Protecting the Pregnant Princess. Lisa Childs

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