She leaned closer and adjusted the air vent over him. “You look awfully warm, sir. We’ll be landing soon, but it may take a while to get to the gate.”
“I’ll be fine,” he assured her. Because he would be closer to Gabriella—or at least closer to where she had been last. But after the woman moved down the aisle, he reached up to brush away the sweat beading on his forehead. And he grimaced over moving his injured shoulder.
He had been shot—a through-and-through, so the bullet had damaged no arteries or muscles. But now he was beginning to worry that the wound could be getting infected. And where he was going, there was unlikely to be any medical assistance.
He didn’t care about his own discomfort though. He cared only about finding Gabriella and making damn sure she was alive and safe. And if he found her, he had to be strong and healthy enough to keep her safe.
Because it was probable that whoever had threatened her was still out there. Like everyone else, her stalker had probably thought her dead these past six months. But once they learned she was alive, they would be more determined than ever to carry out their threat.
“SHE’S ALIVE.”
Gabriella St. Pierre expelled a breath of relief at the news Lydia Green shared the moment the older woman had burst through the door. For six months Gabby had been holding her breath, waiting for a message from her bodyguard. Actually she’d been waiting for the woman to come for her.
Especially in the beginning. She hadn’t realized how pampered her life had been until she’d stayed here. The floor beneath her feet was dirt, the roof over her head thatch. A bird that had made it through her screenless window fluttered in a corner of the one room that had been her home for the past six months.
Once she had stopped waiting for Charlotte to come for her, she had gotten used to the primitive conditions. She had actually been happy here and relaxed in a way that she had never been at the palace. And it wasn’t just because she had been out of the public eye but because she had been out from under her father’s watchful eye, as well.
And beyond his control.
She had also been something she had never been before: useful. For the past six months she had been teaching children at the orphanage/school Lydia Green had built in a third-world country so remote and poor that no other charity or government had yet acknowledged it. But she had learned far more than she’d taught. She realized now that there was much more to being charitable than writing checks.
Lydia Green had given her life and her youth to helping those less fortunate. She’d grown up as a missionary, like her parents, traveling from third-world country to third-world country. After her parents had died, she could have chosen another life. She could have married and had a family. But Lydia had put aside whatever wants and needs she might have had and focused instead on others. She had become a missionary, too, and the only family she had left was a niece.
Charlotte. The women looked eerily similar. Lydia had the same caramel-brown eyes, but her hair was white rather than brown even though she was still in her fifties.
“Charlotte called?” The first day Gabriella had arrived, somewhere between the airport and the orphanage, she had lost the untraceable cell phone her bodyguard had given her. But it probably wouldn’t have come in as far into the jungle as the orphanage was.
Lydia expelled her own breath of relief over finally hearing from her niece and nodded. “The connection was very bad, so I couldn’t understand much of what Charlotte was saying …”
The orphanage landline wasn’t much better than the cell phone. There was rarely a dial tone—the lines either damaged by falling trees, the oppressive humidity or rebel fighting.
“Did she tell you where she’s been and why she hasn’t contacted us?” Not knowing had driven Gabriella nearly crazy so that she had begun to suspect the worst—that Charlotte was dead. Or almost as bad, that Charlotte had betrayed her.
Lydia closed her eyes, as if trying to remember or perhaps to forget, and her brow furrowed. “I—I think she said she’d been kidnapped …”
“Kidnapped?” Gabby gasped the word as fear clutched at her. That would explain why they hadn’t heard from the former U.S. Marshal. “Where? When?”
“It happened in Paris.”
Gabriella’s breath caught with a gasp. “Paris?”
She was the one who was supposed to have gone to Paris; that was what anyone who’d seen them would have believed. Whoever had abducted Charlotte had really meant to kidnap Gabby. She shuddered in reaction and in remembrance of all the kidnapping attempts she had escaped during her twenty-four years of life. If not for the bodyguards her father had hired to protect her, she probably would not have survived her childhood.
“Is she all right?”
“Yes, yes,” Lydia replied anxiously, “and she said that the kidnapper has been caught.”
“So I can leave …” Gabby should have been relieved; months ago she would have been ecstatic. But since then she had learned so much about herself. So much she had yet to deal with.
“She said for you to wait.”
“She’s coming here?” Nerves fluttered in Gabby’s stomach. She was relieved Charlotte was all right, but she wasn’t ready to see her.
Or anyone else.
“She’s sending someone to get you,” Lydia replied, with obvious disappointment that she would not see her niece.
Gabriella was to be picked up and delivered like a package—not a person. Until she’d met Lydia and the children at the orphanage, no one had ever treated Gabriella like a person. Pride stung, she shook her head and said, “That won’t be necessary.”
“You’re going to stay?” Lydia asked hopefully.
“I would love to,” she answered honestly. Here she was needed not for what she was but who she was. She loved teaching the children. “But I can’t …”
She had no idea who was coming for her, but she wasn’t going to wait around to find out. Given her luck, it would probably be Whit, and he was the very last person she wanted to see. Now. And maybe ever again.
Lydia nodded, but that disappointment was back on her face, tugging her lips into a slight frown. “I understand that you have a life you need to get back to …”
Her existence in St. Pierre had never been her life; it had never been her choice. But that was only part of the reason she didn’t plan on going back.
“But I would love to have you here,” Lydia said, her voice trembling slightly, “with me …”
They had only begun to get to know each other. If they had met sooner, Gabriella’s life would have been so different—so much better.
Tears burning her eyes, Gabriella moved across the small room to embrace the older woman. “Thank you …”
Lydia Green was the first person in her life who had ever been completely honest with her.
“Thank you,” she said, clutching Gabriella close. “You are amazing with the kids. They all love you so much.” She eased back and reached between them to touch Gabby’s protruding belly. “You’re going to make a wonderful mother.”
The baby fluttered inside Gabriella, as if in agreement or maybe argument with the older woman’s words. Was she going to make a wonderful mother? She hadn’t had an example of one to emulate. Her throat choked now with tears, she could barely murmur another, “Thank you …”
She didn’t want to leave, but she couldn’t stay. “Can I get a ride to the bus stop in town?”
She needed a Jeep to take her to a bus and the bus to take her to a plane. It wasn’t a fast trip to get anywhere in this country while the person coming for