. He pulled one out and pressed it to his head. “I’m bleeding. That crazy son of a bitch was shooting at me.”