Free The Princess Predicament by LISA CHILDS Page A

because he no longer trusted her to safeguard the princess—not after she had already failed. Charlotte had spent six months in captivity and during that time all kinds of unimaginable horrors could have happened to Gabriella—since she’d been left completely unprotected.
    “She’s pregnant, too,” Charlotte said, as with awe, she remembered her aunt’s words the first time they had talked. The phone connection hadn’t been good, but she’d not misinterpreted that.
    Aaron sighed. “Did you tell your father that news?”
    Charlotte tensed—not used to thinking of the king as her father even though she’d known for a few years now. Gabby had just discovered her real parentage. So she was dealing with all those conflicting emotions while she was going to become a mother herself.
    “I haven’t told him yet,” Charlotte admitted. “I’m concerned...”
    “About how he will react?”
    The king had never treated Gabby with the respect she deserved. He’d never treated her like what she was—an independent, modern woman. “He already arranged for her to marry another man.”
    “You don’t think the baby she’s carrying is Prince Tonio Malamatos’s?” Aaron asked, referring to Gabby’s fiancé.
    The prince had been waiting at the palace when they arrived. As soon as the king had notified him that the princess had been found, he had come from his country with an entourage that included his ex-fiancée. When Charlotte had stepped off the plane, he’d mistaken her for Gabby and tried to embrace her. She shuddered as she remembered the man’s clammy hands touching her arms, of his pasty cheek trying to press against hers.
    Gabby never would have let that man touch her. Charlotte shook her head. “And neither do you. You know who the father is.”
    He expelled a ragged sigh. “Whit. If they’d been involved before she disappeared, it would explain why he was acting so strangely when you and Gabby went missing.” Aaron had admitted that he’d been suspicious his old partner had been involved in their disappearances. “And why he was so anxious to bring her back once you told him where she was.”
    “I knew she had a crush on him,” Charlotte admitted. “But I hadn’t thought Whit would ever act on her vulnerability to him.”
    “Neither did I,” Aaron admitted. “He’s always been the professional, unemotional one.”
    Charlotte smiled as she thought of her sister. “Gabby has a way of getting to a person, of stealing her way into your heart.”
    But that hadn’t worked with their real mother or with the queen. The person actually had to have a heart for Gabby to work her way inside. From everything Charlotte had heard about him, Whitaker Howell didn’t have a heart either. But he had acted very worried about Gabriella and her safety.
    Charlotte was also anxious about her sister. “I hope she’s had access to medical care. And that she’s not in need of it now.”
    “She’s fine,” Aaron said, referring back to Charlotte’s most recent conversation with her aunt, who had called the palace at Whit’s request. “Whit rescued her at the airport.”
    Charlotte breathed a soft sigh of relief. Whit had saved her. Just because he’d been doing his job? Or because he cared about Gabby?
    In order to board the royal jet and return to St. Pierre, they would have to go back to the airport. And what if the gunmen were waiting there to try to grab Princess Gabriella again?
    “We still should be there, too,” Charlotte insisted. While the doctor had cleared her for flight and work, he’d cautioned her to take it easy. She’d been restrained to a bed for the past six months, so she’d lost some of her strength and stamina.
    “The other jet has already taken off,” Aaron said. “They’re hours ahead of us and may have already landed.”
    “But they’re not you and me,” she pointed out. “And I’m not sure if Whit should trust anyone but you and me.” Not with his life and certainly not