by Lisa Childs
A hand, small but rough with calluses, slid over his, entwined their fingers and tugged him back around to face her. Her dark eyes warm with sympathy, she stared up at him.
“You know why I’m asking you. Ever since you commiserated with Samantha, I’ve been dying to ask you…how you could. How did you know everything that my little girl was feeling today?”
“You know why,” he said, “because I felt it, too.”
“How old were you?”
“Six—almost seven. But I don’t remember how old Antoine and I were when Dad first taught us how to play hide and don’t come out until he gave us the safe word.”
“Was he concerned that people were going to come after you because you’re royalty? You and your brother were probably at great risk of being kidnapped and held for ransom.”
If only money had been what those people had wanted…
He shook his head. “Revenge.”
“Held for revenge?”
“My father was Special Forces. He’d made a lot of enemies over the years—enemies who had wanted to see him suffer. A lot.”
She glanced to that closed door. “And nothing makes a parent suffer more than hurting their child.”
“He won’t get her,” Sebastian assured her. Taking advantage of their entwined fingers, he tugged her closer so that she pressed against his chest. And he closed his arms around her.
She drew in a deep breath that lifted her soft breasts in that soft robe. Then she expelled the breath and relaxed against him. “The men who wanted to get revenge on your father, they didn’t get you and your brother. Samantha could be safe.”
He tightened his arms around her. She had shared so much with him today that it was only fair he do the same. “They didn’t get me and my brother, but…”
She stilled against him. “Oh, my God…”
“But—” he forced himself to continue “—they got my mother. That’s how I know what Samantha heard today…because Antoine and I heard everything from where we were hiding.”
Her arms slid around his back and squeezed. “I’m so sorry.”
“And he…” He stopped to clear the emotion from his throat. “He never came to get us out of our hiding place.”
She gasped. “Your father, too?”
“He died trying to protect our mother.” But he had failed. Would Sebastian? Was he the right person to try to save Jessica?
“And you and your brother. He saved the two of you,” she said. “He saved his sons.”
“It was his job to protect my mother, you know. Grandfather had hired him to be her bodyguard. After he’d left Special Forces, he’d been a mercenary. King Omar was willing to pay any price to keep his only child safe. While he’d been worried about her physical safety, he should have been worried about her emotional safety. She fell for my father.” Tom Cavanaugh had been an impressive man: over six-and-a-half-feet-tall with muscles and tattoos and scars, and golden blond hair and blue eyes. He’d been his and Antoine’s hero as well as their father. “But King Omar would not approve their marriage. In fact he forbade it, so they ran off and eloped.”
“Why wouldn’t he approve? Because your father was a mercenary? You said he was in Special Forces before that. Was he American?”
Sebastian nodded.
“So you’re half American?”
He shrugged. “Grandfather never acknowledged that half of us. After we came to live with him, he never allowed us to talk about our father.” That hadn’t stopped him, though, from constantly comparing them to their failure of a father. He’d been so angry and bitter over the senseless loss of his only child. “Most people don’t know what happened or that we are, as Grandfather said, half commoner.”
“So he didn’t approve of your father because he was American?”
“Because he wasn’t royalty,” Sebastian explained. “Grandfather was not prejudiced about nationality. He married a European princess himself. He believed royalty should marry only royalty.”
She flinched as if he’d reached for her. But he hadn’t lifted his hands from his sides. “So he was a snob.”
Sebastian shrugged. “I don’t know. I think he was just realistic. And he was right about my father being the wrong man to marry a princess.”
“Your father loved her, and he loved you,” she said in defense of a man she’d never met. “He taught you and your brother to hide from danger. What was the safe word he used for you to come out?”
“Oreos.”
“What?”
“He’d sneak ’em to us even though Mother didn’t approve of us having sweets—said that they made us too hyper. So Dad would sneak us cookies. It was our secret with him—one even she didn’t know.”
She squeezed his arm. “You loved him so much.”
He hadn’t realized that he had. He’d almost let Grandfather’s bitterness eradicate all the good memories. If only there had been more…
“He never prepared us for him not coming for us,” Sebastian admitted.
“How long did you two stay in hiding?”
“Too long,” he admitted with a heavy sigh. “If we’d come out sooner and called for help, we might have been able to save them.”
She shook her head. “Or you two might have been killed, too. You did the right thing, remaining hidden. You both must have been so scared.” She sucked in a shaky breath. “Like Samantha must have been so scared today.” She glanced out the window to where the sky was beginning to lighten behind the fog. “Yesterday.”
“She’s fine now. But you have to make sure she sees Helen and knows that she’s fine, too,” he said. “After what she heard she will need that assurance.”
She nodded. “Of course. I didn’t let her see Helen earlier because of the blood and the swelling.”
“And that was the right thing to do.” Because he could never get out of his head those images he’d seen once he and Antoine had come out of the darkness. They would haunt him forever. “But she will need to see her before you go running off like you planned.”
She stepped back from him. “I need to run.”
“I can’t let you do that,” he said. And even at the risk of sounding like Evgeny, he had to add, “I can’t let you leave.”
JESSICA SHIVERED. Her white knight hadn’t taken off, as Evgeny had insinuated at the hospital; instead he’d taken over, bustling her and Samantha back to the resort and his private suite.
“Go back to bed,” he said, issuing another of his autocratic orders. “You’re cold.”
It wasn’t the cool temperature in the room chilling her skin; it was his demeanor. And who it reminded her of. Was she forever doomed to be attracted to the wrong kind of man?
“I should call the hospital and check on Helen,” she said, crossing the room to the phone.
“That’s a good idea,” Sebastian said. “I’ll give you some time alone.”
She suspected that after what he had just shared with her, he was the one who needed time alone. So she watched him leave the room and waited until he closed the door to the hall before dialing the phone. She could have called a cab to take her and Samantha to the train station because he was gone and wouldn’t have overheard.
But instead she called Helen. A gruff male voice answered, “Hello?”
“Mr. McGuire, it’s Jessica Peters,” she identified herself. “How is she?”
“There was no swelling in her brain, so they woke her up from the coma. She talked to the sheriff and gave him descriptions of the two guys who attacked her. Wolf said they matched descriptions you gave of the two guys who tried grabbing you at the resort.” Clay’s deep voice vibrated with concern. “What’s going on, Jessica?”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “Tell Helen I’m sorry.”
“Jessica, if you need help…”
“She gave me help. That’s why she got hurt,” Jessica said. “I don’t want her to get hurt any more.”
“She won’t. I’m not leaving her side, visiting hours be da
mned. She’s in danger, and I’m going to protect her no matter how hard the damn stubborn woman fights me.” He chuckled. “Hell, I’m going to ask her to marry me.”
“Which one of us has got the concussion?” a groggy voice murmured in the background.
Jessica’s heart clutched with regret.
Clay chuckled with relief and affection. “She’s awake. Do you want to talk to her?”
More than anything, Jessica needed her friend. “No, let her rest. I’ll bring Samantha to see her tomorrow.”
She glanced to the window and the lightening sky. “Later today.”
Then, no matter what Sebastian said, she was leaving Wind River County.
“THIS IS A DANGEROUS PLAN,” Antoine said as he paced the floor of his suite. It was adjacent to Sebastian’s, and the door to the hall was open so that he could hear if Jessica tried to run.
“Yes,” Sebastian agreed. “It is very dangerous.”
Antoine stopped pacing and stared at him, his light blue eyes full of concern. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“Perhaps.”
“Protecting her is not going to bring back our mother.”
“No.”
“You’re not Dad, no matter how much Omar tried to convince you that you are.”
“Then I should not get myself killed.”
“Sebastian!” Antoine’s temper snapped. “Do not be flippant.”
“I’m not. I’m scared,” he admitted, an admission he had not made since they’d cowered together in that closet so long ago. “But I don’t know what else to do.”
Antoine sighed. “You can’t let them go.”
“No, I can’t.”
“It’s not in your nature to walk away from someone who needs help or protection. You always feel responsible for everyone else’s safety. That’s why you’re such a good leader.”
Sebastian blew out a breath of surprise. His brother had never been so vocal before, certainly not with praise.
“And because you’re such a good leader,” Antoine continued, “you can’t go getting yourself killed.”
“You really don’t want to rule Barajas alone,” he joked.
Antoine cursed him again.
Sebastian held up his palms to ward off the vulgar insults. “Don’t worry, getting killed is not part of my plan.”
A muscle twitched in Antoine’s cheek. “You can’t count on everything going according to plan.”
“No, I can’t.” The last time everything was supposed to go according to plan, he’d wound up in the dark waiting for a safe word that never came, and screams ringing in his ears. This plan could not go that wrong. But his brother was right to be concerned. Sebastian was certain that someone was going to end up dead.
Chapter Thirteen
“You cannot keep me here,” she said. “I am not one of your subjects. I am an American citizen, free to come and go as I please.”
He stared down at her, his blue gaze unsettlingly intent; his jaw clenched so tightly. “You are a fool to leave here, to leave my protection.”
Juggling the blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms, she pulled open the back door and snapped her sleeping child into the booster-style car seat. Then she quickly shut that door and jerked open the driver’s side.
“I don’t want your protection,” she said. “You’re no better than he is.”
“And you’re an even bigger fool than I suspected you were.”
She lifted her hand to slap him, but he caught her wrist.
“Your husband warned me that I actually needed protection from you,” he said. “Apparently I should have heeded his advice…because you refuse to heed mine.”
“You didn’t offer advice,” she said, tugging free of his grasp. “You issued orders. I’ve had enough of being bullied. No more. If you want to boss people around, I suggest you go back to your own damn country where they have to listen to you.”
“Perhaps I shall.”
She slid into the driver’s seat, and with shaking hands, grasped the steering wheel. “Have a safe trip home, then.”
Sebastian grabbed the door before she could shut it, as he had back at the courthouse just the day before. Had it been only a day since she’d met him? It felt like a lifetime ago.
Given how short her life might be, maybe it had been a lifetime.
“Don’t forget that I warned you,” he said before slamming the door shut for her.
She twisted the key in the ignition. As it had at the courthouse, the motor actually started on the first try. Her stomach clenched with regret and nerves.
This is crazy…
“Damn Antoine. He always has to have the last word,” Sebastian said; his deep voice vibrated behind the seats where he crouched on the floor.
“He seems to believe it might actually be the last word he speaks to you.” For even though Antoine, posing as his twin, had said the words to her, she knew he’d meant them for Sebastian. His brother was as skeptical of the plan as she was, probably partially because he had been enlisted to protect Samantha. Her little girl was not inside that bundle of blankets she’d buckled into the car seat. She was waiting inside the resort for her temporary guardian.
Prince Antoine Cavanaugh as a babysitter?
Jessica could not believe she had entrusted him with her sweet little girl. But Samantha had not been scared of him, probably because he looked almost exactly like Sebastian except for his eyes. Not only were they a lighter blue but they were also full of cynicism. Despite everything that Sebastian had been through, he was not a cynic. In fact he was more of an optimist than she could ever be because he actually believed his plan could work.
THIS IS NOT GOING TO WORK…
Sebastian studied the ranch through the small circle of the scope he’d taken off his long rifle. Kate, the gun, was there, too—the Remington propped in the corner of the kitchen. Except for a rabbit and some birds, nothing moved outside. Not even the men Antoine had sent ahead to guard the perimeter of the ranch. Were Brenner and the others out there?
Antoine had sworn they were all trustworthy, after he’d interrogated them. If not for his twin vouching for Brenner and the other members of their Barajas security detail, Sebastian never would have allowed Jessica back on the ranch. It had been cleared as a crime scene, all the evidence collected and forwarded to the lab, thanks to Jane’s fast work as the forensics expert. The front door had been replaced, but the house still needed to be cleaned up.
“I still wish you would have let a cop pose as you,” he said. Jane had offered despite Prince Stefan’s protest.
His original plan had had Jessica and Samantha both safe with Antoine at the resort while he and Jane or a deputy, posing as Jessica, flushed out Evgeny.
Jessica sighed, and her breath whispered across the back of his arm as she stood beside him, staring out the window. “That wouldn’t have worked.”
“Why? You think Evgeny got to someone in the sheriff’s office?”
“You must think it’s possible or you would have brought Sheriff Wolf in on your little plan.”
He sighed now. “I would have, had you agreed to let a female deputy pose as you.”
“Evgeny wouldn’t have fallen for it,” she said. “I grew out my hair, straightened and dyed it, changed the way I walk and talk, and from just a glimpse of me on a news clip, he knew it was me. He would damn well know if it wasn’t me.”
“You sure he knows it’s you?” he asked, gesturing toward the stillness outside. “We’ve been here a couple of days, and he hasn’t made a move, not even to send his men ahead.” She’d been going out to feed the animals, making sure she’d be seen if anyone was watching the ranch.
“Patience isn’t your strong suit?”
He flashed back to all the waiting he’d done in the military, waiting for that perfect shot. It hadn’t bothered him then because he’d been waiting alone. It was waiting with someone that sent him back to his dark past, to the time he’d spent in the hiding place wi
th Antoine.
But waiting with Jessica was even worse than the dark because there was nothing to distract him from his attraction to her. Every time she moved, every time she breathed he wanted her more. “Patience used to be one of my attributes.”
“It’s never been one of mine,” she admitted. “And this waiting is killing me. I’ve never been away from Samantha before.”
“Do you want to call her again?” he asked, pulling the untraceable cell phone from his pocket. He and Antoine were both using them, just in case Evgeny tried tapping their phone lines. His twin and the little girl were playing games and watching cartoons in Antoine’s suite, on which he’d placed a Do Not Disturb order so that the hotel staff would not see her.
“And interrupt her fun with Uncle Antoine?” she asked with a derisive snort.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” he said with not much sincerity. “But she needed something to call him.”
“I think your brother would have preferred Prince Antoine or maybe Your Highness.”
“And that’s precisely why I told her to call him uncle,” Sebastian admitted, chuckling as he remembered the annoyance that had crossed his brother’s face.
“Well, at least she’s having fun.”
“You’re not?” he teased.
“Waiting for someone to try to kill me? Yeah, it’s great fun.” All the color drained from her face, and her mouth fell open with a gasp. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It was so insensitive…after what you told me about…”
“I shouldn’t have told you about that,” he said, wishing he could take back the confidence he’d shared with her. He’d told her too much; he could tell from the way she avoided looking at him the past couple of days that he’d made her uncomfortable.
“Have you ever told anyone?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“At least you have your brother.”
“Your brother is dead,” he remembered. “How did that happen?”
“He was murdered,” she said almost matter-of-factly. But from what she’d revealed about their lives, she hadn’t had an easy upbringing, either. “He was a bouncer at one of Evgeny’s father’s clubs. He got in a scuffle with someone, and they stabbed him.”