Romancing the Crown: Max & Elena

ROMANCING THE CROWN: MAX & ELENA

The Disenchanted Duke

MARIE FERRARELLA

Secret-agent Sheikh

LINDA WINSTEAD JONES

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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The Disenchanted Duke

MARIE FERRARELLA

ROMANCING THE CROWN

A kingdom holds its breath…a duke comes out of hiding…trial and temptation meet as the search for the missing crown prince of Montebello stretches across the globe!

Meet the major players in this royal mystery…

Duke Maximillian Ryker Sebastiani: The Disenchanted Duke will do anything to help the search for his missing cousin, the crown prince of Montebello. Even give up his precious anonymity: and maybe his heart!

Cara Rivers: Life has taught the bounty hunter to trust no one. Now her destiny rests in the hands of an intriguing man whose very identity is suspect.

King Marcus Sebastiani: His Majesty hopes the criminal his nephew Max seeks will hold the key to find his missing son and heir.

Kevin Weber, aka Jalil Salim: Is he a petty criminal? Or a threat to the crown of Montebello?

Dearest Reader,

In The Disenchanted Duke you have before you my favourite type of story: the feisty, chipper heroine going toe-to-toe with the strong, handsome, sombre hero. During the course of the story, she shows him it’s all right to be human, and he shows her it’s all right to be vulnerable. Mix in a little danger, a little intrigue, a good dose of banter and healthy sex, and voilà, you have (I hope) a good read to curl up with on a rainy day. Or a sunny day. Or maybe not even a day at all, but an evening. Anyway, the point is that I love writing this kind of story and, I hope, this love translates into a really good read for you, because some of what I’m feeling when I’m getting to know these characters who have leaped off the keyboard and popped up on my computer screen has to filter back to you, the reader. I’ve never tackled a duke or a bounty hunter before, so after one hundred and thirty books, I can honestly say this was a new experience for me. I sincerely hope that it is a pleasing, exciting one for you, as well.

Whatever you do, keep reading! And from the bottom of my heart, I wish you love.

Marie Ferrarella

Chapter 1

“You got a strange call in this morning that you might not want to return.”

Max Ryker had just walked into the first-floor office that he maintained in Newport Beach’s trendy Fashion Island, a warm check in his pocket and the satisfying rush of a job well done still coursing through his veins. He paused before closing the outer door, puzzled by the enigmatic sentence his grandfather had just greeted him with.

“Well, seeing as how I just wrapped up a case for Lilah Beaumont.” He mentioned the name of the most recent Hollywood star who had availed herself of his well-honed investigative services, “if the call is about taking on a new assignment, strange or not, the odds are I’ll be returning it.”

William Ryker pivoted the wheelchair he’d learned to operate expertly like an extension of the legs that no longer obeyed his command and looked at his grandson. A fortuitous twist of fate had brought Max back into his life nearly sixteen years ago after an absence of almost twenty. It wasn’t many men who found themselves learning to become a grandfather to a full-grown man.

For all intents and purposes, he and Max came from two different worlds. But Bill was grateful for the chance to bridge that gap and the years that had come before.

Grateful, too, that even now his handsome, thirty-six-year-old grandson had gone out of his way to find a place for him in his life. Bill spent his days working as Max’s all-around man Friday at the detective agency Max had started up several years after he left his birthplace, the tiny kingdom of Montebello, and came to live in Southern California. Felled by a robbery suspect’s bullet five years ago and confined to a wheelchair by a shattered vertebra, Bill found that working at the agency gave him the opportunity to use the experience he’d amassed in his years on the L.A. police force.

It made him feel useful, something he knew Max acitly understood.

“I don’t know about that,” Bill murmured in response as he moved the large wheels of his chair to the desk where he’d left the carefully written message. His aim was less than perfect, and one of the wheels hit the side of the desk. He cursed quietly, righting his position.

Max watched his grandfather maneuver his wheelchair. He knew better than to get behind Bill and push. A man’s pride was a fragile thing and should be respected. Still, it bothered him to see the man struggle.

Max suppressed a sigh. “I wish you’d let me get you a motorized one.”

It was familiar ground. They’d covered it more than once before. Bill knew the concern came out of love rather than impatience or a tendency to patronize, so it didn’t irritate him. He picked up the phone message, then spun the chair around 180 degrees.

“And I told you I don’t need one of those fancy things. How’m I supposed to get my exercise if I sit on one of those metal magic carpets? Besides,” he snorted, “the batteries could die while I’m out in the middle of nowhere, then what?”

Max shook his head. Sometimes he thought the Rockies would sooner crumble than his grandfather would change his mind once he’d made it up.

But for argument’s sake, he said, “Then you call me on the cell phone you’d have with you and I’d come and get you.”

The answer made no impression. “Supposing you’re occupied?”

Bill emphasized the last word as if there was only one way that someone as handsome as his six-foot-one grandson could be occupied. He raised and lowered bushy black-and-gray brows in a devilish fashion, wishing with all his heart that he was thirty-six again, too, and whole.

Max grinned fondly at the old man. “For you, Grandpa, I’d always make time.”

Funny word, “grandpa,” Bill mused. He’d always thought he’d hate the sound of it, that hearing it applied to himself would make him feel old. But he had been separated from both his grandsons by his late daughter, Helen, for so long that all he felt whenever he heard the name was grateful.

“Here.” Bill held out the yellow piece of paper he’d written the long telephone number on. The former police sergeant fervently hoped that what was on the piece of paper would not ultimately take the young man out of his life again. Not after he’d waited all this time to have Max come into it.

Max’s smile faded just a shade as he read the message. It was just two words: Please call, and a name, followed by a telephone number.

The number was only vaguely familiar, but the name—the name was something else again. The name belonged to a man Max owed his allegiance to. Not as a subject of the man’s country, and not even because King Marcus of Montebello was his uncle, but because the monarch of the small country was his friend as well. At times, when he was growing up, Max had felt that Marcus was the only friend he had in a country where he’d never quite fit in, despite his royal ties and family name.

Max’s full name was Maximillian Ryker Sebastiani and he was a titled member of the royal ruling house of Montebello, a small, proud country that occupied an island located halfway around the world from the United States. But he’d shed his title and then his last name in what had proved to be a semifutile bid for anonymity. He’d wanted no part of a house that had spawned the likes of his father, Antonio, the dashing, womanizing duke who had warmed countless beds and broken Max’s mother’s heart long before she died of leukemia.

His mother had died when Max was fourteen, his father when he was eighteen, and his desire to be part of the royal farce, as he saw it, sometime between the two life-shaping events. Although he’d inherited the title of duke when his father died, he refused to use it. Soon after his father’s funeral, he’d joined the royal army.

But two years later had found him feeling just as restless, just as displaced as ever. So he’d packed up a few belongings and left his father’s country, hoping to find his true destiny somewhere within his mother’s homeland.

To his surprise and relief, his grandfather had welcomed him with open arms and put him up in the house where his mother had known happier days. For Max it turned into the homecoming he’d hoped for. After searching for his roots for twenty years, he’d finally found a place for himself.

He’d conceived of the agency six months after his grandfather’s fateful encounter with a robbery suspect had landed Bill flat on his back with nothing to look forward to. He’d deliberately chosen the detective agency to give his grandfather’s life a purpose. As a bonus, it had given him one, too.

Bill watched his grandson look at the note and could almost hear the wheels turning in the younger man’s head. Max had a call to make. He turned his wheelchair around again, heading for the door.

“Open the door for me, boy. I need to get one of those dinky cups of coffee they overcharge you for at the café,” Bill told him, referring to the small coffee shop located along the outside perimeter of the eight-floor office building.

Max crossed to the door, opening it. He knew what this was about. Nobody respected space the way his grandfather did. “You don’t need to clear out.”

Bill spared him a kindly look. “Figure I’ll give you some privacy.”

Max closed the door after his grandfather and went back to the desk. Taking a seat, he placed the message down on the blotter and studied it for a long, silent moment before he finally picked up the receiver. Blowing out a breath, he pressed the series of numbers that would connect him with the palace. Something akin to a melody resounded as he tapped on the keys.

It took awhile for the connection to kick in. The line, he knew without being told, was a private one which went directly to the king’s own offices, circumventing the army of secretaries and go-betweens that were usually encountered when making such calls.

The only person Max had to go through was the King’s personal secretary, a gruff old man named Albert who was exceedingly protective of the monarch’s time. Only after Max had volunteered the name of his father’s last mistress did Albert believe he was who he claimed to be and put him through.

“I would have thought that old bulldog would have died years ago. What is he, eighty?” Max asked when he finally heard his uncle’s deep voice say hello on the other end of the line.

“Eighty-two,” the king corrected. “And I couldn’t get along without him. Maximillian, my boy.” There was sincere pleasure in the monarch’s deep voice. “How long has it been? Never mind, whatever the time, it has been far too long.”

Max knew exactly how long it had been. Though he cared a great deal for his uncle and aunt, and was very fond of his brother Lorenzo, his visits to Montebello were few and very far between.

“Almost eight years since the last visit.”

“Eight years,” Marcus marveled. Where did time go? It seemed like only yesterday that the boy had gone. “Don’t believe in overstaying your welcome, do you, Maximillian?”

Max knew that his uncle’s time was far too valuable for Marcus to have called only to shoot the breeze. There was some other reason behind the call.

“Something like that. My grandfather said you called with urgent business.” He embellished slightly, but he had a feeling he was on the right track.

“I’m surprised he gave you the message. He was rather evasive about when you’d be in when I told him who I was.”

Max smiled to himself. He knew how cantankerous his grandfather could be. A plainspoken man, Bill made it clear that royalty didn’t impress him. “You have Albert, I have Grandpa.”

“I see your point,” Marcus conceded graciously. He would have liked nothing better than an opportunity to catch up with his dashing, nonconformist nephew, but there were more pressing issues at hand. “Well, then, to business. I need a favor.”

It was rare that Marcus ever asked for anything. Still, time had taught Max to qualify things and not jump in headfirst, eyes shut. “As long as it doesn’t involve returning to Montebello on a permanent basis, you only have to ask.”

Marcus paused. When he spoke, there was a detectable sadness in his voice. “Dislike us that much, do you, Maximillian?”

It wasn’t the country or his relatives that Max disliked, it was the memory of his father that haunted him.

“I’ve always been more American than royal, Uncle Marcus, you know that. I never fit in. Too much pomp and circumstance to suit me. Life is to be savored and explored, not sampled through a gilded cage. What’s the favor?”

Marcus weighed his words carefully. “It would actually be right up your alley, as you ‘Americans’ say. I hear you’re a private investigator these days.”

Max knew that his uncle possessed an extensive network for garnering information, not the least of which was Gage Weston, the nephew of the king of Penwyck. Marcus usually had all the answers to his questions before he ever voiced them aloud.

“Yes, I am.”

“Doing well?”

To the untrained ear, it sounded like a typical conversation between a man and the nephew he hadn’t seen in years.

“Yes,” Max said.

Marcus laughed. “Talkative as ever, I see.” And then his voice became audibly more serious. “All right, Maximillian, I need you to track down a Kevin Weber for me. I’m told he recently—” there was a pause as Marcus hunted for the right words “—jumped bail, I believe it is called. He is wanted for crimes committed in a small town in Colorado.”

“That’s the expression.” Max frowned as he wrote down the name. So far, this wasn’t making any sense. “What do you want with a so-called American bail jumper?”

There was another pause, a longer one this time. And then Marcus said, “Nothing is what it seems, Maximillian, but for now, that is all the information you need. Weber has been spotted in a small town in New Mexico. Tacos or Chaos—”

“Taos?” Max suggested, trying not to laugh.

Even now, he could picture his uncle, his stately brow furrowed as he tried to remember. Marcus was the one his mother should have married, the stable, noble older brother, not his far more outgoing, charming younger brother who broke hearts as a way of feeding his own need for adulation and adoration. Max would have gladly called Marcus “father.”

“Yes,” Marcus declared. “That is the place. I need this Weber brought back to Montebello.”

They both knew that Weber was not the man’s real name, but because, despite precautions, you never knew who was listening, the alias the man went by in America would suffice. In truth, “Weber” belonged to a group that was as evil as its name: the Brothers of Darkness. It was they whom the king suspected might have something to do with Prince Lucas’s disappearance. Ever since the news broke that Lucas had survived the plane crash over the Rockies a year earlier, the royal family had been searching for the long-missing and beloved Prince of Montebello. Ironically “Weber” was wanted for trying to break into the Chambers ranch, the very place Lucas had last been seen. And now that the king’s intelligence agency had positively identified Weber as a member of the Brothers, there was no doubt, in the king’s mind anyway, that Weber had not been a mere burglar, but a man on a mission for the Brothers. A mission that might have resulted in the capture of Lucas, if Weber had had the chance to catch up with him before he was arrested for breaking and entering. Now that Weber had jumped his bail, the king’s only hope was that Max would catch up with him before Weber—or any of the Brothers—did.

“When you bring Weber back,” the king began, for the idea that Maximillian would fail to bring the man to Montebello never entered the king’s mind, “you and I and Tyler will meet. We need to talk. Extensively. But until then—well, I am afraid that these lines are not always secure.”

No, Max thought, remembering life in the palace, they were never that. And the lines were not the only things that weren’t secure. You never knew who might be listening in on a conversation. In Montebello, beneath its clear blue skies and inviting scenery, there was a state of almost constant intrigue, something he’d never gotten used to or appreciated. He liked his intrigue in small doses, wrapped in the cases he handled, not seeping into his personal life.

“I understand. But you have to give me more than that to work with.”

“I’ll have Albert send you a fax of the man’s photograph.”

Max laughed shortly, unable to picture the crusty old man operating anything more complex than a two-line telephone. “How long did it take someone to teach him how to fax?”

“Longer than most people would have been patient with, but the result is what matters. Now, along with the photograph, I can give you a more exact location on Weber, but nothing further right now.”

Max nodded to himself. “Give me what you can.”

Taos, New Mexico, One week later.

As unobtrusively as possible, she checked the small handgun she carried in the holster strapped to the inside of her thigh. Barely the size of a derringer, the weapon contained a clip with a surprising amount of ammunition. It was a specially made gift for her, courtesy of the gunsmith whose family she had once lived with.

There was certainly enough in the clip to bring the bail-jumping scumbag in the motel room just thirty feet away down to his knees. Except that she didn’t need him on his knees, she needed him on his feet. On his feet and walking toward the car she had parked out back.

Cara Rivers hadn’t had time to scope out the rundown motel where Kevin Weber was holed up, but there didn’t seem to be that much to it. There were two sets of stairs, one on either side of the second floor where his room was located.

She figured that if she rushed the front door, she could catch Weber before he had a chance to make his way out the back window. That he had a plan of escape she never doubted. A man on the run didn’t take a second-floor room without working out a way to get out of that room if he needed to. He wouldn’t simply leap down two stories without having some kind of contingency plan, a way to break his fall.

From everything both the bail bondsman she worked for and the sheriff of Shady Rock, who she unofficially worked with, had told her, she knew that Kevin Weber wasn’t stupid. Quite the contrary, the man was nothing if not crafty. So crafty that she wondered what he’d been doing in the likes of Shady Rock. Luckily, she thought as she made her way slowly up the stairs, she was just as crafty.

If she hadn’t been, Cara would have never chosen her present profession, would have never been able to make any sort of a living as a bounty hunter.

Bounty hunting was something she had begun doing shortly after she’d put herself through college and discovered that strict law enforcement, with its binding rules and regulations, just wasn’t for her.

Bounty hunting wasn’t exactly the kind of vocation most people associated with someone who looked the way she did, but that was the kind of advantage she made full use of. Blond, blue-eyed and delicate-boned at five-four, Cara looked as if her biggest concern in life was how to get her tan even and how long she wanted her bangs to be. Men told secrets to women who looked like her. They let their guards down because they thought her IQ was undoubtedly only slightly higher than her supple bust size. They were always unpleasantly surprised to find out otherwise.

Surprising, too, was the fact that she was as tough as she looked soft. But that had been dictated by not only the life she presently lived, but by the one she had lived through her adolescent years, when she was being passed around from one foster home to another. Being soft meant being hurt. Early on she had learned to depend on only herself. That way, there was never anyone to let her down.

Cautiously she made her way toward Weber’s door from the right stairway. She had tailed the man here after putting in more than two weeks of following clues and canvassing the various places he had been known to frequent recently within the Taos area. Weber had been a no-show in all but one of them, and even there, she’d been too late to get the drop on him. She was running out of time.

Wearing a wig with hair down to her waist and a skintight outfit, Cara had planned to proposition Weber and get him into the parking lot. Once there, she’d thought the weapon strapped to her thigh and the handcuffs she kept in her car would do the trick.

But Weber was nowhere to be seen in the seedy, smoky bar. The seat the bartender pointed out where her quarry had been sitting was still warm.

Defeated, she’d sat down at the bar herself and ordered a beer. It was only after she’d hoisted the glass that she noticed there was an empty matchbook carelessly left behind on the table. From the way its edges were bent, Cara figured Weber had used it to pick his teeth.

More important was the imprint on the back. It belonged to a popular, inexpensive chain of motels. Systematically, she’d gone to all of them in the region. As she’d discovered to be par for the course, the one farthest from the bar and the last on her list had turned out to be the right one.

Cara had flashed the photograph she’d gotten from the bail bondsman who signed her checks, showing it to the man at the office. She’d accompanied the photograph with a tearful story involving broken promises and a baby on the way. By the time she was finished, the manager had melted, volunteering that the man she was looking for was staying in Room 218.

A movement on the opposite stairway caught her attention. She saw a tall, somber-faced man walking up the stairs. Dark complexed with dark brown hair and broad shoulders, he could have been a male model in one of those pricey magazines that catered to the upper crust. But the way he had his hand in his pocket alerted her.

There was no doubt in her mind that his hand was covering a handgun.

It was another bounty hunter.

Incensed, Cara would have bet her well-earned reputation on it. She knew a professional when she saw one, even a handsome one. She thought she could make out the glint of steel handcuffs at his waist. Damn it, there was no way he was going to get her man, not after all the woman hours she’d put in tracking him down.

Cara cut the distance between herself and the door to Room 218 in less than a heartbeat. By the time the good-looking stranger approached, she was standing in front of the door in question, blocking his access to it. With a triumphant toss of her head, she knocked on the door.

A moment later, a deep voice from within the room growled “Yeah?”

“Housekeeping,” Cara chirped cheerfully, aware that the man at her side was giving her a very suspicious once-over. Probably because she had no uniform or any of the paraphernalia that would tie her to the profession she claimed.