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!”
“I’m trying to help you,” he said, his voice low and raspy—either from her attack or because he didn’t want to be overheard.
“Then get me the hell out of here!”
“That’s the plan.”
Her breath shuddered out in a gasp of surprise. “It is?”
“It’s why I’m here, Charlotte.”
“Why—why do you think I’m Charlotte?” The question slipped out, unbidden. And now she silently cursed herself. If Charlotte was the woman he’d intended to free, then she should have let him believe she was Charlotte.
Hell, maybe she was.
His eyes, that eerily familiar pale blue, widened in surprise. “You’re not?”
God, now he wasn’t sure, either.
She should have kept her mouth shut, but maybe she had done that as long as she had physically been able. Her voice was raspy, as if she hadn’t used it much lately. Or maybe someone had tried choking the life out of her, too.
She needed to get the hell out of this place. But should she leave with a stranger? Maybe he posed a bigger threat than the man with the Glock.
He studied her face, his gaze narrowing with the scrutiny. “Princess Gabriella?”
“Pr-princess?” she sputtered with a near-hysterical giggle. “You think I’m a princess?” Maybe it wasn’t that ridiculous a thought, though. It was almost as if she had stumbled into some morbid fairy tale where the princess had been poisoned or cursed to an endless slumber.
Except she wasn’t sleeping anymore.
“I don’t know what the hell to think,” the man admitted, shaking his head as if trying to sort through his confusion.
Maybe it wasn’t the blow to her head that had knocked out her sense since he couldn’t understand what was going on, either.
“Please,” she urged him, “get me out of here.” She glanced toward the window in the door, where the burly Mr. Centerenian usually stood guard. “Now.”
“I need to know,” he said. “Who are you? Gabby or Charlotte?”
Gabby? The name evoked the same familiar chord within her that Charlotte and his eyes had struck. It must have been a name she’d used. “Does it matter?” she asked. “Would you take one of us but leave the other?”
And why couldn’t he tell the difference between the women? Was she a twin? Was there someone else, exactly like her, out there? Hurt? In danger? As freaking confused as she was?
He shook his head. “No, damn it, I wouldn’t. You know I wouldn’t leave either of you here.”
Either of you…
Where was the other woman? Locked in another room in this hellhole? Jane’s breath caught with fear and concern for a person she didn’t even know. But then she didn’t even know herself.
“But why won’t you be honest with me?” the man asked, and hurt flashed in his pale blue eyes. “Don’t you trust me?”
It was probably a mistake. But the admission slipped out like her earlier question. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“Damn it, you have every right to be pissed, but it was the king’s decision to make that announcement at the ball. He wouldn’t listen to me…” he said then trailed off, and those pretty eyes narrowed again. “You’re not talking about that. You’re not just mad at me.”
Maybe she was.
He definitely stirred up emotion inside her. Her pulse raced and her heart pounded hard and fast. Her mind didn’t recognize him, but her body did as even her skin tingled in reaction to having touched his. An image flicked through her mind, of her hands sliding over his skin—all of his skin, his broad shoulders bare, his muscular chest covered only with dark, soft hair.
Then her fingers trailed down over washboard abs to…
Her head pounded as she tried to remember, but the tantalizing image slipped away as a ragged breath slipped between her lips. Despite the pounding, she shook her head and then flinched with pain and frustration. “No. I really don’t know who you are.”
He sucked in a sharp breath, as if her words had hurt him even more than her hands wrapped tightly around his throat had.
“Don’t feel bad,” she said with a snort of derision. “I don’t know who I am, either.”
“You