Free The Princess Predicament by LISA CHILDS

with dangerous men. Maybe he hadn’t been followed straight to her...
    “That can happen in St. Pierre, too,” she pointed out.
    “I will make sure it doesn’t happen,” he said. “I will protect you.” And with Aaron and Charlotte helping, he had a good possibility of actually keeping her safe.
    “You will protect me from kidnappers and killers,” she agreed—again with that damn calmness that infuriated him. “But will you protect me from my father?”
    He couldn’t say that her father wouldn’t hurt her—because he already had. With his lies. With his manipulations...
    Maybe she had learned some of her father’s moves because she had veered the conversation away from what he wanted to know. She’d stalled him long enough. Maybe it was her form of payback for having had to wait twenty-four years before she’d learned the truth.
    “Gabby,” he began, about to urge her to stop the cycle of secrets now.
    But the roar of a Jeep engine drew his attention to the doorway. If he’d missed a tail from the airport, he had lost his ability to do his job properly—then he couldn’t protect the princess.
    But there was only one man in the Jeep. Both the man and the vehicle must have been familiar to the kids because they came out of nowhere to greet him, dancing around his feet like puppies as he hopped out of the vehicle. The kids hadn’t greeted him and Gabby like that. Maybe they’d been in class. Or maybe they had been taught to never approach a strange vehicle or a strange man. This man wasn’t unfamiliar to them.
    Despite the black medical bag clutched in his hand, he looked too young to be a doctor.
    Whit should have cancelled the house call Lydia had arranged; he didn’t need a doctor. He needed the truth from the princess; he needed to know the paternity of her baby.
    “Gabriella,” the man said. With the familiarity of a frequent visitor, he stepped through the hut doorway without knocking and waiting for her permission to enter. “I am sorry I took so long getting away from the clinic.”
    She offered this man the smile she used to give Whit when they’d first met. It was a smile full of warmth and welcome and beauty. Whit wondered if she would ever smile that way at him again.
    “Dominic, it’s fine,” she assured the doctor, her concern for Whit’s injury obviously long forgotten. “I know how busy you are.”
    The guy answered her smile with a wide grin. Not only was he young but good-looking, too, since women seemed to like that whole tall and dark thing. Or at least that was what he’d witnessed with the women who’d gone for Aaron Timmer over the years. As easily as his partner had fallen for women, they had responded to him, too.
    This guy also had charm. His grin widened as he took Gabby’s hand in his with a familiarity and possessiveness that had Whit gritting his teeth. “If you had been the patient, I would have dropped everything...”
    For her. Not for Whit. The doctor had clearly fallen for the princess.
    Maybe Whit had been wrong to assume the child she carried was his. Maybe her baby belonged to this man.
    Whit should have been relieved that he might not be the father. But his heart dropped with regret. And then possessiveness gripped him.
    He did not want Princess Gabriella or the baby she carried belonging to any man but him.

Chapter Six
    “The doctor gave me a clean bill of health.”
    Aaron Timmer grinned at the news. He was apparently as relieved as she was that their baby was all right. But Charlotte wasn’t worried only about the baby she carried. She was worried about the baby sister she’d failed to protect as she’d sworn she would.
    “I’m clear to travel,” she said. “Clear to do my job.”
    Aaron shook his head. “You don’t have a job anymore,” he reminded her. “The king doesn’t want you working for him.”
    King St. Pierre claimed that he wanted Charlotte as a daughter now, not as an employee. But she worried that he’d dismissed her