At least she wasn’t lying in the dirt below. Tramping through the alps in trendy heels wasn’t much better. Damn it, this woman was turning into a nightmare.
“Alert security,” he told Inga, and he strode outside to join the search.
* * *
Crammed beneath the sink was a little too much like the horrid cellar she’d been locked in during her first kidnapping. The shelf had easily moved to the bottom of the vanity, making room for her to curl herself on top of it, but she’d had to cover herself with the towels and was overheating.
Panicking.
No. One minute at a time. Uno naranjo, dos naranjos... She counted the seconds, counted the oranges, a scent she always associated with family since they had a grove of them at Sus Brazos. She would get through this. It was another test of her ability to move on from her past.
She did her breathing exercises while she listened for footsteps. When she was confident everyone had moved outside, she carefully opened the cupboard door and groped her way out of the small space, thankful for her yoga practice.
Carrying her shoes, she paused at the door. There were security cameras. She had noted one in the foyer as they’d entered. Someone would be watching the screens. She had to move fast, but—thank you, Killian—she had what amounted to an SOS flare in her phone. It was supposed to be for signaling help, but she hoped it could have another use.
She took the device from her bra, turned on the blinding white light, and walked into the hall, aiming the beam directly at the first camera she came to. It sat like a brilliant spotlight on the dark orb. She prayed it blinded the lens as she hurried through the house to the garage.
There was no one in the kitchen and keys hung neatly on the hook beside the door. She tucked her phone back into her bra and took all the keys, deducing from a keychain which one belonged to the top-down cobalt blue Audi.
Outside the garage doors, she heard footsteps jogging across gravel.
Her entire body trembled, but she fought to keep a focused mind. She wasn’t helpless. She would get away.
She set all the keys on the passenger seat and climbed behind the wheel of the Audi, then hit the button on the visor to open the garage door, ready to start the car as soon as the door climbed high enough.
There was a click, the hum of a motor and a rattle of effort, but the door didn’t budge. She jabbed her finger onto the button again, glancing at the jumble of keys. Should she take a different car?
The door to the interior of the chalet opened and Xavier came into the shadowed garage.
Nooooo! She jabbed again and again at the stupid button, then started the car with a roar of its high-performance engine.
“The house is locked down. Don’t try to drive through the door. It’s reinforced. You’ll hurt yourself. And my car.” He moved past the other three vehicles with smooth steps, pausing beside her to lean in and turn off the engine, pocketing the key. “But that was a very good try. I’m impressed.”
She gripped the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, concentrating on not revealing the tears gathering hotly behind her eyes.
“Come back into the house.”
“No.”
“We’ll talk here then.” He moved to flick a switch on the wall. A fan came to life with a low drone, quickly sucking away the lingering exhaust.
He came back to set an elbow on the top of the windscreen. She felt his eyes studying her, but kept her nose pointed forward.
“I’m trying to be patient, bella, I really am, but I don’t understand why you’re being so combative. This doesn’t have to be a fight.”
“I could drive this, you know. Probably better than you.”
“Not without keys.”
“You’d be surprised.” She worked her hands on the steering wheel’s soft leather, more than a little enamored with cars, thanks to Ramon. “I can hotwire and drive anything. I’ve been up to two hundred and twenty on a closed circuit in my brother’s Pur Sang. The Gs nearly crack my ribs when I brake from that speed, but it’s quite a rush. Have you ever driven this the way it was designed to drive?”
“No.” His tone was one of forced patience.
“Ramon got into racing after taking evasive driving lessons. We all had to take them.” Like Ramon, she had tried to outrun herself on the track more than once, but it was never a permanent solution. At some point, she had to park the car, take off the helmet and face reality. “Because of my kidnapping.”
She sensed him grow very still, indicating she had his full attention.
Had he thought that wouldn’t come up? She hated that it defined her, but it did. She worked around it as often as she could, but when she did have to face it, she did it head-on with her foot to the floor, even though it also had the power to crack her ribs and shatter everything inside her.
As the silence lengthened, she suspected he was reviewing what he had said in Paris—when he had thought he was talking about her but had been speaking to her.
“You think you were worried when I was stolen.” Her voice trembled against her will. She soothed herself by running light fingers across the bumps in the bottom of the steering wheel, playing over them like keys on a piano, but her hands shook.
His voice was grave. “If I was triggering you today, you should have said.”
“Really?” A smile touched lips that felt so dry they might split. Her body vibrated with fight-or-flight. She was going to crash hard after this, but she couldn’t think about that yet. “Because I did tell you to take me back and you ignored me. Which is exactly what happened the first time.”
Her knuckles whitened where she grasped the wheel again, trying to keep a grip on herself. It was time for the head-on collision.
“I said stop, and no, and please so many times I lost count. I said it when they threw me in their van and I could see Ramon running after us. I said it when one of them pulled me onto his lap and shoved his hand under my skirt and hurt me. I said it when he slapped me because I was fighting him. I said it when he locked me in a cold, dark cellar and I said it a lot when he let me out three days later, only to put me on a filthy stinking mattress and call me lucky. Lucky. Because he was going to show me what men liked.”
She knew it was an assault to throw that at him. It was one of the reasons she rarely spoke about it, but she wanted to hurt him. She wanted to scar him.
“I should check with my therapist, see if my experience of being assaulted might create a profound desire to control my own destiny. Gosh, what an enlightening moment of self-discovery you’ve provided, Xavier. Yes, I’m quite sure that’s why I’m combative.”
* * *
He couldn’t move, wasn’t even sure he was breathing, as he tried to un-hear what she’d said. Who would do such a thing? To a child?
He didn’t have a particular affinity for children, not having had a childhood to speak of himself. Royal duties took him into contact with them, but children were just one more foreign culture with whom certain rituals were observed. He didn’t live among them or desire to.
What he did understand was that they were vulnerable. Those who exploited the weak were beneath contempt. Only a true monster would hurt someone as helpless as a nine-year-old girl, especially sexually.
“I didn’t think I could get pregnant.” Trella’s thin voice echoed off the concrete and steel of his garage, underpinned by the drone of the fan. Her profile was pale and still, grayed by the half-light beyond the row of windows in the doors. “The damage he did was that bad. Do you understand what I’m saying? Because I don’t want to get any more specific.”
A twisted, anguished feeling struck his middle, clenching talons around his chest and squeezing his throat, pushing fear and helplessness to such heights inside him, it became a pressure he could barely withstand. He knew his heart was beating because it throbbed with painful pounds that rang in his ears, but he couldn’t move or speak.
There were no words, no reactions, that fit this situation. Only a primal scream that would have no effect whatsoever. It wouldn’t reverse the past, wouldn’t erase her dark memories. He was at a complete loss.
“When I realized I was pregnant, I had to give the baby a chance. Even though the odds were against it. I’ve been expecting a miscarriage every single day. What was the point in telling you if I was only going to lose it? Even now, I’m terrified of becoming too attached in case something happens.”
It was his. The knowledge crashed over him like a wave, bringing a sharp sting of heightened awareness to his whole body. It changed everything. His entire life, every decision and action, filtered in a blur through this lens of a new life they had created.
The cogs in his brain finally began turning, but with a rustiness that scraped at his detachment.
“So this is...delicate?” What if she lost it? For some reason, neat as that solution might sound, the idea appalled him. “Are you all right?” He should have asked these questions the minute he’d had her alone. “Has this put you into labor? Are you in pain?”
“No.” She skimmed her hair out of her eyes and let herself relax into the seat of the car, hands settling over her bump. Her complexion was pale, but she sounded calm. “We’re both quite healthy, all things considered. But I see a specialist in London and she wants me on bed rest for the third trimester. She was an intern in Spain when I was a child and knows everything I’ve been through. I’ll let your doctor take my blood, but I’m not giving some stranger my medical history. He touches my arm. That’s it.”