Chapter Seven
“What are you so afraid of?” Sebastian asked, hating the fear that had drained the color from her face and left her eyes so wide and so very dark.
She tilted her head and stared up at him, incredulous. “After what just happened, how can you ask me that?” She trembled. “Those men—”
“Would have you in that van now if not for me.” Rage heated his blood at the thought of her in that burly man’s grasp. She so delicate and fragile and the man so brutish and strong.
Her breath escaped in a shaky gasp. “You are so arrogant.”
He shrugged. “I need to have some arrogance or I would not be able to lead my country.” Or he would let that voice in his head, the one that told him he wasn’t good enough, undermine his confidence.
Her lips curved into a slight smile. “You would consider that an attribute instead of a flaw.”
“It is an attribute,” he said. “Like integrity and trustworthiness, which I also possess.”
Her smile widened, brightening her pale face. “Of course.”
No doubt he sounded pompous, but that was not his intent. “I am trying to convince you that you can trust me.”
Her smile faded. “I can’t trust anyone.”
The certainty in her voice clenched his heart. “You can trust
me,
” he insisted. “Did I not protect you as I promised I would?”
“Yes. Yes.” She nodded. “And I owe you my gratitude for stepping in and risking your life like you did.”
“You owe me the truth,” he said. “Admit that you witnessed the explosion.”
She shook her head and turned toward the door he’d kicked closed moments ago.
Sebastian could physically stop her and probably would before he let her open that door and just walk out. But he tried one more time to get through to her rationally. “At least have the decency to tell me if my friend is alive or dead.”
She stilled, her body tense.
He held his breath, waiting for her to refuse him again. Then perhaps he would need to turn her over to Antoine. His brother could make her talk; he could make anyone talk. But Sebastian didn’t want her hurt or frightened or manipulated. He suspected she’d already been in that position too many times.
“Alive,” she replied in a tremulous whisper. “The last time I saw him, he was alive.”
His breath shuddered out in a sigh of pure relief. “He’s alive?”
“He was…right after the explosion. But I think he was hurt.”
Some of his relief fled as concern rushed back. They had already known he was hurt, though, because forensics expert, Jane Cameron, had admitted they’d found Amir’s blood in the limo. A lot of blood.
“Didn’t you help him?”
She shook her head. “I was a distance behind the limo when it exploded. It looked as though he must have been thrown clear.”
Perhaps Amir hadn’t been hurt that badly then. But if he hadn’t, why hadn’t he returned to the resort or at least contacted one of them?
“You didn’t get closer to the scene?” he asked, wondering if her tire tracks had been the ones that Jane had found at the site of the explosion. Jane could check out the rusted Suburban now.
As Sebastian had carried this woman away from the parking lot, the other royals had been rushing toward it. Prince Stefan Lutece would call Jane, if she wasn’t already at the resort. Since meeting after the explosion, the two had rarely been apart. Sebastian would need to speak with Jane later about pulling the bullet from the armrest of his door.
“I got closer,” the woman said with a shudder. “I saw the driver.” Her delicate features twisted into a grimace at the memory of what she’d seen. “It was too late to help him.”
“I know.” He stepped up behind her and closed his hands over her slender shoulders.
She shuddered again.
“I am sorry you had to see that.” It was never easy seeing someone die, not even through a scope at long distance.
“That was when I left the scene,” she said.
He tightened his grasp on her shoulders and spun her around to face him. “Without waiting to see if Amir was all right?”
“By the time I had driven up closer to the burning limo, he was already gone.”
“Gone? How? If he was injured, he couldn’t have outrun your vehicle.”
“Someone picked him up,” she said. “With all the flames and the smoke, I wasn’t able to see who. From the height of the taillights as it drove off, I figure it was some kind of truck or SUV. But most people drive trucks or SUVs around here.”
His relief was short-lived as his concern turned to dread. “So anyone could have driven off with him. Even a white van?”
She nodded. “I’m sorry. It could have been.”
And if it had been, it was no wonder that Amir had not contacted them. Even though the explosion hadn’t killed him, those men would have, had they gotten hold of the sheik. And no doubt if Sebastian hadn’t gotten her away from them, they would have killed her, too.
J
ESSICA’S HEAD POUNDED
and her throat had grown raspy from all the questions she’d answered. Not for Sebastian. She’d told him what he’d wanted to hear, but then he had called the others into the room. And she’d had to repeat her story to the other royals, to the forensics expert, Jane Cameron, and to Sheriff Wolf. They had all taken turns interrogating her, and his twin had studied her as she’d replied, as if he were a human lie detector.
She had no idea if she’d passed or failed. All the others had left the room except for the man identical to the one who’d saved her. She suspected his twin did not approve of the risk Prince Sebastian had taken to protect her. Although they talked in low tones, their deep voices vibrated with anger, as if they were arguing.
Over her?
Finally Prince Antoine stepped into the hall, and Sebastian nearly slammed the door between them be cause he shut it with such force.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Why? You told the truth, right?” he asked, fixing her with that implacable stare.
She nodded. “Of course.”
He crossed the sitting area to the desk and pulled open a drawer. He took out a pen and a checkbook, scribbled out something and then tore the check free of the book. He walked back to her and held it out between them.
She clasped her hands together, unwilling to reach for it.
“Take it,” he ordered, pressing the check into her hand.
Her fingers trembled, rustling the piece of paper. Then she noticed the amount and dropped the check as shock filled her. “I—I can’t.”
He bent over to pick it up, and a grimace contorted his handsome face.
“You’re hurt,” she said, and reached out in concern, her hands sliding under his shoulders to help him back up. He’d discarded his suit jacket and wore only a silk dress shirt in a blue nearly as deep as his eyes. Her palms skimmed over the expensive fabric and the hard muscles that rippled beneath it. “You should have a doctor check you out.”
“I don’t need a doctor,” the prince said, his body so tense as he stood close to her that she felt the deep breath he dragged into his lungs. “I just need the whole truth from you.”
“I told you everything I saw that night, which wasn’t much. That’s why I can’t take your money.” She couldn’t take a reward for doing the right thing. While she’d had her doubts earlier about telling him that the missing sheik survived the explosion, she believed that Prince Sebastian was a true friend to the man. He would not cause him any harm.
Jessica wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t cause her any harm, though. Just touching him had her heart racing at an almost painful pace. She jerked her hands off him and stepped back.
But Prince Sebastian followed her, standing so close that his legs brushed against her thighs. His chest and abdomen also rubbed against her breasts. Awareness pooled low in her stomach, spreading heat from the tips of her breasts to the very core of her.
“Is that the only reason you won’t take my check?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You don’t have another reason?”
“Pride? I can’t afford to be proud,” she admitted although she probably didn’t need to point that out to him. He had to see how she dressed, what she drove.
“Then why won’t you take this?” He held up the check. “Because you can’t cash it?”
“I won’t cash it.” She stepped back again and turned toward the door. “So keep it.”
He caught her wrist and spun her around to face him. “Is Jessica Peters your real name?”
“Wh-why would you ask me that?”
“Because my brother says you’re lying about your name, that you’re hiding your real identity.”
God, the man really was a human lie detector.
“I will deny it if you tell him this, but my brother is rarely wrong.”
She couldn’t help but smile at his admission of sibling rivalry. But then a pang of loss clutched at her heart. She’d had a brother, too, and had been as close as the royal twins, if not closer. Because their single mom hadn’t been the most reliable guardian, Sam had been as much parent as brother to her. Hell, Sam had been everything to her. And when he’d died, she’d lost everything, even her common sense.
But now she had her daughter whom she’d named after her brother. She couldn’t lose Samantha, too, and that could happen if anyone discovered her real identity. She drew in a shaky breath and asked, “So you think I’m lying about my name, too?”
“I think you changed your name.” He caught a lock of her hair between his fingers. “I think you tried to change how you look.”
His brother wasn’t the only observant Cavanaugh. She held her lips closed, unwilling to say any more. She’d agreed to tell him what she’d witnessed but nothing else.
“I thought you had dyed your hair to hide from the people seeking the witness,” he continued. “But I have a feeling you’ve been hiding from someone else and for much longer than two weeks.”
She shivered at his insightfulness—and at the horrible memories that rushed over her.
“Who are you hiding from, Jessica, or whatever your real name is?”
“I’m Jessica,” she said, then relented. “Now.” She didn’t want to hear her old name ever again. She didn’t want to go back to that old life, not even in memories. But as she’d already learned, the prince was relentless when he wanted to know something. No doubt he would keep at her until she told him what he wanted to know—what she’d never wanted to talk about again.
“Who are you hiding from?”
“My husband.”
S
EBASTIAN FELT AS THOUGH
he had struck the pavement again. She was married. When he’d seen the car seat, he’d realized she was a mother and had even considered that she might be a wife.
But having confirmation…
“Why are you hiding from your husband?” he had to know.
“Because he told me that if I ever left him, he would track me down and kill me.” She said it matter-of-factly—fatalistically—as if she had every reason to believe her husband would follow through on the threat he had made.
“He was abusive.” That explained the reason she’d flinched whenever Sebastian had reached out to touch her.
“Yes.” Color rushed to her face. “But I—I didn’t know that about him…until after we were married. And then it was too late.”
“Had you tried to leave him before?”
“Yes,” she said, “when he was in prison.”
He wanted to ask her what the man had done that had sent him away. But her story was difficult for her to share; he didn’t want to make it any more traumatic for her.
“He was serving seven years on an assault charge,” she offered, surprising him.
When he gasped, she added, “Not me. He’d lost his temper with someone who worked with him—put the man in a coma. Of course he told me it was self-defense, that the man had assaulted him first.”
“You believed him?”
“No, but no one calls Evgeny Surinka a liar. I was relieved when he went to prison. But he had people watching me,” she continued, “making sure I didn’t leave.”
“You had no one to help you escape him?” Had she been all alone?
“My brother died before I married Evgeny. He was all I had.”
Until now. Now she had him—if she would accept his offer of protection. “So you stayed?”
“I tried to leave,” she said. “I filed for divorce while he was in prison.”
“What happened?”
A soft cry escaped her lips. “He got out.”
“Jessica…”
“That was almost five years ago.”
“He hurt you.”
She flinched as if reliving the pain. “That first night he got out, he put me in the hospital.”
“Oh, my God…”
Her breath shuddered out, as if with relief. “But that’s how I got away. A nurse realized what had happened and who he was. She gave me some money and a bus ticket. She helped me leave.”
“Where did you leave?”
“New York.”
Not only had she changed her appearance but also her speech. He detected no trace of city in her soft voice. “You put a lot of distance between the two of you. No wonder he hasn’t found you.”
“Until now,” she said, the color draining from her face again to leave her eyes so dark and haunted.
“He was one of those men in the van?” If so, Sebastian wished to hell that he’d taken the damn shot now.
“No.” She shuddered. “But they are his men.”
“He has men? Who is he?”
“Evgeny Surinka,” she repeated the man’s name. But it meant nothing to Sebastian. She added, “He emigrated to the United States with his father when he was just a twelve-year-old kid. His father is an infamous Russian mobster. Or he was, until Evgeny took over.”
No wonder she had been hiding for so many years. To protect herself and her child.
“And do you have a child?” he asked.
“A daughter.” A smile lit up her face so that it glowed with love. Her beauty stole away his breath for a moment. “She’s four.”
“Where is she? Is someone holding her?”
“She’s safe at the ranch with my friend Helen Jeffries. Helen owns the Double J. She would never let anyone take Samantha. She treats her like she’s her granddaughter. Hell, Samantha might be safer with Helen than she is with me. Evgeny doesn’t know about her,” she said. Her voice cracking with emotion and old pain, she added, “I didn’t know I was pregnant when I left.”