Free Royal Rescue by Lisa Childs

she’d done. No one had been safe around her, not even her classmates when she’d been at boarding school and later at college.
    None of her friends had been safe from her, either. Maybe that was why she’d had few when they’d met. Maybe that was why it had been so easy for her to leave everyone behind.
    Including him.
    Except her father. That was why she’d come to the hospital after he’d been assaulted. Perhaps they hadn’t actually severed contact, as she had with Brendan—never even letting him know he’d become a father.
    She probably didn’t know the identity of her would-be killer or she wouldn’t have had to stay in hiding all this time. But he asked anyway. “Who do you think was trying to kill you?”
    She answered without hesitation and with complete certainty, “You.”

Chapter Seven
    Maybe Josie was as tired as her son was. Why else would she have made such an admission? Moreover, why else would she have let him drive her here—of all places?
    She should have recognized the route, since her gaze had never left the road as he’d driven them away from the hospital. She had driven here so many times over those months when they had been seeing each other. She’d preferred going to his place, hoping that she would find something or overhear something the police didn’t know that could have led her to a break in his father’s murder investigation.
    And she hadn’t wanted him to find anything at her apartment that would have revealed that she was so much more than just the empty-headed heiress so many others had thought she was. Things like her journalism awards or her diploma or the scrapbook of articles she’d published under her pseudonym.
    But it didn’t matter that he had never found any of those things. Somehow he’d learned the truth about who she was anyway. And after the ferocious fight they’d had, the attempts on her life had begun.
    “How could you think I would have tried to kill you?” he asked, his voice a rasp in the eerie silence of the vehicle. Even CJ wasn’t making any sounds as he slept so deeply and quietly.
    Brendan had pulled the SUV through the wrought-iron gates of the O’Hannigan estate, but they had yet to open the car doors. They remained sealed in that tomblike silence he’d finally broken with his question.
    “How could I not think it was you?” she asked, keeping her voice to a low whisper so that she didn’t wake her son. He didn’t need to know that tonight wasn’t the first time a bad man had tried to hurt his mommy. Even the authorities had suspected Brendan O’Hannigan was responsible. That was why they’d offered her protection—to keep her alive to testify against him once they found evidence that he’d been behind the attempts. “Who else would want me dead?”
    He turned toward her, and since she still leaned over the console, he was close. His face was just a breath away from hers. And his eyes—the same rare blue-green as her son’s—were narrowed, his brow furrowed with confusion as he stared at her. “Why would I want you dead?”
    “I lied to you. I tricked you,” she said, although she doubted he needed any reminders. And given how angry he’d been with her, she shouldn’t have reminded him, shouldn’t have brought back all his rage and vengeance. He might forget that she was the mother of his son. Of course he had earlier mentioned those things to their son. He’d included stealing, too, although she’d stolen nothing from him but perhaps his trust.
    Despite how angry he’d been, Brendan literally shrugged off her offenses, as if they were of no consequence to him. His broad shoulder rubbed against hers, making her skin tingle even beneath her sweater and jacket. “I’ve been lied to and tricked before,” he said.
    She doubted that many people would have been brave enough to take on Dennis O’Hannigan’s son—the man that many people claimed was a chip off the block of evil. She still couldn’t believe that she had