The Princess Read online

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  ALSO BY LISA RENEE JONES

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the supplier and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at lisareneejones.com/contact

  All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination. www.lisareneejones.com.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Harper

  Darkness engulfs me inside the Kingston warehouse as I try to escape the hand on my mouth and the big body at my back, but then I hear a whispered, “Easy, sweetheart,” at my ear and everything familiar about this man washes over me with relief. It’s Eric. Oh God, it’s Eric. He came back. He’s here. He’s with me and I have never been so happy to feel someone this close as I am now.

  “Shhhh,” he murmurs softly and then releases my mouth.

  I rotate in his arms and hug him so tightly that it hurts, but somehow it’s not tight enough.

  He holds onto me, his hand flattening between my shoulder blades, but this is not just about affection. This is him holding me, keeping me still. This is him listening for movement and the necessity of my silence replaces my relief.

  We aren’t alone.

  This wasn’t a random power outage.

  I stiffen and softly inhale a calming breath. Eric strokes my hair as if in approval and then kisses my temple before pulling me around and then in front of him. His hands go to my shoulders and he starts walking us forward, and I have no sense of where we are in the Kingston warehouse, but somehow he does. I sense this. I know this. I remind myself he’s not only a genius but an ex-Navy SEAL. About that moment is when he abruptly stops walking and we just stand there, and stand there, and I swear there is a whisper of movement somewhere nearby.

  I don’t know where.

  I just know it’s here. It’s close. Someone is with us.

  Eric suddenly moves me forward and we take five fast steps before he stops us again. He reaches around me and my hands plant on what I think is a moving door. He walks me inside what I now know is an office, as the aquarium inside the foreman’s office glows. He moves quickly then, shutting us inside and moving me into a corner. For the first time since he arrived, I can see him, and even in the shadows, he’s beautiful and intense.

  “You came back.”

  “I should never have left,” he says, cupping my face. “And we have a lot to talk about when this is over.” He kisses me and then takes my hand and presses a gun into it. “Shoot first. Ask questions later.” He shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it. “Call 911, but don’t move. You could run right into a problem. I’ll be right back.” He starts to move away.

  I catch his arm, my heart lurching as I plead, “Wait. Don’t go. You could get hurt.”

  “I won’t get hurt.” His hands settle on my shoulders and as if he knows I need to hear the words again, he repeats, “I’ll be back. Don’t move.” He starts to step away again, but suddenly halts, holding a finger to his lips to silence me. I nod and he turns toward the door, silently stepping to a spot that places him behind it as it opens. The next thing I know, Eric and some man in all black are exchanging punches. Eric throws him across the desk and I don’t even consider running. I hold the gun ready to shoot the minute I know Eric is safe, but he’s across the desk and on the guy so quickly I can’t fire. I also can’t call 911 because I don’t have my phone, and the only phone in the office is now on the floor somewhere, out of sight.

  I hunt desperately for it, but what I find is Eric flying across the desk this time, landing at my feet. The man he’s fighting charges at him and I manage to retain a level head. I fire the gun, but I’m clearly out of practice. It pulls left and misses the man and before I can recover, he’s on top of Eric, both of them rolling as I hit the wall. I run for the desk, searching for the phone, but as sure as I’m hunting, suddenly the man Eric is fighting runs out the door.

  “Harper!” Eric shouts, motioning me forward. “We need to get out of this office now!”

  I run toward him and he grabs my hand and then I’m running again as he pulls me forward into the darkness. I have no idea how he sees where we’re going and my stomach is all over the place in anticipation of the phantom object we’re about to run into, but never do. Suddenly, we stop again and he presses me against a wall, his big body against mine and it’s sweet relief, like everything wrong is now right. I’ve found my shelter and that shelter is him.

  “Don’t move, sweetheart,” he whispers and then that shelter, his body, is gone. “We’re getting out of here.”

  A moment later, he opens a door, and I mentally scramble to place us at the exit by the parking lot. Eric leans out of the door and then grabs my hand. The next thing I know, we’re outside in the cold and a black SUV halts in front of us. Eric opens the back door to the vehicle and ushers me inside before joining me. “Airport,” he orders the driver. “Now.” The vehicle starts to move.

  My heart races. “Airport?” I ask urgently, grabbing Eric’s arm. “Are you leaving again?”

  “We’re leaving,” he says, turning to me and cupping my face. “We need out of here. We are getting out of here. Are you okay? I need to know that you’re okay.” His voice is low, urgent, and rough with emotion.

  “Yes. Are you?” I touch the cut down his cheek. “That man—”

  “Was a professional. The kind you pay to do a job.” He eyes the driver. “What do we know?”

  “There were three men in the warehouse with you,” the man behind the wheel answers, placing us in drive. “They left in a car with no plates.” He turns us onto the main road. “Police or no police?”

  “Police limit my response,” Eric replies. “No police.” He reaches for his phone and punches in a number. Seconds pass and I can hear the line ring and ring before a muffled voicemail
picks up. “Brother,” Eric bites out at the beep, “when you get this message, replay it and think about the implications of what I’m about to say. And when I say think, I mean think hard, because we know you’re not the sharpest tool in the shed. Three men attacked Harper in the warehouse tonight. You better hope I don’t find out that you sent them.” He disconnects.

  I swallow hard, sickened by the implications of that message. “You think Isaac sent those men to attack me?”

  “Yes,” Eric says, without even a second of hesitation. “I do.”

  “As do I,” the man driving states. “And I’m Adam, Harper. At your service.”

  “He’s with Walker Security and he’s a former SEAL. That means he’s bulletproof.”

  There’s a sharp sensation in my chest that I’m pretty sure is panic bubbling to the surface, and a choked laugh escapes my throat. “He’s a former SEAL,” I say, “as in a Navy SEAL, who is driving us to the airport to escape after three men attacked me in a warehouse. Three men who probably wanted to kill me.”

  “Easy, sweetheart,” Eric says, stroking my hair. “You’re safe and you’re going to stay that way, but yes. We have to leave. I need to get distance between you and whatever this is while we sort through what’s really going on.”

  Dangerous. That word rockets my mind to a bad place, urgency bubbling inside me. Oh God. “My mother. What about my mother?”

  “Adam’s men are watching her.”

  Adam chimes in. “Some of our best men. She’s safe.”

  “For now,” I amend, focusing on Eric. “I can’t leave her.”

  His jaw sets hard, stubborn. “Whether you like it or not, Harper, she’s one of them. That means she’s safe. You’re not and I’m not leaving you here.”

  “I’m not leaving her here,” I insist, my jaw setting just as stubbornly as his did.

  But he pushes back, fast and hard. “We’re leaving, and I promise you, Harper, if you try to fight me on this, I’ll throw you over my shoulder and carry you onto the private jet waiting on us.”

  “Eric, damn it—”

  “Your mother is safe. Being one of them makes her safe. You, me, we’re not one of them. We’re not safe. In other words, we’re leaving the way we should have left earlier today. Together.”

  “Yes, but—”

  He cups my face and kisses me, the touch of his lips to my lips, instantly bringing me down two notches. “Together,” he murmurs. “Alone on that plane where we’re going to talk. We need to talk.”

  To talk.

  About the baby.

  About the past.

  About the secret I kept from him.

  “I’m not sure a plane where I’m trapped is a good place to have that conversation.”

  “But I am,” he says. “It’s exactly the right place to have that conversation. It’s exactly where you belong. With me. You belong with me now, Harper.”

  He says that now, but what if he changes his mind when we really talk about what I left on his voicemail? What if he hates me when he hears all the details? “I can’t get on that plane with you.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Harper

  Eric and I are still huddled together, that talk we’re going to have in the air between us, when the SUV halts without warning. “What’s happening?” I ask, jerking out of Eric’s embrace, the reality of being trapped in a warehouse and on the run, now coming back to me with a jolting force.

  “We’ve arrived,” Adam calls out from the front seat, placing us in park. “Private airport and private plane.”

  Eric squeezes my hand. “We’re all good, princess. I promise. All is as it’s supposed to be.” He kisses my hand. “Now we get the hell out of here.” He leans forward to speak to Adam in a low, muffled voice that I don’t try to understand.

  Instead, I eye a runway with the plane waiting on us.

  The plane that will take me away. Take us away.

  The plane that will leave my mother behind.

  Do I really dare to leave her behind?

  Could I even get her to leave with me if I tried? No, the real question is: could I ever get her to leave with us if I tried? That’s the key here. She’s definitely not going to agree to go anywhere with Eric and who am I kidding? She won’t leave my stepfather.

  I have to leave her here. I have no choice.

  Adam opens his door and gets out of the vehicle as Eric settles back into the seat with me. “Adam’s going to clear the plane.”

  My eyes go wide. “Clear the plane? Surely you don’t think someone is waiting on us here.”

  His hand comes down on my leg. “Relax, sweetheart. He’s doing his job and doing it well by being paranoid. The safest place we can be right now is on that plane, in the air. And this was our plan anyway. We were going to give them space. Get away. Make the family feel safe. They’ll let their guard down. Adam’s team is watching.”

  He’s right. I know he’s right and I can’t let my mother’s decisions make me a fool, any more than I can my miscarriage and where our talk will lead us. Yes, we’ll be trapped on that plane in our own swampland of pain and history, but we’ll both be alive.

  “Harper.”

  At Eric’s softly spoken prod I shake myself and refocus on him. “Yes?”

  “I promise you, your mother is safe. If there’s a shift in where she settles in all of this, Adam and his men will be here to get her out.” And then as if he’s reiterating my earlier thoughts, he adds, “She wouldn’t leave if we asked. You know that.”

  “Maybe if she hears what happened tonight, that’ll change.”

  His hands come down on my arms, those blue eyes of his connecting with mine. “You can’t tell her. You don’t know how she’ll react or what danger she’ll put herself in. We need to stick to the plan. Let them get comfortable. Let them lead Walker Security to whatever is going on here. All that’s happening right now, is that we’re making sure whoever thinks we’re a problem, thinks we’re not anymore.”

  “You mean whoever thinks I’m a problem.”

  “We’re one, baby. They know that. I came here for you.”

  But we’re not one or he wouldn’t have left. Only he didn’t leave, I remind myself. “You really think this is all Isaac?”

  “He’s involved, but he’s not the mastermind.”

  “The mastermind of what?”

  “We don’t know yet, but we will.” There’s a knock on the window.

  “We’re clear,” Eric says. “Let’s move.”

  He opens the door and exits the SUV, cold air gushing in through the open vehicle. I resist the chill, but my realization that we couldn’t even afford the time for me to pack has me worried we might have been followed. A thought that has me quickly scooting across the seat to catch up with Eric. He’s waiting on me and all but pulls me out of the backseat, a hint of urgency radiating off of him as I settle onto the pavement, into a bright night illuminated by a full moon. I shiver in the cold gust of wind, glancing up as I do at a star shooting across the sky.

  Eric pulls me close, under his arm, setting us in motion toward the plane, while his big body is a shelter against the wind; shelter that he doesn’t seem to need, considering like me, he has no coat, not even his suit jacket he left in the warehouse. We start walking toward the plane, and I quickly look for the star again. It’s gone, but I make a wish anyway: Please keep everyone safe and alive. It’s the only wish that matters. It’s the only wish I’d dare make. We cross the tarmac toward the plane and Eric halts us by the stairs where Adam awaits. “I’ll have internet access in the air. Update me.”

  Adam gives a nod. “Our team will have support waiting for you when you land.”

  Eric inclines his chin and refocuses on me. “Let’s get inside, baby.” He urges me up the narrow stairs and I start walking, eager to find shelter from the wind. I’m relieved when I feel Eric right at my back, a protector that I never expected him to be, and never would have
asked him to be. A protector to my mother, who wasn’t kind to him. A protector to—

  I stop at the top of the stairs and step into the plane, backing up to let Eric join me. “What about Gigi?”

  His jaw sets hard. “What about her?”

  “She and I—”

  “Don’t finish any sentence that begins that way. Not with you and Gigi connected. I’m not in the mood.” He pulls me to him. “Walker’s watching everyone.” He turns me to the plane. “I need to talk to the pilot,” he says. “I’ll be right there. Go to the back of the plane.”

  He releases me and I want to turn and press him about Gigi’s safety, to reason with him, but I think better of that idea, considering the topic. This is Gigi, after all, a woman who treated his mother like trash that dirtied up the family with him.

  I start walking down the narrow path, eyeing the fancy plane with luxury cream-colored recliners and tables left and right without really seeing it. I’m focused on the engines firing up already, a sign we’re wasting no time getting into the air. A sign of urgency, of a sense of danger. This hastens my pace, all the way to the rear of the plane, to a set of recliner-style seats I assume will allow us to lay back and sleep, as if I could sleep right now. I claim one of them and sit down, shivering again and not from the chilly air coming out of the overhead vents. From the evil at play in this family, in my life. I hug myself, trembling in that kind of deep, soul-wrenching way that comes with a fever and illness, but isn’t this family just that? An illness? A sickness I can’t escape, but Eric had. Until I went and pulled him back into this.

  Eric joins me almost immediately and he must notice me shivering because he pulls a blanket from an overhead bin. When I expect him to hand it to me, he doesn’t. He wraps it around me and goes down on the blue carpet beneath our feet, on a knee beside me, his hands on either side of the blanket.

  “I shouldn’t have left you tonight,” he says, and I know he’s not talking about the plane. He’s talking about back at the office. He’s talking about our fight. “I didn’t leave, not for long. I went back for you and I’m here now, but I fucked up. I let Isaac get to me tonight.”

  “What did he say to you?”