“I didn’t want to hurt you. But you’d made me so angry, trying to leave me.”
“That was no excuse—”
“You know that I have an excuse, though. You know how I was raised,” Evgeny reminded her.
All those times he’d come to their apartment, battered from his father’s fists, flashed through her mind. The sympathy she’d felt for him then had become something more once they’d grown up. It had turned to love. But then Evgeny had turned into someone else, the man he’d claimed to hate.
“Then you,” she replied, “should know better than anyone how it feels to be treated that way.”
“See, Teresa,” he said, with that wicked grin that always used to charm her, “you understand me—as no one else ever has.”
“I know you,” she said. “But I don’t understand you at all.”
“No.” He shook his head and reached for her, but when she flinched, he fisted his hands at his sides. “You and I share that special connection.”
“And I told you that you severed that—”
“I’m talking about our daughter,” he said. “She’s the connection we’ll always have.”
“She’s not yours,” she hotly denied.
He laughed. “You cannot deny her paternity. She looks just like me. I am her father.”
But for her eyes, she had actually looked more like Sebastian when he’d held her—as a father would, with comfort and care. Evgeny would never care about anyone as much as he cared about himself.
“You’ll have to order a DNA test to prove that,” she said because she would never admit it. And his lawyer would have to track her down to serve her with the court order to have it done.
“You have changed,” Evgeny admitted. “You’re not the same woman I remember.”
She expelled a shaky breath. “I’m not.” She wasn’t the naive young girl who’d fallen for his charm and his lies and his sad story. “You need to let me go.”
His jaw clenched, a muscle jumping in his cheek. “You can try to run again,” he said. “But you’re not taking her with you. What did you name her?”
He asked as if he intended to change the child’s name if he didn’t like it. She lifted her chin. “You don’t need to know her name because you’re never going to get to know her.”
He leaned closer, his gray eyes hard with rage, and in a vicious whisper demanded, “Tell me her name.”
The fear he always filled her with, even when he was hundreds of miles away, gripped her and had her automatically obeying him. “Samantha. Her name is Samantha.”
He expelled a ragged breath. “For your brother.” He nodded. “I understand…”
“I don’t care if you understand. I don’t care what you think, either.” Her anger and mother’s instincts of protection beat back her fear. “You’re not going to be part of her life.”
“I’m not just going for a DNA test. I’m going for full custody. You’ve stolen over four years of her life from me. I’ll take the rest from you.”
He threatened more than a custody battle, and she knew it. He threatened more than her life even; he threatened to take away her very reason for living. Jessica’s stomach pitched as she realized her worst nightmare was about to come true.
D
MITRI DUCKED HIS CHIN
into the collar of his coat, hoping nobody recognized him. “We shouldn’t have come back here,” he murmured to the driver who hunched low behind the wheel of the small SUV they’d rented days ago as a backup to the van.
“The boss ordered it,” the driver reminded him. “Said we can’t take our eyes off her or she’ll split again.”
“We shouldn’t be hanging around here, not after what we…” Bile rose in his throat. He hadn’t wanted to hurt the older woman, but she’d damn near killed him. He rubbed at his shoulder and winced. He’d dug out the buckshot, but the wounds were raw, like the ones on his face where the woman had clawed his skin.
“We needed to know if that red-haired woman was the woman the boss has been looking for,” the driver replied. “And now we know.”
“That ranch lady didn’t tell us, though,” Dmitri reminded him with a flash of respect despite his pain.
“She is a loyal friend,” the driver grudgingly admitted.
“She probably has more than one here. We should not be here. Especially
here
.” He glanced around the parking lot, hoping no one had noticed them. While they sat in the dark, steam had begun to build up on the windows. “I wish Rurik had not recognized the woman. If he hadn’t, we’d never have had to come to this godforsaken place. Look what happened to Rurik after he came here.”
“He got killed,” Nic recalled with a shudder. “Crushed to death.”
“After he murdered someone,” Dmitri added. He’d first met the man in prison, years ago in Russia. Then they had met again, years later, through the boss. Rurik hadn’t been on the payroll, though. He’d been a contract killer.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Dmitri shuddered, too. “And all hell broke loose around here. Now is not the time for us to be here, not when it’s crawling with cops and reporters. We need to leave.”
“And disobey a direct order?” Nic shook his head. “I do not want to be on the boss’s bad side.”
“He does not have a good side.” Dmitri feared that he would wind up just like Rurik. Dead. But he probably would not be the only one. If the boss was going down, he would not go alone.
Chapter Twelve
Sebastian stared out into the night. Fog had rolled in and he could see nothing outside the lodge. Inside, he saw too much. His reflection bounced back from the dark glass, but he didn’t look at his own image. Instead he stared beyond himself, through the open door to the other bedroom in the suite. He’d left it open so he could make sure that Jessica didn’t try to run.
Even though he couldn’t see out, he knew that Evgeny and his men waited out there, ready to catch her should she try to escape.
Escape?
He pushed his hand through his hair, disgusted with himself. Escape from whom? Him? Had he become as bad as Evgeny—determined to hang on to her no matter what she wanted?
She hadn’t wanted to come back to the resort with him, but the sheriff and Samantha had both urged her to accept his invitation. Hell, it hadn’t been an invitation at all. He’d ordered her to come back to his suite so that he could protect her from Evgeny.
But who would protect her from him?
How could he save her without scaring her more? Without convincing her that he was exactly like the man who’d abused her?
He moved away from the window, drawn to that open door. She lay in the bed with her daughter, her arms wrapped tight around Samantha as if afraid that Evgeny would break in and try to wrest the child from her arms as they lay sleeping. Perhaps she was right to be afraid. That seemed exactly like something the ruthless Russian would do.
Sebastian could be ruthless, too. He’d proven that every time he’d pulled the trigger. He could protect Jessica and Samantha. He would not fail like his father had failed his mother.
She shifted on the mattress, and a pang of guilt struck him that he violated her privacy in watching them sleep. He had no right.
He had no rights at all where Jessica was concerned. But when he turned away, she called out, a soft cry that reached inside him and squeezed his heart. He didn’t remember moving, but he was at her side, kneeling beside the bed.
She cried out again, and Samantha murmured, drawn awake by her mother’s fear.
“Shh,” he soothed the child back to sleep.
The woman was not soothed. Instead her eyes opened, wide with fear, and her mouth opened, a scream on her lips. He could have silenced Jessica with his palm, but almost every time he reached a hand toward her, she flinched. So he silenced her with his mouth instead. He pressed his lips to hers.
She lifted her hands to his hair and he winced, expecting that she would pull him away. Instead she tunneled her fingers into it and clutched him to her.
“I knew he was a real prince,” Samantha murmured.
Sebastian jerked away from her mother while Jessica’s face flushed bright red. She’d been asleep when he’d kissed her; she had no reason to be embarrassed. He was the one who’d been awake and aware of what he was doing.
Kissing her…
His lips tingled and he could still taste her.
“Are you a princess now, Mommy?” Samantha asked, rubbing her knuckles into her sleep-dazed eyes. “Since he kissed you?”
“No, honey. I’m not a princess. You’re dreaming, sweetie,” Jessica said, pressing a kiss to her daughter’s forehead. “Go back to sleep.” She tugged the blanket over the little girl’s shoulders, and then she slipped out of the bed and motioned Sebastian to follow her from the room. She wore one of the hotel robes, which was velvety soft and in a rich gold color that brought out the golden tone of her skin.
Did she wear anything beneath it?
He wanted to reach for the belt of the robe, but she beat him there, tightening it around her waist.
“You were dreaming, too,” he said after she pulled the door almost closed behind them.
“You didn’t kiss me?” she asked with a slight smile.
“Oh, I did that. But you were dreaming before I kissed you. You cried out.”
“I was having a nightmare,” she admitted with a shiver.
“About Evgeny taking Samantha away.”
“Yes.” She shuddered now. “And about what happened today to Helen.”
“She’s going to be okay.”
“Will Samantha? She was there when that happened. She was hiding, but the walls in the old house are thin. She could have heard everything that happened. Will she be okay?”
“Why are you asking me? I am not the person to ask,” he replied. “I don’t know anything about kids.” He hadn’t been one since that awful night when his father hadn’t come for him and Antoine. His gut clenched as the dark descended over him again. He turned back toward the window, but he still couldn’t see out. He could only see inside—to the past.
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.”
J
ESSICA 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 damned. 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.
“T
HIS 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.”