Protecting the Pregnant Princess

She needed to tell him—needed to be honest with him about the little she did remember. But before she could open her mouth, his lips pressed against hers.

And whatever thoughts she’d had fled her mind. She couldn’t think at all. She could only feel. Desire overwhelmed her. Her skin tingled and her pulse raced.

He kissed her with all the passion she felt for him.

Then his palms cupped her face, cradling the cheek she’d touched looking for a scar. And he pulled back.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, and his broad shoulders slumped as if he’d added to that load of guilt and regret he already carried. “I shouldn’t have done that…”

“Why did you?” she wondered aloud. With a bruised face and ugly scrubs stretched taut over her big belly, she was hardly desirable.

Those broad shoulders lifted but then dropped again in a slight shrug.“I wanted you to remember me—to remember what we once were to each other.”

Bestselling, award-winning author LISA CHILDS writes paranormal and contemporary romance for Mills & boon. She lives on thirty acres in west Michigan with her two daughters, a talkative Siamese and a long-haired Chihuahua who thinks she’s a rottweiler. Lisa loves hearing from readers, who can contact her through her website, www.lisachilds.com, or snail-mail address, PO box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.

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For my parents, Jack and Mary Lou Childs. Alzheimer’s disease has stolen her memories of their long life together, but he is still her hero—loving and protecting her. While her mind doesn’t always remember him, her heart will never forget that he is the love of her life.

Heat scorched his face and hands, but Aaron Timmer ignored the pain and ran headlong toward the fire. His breath whooshed out of his burning lungs as his body dropped, tackled to the ground.

“You damn fool, what the hell are you thinking?” asked the man who’d knocked him down.

“We have to save her!” As her bodyguards, saving her was their responsibility. But she had become more than just a job to Aaron.

“It’s too late.” The house—the safe house—they had stashed her in was fully engulfed. the roof was gone, and flames were rising up toward the trees overhead. Leaves caught fire, dissolving into sparks that rained down onto the blackened lawn surrounding the house.

“We shouldn’t have left her.” But Aaron’s partner, Whitaker Howell, had insisted that she would be fine—that no one could have possibly figured out where she was.

Obviously someone had.

He rolled over and swung his fist right into Whit’s hard jaw. His knuckles cracked and stung as blood oozed from them. He shook off the pain and pushed away Whit’s limp body. Then he turned back to the burning frame of the house, debris strewn wide around the yard from the explosion.

It was too late. She was gone.

Three years later…

BLOOD SPATTERED THE ivory brocade walls of the Parisian hotel suite. Holes were torn through the paper, causing plaster and insulation to spill onto the hardwood floor. Some of the holes were big, probably from a fist or a foot; others smaller and blackened with gunpowder. The glass in the windows was broken, the frames splintered. Shots had been fired. And there had been one hell of a struggle.

Aaron’s heart hammered against his ribs, panic and fear overwhelming him as he surveyed the gruesome crime scene.

A whistle hissed through clenched teeth—not his but Whit’s, the man with whom he’d vowed to never work again after that tragedy three years ago. But a couple of months ago he’d been offered an opportunity too good to pass up. Only after he’d accepted the position as a royal bodyguard had he learned that he was actually going to share that assignment with his former business partner and friend.

That safe house explosion had destroyed whatever bond they’d formed in war, fighting together in Afghanistan. After the fire, they had only fought each other. So Aaron should have walked away from this job. He should have known how it would end.

“She put up one hell of a fight,” Whit said, his deep voice almost reverent with respect. “But there’s no way they survived…”

Aaron shook his head, refusing to accept that they were gone. She couldn’t be gone. Charlotte Green was too strong and too smart to not have survived whatever had happened to her.

What the hell had happened to her?

To them? Charlotte Green was also a royal bodyguard for the princess of St. Pierre Island, an affluent nation near Greece.

Aaron and Whit had retraced their steps from their missed flight home, back to the hotel they’d been booked into in Paris. The suite had been destroyed. But despite the amount of blood pooled on the hardwood floor, the Parisian authorities had found no bodies. No witnesses. No leads at all. And no hope for survivors.

King Rafael St. Pierre nodded in agreement with Whit Howell’s statement of resignation. Aaron clenched his fists, wanting to punch both men in the face. He couldn’t strike the king though, and not just because he was paid generously to protect the ruler of St. Pierre. He couldn’t hurt the man because Rafael was already hurting so much that he probably wouldn’t even feel the blow.