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 kissed her with all the passion she felt for him.

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. “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.”

About the Author

Bestselling, award-winning author LISA CHILDS writes paranormal and contemporary romance for Mills & boon. She lives on thirty acres in west Michigan with her two daughters, a talkative Siamese and a long-haired Chihuahua who thinks she’s a rottweiler. Lisa loves hearing from readers, who can contact her through her website, www.lisachilds.com, or snail-mail address, PO box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.

Protecting
the Pregnant
Princess
Lisa Childs

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For my parents, Jack and Mary Lou Childs. Alzheimer’s disease has stolen her memories of their long life together, but he is still her hero—loving and protecting her. While her mind doesn’t always remember him, her heart will never forget that he is the love of her life.

Prologue

Heat scorched his face and hands, but Aaron Timmer ignored the pain and ran headlong toward the fire. His breath whooshed out of his burning lungs as his body dropped, tackled to the ground.

“You damn fool, what the hell are you thinking?” asked the man who’d knocked him down.

“We have to save her!” As her bodyguards, saving her was their responsibility. But she had become more than just a job to Aaron.

“It’s too late.” The house—the safe house—they had stashed her in was fully engulfed. the roof was gone, and flames were rising up toward the trees overhead. Leaves caught fire, dissolving into sparks that rained down onto the blackened lawn surrounding the house.

“We shouldn’t have left her.” But Aaron’s partner, Whitaker Howell, had insisted that she would be fine—that no one could have possibly figured out where she was.

Obviously someone had.

He rolled over and swung his fist right into Whit’s hard jaw. His knuckles cracked and stung as blood oozed from them. He shook off the pain and pushed away Whit’s limp body. Then he turned back to the burning frame of the house, debris strewn wide around the yard from the explosion.

It was too late. She was gone.

Three years later…

BLOOD SPATTERED THE ivory brocade walls of the Parisian hotel suite. Holes were torn through the paper, causing plaster and insulation to spill onto the hardwood floor. Some of the holes were big, probably from a fist or a foot; others smaller and blackened with gunpowder. The glass in the windows was broken, the frames splintered. Shots had been fired. And there had been one hell of a struggle.

Aaron’s heart hammered against his ribs, panic and fear overwhelming him as he surveyed the gruesome crime scene.

A whistle hissed through clenched teeth—not his but Whit’s, the man with whom he’d vowed to never work again after that tragedy three years ago. But a couple of months ago he’d been offered an opportunity too good to pass up. Only after he’d accepted the position as a royal bodyguard had he learned that he was actually going to share that assignment with his former business partner and friend.

That safe house explosion had destroyed whatever bond they’d formed in war, fighting together in Afghanistan. After the fire, they had only fought each other. So Aaron should have walked away from this job. He should have known how it would end.

“She put up one hell of a fight,” Whit said, his deep voice almost reverent with respect. “But there’s no way they survived…”

Aaron shook his head, refusing to accept that they were gone. She couldn’t be gone. Charlotte Green was too strong and too smart to not have survived whatever had happened to her.

What the hell had happened to her?

To them? Charlotte Green was also a royal bodyguard for the princess of St. Pierre Island, an affluent nation near Greece.

Aaron and Whit had retraced their steps from their missed flight home, back to the hotel they’d been booked into in Paris. The suite had been destroyed. But despite the amount of blood pooled on the hardwood floor, the Parisian authorities had found no bodies. No witnesses. No leads at all. And no hope for survivors.

King Rafael St. Pierre nodded in agreement with Whit Howell’s statement of resignation. Aaron clenched his fists, wanting to punch both men in the face. He couldn’t strike the king though, and not just because he was paid generously to protect the ruler of St. Pierre. He couldn’t hurt the man because Rafael was already hurting so much that he probably wouldn’t even feel the blow.

Whit, on the other hand…

For the past three years Aaron had wanted to do much more than just strike the man. He had damn sure never intended to work with him again. But when they’d both been hired, separately, to protect the king, neither had been willing to give up the job—a security job they’d been lucky to get after what had happened to the last person they’d protected together.

The king was fine, though. Physically. Emotionally, he was a wreck. The man, once fit and vital, was showing every year and then some of his age in the slump of his back and shoulders and in the gray that now liberally streaked his dark hair. Clearly Rafael St. Pierre was beside himself with grief.

Despite how far he and Whit went back, to a friendship forged under fire in Afghanistan, Aaron never knew exactly what his ex-business partner was thinking. Or feeling, or if Whit was even capable of feeling anything at all.

As dissimilar as they were physically, Whit being blond and dark-eyed and Aaron dark-haired with light blue eyes, they were even more unlike emotionally. Aaron was feeling too much; frustration, fear and grief battled for dominance inside him. But then anger swept aside those emotions, snapping his control. He shouted a question at both men, “How can you just give up?”

Whit’s head snapped back, as if Aaron had slugged him. And the king flinched, his naturally tan complexion fading to a pasty white that made him look as dead as he believed his daughter and her female bodyguard to be.

Whit glanced at the king, as if worried that the once so powerful man might keel over and die. They could protect the ruler from a bullet but not a heart attack. Or a broken heart. Whit turned back to Aaron, his intense stare a silent warning for him to control his temper.

He had to speak his mind. “Charlotte Green is the best damn bodyguard I’ve ever worked with.” Before she’d gone into private duty protection, she had been a U.S. Marshal. “She could have fought them off. She could have protected them both. She devoted herself to protecting the princess. She went above and beyond the responsibilities of her job.”

And to extremes that no other guard could have or would have gone.

“It isn’t just a job to her,” Aaron continued, his throat thick with emotion as thoughts of Charlotte pummeled him. Her beauty. Her brains. Her loyal heart. “She considers Princess Gabriella a friend.”

“That’s why she would have died for her,” Whit pointed out, “and why she must have died with her.”

Aaron’s heart lurched in his chest. “No…”

“If they were alive, we would have heard from them by now,” Whit insisted. “They would have reached out to us or the palace.”

Unless they didn’t think they could trust them, unless they felt betrayed. Maybe that was why it was easier for Whit and the king to accept their deaths; it was easier than accepting their own responsibility for the young women’s disappearances.

“No matter how fierce a fighter she was,” Whit said, “Charlotte Green is gone. She’s dead. And if the princess was alive, we would have had a ransom demand by now.”

The king gasped but then nodded in agreement.

Aaron shook his head. “No. We need to keep looking. They have to be out there—somewhere.” He couldn’t have been too late again. Charlotte Green couldn’t be gone.

Chapter One

Six months later…

Like a sledgehammer shattering her skull, pain throbbed inside her head—clouding her mind. She couldn’t think. She could barely feel…anything but that incessant pain. Even her hair hurt, and her skin felt stretched, as if pulled taut over a bump. She moved her fingers to touch her head, but she couldn’t lift her hand.

Something bound her wrist—not so tightly that it hurt like her skull hurt, but she couldn’t budge her hand. Either hand. She tugged at both and found that her wrists were held down to something hard and cold.

She forced open her eyes and then squinted against the glare of the fluorescent lights burning brightly overhead. Dark spots blurred her vision. She blinked over and over in an attempt to clear her vision. But images remained distorted. To her it looked like she had six arms—all of them bound to railings of a bed like an octopus strapped down to a boat deck. A giggle bubbled up with a surge of hysteria, but the slight sound nearly shattered her skull.

The questions nagging at her threatened to finish the job. What the hell happened to me? Where am I? Because she had no answers…

She also had no idea why she was being held down—restrained like a criminal. Or a captive…

She fought against the overwhelming fear. She needed to focus, but her head wouldn’t stop pounding and the pain almost blinded her, like the fluorescent light glaring down from the ceiling. It was unrelenting, and reminded her of the light in an interrogation room or torture chamber.

That light was all she could discern of her surroundings. Flinching against its glare, she looked down, but she couldn’t see more than a couple of feet in front of her—not because of the pain but because she couldn’t see beyond the mound of her belly.

Shock turned her giggle into a sharp gasp. I’m pregnant?

No…

Her swollen belly must have been like her seeing six hands, just distorted and out of focus. She wasn’t pregnant…

In denial of the possibility, she shook her head, but the motion magnified her pain. She closed her eyes against the wave of agony and confusion that rushed over her, making her nauseous. Or was that sick feeling because of the pregnancy?

How far along was she? When had it happened? And with whom?

She gasped again, her breath leaving her lungs completely. Not only couldn’t she remember who the father of her unborn child might be but she couldn’t even remember who she was.

AARON HELD OUT his phone to check his caller ID, surprised at where the call was coming from. Sure, as desperate as he’d been he’d reached out to everyone he thought might be able to help. He had called Charlotte’s ex-partner with the U.S. Marshals. He’d tried calling her aunt, but there must not have been any cell reception in whatever jungle she was building schools or orphanages. And he’d called this man…

“Hello, Mr. Jessup.” This man was America’s version of royalty—the ruler of an empire of news networks and magazines and newspapers. Nothing happened anywhere without his knowing about it—unless a more powerful man, like King St. Pierre, had covered it up. “Thank you for calling me back.”

Aaron was surprised that the man would speak to him at all. He was the last client of the security firm in which Aaron and Whit had been partners. He had hired them to protect the most important thing to him. And they had failed…

“Don’t thank me yet,” the older man warned him. “Not until you see if the lead pans out.”

“You have a lead?”

“Someone called in a tip from a private sanatorium in northern Michigan, wanting to sell a story about Princess Gabriella St. Pierre being committed to the psychiatric facility.”

From that destroyed hotel room to a private sanatorium? Given what she’d seen, what she must have gone through, it almost made sense. A tip like this was why Aaron had refused to give up. That and a feeling deep in his gut—maybe his heart—that told him Charlotte Green wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be dead—somehow he’d know if she was.

“Is she alone?” he asked.

“She’s got a royal entourage,” Jessup said, “including a private doctor and nurse.”

Royal? But the king swore he knew nothing of their disappearance. And a man couldn’t feign the kind of grief he was obviously experiencing.

“And a security detail?” Aaron asked. Or at least one very strong woman.

Stanley Jessup grunted. “Yeah, too much of it according to the source.”

Hope fluttered in Aaron’s chest. Was it possible? Had he found them both? “Is one of the guards a woman?”

“I don’t know.” The man sighed. “I’m getting this third hand—from the editor of a magazine who got it from an ambitious young reporter. I don’t have details yet, but I’m going to check it out.”

“Why?” The question slipped out.

Stanley Jessup grunted again, probably around the cigar he usually had clamped between his teeth. “It’s a story—a damn good one since it involves royalty.”

If only Stanley knew the real story…

But the women had been checked into that Parisian hotel under aliases. To prevent the paparazzi from hounding the princess, Charlotte had developed several alternative identities for them. She had been that thorough and that good.

Still was—she couldn’t be dead. Aaron had already lost one woman he thought he might have been falling for—Stanley Jessup’s daughter.

“Why call me?” Aaron asked the newsman. “Why talk to me at all?”

“I don’t blame you or Whit for what happened three years ago,” Jessup assured him. “Neither should you.”

Stanley, despite grieving for his daughter, might have found a way to absolve them of any culpability. But Aaron hadn’t.

“Do you want me to call you back after I get more details?” Stanley asked. “I’m going to talk to this young reporter to verify he really has a source inside the sanatorium. Then I’ll see if he can get a picture to prove it’s actually her.”

“No,” Aaron replied. He couldn’t trust anyone else to do that. No one else would know for certain which woman she really was. “Just tell me the name of this psychiatric hospital.”

“Serenity House,” Stanley divulged freely. “I’m going to have that reporter follow up with his source, too, Aaron. Anything Princess Gabby does is newsworthy, and this story is a hell of a lot more exciting than her attending a fashion show or movie premiere. And she hasn’t even hit one of those in a few months—maybe longer. In fact, she’s kind of dropped off the face of the earth.”

Or so everyone had believed. But if it really was her…

“I know I don’t have any right to ask you for a favor…”

“You said that when you called the first time,” Jessup reminded him, “when you asked me if I’d heard anything recently about the princess.”

“So I definitely don’t have any right to ask you for a second favor,” Aaron amended himself.

“That’s BS,” Stanley replied with a snort of disgust. “You can ask me anything, but I have the right to refuse if you’re going to ask what I think you are.”

“I’m not asking you not to run with the story,” Aaron assured the man. He knew Stanley Jessup too well to ask that. “I’m just asking you to run in place until I get there.”

“So hold off on printing anything?”

“Just until I get there and personally confirm if it’s really Princess Gabriella.”

Stanley snorted again. “Since she was ten years old, Princess Gabriella St. Pierre’s face has been everywhere—magazines, newspapers, entertainment magazines.” Most of those he owned. “Everybody knows what her royal highness looks like.”

Everyone did. But unfortunately she was no longer the only one who looked like her. The woman committed to the private sanatorium wasn’t necessarily Princess Gabriella.

“Just hold off?” Aaron asked.

Stanley Jessup’s sigh of resignation rattled the phone. “Sure.”

“And one more favor—”

The older man chuckled. “So what’s this? The third one now?”

“This is important,” Aaron said. “I wouldn’t have bothered you if it wasn’t…” If Charlotte wasn’t missing, he would have never been so insensitive as to contact Stanley Jessup again. He hated that probably just the sound of his voice reminded the man of all that he had lost: everything.

“I can tell that this is important to you,” the older man replied. “So what’s this third favor?”

Maybe the most important. “If Whit calls, don’t tell him what you’ve told me.”

“About the explosion not being his fault?”

Aaron snorted now. It had been Whit’s fault; he’d convinced him that the safe house was really safe. That was why he couldn’t trust another woman’s safety to his former partner. “Don’t tell him about Princess Gabriella.”

“He’ll read it for himself.”

“Let him find out that way, and let me find out first if it’s really the princess.” Or Charlotte.

“You don’t trust Whit?”

Not anymore. Whit had always cared more about the money than Aaron had. Maybe he cared too much. Maybe he’d been bought off—three years ago and now. Both times there must have been a man on the inside. Aaron hated to think that that man was one he’d once considered a friend—a man at whose side he’d fought. But war had changed so many veterans. Whit had changed. Maybe he’d gone from killing for his country to killing for the highest bidder.

“Promise me,” Aaron beseeched his old client.

Jessup grunted. “You make it all sound so life and death. She’s just a spoiled heiress who’s probably been committed to this private hospital to get cleaned up or dried out.”

Aaron had only interacted with the princess for a couple of months before her disappearance. Even at parties she’d never had more than a few sips of champagne and she had never appeared under the influence of drugs, either.

If this really was Princess Gabby at Serenity House, she wasn’t there for rehab.

SHE STARED AT the stranger in the mirror above the bathroom sink. The woman had long—very long—caramel-brown hair hanging over her thin shoulders. And her face had delicate features and wide brown eyes. And a bruise on her temple that was fading from purple to yellow.

She lifted her hand and pressed her fingertips against the slightly swollen flesh. Pain throbbed yet inside her head, weakening her legs. She dropped both hands to the edge of the sink and held on until the dizziness passed. She needed to regain her strength, but even more she needed to regain her memory.

She didn’t even recognize her own damn face in the mirror. “Who are you?” she asked that woman staring back at her through the glass. She needed a name—even if it wasn’t her real one. She needed an identity. “Jane,” she whispered. “Jane Doe.”

Wasn’t that what authorities called female amnesiacs…and unidentified dead female bodies?

Drawing in a shaky breath, Jane moved her hand from her head to her belly. her flesh shifted beneath her palm, moving as something—somebody—moved inside her.

She didn’t recognize her face or her body. What the hell was wrong with her? Maybe that was why she’d been locked up in this weird hospital/prison. Maybe it was for her own damn good. Her belly moved again as the baby kicked inside her, as if in protest of her thought.

“You want out of here, too,” Jane murmured.

A fist hammered at the door, rattling the wood in the frame. The pounding rattled her brain inside her skull.

“Come out now, miss. You’ve been in there long enough.”

The gruff command had her muscles tensing in protest and preparation for battle. But she was still too weak to fight.

The door had no lock, so it opened easily to the man who usually stood guard outside her room. Unlike the other hospital employees who wore scrubs, he wore a dark suit, and his black hair was oily and slicked back on his big, heavily featured head. His suit jacket shifted, revealing his holstered weapon. A Glock. As if familiar with the trigger, her fingers itched to grab for it.

But she would have to get close to the creep and if she got close, he could touch her, probably overpower her before she ever pulled the weapon from the holster. A cold chill chased down her spine, and she shivered in reaction.

A nurse moved around the guard. “You’re cold,” she said. “You need to get back into bed.” The gray-haired woman wrapped an arm around Jane and helped her from the bathroom to the bed. The woman had a small, shiny metal nameplate pinned to her uniform shirt. She had a name: Sandy.

Jane found herself leaning heavily against the shorter woman. Her knees trembled, her legs turning into jelly in reaction to the short walk. With a tremulous sigh of relief she dropped onto the mattress.

“Put the restraints on her,” the gruff-voiced guard ordered. He spoke with a heavy accent—some dialect she suspected she should have recognized if she could even recognize her own face right now.

“No, please,” Jane implored the nurse, not the man. She doubted she could sway him. But the woman…“Sandy, please…”

The nurse turned toward the man, though. “Mr. Centerenian, do we have to? She’s not strong enough to—”

“Put the restraints on her!” he snapped. “You remember what happened to her the last time you didn’t…”

Deep red color flushed the woman’s face and neck. But was her reaction in embarrassment or anger?

What had happened the last time Jane hadn’t had on the restraints? She hadn’t simply fallen out of bed…if that was what he was trying to imply.

Jane doubted the bruise on her head had come from a fall since she had no other corresponding bruises on her shoulder, arm or hip. At least not recent ones. But she had a plethora of fading bruises and even older scars.

More than likely the bruise on her face had come from a blow. She glanced again at the holster and the gun visible through Mr. Centerenian’s open jacket. The handle of the Glock could have left such a bruise and bump on her temple. It also could have killed her.

From the loss of her memory and her strength, she suspected it nearly had. This man had attacked a pregnant woman? What kind of guard was he? He definitely wasn’t there for her protection.

The nurse’s hands trembled as she reached for the restraints that were attached to the bed railings.

“Sandy, please…” Jane implored her.

But the nurse wouldn’t meet her gaze. She kept her head down, eyes averted, as she attached the strips of canvas and Velcro to Jane’s wrists.

“Tight,” the man ordered gruffly.

Sandy ripped loose the Velcro and readjusted the straps. But now the restraints felt even looser. The nurse snuck a quick, apologetic glance at Jane before turning away and heading toward the door. Sandy couldn’t open it and leave though. She had to wait, her body visibly tense, for the man to unlock it.

Mr. Centerenian stared at Jane, his heavy brows lowered over his dark eyes. He studied her face and then the restraints. She sucked in a breath, afraid that he might test them. But finally he turned away, too, and unlocked the door by swiping his ID badge through a card-reading lock mechanism. The badge had his intimidating photograph on it, above his intimidating name.

Jane Doe was hardly intimidating. What the hell was her real name?

Once the door closed Jane was alone in the room, and she struggled with her looser restraints. She tugged them up and down, working them against the railings of the bed, so that the fabric and Velcro loosened even more. But she weakened, too.

Panting for breath, she collapsed against the pillows piled on the raised bed and closed her eyes. Pain throbbed in her head, and she fought to focus. She needed to plan her escape.

Even if Jane got loose, she didn’t have the ID badge she needed to get out of the room. But then how could she when she didn’t even have an ID? of course she was a patient here—not an employee.

But the slightly sympathetic nurse didn’t have one, either. The only way Jane would get the hell out of this place was to get one of those card-reading badges off another employee.

The guard was armed, and Jane was too weak and probably too pregnant to overpower Mr. Centerenian anyway. So whatever employee or visitor stepped into her room next would be the one she ambushed.

Images flashed behind her closed eyes, images of her fists and feet flying—connecting with muscle and bone, as she fought for her life.

Against the guard?

Or were those brief flashes of memory of another time, another fight or fights?

Who the hell was Jane Doe really?

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.”

He glanced behind her but the man was gone. Somehow she’d gotten rid of the goon—apparently with just a look as he’d overheard no words of dismissal. Maybe Aaron would have been in less danger if he’d gone with the guard because there was something kind of eerie about this steely-eyed woman.

“Yes, that was bad judgment on his part,” she said, sounding nearly unconcerned about the shots now. “But maybe it wasn’t uncalled for.”

“Dr. Platt, I’ve done nothing to warrant an execution.” He edged around her desk, toward the door. She blocked it, but as a trained bodyguard, he could easily overpower her—physically. Mentally, he didn’t trust her—given the doctorate of psychology degree on her wall and her overall soulless demeanor.

“You entered a room that every employee,” she said, “newly hired and long-term—has been warned is strictly off-limits.”

He hadn’t actually attended an orientation. But the guard posted at her door had certainly implied Room 00 was off-limits. “I thought I heard a yell for help. I was concerned—”

“Then you should have summoned the guard or the nurse who are authorized to enter that room. That is protocol,” she stated, her voice cold with an icy anger. “By going inside yourself, you violated protocol.”

“I wasn’t thinking,” he said. “I just reacted.”

“You reacted incorrectly,” she said. “And because of that, you can no longer be on staff at Serenity House.” She held out her hand.

He moved to shake it, but she lifted her hand and ripped the ID badge from the lanyard around his neck. “You’re fired, Mr. Ottenwess,” she said, addressing him by the name on that ID badge.

“I would appreciate another chance,” he said. “Now that I’m fully aware of the rules, I promise not to violate them again.”

She shook her head. “That’s a risk I can’t take. And frankly, Mr. Ottenwess, staying here is a risk you can’t take. I talked the private security guard out of interrogating you. But if he sees you again, I’m not sure what he might do to you.”

Shoot at him again. And maybe the next time he wouldn’t miss. The only thing that had nicked Aaron’s cheek had been a shard of a porcelain vase that the guard had shot instead of him.

The burly guy had disappeared, but Aaron suspected he hadn’t gone far. How could he get past him again to access Room 00?

“That’s why I’m having my own guards escort you off the premises.” As silently as she’d dismissed the private guard, she must have summoned her own because two men stood in the doorway.

“This isn’t necessary,” Aaron said. “I can show myself out.”

“Actually you can’t,” she reminded him, “without your badge you can’t open any of the facility doors—not to patients’ rooms and not to exits. They will show you out.” She barely lifted an ash-blond brow, but she had the two men rushing forward. Each guy grabbed one of his arms and dragged him from her office.

Aaron could have fought them off. They weren’t armed. But he didn’t want to beat them. He wanted to outsmart them. Or he had no hope of helping the woman in Room 00.

JANE HAD JUST resigned herself to the fact that the man, that the voice in the hall had addressed as Timmer, wasn’t coming back…when the lock clicked and the door opened. She fought to keep her eyes closed and her breathing even, feigning sleep as she had when he’d entered the first time. Or at least the first time that she remembered.

“Is she really out?” the gruff-voiced guard asked someone.

Soft hands touched her face and gently forced open one of Jane’s eyes. She stared up at the gray-haired nurse who dropped her lid and stepped back before replying, “She’s unconscious.”

“Did he hurt her?” Mr. Centerenian demanded to know.

“Who?” the nurse asked, her voice squeaking with anxiety. Over Jane or over lying to the guard?

“Someone was in her room,” the man explained.

“He wouldn’t have been able to talk her,” Nurse Sandy easily lied again. She obviously hadn’t been anxious about lying to him. “I gave her a sedative earlier, like you requested. She’s completely out and oblivious to her surroundings.”

Jane fought to keep her lips from twitching in reaction to the nurse’s blatant lie. Wouldn’t the guard remember that the nurse had given her no medication?

If only this woman had access to a door-opening name badge, Sandy could prove an even more valuable ally because Jane suspected she would help her escape if she could.

Of course the other man—Timmer—had promised he would return. Could he? Was he physically able to return?

“Good,” the guard grunted. “And he won’t get another chance to talk to her.”

She held in a gasp as fear clutched her heart. Had one of those shots struck the man?

“Why—why won’t he?” the nurse nervously asked the question burning in Jane’s mind.

The guard did not answer, just issued another order. “Leave now.”

“But—but I should stay to monitor her—”

“Leave now,” Mr. Centerenian repeated.

The lock clicked again and the door opened with a creak of hinges and rush of cool air from the hall. It closed again, shutting in the stale air that smelled faintly of the cigarette smoke that always clung to the guard.

Had Mr. Centerenian left with Nurse Sandy? Was Jane alone again?

She nearly opened her eyes but then the guard spoke again. Since the older woman had left, he wasn’t talking to the nurse.

Jane peered through a slit in one lid and saw that his cell phone was pressed to his ear. He spoke in a language she couldn’t place but somehow understood. She interpreted his side of the conversation.

“There is a problem,” he said. “Someone got inside her room tonight. He saw her…”

Mr. Centerenian grunted in response to whatever the person he called told him and then agreed, “Yes, it is no longer safe to keep her here. I will bring her and your unborn child to the airport tomorrow night to meet your private plane.”

Who the hell was the guard talking to? Who was the father of her unborn child? She had suspected it was the man who’d snuck into her room. If not him, then who?

She barely restrained her urge to attack the guard and demand that he tell her who he was talking to, who he was bringing her to meet. But she couldn’t risk getting hit again. An apparent blow had already cost her too much—of her strength and her mind.

And she needed all she had of both to escape before the guard brought her to the airport. She feared that if she got on that private plane, that she would have no hope of ever regaining her freedom.

She couldn’t trust that the man who had snuck in would keep his word to return and help her. She didn’t know if he even could—if Timmer had survived his confrontation with the guard. She waited but Mr. Centerenian said nothing of the man he’d caught in her room.

Was he alive or dead?

And who the hell was he or had he been to her?

PAIN EXPLODED IN Aaron’s stomach, sending his breath from his lungs in a whoosh. He doubled over, hanging from the arms holding him back. Not that he couldn’t have broken free had he wanted to fight. But as he writhed around in an exaggerated display of pain, he lurched forward and accidentally fell against the guard who was using him as a punching bag.

“And don’t come back unless you want more of that,” the man warned as he pushed Aaron back. He pushed him through the gate he’d already opened that led from the building to the employee parking lot.

The lot was behind the big brick building and dimly lit. The few parking lights flickered and cast only a faint glow that reflected off the windshields and metal of the cars filling the lot. Darkness was gathering, pushing the last traces of daylight into night.

The gate snapped shut behind him and the lock buzzed. That gate and the one between the guest parking lot and front entrance were the only ways through the sixteen-foot-high fence surrounding the building.

Serenity House was a freaking fortress—more prison than hospital. If Charlotte was the woman in Room 00, it was no wonder that she hadn’t managed to escape yet—despite her skills. Of course if she’d been telling him the truth, she’d forgotten all those skills…except for how to strangle him. Only she hadn’t been as strong as the woman he remembered—as the woman with whom he’d made love one unforgettable night.

Images flashed through his mind. Moonlight caressing honey-toned skin and sleek curves. His hands following the path of the moonlight. Then his lips…

And her hands and her soft lips, touching him everywhere. Passionate kisses, bodies entwined…

His breath shuddered out in a ragged sigh as he shook off those skin-tingling memories. That had been one incredible night. And even though they’d used protection, it wasn’t foolproof.

Was that baby she carried his? The dates would probably be about right. But was the woman?

He would find out soon. For the sake of the guards who watched him yet from behind the gate, he stumbled across the parking lot with the drunkenlike stagger of a boxer who’d taken too many hits.

Aaron had driven separately from the U.S. Marshal, which was good since Jason “Trigger” Herrema had left him without a backward glance. Some partner Trigger must have been to Charlotte. No wonder she was so strong and independent. And no wonder she had resigned from the U.S. Marshals for private security.

But Charlotte Green wasn’t the only one with skills. Aaron clutched the ID badge he had lifted from the guard who’d hit him. The guy had seemed too arrogant an SOB to admit or even realize that Aaron had taken the badge off him. At least not right away. But he might eventually figure it out. So Aaron had to act quickly.

But not too quickly that they were waiting and ready for him to try something. He also needed backup. Obviously he couldn’t count on Trigger, the man, so he needed another kind of trigger—one on a gun.

He hurried toward his vehicle, which was a plain gray box of a sedan that he’d rented at the airport. His gun wasn’t inside but back at the cottage he’d found in the woods near Serenity House. He hadn’t rented it; he hadn’t needed to—it had looked abandoned or at least out of season for the owners. The cottage was close enough that he’d figured they would be able to run there if they weren’t able to reach his vehicle.

But now that he had seen Charlotte or Princess Gabriella or whoever the hell she was and realized how weak she was, he suspected that outrunning anyone was out of the question.

He needed wheels and a very powerful engine. Maybe he should have gone for fast rather than nondescript when he’d rented a car. Just as he was considering his choice, shots rang out—shattering the rear window. He ducked down, easing around the trunk toward the driver’s side. Maybe if he kept the car between him and Serenity House, the guards wouldn’t have a clear shot—if they were the ones shooting. But he’d seen no weapons on them. Then the driver’s side windows shattered, bullets striking first the rear window and then the front window.

“I’m not getting the deposit back on this rental,” he murmured as he clicked the key fob to unlock the doors. He could have just reached through the shattered window and unlocked it himself, but he didn’t want to raise his head too high for fear that it might be the next thing a bullet hit.

He didn’t even know where the hell the shots were coming from. Serenity House? Or somewhere in the parking lot behind him?

He ducked down farther, suspecting the shots might have been coming from behind him. Maybe he had his answer about where the hell the private security guard had gone. Instead of standing sentry outside Room 00, he’d set up an ambush outside Serenity House.

With the door unprotected, Aaron had the best chance to free Charlotte or Princess Gabriella. But he couldn’t go back inside. Shots kept firing, and he knew it was just a matter of time before one struck him. He had to get the hell out of here while he still could.

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