Protecting the Pregnant Princess

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!”