“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.