a mother?”
She followed his gaze, her breath audibly catching. “That’s not any of your business.”
He focused on her left hand that clutched the door handle. The fingers were bare but for scrapes and calluses. That didn’t mean she wasn’t married with children. She might have just removed her ring because of the manual labor she obviously did. He ignored the disappointment that cooled the heat in his stomach.
His attraction to her was ridiculous anyway. He dated only princesses and heiresses—women clad in designer gowns, not ragged jeans. Women who wore jewels, not calluses. As Grandfather had constantly lectured him and Antoine, princes could marry only princesses and vice versa. King Omar had practiced what he’d preached; he’d married the princess of a small European country lost during a civil war, and he’d brought her to reign over Barajas with him. If only their princess mother had listened to her father and married a prince instead of a mercenary…
He needed to make this woman listen to him. “What you witnessed makes you my business.” That was the only reason for his interest in her.
“I didn’t witness anything. I don’t want your reward. I just want to leave,” she said, her voice shaky with frustration and that fear she wasn’t able to conceal.
“If you don’t want my money,” he said, carefully hiding his skepticism, “then how about my protection?”
“Protection?” she asked, her eyes widening as she stared up at him.
“Is that not why you didn’t come forward earlier—because you were too frightened?” And perhaps not just for her own safety but also for the child she might have, if that car seat belonged to her. From her reaction, he was almost certain that it did. So she had a child. But did she have a husband? He suspected not because if she had someone to protect her, she should not be so scared. “You need not be afraid.”
She didn’t hold in her snort but expelled it softly.
He lifted his chin, offended at her derision. He was a ruler—coruler—and a former military officer. How dare she doubt him and remind him of someone else in his life who always had? “I will protect you.”
JESSICA LAUGHED. She need not be afraid? She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been afraid. “You can’t protect me.”
No one could.
“Have you already been threatened?” he asked, his voice deepening with concern. “Is that why you haven’t reported what you’ve seen?”
She had other reasons for not reporting, like that relentless media coverage. Had any of those reporters followed them out? Had they caught her image on camera? Even before the explosion, the coverage of the COIN summit had been national—broadcast on every network to every city. She’d tried hard to avoid the cameras every time she came to town or went to the Wind River Ranch and Resort. Until today she was pretty positive she’d been successful.
To see if the reporters had followed her like the prince had, she tried to look out the driver’s door, but she couldn’t see beyond him. He was too big. Too broad. Too close, so close that with every breath she drew, she inhaled him. He even smelled like a prince: regal and rich—musk and leather and a faint trace of citrus. His scent filled her lungs and had her heart pounding furiously. “I—I have to go.”
“You’re not leaving until you tell me what you saw that night,” he ordered as if she were one of his subjects or his servants.
She was certain that would be the only relationship he’d ever entertain with someone like her. He’d boss her around and bully her—just like…
“I can’t stay!” she said, her panic escaping in a squeak that cracked her voice.
Those reporters couldn’t have missed how he’d chased after her. Even though she couldn’t see beyond his broad shoulders, she was certain that they had followed him. They would have to follow the story. She shouldn’t have come here—shouldn’t have let his blue eyes persuade her to risk everything for him. To ease his fear for his friend, she’d confronted hers. Why?
He was nothing more to her than a handsome stranger. And a stranger was all he could ever be.
She tugged harder on the handle, but the door didn’t budge. He held tight to the edge of the rusted metal. With her right hand, she jammed the key in the ignition, and with a silent prayer that it would start the first time, she turned the motor. The engine miraculously roared to life, the Suburban shuddering from the high idle and the missing exhaust.
“What are you doing?” the prince demanded, shouting to be heard over the motor.
She slammed the transmission into Drive and stepped on the gas, pulling away with the door hanging open. The metal slipped through the prince’s grasp. He ran, as if trying to leap inside the vehicle with her, but she accelerated. Then, with her hand shaking, she slammed the door shut.
She spared him only a glance in her rearview mirror. Standing in a cloud of exhaust, he stared after her as if dumbstruck that she had disobeyed him and that she had escaped him. For now. The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach warned her that he would be just as relentless as that other man in tracking down her.
“WHAT THE HELL—”
Sebastian echoed the sheriff’s sentiments as the man joined him in the street. What the hell had just happened?
“—were you thinking!” Wolf yelled. “Running after her like that, you could have been running right into her trap.”
“She didn’t trap me.” Except in her gaze, with her fear and vulnerability.
“She freaked at the courthouse’s security screening,” Wolf said. “Most likely because she was armed. You’re lucky you didn’t get your damn head blown off.”
Sebastian’s temper flared; he did not like being reprimanded like a child or a fool even though he had to acknowledge that he might have acted like one. The fear in the woman’s eyes had brought out his protective instincts so that he’d worried only about her safety and not his own.
“She was not armed,” Sebastian insisted. Or more than likely she would have pulled the gun on him to get him to leave her alone.
“The sheriff is right, Your Highness.” Brenner, the head of the Barajas security detail, said. “You should not have left the courthouse without our protection.”
“I am fine,” Sebastian insisted, even though his pulse raced just like she had raced away from him. “Or I will be when I find her.”
“She is the witness?” Wolf asked.
Sebastian nodded.
“Did she tell you what she saw?” Brenner asked.
“Not yet,” he replied. “The reporters frightened her off with their cameras.”
“That’s why I had my deputies detain them,” Wolf said, his mouth curving into a slight grin as he glanced back toward the courthouse.
“I thought you didn’t believe she was the witness,” Sebastian said. “You were concerned that she might be another hired assassin.”
“And if that had been the case, I didn’t need any more collateral damage in Wind River County.”
“There has been quite enough,” Sebastian agreed. “I need to find her so that we can prevent something happening to anyone else. I need to learn what she saw.” He needed to know if Amir lived or…
The sheriff rubbed his hand along his jaw as if struggling with something. Then, with a sigh, he admitted, “I know where you can find her.”
“Where?”
“The Double J. That’s who the plate is registered to.”
He had been talking to her long enough for the sheriff to run the plate, and still he had not convinced