LITMIR.BIZ

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another beat of silence from the reporters, the room erupted with questions. They shouted over each other, so their voices were unintelligible.

      Prince Sebastian fixed that stare on the crowd again until they subsided to just excited murmurs. “One question at a time,” he directed them.

      “How much is the reward?” Danny Harold asked. The reporter from the local television station had pushed closest to the podium.

      The prince’s reply had the crowd gasping with surprise and awe.

      “So it’s Sheik Amir Khalid who is missing?” Danny tossed out another question. “Do you believe he’s still alive or do you suspect he’s dead?”

      The intensity of Prince Cavanaugh’s gaze changed from intimidation and arrogance to anguish and frustration. “We do not have enough information to determine the sheik’s whereabouts or his physical condition.”

      “And you believe this witness might know where he or his body is?” Although many other reporters crowded the room, it was Danny who asked this question, too. Maybe it was because he was a local that his interest in the story seemed so personal.

      The muscle twitched again in the prince’s lean cheek. “That is what we believe and why we are offering such a substantial reward.”

      Danny snorted. “That substantial reward is going to have every kook coming out of the woodwork with a cockamamie story so they can claim the money.”

      “Kooks?” the prince repeated, arching a golden brown brow.

      “Crazies, crackpots,” Danny translated.

      Prince Sebastian’s lips—the bottom one full and sensual—curved into a slight grin. “My brother, Prince Antoine, has a way of determining when a person is telling the truth or a lie.”

      Danny nodded in agreement. “He was an interrogator with military special forces.”

      The prince neither confirmed nor denied the reporter’s statement. He just stared again, his blue eyes unblinking.

      “And you were a sniper.”

      “Any more questions?” Prince Cavanaugh asked.

      Jessica had many. So did her daughter.

      “What’s a matter, Mama?” The little girl slid out of her chair to join Jessica at the sink. She tugged on her soapy hand to gain her mother’s attention.

      “Nothing,” Jessica replied as she turned toward her daughter. The sun streaming through the windows glinted off the little girl’s honey brown hair and sparkled in her gray eyes, highlighting the child’s concern. Jessica forced a reassuring smile. “I just got caught up in the news, like you sometimes do your cartoons.”

      “Didn’t you ever seen a prince before?”

      Jessica wasn’t exactly certain what she’d seen that night except that it was probably enough to put her daughter and her in danger. Well, more danger than they were already in.

      “There’re no such things as princes,” a husky but feminine voice murmured as Helen Jeffries joined them in the kitchen. The tall woman stomped her boots on the woven rug at the back door, knocking off mud and straw.

      “Is, too,” Samantha said, pointing at the television screen. “He’s a real prince.”

      Helen snorted. “He might legally be a prince, but I’ve yet to meet a man who’s a real prince.”

      The little girl’s forehead scrunched up with confusion. “The ones in my books and movies aren’t real?”

      “Fairy tales,” Helen replied cynically. “Not real.”

      “What about Clay McGuire?” Jessica asked about the rancher Helen dated.

      The older woman snorted again. “He’s a cowboy.”

      “Can’t princes be cowboys?” Samantha asked.

      Jessica chucked her daughter’s slightly pointed chin. “You got that backward, honey.”

      The little girl’s forehead wrinkled with confusion. “How?”

      “Cowboys can’t be princes,” Helen explained with a grin. She stepped closer to the sink and dipped her hands into the sudsy water.

      “You should have let me feed the animals,” Jessica said. Then she would have missed that special report.

      Helen shook her head. She’d owned and managed the Double J alone for years. The older woman was so fiercely independent and proud that she insisted on doing more of the chores herself. Jessica was proud, too, though and had convinced Helen to accept her help in lieu of the room and board she refused to let Jessica pay her. “I’d rather work in the barn than the kitchen,” Helen said as she brushed a fingertip across Samantha’s button nose, leaving a dab of foam on the upturned tip of it.

      Jessica lifted up her daughter and hugged her sweet-smelling body close. “Sweetheart, why don’t you run up to your room and change out of your pajamas and into your clothes?”

      “Do I have school today?” Samantha asked, her gray eyes bright with hope.

      Preschool was in session today, but Jessica didn’t dare bring Samantha into town when it was overrun with media. “No school. You have work to do here instead, young lady. You have to pick up all the toys in your room.”

      “There’re not that many, Mama,” Samantha said, wriggling down from her arms.

      Jessica’s heart clutched with sadness that it was true. She wasn’t able to afford everything her little girl deserved. “You still have to pick them up.”

      Samantha, feet dragging, headed up the back stairwell in the kitchen. The house was a foursquare, two-story farmhouse. It had a large foyer with a grand staircase as well as the back stairwell. It also had more bedrooms than they needed. Now. But the ranch owner had plans to someday turn her home into a women’s shelter. She’d put her plan in motion when she’d offered Jessica shelter more than four years ago.

      Helen narrowed her eyes and focused on Jessica. “What’s going on? You never lie to her.”

      “I have,” Jessica regretfully admitted. Every time the little girl asked about her father.

      With understanding Helen nodded. “Why won’t you bring her to school?”

      “It’s too dangerous.”

      “School is too dangerous?”

      “It’s too dangerous for us to go to town right now.” The prince’s press conference had whipped the media into a frenzy, and they’d already been doing too much filming around Wind River County and the town of Dumont.

      If she’d been caught on camera…

      Helen sighed. “Crazy stuff going on since those damn royals came to Dumont. That explosion. Gunfire. And poor Clay…” His family had been among the most vocal protestors of the COIN summit. Now his youngest boy sat in jail.

      “Mr. McGuire will be okay,” Jessica assured her friend. “He has you.”

      Helen shrugged as if she wasn’t so worried that Jessica usually found her staring at the TV into the early hours of the morning instead of sleeping. “He’s busy. I’m busy. We just see each other occasionally, you know. Nothing serious.”

      Was that really because they were too busy or because they both had their reasons for avoiding involvement? Jessica understood their reasons; she had her own. But then the prince’s face filled the television screen again as the station replayed the earlier live broadcast. His deep blue gaze implored the witness to come forward, to ease some of his anxiety over his missing friend.

      “Can you watch Samantha for me for a little while?” she asked the older woman.

      Helen nodded. “Of course I can. And I don’t blame

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