Then reality rushed in as a scuffling noise and a grunt penetrated. She swung her gaze to see Benita in a fight. A fight. With a man. He tried to twist Benita’s arm behind her back as she bent forward, trying to use leverage to flip him.
Training, the kind Trella had attended to daily until pregnancy had sent her into yoga and water aerobics, jolted her into action. As Benita’s attacker pulled back his weight, dragging Benita off her feet, Trella stepped in and nailed him with a solid, knuckle-bruising punch, right in the nose.
The man grunted and Benita twisted, nearly escaping.
“What the hell are you doing?” That accent. Strong hands grasped her upper arms and pulled her away from the struggling pair.
Trella turned into him, stomach flip-flopping in response as she felt his solid abdomen against her bump. Adrenaline coursed through her, but she only felt reassurance as he drew her protectively close. Her gaze stayed over her shoulder, fixed on the fight, which seemed to be more of a wrestle for dominance. A bloody nose wasn’t slowing down the man and Benita wasn’t giving up, biting out in Spanish, “Run.”
“Help her—Wait. What are you doing?” Trella cried as she realized she was being shoved into the back of the car.
Xavier easily overpowered her, pushing her in and following without ceremony.
She was so shocked that it took her a moment to resist. By then his big body had created a wall of shoulders and chest that were impossible to get past.
Before she could touch the door on her side, he pulled his own closed and the locks clicked. The car pulled away, leaving her guard scrapping on the sidewalk with a brute whose shirt was the same color as both men in the front of this car.
Far too late, she realized what was happening.
She was being kidnapped. Again.
CHAPTER FOUR
“STOP THIS CAR. NOW.”
Xavier respected her ability to sound so authoritative, but he ignored her and opened the privacy window long enough to accept an ice pack from his physician, Gunter, then tapped the button to close it.
“Hello, Trella. Have I got that right?” He knew he had the right one. It was impossible to explain, but the minute he had seen her, he had known.
He pushed aside the ridiculous high that rocketed through him as he finally had her alone and held out his palm. He wiggled his fingers, urging her to release the pendant she was pinching and let him examine her hand.
“What were you thinking, getting involved in that?” The mix of rage and fear he’d experienced at seeing her step into the fight was reflected in his tone. Even if she wasn’t pregnant, it would have been a foolhardy, dangerous thing to do.
But she was pregnant. There was no denying it. The narrow waist he’d held in the crook of his arm had thickened with an undeniable bump. Her breasts...
He dragged his gaze up, refusing to let fantasies sidetrack him, but her features were a distraction all on their own. Her face was rounder, her mouth lush and pouted. The urge to kiss her struck him with a fierce pull.
Damn it, what was it about her?
He met her glare with his own, thinking that he would have sworn her eyes were green, but they were steely. Bright as a cornered cat refusing to stay that way.
“I thought I was preventing myself from being kidnapped. Once again, I have trusted the wrong person.” Her unpainted lips seemed bloodless, which gave him a moment of pause, but too much of his life had been set off balance by her. He wanted answers. Today.
“It’s not a kidnapping.” He set the ice pack near her thigh. “It’s an improvised meeting to discuss mutual business, so drop your pendant. I know it’s a tracking device. Your guard won’t be harmed, only delayed. Your car can’t chase us. It’s still blocked.”
“Which sounds a lot like a kidnapping.” A harsh ringtone emanated from her purse. “That’s for you.” She pulled out her phone and used her thumbprint to accept the call then handed it to Xavier. Her hand might have trembled.
Desperate times called for desperate measures, he’d told himself when he’d concocted this intervention. As he picked up on Trella’s shaken nerves, he wondered if he was using a sledgehammer to kill a fly. It hadn’t occurred to him she might be anything but angry at having her timetable interrupted. He couldn’t be happier if he inconvenienced the hell out of her. He was beyond incensed at the way she was impacting his life without any attempt to mitigate it.
Explaining that would have to wait. He’d been warned to expect this video call. He took the phone and met the formidable expression of a man who resembled Trella. Henri, Xavier suspected, since the other brother was in Brazil.
“Your demands?” Henri asked without greeting.
“A blood sample for a DNA test.”
Trella made a strangled noise. “Like hell.”
He glanced at her. “I would accept her word as to whether she’s carrying my heir, but she’s lied to me more than once already.”
Xavier willed her to lash out with denials of his paternity. With an explanation. An apology.
She hitched her chin and turned her face to the window.
“Return her to where you took her. I’ll see what I can do about the blood test.”
“You can’t even get her to return a call. I can’t wait any longer.”
Trella’s silence was gut-knottingly damning. Whatever lingering favor he had felt toward her went ashen and bitter. A jagged lump hardened in his throat. He swallowed it, but the acrimony only moved to burn as a hot knot behind his collarbone. Each minute that she failed to deny his paternity was a tiny, incremental progression toward accepting what he had been refusing to believe. What he still didn’t want to believe.
“I have your coordinates,” Henri said, dragging Xavier back from staring at the woman who was ruining his life. “A team has been dispatched. We don’t need an incident. Return her to Innsbruck.”
“If you’re tracking us, you know we’ll be in Elazar soon.” Xavier leaned toward the window to see a helicopter chasing from the distance. “I’ll close the borders if I have to, but she’s perfectly safe, especially if that’s our future monarch inside her. Stand down from trying to stop us.”
“Unless my sister gives me her safe word, this escalates.”
Xavier handed her the phone. “Your move, bella.”
She flashed him a sharp glance then looked at her brother.
“We’re coming,” Henri said.
“I know.” She nodded, pale and grave, then said, “Begonia.”
“Vous êtes certain?”
“Sí.”
“That’s tomorrow’s word,” Xavier said.
She shot him a startled frown.
He shrugged. “I do my homework.”
“Then you’ll know I’m buying you twenty-four hours.” She turned back to her phone, expression haughty. “I’m sure Killian knows by now who hacked him. Ask him to drop a virus into the Elazar palace networks, won’t you?”
“Killian has Elazar’s Minister of Foreign Affairs on the phone, along with a more aggressive team assembled.”
Xavier suspected that remark was more for his benefit.
“Gracias. Tell him I’ll handle it.”
“Will you?”
A leaden silence followed where she only gave her brother a tight-lipped look.
Xavier wondered if others were also frustrated by the avoidance game she had been playing.
“Bien,” Henri said. “If I don’t hear from you every hour, your prince may expect a gun against his temple. Je t’aime.”
“Te amo.” She ended the call and slipped her phone back into her purse, then folded her hands into her lap. “Why did you say I lied to you more than once?”
Xavier admired the way she attempted to take control of the conversation, but he was not prepared to give her any concessions until he had what he wanted.
“Why did you speak Spanish and he, French? Was it code?”
“Habit.”
She tried to leave it there, but he lifted a skeptical brow.
“It’s true. Our father was French, Mama is Spanish. We grew up speaking both. I only told one lie.”
“That you were on birth control.”
“That I was Angelique. You asked if I was on the pill or something. I said yes because that was true. At least, I thought it was.” She bit the corner of her lip.
“Your or something failed?”
She flinched, making him realize his voice carried a thickness close to contempt or even hatred.
He grappled to hang onto his temper. “You assured me pregnancy wasn’t possible. How have we arrived at having this conversation?”
Dumb question. They both knew how babies were made. They’d made love. She had come apart in his arms again and again. He’d been greedy as a starved beast certain he would die from the pleasure of being inside her when she shattered around him like that. Then, when he couldn’t hold back any longer, he had joyously thrown himself into the small death of simultaneous orgasm.
In that post-climactic moment, when her breaths had still been jagged and his heart had pounded against her sweating breasts, he had felt...restored. Not just a release of tension but as though deeper needs had been met. Withdrawing had provoked a painful, abandoned sensation he had impatiently tried to forget.
“Is that my child?”
She jolted at the grate in his tone. “You said you wouldn’t believe me no matter what I said.”