Romancing the Crown: Max & Elena: The Disenchanted Duke

“I’d call you conniving.”

He smiled. Or thought he did. It was getting harder and harder to tell.

“I’ve been called worse.” The room was beginning to go at a really dangerous speed. Sweat popped out on his brow. “Is it me, or is it hot in here?”

The look she gave him was purely innocent. “Is that a line?”

“No, that’s—” He lost his train of thought, even as he was attempting to reach for it. “Maybe we should sit the rest of this one out.”

Placing his hand to her spine, he escorted her from the floor. Max’s head was starting to feel as if it weighed a ton. The bar appeared to be much farther away than it had just a moment ago.

Each step back took more and more effort on his part. He found he had to rest his arm across her shoulders just to keep from falling over.

He tried to focus on her face, hoping that would negate or at least balance out the spinning. “What was in those drinks?”

“Just scotch. But the glasses probably don’t always get washed properly,” she guessed. “Maybe there was something else left over from the last…”

He didn’t hear the end of her sentence. The buzzing in his head became too loud.

And then the room around him folded itself up until it became less than a tiny pinprick. The next second, the pinprick had disappeared entirely.

Max thought he was falling, but that might have been his imagination.

Everything stopped.

Nothing looked familiar.

Max had absolutely no idea where he was, only that his head was killing him and the effort to open his eyes cost him dearly. Each lid felt as if it was glued in place and had to be pried open.

When it was, he found the immediate area encased in a milky shroud. Repeated blinking finally made the shroud disappear.

He’d had hangovers in his time, royal ones if he could be forgiven the pun, and he’d never felt like this before. Neither had he passed out on three drinks before, no matter how potent they’d been.

Just what the hell had happened, and how did he get here, wherever “here” was?

He smelled a proverbial rat. A honey-blonde one with gray-blue eyes, fantastic legs and one hell of a well-shaped butt.

Holding on to the wall beside him, he sat up. Max had to really concentrate to keep the world from tilting over on its side. Only when it was in its rightful place did he finally try to take in his surroundings.

He was in a small area that appeared to be a storage room of some kind. There were broken chairs tucked away in one corner beside unopened cases of liquor. He realized that he’d been lying on a cot that smelled of beer and various other things, some of which were hard to place, others far too easily identified. He hadn’t been the first to sleep on it.

He pressed a hand to his stomach, willing himself not to throw up.

Rising on shaky legs, he made his way over to the closed door and tried it.

To his surprise, the knob turned. He wasn’t locked in. Opening the door, Max discovered that he was inside the bar he’d come to with Cara. Last night, if the thin beams of sun that were pushing their way through the partially closed slats at the window were any indication of the time.

Like so many things, the room had looked a lot better in semidarkness. There were dust motes everywhere he looked.

“Anybody here?” he called out.

No one answered.

Gingerly he touched the back of his head, looking for telltale knots that would have indicated his getting hit, which would have explained his sudden passage into darkness.

There were none. No one had hit him in the head to eliminate his presence on the scene.

The odd taste in his mouth told him that scotch hadn’t been the only thing he’d ingested last night.

She’d drugged him.

Somehow, when he hadn’t been looking, the sharp-tongued bounty hunter with the killer body had slipped something into his drink and drugged him.

Why?

The most obvious reason, he decided, struggling to curb his anger at being duped like some kind of novice, was that she thought he was a threat to her getting the bounty on Weber.

He heard a noise to his left and immediately reached for the weapon he always kept strapped around his ankle. It wasn’t there.

The woman must have taken it, he thought, cursing under his breath. Why should that surprise him?

Wary, Max grabbed a bottle from the counter behind the bar and held it by its neck, ready to smash the bottom off on the bar and use the jagged portion as a weapon at a moment’s notice.

“You break that, you pay for it,” the man who had tended bar last night told him, coming into the room. He set down the broom and dustpan he was carrying and scratched his thin, concave chest. A cigarette butt hung out of the corner of his mouth as if it was permanently fixed there. The bartender indicated the other bottles behind Max. “You might want to use something less expensive.”

Annoyed, Max put the bottle back down on the bar. “Where is she?”

The man coughed before finally asking, “Who?”

Impatience clawed at Max as he struggled to clear his head. It still felt as if all his thoughts were under water.

“The woman I was in here with last night. And before you tell me that you don’t know who I’m talking about, I saw the way you looked at her. Like you’d already met. If you didn’t know her, you wouldn’t have put me in your back room to sleep it off.”

The bartender laughed. It sounded more like a cackle and was followed up by a hacking cough. “I don’t know her. Not in any real sense of the word. She’s been here a few times and she gave me fifty bucks to let you sack out in the back room.” He picked up the broom again and began sweeping halfheartedly. “Would’ve given me ten more if the lock on the door worked, but it’s busted, just my luck.”

Max didn’t know if he was buying into this, but the buzz in his head was making it hard to think. “So you don’t know her.”

The man paused again, his expression wistful beneath the day old stubble. “No, but I’d sure like to. Don’t meet many of those in my line of work—fiery, not used up,” he clarified, then gestured around the establishment. “’Case you hadn’t noticed, this isn’t exactly an upscale club.”

Max didn’t bother commenting. He needed answers and if he wasn’t going to get them from this character who was little more than one step removed from a barfly himself, he had to fall back on a tried-and-true method. “Got a phone around here?”

The bartender reached behind the bar and brought out an old-fashioned, stark black dial-up telephone straight out of the last century. He placed it on the bar in front of Max.

“But it’ll cost you,” he said as Max reached for the telephone.

Digging into his pocket, Max pulled out a bill, glanced at it to see the denomination and slapped it down on the counter. Pulling the telephone over, Max dialed his office number back in Newport Beach. Three rings later, he heard his grandfather pick up and give the name of the agency.

“Hi, it’s Max,” he said into the receiver. He talked quickly, before his grandfather could ask any questions. “I need you to look someone up for me. Cara Rivers. Get me everything you can find: driver’s license number, address, priors if there are any, everything,” he emphasized again.

“What state am I looking in?” Bill asked, knowing better than to assume anything. Max got around.

Max paused, thinking, trying to pluck facts out of the murky sea that still surrounded his brain. Concentrating, he remembered the woman mentioning something about Shady Rock, Colorado. Maybe that was her point of origin. It was worth a try.

“Colorado.” He saw the bartender looking his way. The man made no effort not to look as if he was listening. “Start with a place named Shady Rock.”

“Shady Rock, huh?” Bill chuckled. “That’s almost as good as Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, or that other place, Hot Coffee.”

Max was not in the mood to see the humor in anything, least of all his condition. He was supposed to be able to see through people like Cara Rivers. And most of all, he wasn’t supposed to get himself drugged.

“Almost,” he agreed. Covering the receiver as he heard his grandfather begin to slowly type on the computer keyboard, Max looked at the bartender. “Got any coffee around here?”

He knew that this was going to take more than a little while. Though he liked to keep on top of the latest technology, his grandfather’s idea of typing fast amounted to three words a minute. Tops.

The bartender jerked a thumb toward the small table that was set up against the back wall. A coffee-maker, its pot half empty, was standing there. “Yeah, but it’ll cost you.”

Way ahead of the man, Max had already produced another five-dollar bill and placed it next to its mate on the bar.

Cara tried not to dwell on the man she’d left drugged in the bar. She knew it went with the territory but she couldn’t help feeling guilty, even though she’d slipped the bartender fifty bucks to let Ryker sleep it off in the back room. She forced her thoughts back on her job.

It amazed Cara how the simplest things often tripped people up.

Using credit cards had become an established way of life. People did it without a second thought, not realizing that they were simultaneously generating a paper trail as they paid for their entertainment, or their shoes or their gas.

Weber might be able to do without the entertainment or the shoes, but the gas, she was betting, since he was driving a car in his getaway attempt, was another story.

With her cell phone and her portable fax machine, along with several other state-of-the-art items stashed in the trunk of her car, Cara had managed to track Weber down via the activity on his credit card.

It helped having connections in the right places, she thought with a smile as she looked at the latest reported transaction.

Weber had purchased not only gas, but a burrito and a giant-size soft drink at a convenience store on highway 25. It was only fifteen miles away.

Putting pedal to the metal, she was there faster than the law would have smiled upon, the worn photograph of Kevin Weber she’d been showing around sitting on the passenger side beside her.

Screeching to a halt next to the small, squat convenience building, its paint peeling away under the unrelenting sun, Cara grabbed the photograph and dashed inside the store.

The temperature in the interior was only marginally cooler than it was outside. The air felt almost thick as she crossed to the counter. The man behind it looked as if he was ready to wilt.

Cara held up the photograph. “Hi, I’m wondering if you’ve seen this man in the last few hours?”

The man took only a couple of seconds to study the photograph. The other minute and a half were spent studying her.

“He did and Weber’s heading north. My guess is that he might be working his way to Canada.”

The clerk in front of her nodded in affirmation.

For the first time, Cara fully understood what was meant when someone said they could have been knocked over by a feather.

That voice could only belong to—

She swung around, her eyes wide, her mind racing. She knew who she was going to see even before she looked at him. Max Ryker.

Her mouth went dry. “You’re better than I thought you were.”

“And you’re more underhanded than I gave you credit for.” Taking her by the arm, he pulled her aside. He saw the way the man behind the counter was looking at them, his hand hovering over the telephone receiver. “Just a family spat, mister. If you don’t want any trouble, just go about your business,” Max told the barrel-chested man. His smile faded the moment he had her a safe distance away from her would-be protector. “What the hell did you put in my drink?”

Cara raised her chin. She’d never reacted well to being questioned. Her eyes swept over him. He looked none the worse for wear. The sleepy look in his eyes gave him a sexy appearance from where she stood.

“Nothing fatal.”

He snorted. “Obviously.” As she began to pull away, his grip on her upper arm tightened. “I don’t appreciate being drugged and then dumped.”

She looked at him indignantly. “I paid the bartender fifty dollars to let you sleep it off on a bed in the back room.”

“It was a cot and it wasn’t worth even fifty cents and change,” he informed her. But where he’d slept wasn’t the issue. What he’d had was. “Now, what the hell did you put in my drink—the truth,” he warned.

“Clonazepam.” She gave him the generic name. “It puts you out, that’s all.”

Max was familiar with the drug. It had made the rounds as everything from a tranquilizer to a sleeping pill to a recreational drug for what he deemed to be the mentally arrested, but predominantly was prescribed for seizures.

He arched a brow, looking at her, trying to make a judgment call that was right for a change when it came to her.

“Yours?”

Cara shook her head. She didn’t believe in taking anything more powerful than aspirin, and then only under extreme conditions.

“I know this pharmacist who isn’t exactly always on the straight and narrow.”

The man was only one of an arsenal of people she’d compiled over her lifetime, people who she turned to whenever she needed a favor that didn’t exactly fall within the proper lines smiled upon by society. She figured it was her due, after all the time she’d spent being passed from one house to another, trudging from one closed-clique class to the next over the process of transplantation.

“You wake up a little out of focus,” she told him, “a little sluggish, maybe with a fuzzy coating on your tongue, but with no harm done.”

If that was a “little” out of focus, then he was Santa Claus’s helper. He narrowed his eyes, looking directly at her.

“No harm done—except that you took off.”

She shrugged nonchalantly, wishing he’d release her. “Hey, it was just one of those things.”

“Don’t get cute with me, Rivers. I don’t appreciate being drugged and abandoned.”

At his raised tone, her own temper flared. “And I don’t appreciate being aced out of ten thousand dollars or strong-armed by a bully.” This time, she pulled harder against his grip.

Frowning, he released her. “Nobody’s strong-arming you.”

“Oh, no?” She rubbed her arm to get the circulation going. The man had one hell of an iron grip. “Then what do you call insisting on taking my bail jumper to Outer Slobovia?”

“That’s Montebello,” he informed her, struggling not to allow the corners of his mouth to curve.

He could almost see the fire leaping in her eyes. Though he was annoyed as hell about her costing him Weber, not to mention time, he had to admit there was something appealing about the way lightning bolts all but came shooting from every part of her.

“And we have jurisdiction,” he pointed out. “The U.S. and Montebello have had a mutual extradition treaty for some time now.”

“We?” she echoed. She thought she’d heard an accent of some sort. Where the hell was this place he claimed to be from? “Are you a Montebellian?”

“Montebellan,” Max corrected. “And that ‘we’ was just a figure of speech.” He didn’t want to tell her more than he absolutely had to, and certainly not that he was a duke. The last thing he wanted was annoying attention thrown his way. For some people, anything that had to do with a royal family—and it didn’t matter which one—was exciting. “But in any case, Weber’s going there when I get him.”

She begged to differ with his well-laid plans. “No, he’s going to Shady Rock when I get him.”

Max blew out a breath. “You’re going to be a royal pain in the posterior about this, aren’t you?”

She smiled sweetly at him. “Until I get my way, you might say that, yes.”

He had a feeling that she would cost him every time he got close to Weber. He didn’t need any more slipups. Time was money and he wasn’t making any on this venture. This was a favor to his uncle. “Allright, what do you say we team up?”

It was absolutely the last thing she’d expected him to say—unless he wasn’t on the level.

“Team up?”

“Yes, work together to get him.”

Cara looked at him suspiciously. Not that she was buying into this for a minute. “And then what?”

“And then we’ll work it out.”

Just as she’d thought. He was being evasive. Which meant that he didn’t want to tell her. Which meant, in turn, that he intended to shaft her.

She shook her head. “And then we bring him to the sheriff of Shady Rock. The office is closer than wherever the hell Montebello is.”

“It’s an island near Cyprus,” he told her automatically. Max couldn’t argue about Colorado being closer and he didn’t want to waste time arguing about any of the rest of it, either. Every minute that went by, Weber was getting farther and farther away. “Okay.” He put out his hand.

Taking his hand in hers, Cara shook it as she looked up at him. “All right, then it’s a deal.”

“A deal,” he echoed.

Her smile never wavered.

She didn’t trust him any farther than she could throw him.

Chapter 4

Separating their hands, she dropped hers to her sides. “So now what, ‘partner’?”

Max studied her, wishing he knew what was going on in that attractive head of hers. He always liked to know which way the wind was blowing before he set sail. His gut instinct was that, despite the so-called truce between them, he was in danger of standing right in the path of a full-scale gale.

“Why do I get the feeling that you think that’s a dirty word?”

Her expression couldn’t have been more innocent than if it had been on the face of an angel in a Renaissance painting.

“Interpretation, like beauty, is in the eye—or ear—of the beholder, Ryker. I’m just asking a simple question. You’re the one who wanted the partnership.”

That was like saying he wanted to play with a basket full of snakes. “Wanted might not be the right word here, but in any case, it’s the expedient thing to do, seeing as how we both want Weber and we seem to keep getting in each other’s way.”

Her eyes narrowed. The innocent expression evaporated. “None of which would happen if you’d get out of my way.”

About to answer her, Max noticed that the convenience store clerk was unabashedly watching them and all but hanging over the counter. “Something I can do for you, mister?”

The young man grinned broadly at them, completely missing the implication. “Hey, man, you’re doing it. We don’t get much entertainment around here and my satellite dish is busted. Don’t know when I can get it fixed. This is the most fun I’ve had in weeks.”

Max took hold of Cara’s arm. “Let’s take this outside.”

She shrugged him off. “I can walk on my own.”

“Then walk,” he said, holding the door open for her.

Miffed, she walked by him, calling him names under her breath that his ancestors might have taken exception to.

“Spoilsport,” the clerk muttered, returning to his copy of a much folded Victoria’s Secret catalog.

Max stopped on the sun-rotted wooden porch. “When I got here, just a few minutes ahead of you,” Max added the piece of information before she could ask, “the clerk told me Weber had driven off heading north.”

Still, that didn’t explain the leap on Ryker’s part. “What makes you think Canada? There’s an awful lot of territory between here and there, a whole battalion of cities and states.”

He shrugged. “Just a guess. It seems to me that a man with two people coming after him from different directions might just want to get out of the country.”

That had a germ of truth in it, she grudgingly admitted to herself. But there was still a flaw. “Mexico’s closer.”

“Yes, but he’s heading north. Last time I checked, Mexico was south.”

“Maybe he’s trying to confuse us by taking a roundabout route.”

Max paused. She had a point. “All right, but while we’re standing here, talking, he’s out there, driving.” He indicated the highway. “Let’s just follow the road and see where it leads.”

Straight to trouble was her guess, but she kept to herself.

“Fine,” Cara murmured. “I’ll ride point.”

“Good.” He started to turn to go to his car and realized that she wasn’t following. Turning around, Max saw Cara hurrying to her vehicle. She got in before he had a chance to say a word. The car revved up and was heading up the road in less time than it took to process the image.

The woman was a loose cannon.

She had every intention of leaving him in the dust, Max thought with a shake of his head. He’d had a feeling she wouldn’t stick to her end of the bargain. Which was exactly why he’d planted a small homing device, no larger than a spot of lint, on her back as he’d put his hand against her shoulder and escorted her from the store. Shrugging him off hadn’t dislodged it. Once she took off her clothes, of course, she’d notice it, but for the time being, he was assured that she couldn’t get too far away from him.

Cara Rivers drove like a maniac, he thought, after starting his car and getting on the road. The road stretched out before him and she was nowhere in sight.

Except on the screen of his monitor.

A smile curved his mouth. Max took the jacket he’d purposely thrown over the tracking device on the passenger seat of his car and tossed the garment over his shoulder into the back. Rivers was heading due north, just the way she expected Weber to be going.

Why bother losing him if she meant to go in the direction they’d already agreed on? It didn’t make any sense to him, but then, he thought with an inward, patient sigh, neither did the woman.

He watched the blip on his monitor and drove due north.

Twilight was beginning to paint the lonely landscape with long, broad strokes when he caught up with her. It wasn’t through any fancy driving on his part, but a slowdown on hers. More specifically, a complete stop. Her vehicle apparently had died.

She was on the side of the road, circling the dormant car and yelling at it. He couldn’t quite make out what she was saying, but he had a feeling that he was better off that way. The angry expression on her face was enough to send a lesser man running for cover.

Slowing down, Max stuck his head out the window, a mildly amused, mildly curious expression on his face. “Something wrong?”

Cara was angry enough to spit. There was no way to avoid throwing her lot in with this man now. Worse, she needed him. The next town was too far up the road for her to walk to in the dark on her own.

She hated the dark.

“Yes, something’s wrong.” For good measure, because she was so furious, she kicked one of the tires. “Bargain rentals rent cars that should have been sent off to the glue factory.”

“I think that’s supposed to be horses that go to the glue factory,” he corrected, not bothering to hide his amusement.

“Not in this case.” She snorted. “I would have been better off with a horse. At least with a horse if you feed it and take care of it, it’ll take you where you want to go.”

“Not in my experience,” Max muttered.

He wasn’t much for horseback riding, despite the fact that riding to the hunt was supposed to be the sport of kings. But he could easily picture her on the back of a horse. A purebred stallion. Black as the night to contrast with her fair skin.

An image of her riding bareback in the fine old tradition of Lady Godiva suddenly flashed through his brain.

With a start, Max jerked himself to attention. “What seems to be the trouble? With the car,” he added, looking at her pointedly as he got out of his vehicle.

Max walked over to her and took a cursory look beneath the hood. There was hardly enough light left to make out the separate parts, much less what was wrong.

Her frowned deepened. There was no point in wasting time tinkering with it. “The distributor cap is burned through.”

That was far more specific than he’d ever gotten with a car. He knew enough to keep the fluid levels up, the oil new and jumper cables in his trunk. “And you know this how?”