Ransom for a Prince Read Free Page A

with him out there, determined to find her.
    And kill her.
    But it wasn’t just her life she risked by coming here. She could be risking the sheik’s, too. What if he was safer if no one knew he was alive? But she remembered the anguish and frustration in Prince Sebastian Cavanaugh’s blue gaze, and guilt churned in her stomach. He had to know what had happened to his friend. She had to tell him.
    Her fingers trembling, she fumbled with the handle before opening the driver’s door and sliding out of the vehicle. Then, head down, she hurried past the reporters’ vans. She hesitated outside the county courthouse before pushing open the door and stepping inside. Security scanners blocked the foyer, but while she stepped into a line, she could see into the outer office where the conference had been held. A few reporters waited while cameramen filmed the deputies taking calls.
    Were those calls coming from people trying to claim the reward? But no one else had seen what she had, except for whoever she’d spied driving away from the scene. Maybe that person had decided to come forward and Jessica didn’t need to be here; she didn’t need to risk her own safety. Or Samantha’s.
    She stepped out of the security line and backed toward the doors. She couldn’t risk going inside with all those cameras. But before she could turn away, Prince Sebastian looked up from the desk over which he’d been leaning. And his deep blue gaze met hers.
    Panic accelerated her pulse, so that it leaped at her throat and hammered at her wrists. Even though several feet and people separated them, she had confirmation that the television screen had not made him more handsome than reality. With his golden brown hair, those piercing eyes and his long, lean body, he was as handsome in person as he’d been on the screen. More so even. Heat flashed through her along with the panic.
    But then a camera flashed and another lens turned toward her, and panic won out. She turned and ran. But the sick feeling in her stomach warned her that it was already too late. Coming here had been a mistake. One that would probably get her killed.

Chapter Two
    When the redhead turned and ran, breaking that strange connection between them, Sebastian’s breath shuddered out. Then, after those breathless seconds that he’d held perfectly still when their gazes had met, he moved again. Shoving through the security screeners, he pushed open the doors to the courthouse and raced after her.
    She had to be the witness because he’d glimpsed the fear in her dark eyes, which had widened when the cameras had turned on her. The reporters hadn’t missed his interest in the woman who’d entered the courthouse but hesitated at the screeners. Sebastian had wanted to draw out the witness, not just for information about his friend but also to warn her.
    Apparently she didn’t need his warning; she already knew she was in danger. And she ran as if an assassin—not a prince—pursued her. Despite his legs being longer than hers, he had to run to catch her. She’d already jumped inside her rusted SUV, but he grabbed the door before she could swing it closed.
    “Let me go!” she implored him, her voice cracking with fear.
    He shook his head. “You cannot leave until you say what you came here to tell me.”
    “I—I didn’t come here to talk to you.”
    “You are not the one who called and asked if I was at the office?”
    Color suffused her delicately featured face. “No—No, that wasn’t me.”
    He would not need Antoine’s assistance to determine if she spoke the truth or lies. She was not a very good liar. “Then why were you coming into the courthouse?”
    “Uh, I have a ticket to pay.”
    “You left before you paid it,” he pointed out.
    “I—I forgot my checkbook.”
    “Show me the citation,” he challenged her.
    The color in her cheeks deepened to a darker red, nearly the same shade as her long auburn hair. “I forgot that, too.”
    “You’re quite