Читать книгу The Princess Predicament - Lisa Childs - Страница 9

As disguises went, the hat and the glasses were weak. But it had fooled Whitaker Howell. He had barely glanced at her when she’d disembarked from the crowded bus. Of course he had seemed distracted, as he’d been reaching for his phone while moving quickly through the crowd milling from and to the airport.

She’d had to fight the urge to gawk at him. He had looked so infuriatingly handsome and sexy in a black T-shirt and jeans. But the sense of betrayal and resentment and anger overwhelmed her attraction for him. She didn’t want to see Whit Howell much less be attracted to him any longer.

When she’d glimpsed him through the window, she’d thought about staying put in her seat. But since he was probably the one who’d been sent to retrieve her, he would have boarded the bus for the return trip and she would have been trapped.

When Charlotte had become her bodyguard three years ago, that was one of the first self-defense lessons she had taught Gabriella. Avoid confined places with limited exits. And given her girth, the exits on the bus had definitely been limited for her since it wasn’t likely she’d been able to squeeze her belly out one of those tiny windows. So she had gotten off the bus and hurried toward the airport.

That was another of Charlotte’s lessons. Stay in crowded, public places. So Gabriella had breathed a sigh of relief when she’d walked into the busy airport. She needed to buy a ticket for the first leg of the long journey ahead of her. She still had most of the cash Charlotte had given her to travel. She hadn’t needed it at the orphanage. Even though she was using cash, she would still have to present identification. She fumbled inside her overstuffed carry-on bag for the fake ID that Charlotte had provided along with the cash.

She couldn’t even remember the name under which she’d traveled. Brigitte? Beverly? As she searched her bag for the wallet, she stumbled and collided with a body. A beefy hand closed around her arm—probably to steady her.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. She glanced up with a smile, but when she met the gaze of the man who’d grabbed her, her smile froze.

It wasn’t Whit. He had probably already boarded the bus on its return trip to the orphanage. She didn’t know this man, but from the look on his deeply tanned face, he knew her—or at least he knew of her. Most people thought her life a fairy tale; she had always considered it more a cartoon—and if that were the case, this man would have dollar signs instead of pupils in his eyes.

“Excuse me,” she said and tried to pull free of the man’s grasp.

But he held on to her so tightly that he pinched the muscles in her arm. “You will come with me,” he told her, his voice thick with a heavy accent.

She was thousands of miles from home, but it had come to her. First Whit and now this man, who sounded as though he was either from St. Pierre Island or close to it, probably from one of the neighboring islands to which her father had promised her. Well, he’d promised her to their princes, but she would belong to the island, too. Like a possession—that was how her father treated her.

And it was how this man obviously intended to treat her. She glared at him, which, since she’d taken off her sunglasses in the dimly lit building, should have been intimidating. Charlotte hadn’t had to teach her that glare—the one that made a person unapproachable. Gabriella had learned that glare at an early age—from her mother, or the woman she’d always thought was her mother.

The man, however, was not intimidated, or at least not intimidated enough to release her.

So she pulled harder, fighting his grip on her arm.

“Let me go!” she demanded, the imperious tone borrowed from her father this time. No one had ever dared refuse one of his commands, no matter how very much she had wanted to.

The first time he’d offered her as a fiancée she’d been too young and sheltered to understand that arranged marriages were archaic and humiliating. She’d also been friends with her first fiancé—she and Prince Linus had grown up together—spending all her holidays home from boarding school with him.

But the night of the ball her father had broken that engagement and promised her to another man, a prince who’d already been engaged to one of Gabriella’s cousins. So her father had actually broken two engagements that night. He hadn’t cared about the people—not that he’d ever considered her a person—he’d cared only about the politics, about using her to link St. Pierre to another, more affluent country.

The man moved, tugging Gabriella along with him. He pulled her through people—toward one of the wide open doors that led to the airstrip in the back and the private planes. The planes for which a person didn’t need a ticket or even a flight manifest in this country …

And if Gabriella got on that plane, she would probably never get off again. Or at least she would never be free again. Panic overwhelmed her, pressing on her lungs so that she couldn’t draw a deep breath.

Don’t panic.

Charlotte was undoubtedly still thousands of miles away, but it was her voice in Gabriella’s ear, speaking with authority and confidence. And hopefully, in this case, the truth for once.

Gabriella exhaled a shaky breath and then dragged in a deep one, filling and expanding her lungs with air. It was stale and heavy with the humidity and the odor of sweaty bodies and jet fuel and cigarette smoke. There was no airport security to help her. She had to take care of herself.

Assess the situation.

Despite the lies, Charlotte had helped her. Perhaps she had even considered her lies helping Gabriella, protecting her. But Charlotte had known there would be times like this when she wouldn’t be there, so she had taught Gabby how to protect herself.

The man wasn’t much taller than she was. But he was heavier—much heavier even with the extra pounds she was carrying in her belly. Most of his extra weight was muscle. He had no neck but had a broad back and shoulders. And at the small of his back, there was a big bulge. He had definitely come in on a private plane and from some airport with about the same level of security as this one. None.

Choose the most effective mode of protection.

Charlotte had been trained to fight and shoot and had years of experience doing both. She had taught Gabby some simple but effective moves. But Gabriella’s experience using those methods had been in simulated fights with Charlotte, whom she hadn’t wanted to hurt. Then.

A sob caught in her lungs. She didn’t want to hurt her now, either. Or avoid her like she’d initially thought. She wanted to see Charlotte and talk to her, give her a chance to explain her actions and her reason for keeping so many secrets. But Gabriella couldn’t do that if she didn’t get the chance—if she wound up held hostage or worse.

And by effective, I mean violent …

Charlotte Green had lived a violent life, and she possessed the scars to prove it. Both physical and emotional.

Gabby only had the emotional scars until now.

She wouldn’t be able to use her simulated fight moves to fend off this muscular man—probably not even if she wasn’t six months pregnant. But because she was six months pregnant, she couldn’t risk the baby getting hurt.

So instead she reached for the gun and pulled it from beneath the man’s sweat-dampened shirt. The weapon was heavier than she remembered. She hadn’t held one in the past six months. But before that she’d held one several times. With both hands, using one to hold and balance the gun while she focused on flicking off the safety and pulling the trigger with the other.

But the man held one of her hands. When he felt her grab the gun, he jerked her around and reached for the gun. So she fumbled with it quickly, sliding the safety and squeezing the trigger.

Because she hadn’t wanted to hit anyone else in the crowded airport, she’d aimed the barrel up and fired the bullet into the metal ceiling. Birds, living in the rafters, flew into a frenzy. And so did the people as the bullet ricocheted back into the cement. She breathed a sigh of relief that it struck no one. But the cement chipped, kicking up pieces of it with dust.

The man jumped, as if he’d felt the whiz of the bullet near his foot. And he lurched back. When he did, he released her arm. Now she had two hands, which she used to steady the gun and aim the barrel—this time at the man’s chest.

People screamed and ran toward the exits. They thought she was dangerous. The man didn’t seem to share their sentiment because he stepped forward again, advancing on her.

“I will shoot!” she warned him.

He chuckled. Then, his voice full of condescension, said, “You are a princess. What do you know of shooting guns?”

“More than enough to kill you …” Like the simulated fights, she hadn’t shot a weapon with the intent of hurting anyone … except for all the targets she had killed. She was good at head shots. Even better at the heart-kill shot.

Of course those targets hadn’t been moving. And the man was—advancing on her with no regard for the weapon. He was mad, too, his eyes dark with rage. If he got his hands on her again, he wasn’t just going to kidnap her. He was going to hurt her. And hurting her would hurt her unborn child.

So when he lunged toward her, she fired again.

ANOTHER SHOT RANG out. But it didn’t echo off metal as the earlier shot had. It was muffled—as if it had struck something. Or someone …

Gabriella …

Whit held back the shout that burned his lungs. Yelling her name might only put her in danger—if she wasn’t already—or increase the danger if she was. Maybe that hadn’t been Gabby he’d glimpsed getting off the bus. Maybe she was still back at the orphanage. If she’d known someone was coming for her, wouldn’t she have stayed and waited?

Or maybe she hadn’t wanted to be found. If the shooting involved her, she had been found, but the wrong person had done the finding. The person who’d written that threatening note?

Whit shoved through the screaming people who were nearly stampeding in their haste to escape the building. There was no sign of the pregnant woman he’d glimpsed getting off the bus. She wasn’t with the others running away.

And then he saw her and realized that she was the one they were all running from—she was the one with the gun. She gripped it in both hands.

As Whit neared her, he noticed the blood spattered on her face, and his heart slammed into his ribs with fear for her safety.

“Gabby,” he spoke softly, so as to not startle her, but she still jumped and swung toward him with her body and with the barrel of her gun.

He barely glanced at it, focusing instead on her face—on her incredibly beautiful face but for those droplets of blood.

Anxiously he asked, “Are you hurt?”

A groan—low and pain-filled—cut through the clamor of running people. Gabriella’s lips had parted, but she was not the one who uttered the sound. Whit lowered his gaze to the man who had dropped to his knees in front of Gabby. The burly man clutched his shoulder and blood oozed between his fingers.

Whit flinched, his own shoulder wound stinging in reaction. “What the hell’s going on?”

Gabby took one hand from the gun to tug down the brim of her hat—as if her weak disguise could fool him twice.

The man took advantage of her distraction and looser grip and reached for the gun. But he could only grab at it with one hand, as his other arm hung limply from his bleeding shoulder. He had the element of surprise though and snapped it free of her grasp.

She lunged back for it, her swollen belly on the same level as the barrel of the gun. But Whit moved faster than she did and stepped between them. Before the man could move his finger to the trigger of the gun, Whit slammed his fist into the wounded man’s jaw. The guy’s eyes rolled back into his head as his consciousness fled, and he fell back onto the cement floor of the airport, blood pooling beneath his gunshot wound.

Whit’s shoulder ached from delivering the knockout punch, and he growled a curse. But his pain was nothing in comparison to the fear overwhelming him. He’d only just learned where Gabby was and he’d nearly lost her again.

Maybe forever this time—if the man had managed to pull the trigger before Whit had knocked him out.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he shouted the question at Princess Gabriella.

His fear wasn’t for himself but for her, and he hadn’t felt an emotion that intense since the night before she disappeared. The night she’d begged him to stay with her. At first he’d thought she’d only wanted protection but then he’d realized that she’d wanted more.

She’d wanted him. But then the next morning she’d left him without a backward glance. So he’d probably just been her way of rebelling against her father’s attempts to control her life. That was what that night had been about, but what about today?

“I—I was defending myself,” she stammered in a strangely hoarse tone, as if she’d lost her voice or was trying to disguise it. She ducked down and reached for the gun that had dropped to the floor with the man.

But Whit beat her to the weapon, clutching it tightly in his fist. “No more shooting for you, Princess.”

“I’m not a princess—”

“Save it,” he said. “I damn well know who you are.” He had no idea why she was denying her identity to him, though. But that wasn’t his most pressing concern at the moment.

He leaned over to check the man for a pulse. He was alive, just unconscious. And that might not last long. “Who is this? And why did you shoot him?”

“He tried to kidnap me,” she said, apparently willing to admit that much even though she wouldn’t admit to who she was. “So I grabbed his gun.”

Whit uttered a low whistle of appreciation. Even without a weapon, the guy would have been intimidating, yet she’d managed to disarm him, too. Maybe she wasn’t Princess Gabriella. “How do you know he was going to kidnap you?”

“He tried to drag me out there,” she gestured toward the big open doors in one of the metal walls, “to a plane.”

As Whit glanced up to follow the direction she pointed, he noticed men—about four of them—rushing in from the airfield. They must have heard the shots, too. And they were armed.

“We have to get the hell out of here,” he said.

Or the man’s friends were liable to finish what he’d started—abducting Gabriella. And Whit with his shoulder wound and his borrowed gun were hardly going to be enough protection to save her.

She must have seen the men, too, because she was already turning and moving toward the street. Whit kept between her and the men. But they saw the guy on the ground, and they saw the gun in Whit’s hand.

And they began to fire.

“WHAT’S WRONG?” Charlotte asked anxiously. “What did Whit say?”

It wasn’t so much what he’d said as what Aaron had overheard when he’d been on the phone with his friend. But Charlotte was already worried about Princess Gabriella; he didn’t want to upset her any more.

She settled onto the airplane seat across from him. After her trip to the restroom, her eyes were dry and clear. She’d composed herself. But how much would it take for her to break again?

She’d already been through so much—kidnapped and held hostage for six months. And she was pregnant, too, with his baby.

Aaron’s heart filled with pride and love. But fear still gripped him. He wasn’t like Whit; he couldn’t hide his emotions. Whit usually hid them so well that Aaron had often doubted the man was even capable of feeling. But he’d heard it in his voice—his fear for Princess Gabriella’s safety—once he’d realized she was also where the shooting was.

“I know something’s wrong,” Charlotte persisted, but she pitched her voice low and glanced toward the back of the jet where the king had retired to his private room. “Tell me.”

Aaron uttered a ragged sigh of resignation and admitted, “I heard shots …”

Charlotte’s eyes widened. “Someone was shooting at Whit? He wouldn’t have had time to get a gun yet. He won’t be able to defend himself.”

On more than one occasion, Aaron had seen Whit defend himself without a gun. But he hadn’t been injured then. “Whit wasn’t the one getting shot at.”

She gasped. “Gabby? Was it Gabby?”

“I don’t know,” he said. But from the way Whit had reacted to the news that the princess was pregnant, too, he was pretty sure that it was her. “It’s a dangerous country. It could have been rebel gunfire. It could have been anything …”

“Call him back!” She reached across the space between them and grabbed for the cell phone he’d shoved in his shirt pocket.

But Aaron caught her hand in his and entwined their fingers. “He won’t answer,” he told her. “He needs to focus on what’s happening. And there’s nothing we can do from here anyway.”

That was why he hadn’t wanted to tell her. She would want to help, and that wasn’t possible from so many miles away. That feeling of helplessness overwhelmed Aaron, reminding him of the way he’d felt when Charlotte had been missing. He’d been convinced that she was out there, somewhere, but he hadn’t been able to find her.

Now Whit needed help—Whit, who’d so often stepped in to save him—and Aaron was too far away to come to his aid.

Panic had tears welling in her eyes. “We can have the pilot change course—”

“We’re almost to St. Pierre,” Aaron pointed out. “We’ll be landing soon.”

Panic raised her voice a couple of octaves. “Once we drop off the king, we can leave again—”

“No,” he said. “There’s a doctor meeting us at the palace. You need to be checked out.” Even after he’d rescued her from where she’d been held hostage, she’d been through a lot.

She shook her head, tumbling those long tresses of golden brown hair around her shoulders. “I need to protect Gabby.”

He knew it wasn’t just because she was the princess’s bodyguard. But he had to remind her, “You need to take care of our baby first.”

“We shouldn’t have let Whit go alone,” she said. “He’s hurt too badly to protect her.”

“We hadn’t thought she would need protecting,” Aaron reminded his fiancée.

“We did,” Charlotte insisted, squeezing his fingers in her distress. “Six months ago someone left her that note threatening her life. That’s why I sent her into hiding.” And set herself up as a decoy for the princess. Her plan had worked. Too well.

“But nobody knows where she is.” Or the paparazzi would have found her, no matter where she’d been. And there would have been photographs of Princess Gabriella on every magazine and news show, as there had always been.

“If those shots were being fired at her,” Charlotte said, her beautiful face tense with fear, “then someone must have figured it out.”

“How?” he asked. “Nobody but you and I and Whit know where she is.”

She glanced to the back of the plane. “After I talked to my aunt and confirmed that Gabby was actually still with her at the orphanage, I told the king. I thought he had a right to know.”

“Was he furious?” Aaron asked. Charlotte had done much more than just violating protocol as a royal bodyguard.

“He called St. Pierre and sent out another plane with a security team as Whit’s backup.” She drew in a deep breath, as if trying to soothe herself. “They should be there within a few hours.”

Aaron had heard the shots. He wasn’t reassured. In fact he was disheartened. He had wasted so many years being mad at Whit for something that hadn’t been the man’s fault. Had he repaired his friendship only to lose his friend?

If Princess Gabriella had been involved in the shooting, then Whit would have stepped in and done whatever was necessary to try to save her life—including giving up his own.

By the time the security team made it to where Whit and Gabriella were, they would probably be too late to help. With Whit injured and unarmed, it was probably already too late.