Romancing the Crown: Max & Elena: The Disenchanted Duke

“No—” The voice paused. “Yes, yes I am. Then this is his cell phone?”

“Yes, it is. He’s in the shower right now. Can I take a message?” She looked around for a piece of paper and a pen, then crossed to the bed and pulled her purse over.

“The shower?” Was that a chuckle she heard? “Please forgive me, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I will call back later.”

“You’re not interrupting anything,” she protested. “It’s not what you think—”

She was talking to dead air. Frowning, she closed the cell phone and placed it back in Max’s pocket. About to put the jacket down where she’d found it, she hesitated, wrestling with a conscience that wasn’t always as vigilant as it might have been.

Self-preservation got the better of her and she began to systematically go through the other pockets in his jacket.

“Looking for something? Maybe I can help.”

Startled, she nearly dropped the jacket. Intent on finding something before he was finished in the bathroom, she hadn’t heard him come out.

Composing herself, Cara turned around.

And immediately became uncomposed again.

He was standing in the doorway, an almost threadbare towel draped around his hips, dipping lower where he’d tucked it in. There was still water beading on the downy hair that ran along his chest. A single ribbon of fine hair fed down his abdomen, disappearing under the rim of the towel.

The man had a stomach you could bounce quarters off of. She caught herself wondering if the same could be said of his butt before she managed to regain control of her runaway thoughts.

Cara casually dropped the jacket back where she’d picked it up. “Your phone was ringing.”

And she had answered it. His eyes darkened just a shade.

“Who was it?”

She shrugged, looking straight at him, knowing that if she attempted to avoid looking his way, Ryker would find it amusing.

“He didn’t say. I told him you were in the shower and he apologized for interrupting. I guess he thought you were entertaining.”

Rather than say anything, Max crossed to where she’d dropped his jacket and took his cell phone out. Flipping it open, he pressed a button. The word Private appeared in the small LCD. That could be a lot of people, but his mind gravitated to one.

“What did he sound like?”

When was the man going to put some clothes on? And why was the room getting so damn warm? Couldn’t the management at least put in some fans?

“Nice voice. Deep, cultured. Like he’d never met a dangling modifier in his life.”

She was describing the king. It had been more than a week since he’d gotten the assignment and he hadn’t checked in with his uncle because he’d wanted something positive to report. Not that he was on Weber’s trail, but that he’d captured him.

Max supposed that he should have called. It wasn’t fair to leave the king twisting in the wind, although as far as patience went, his uncle seemed to possess an infinite supply. The man had gone through a great deal in the last year, the worst of which was facing the loss of his beloved only son and heir, although King Marcus still hadn’t given up hope that Lucas was alive. The plane Lucas had been flying had gone down in the Colorado Rockies and so far, only bits and pieces had been recovered.

The king believed that no news was good news, even though he prayed nightly for word. The last he’d heard, his uncle was still praying.

Colorado.

He glanced toward Cara.

The man was having an unnerving effect on her, standing around half naked like that and staring at her. Cara looked at him with all the coolness she could muster. Given the situation, she thought she did rather well.

“Are you planning on dripping dry, or do you intend to get dressed sometime in the next decade or so?”

He raised a dark, inquisitive brow, throwing her into a tailspin.

“Does this make you uncomfortable?”

She shrugged, refusing to give him any satisfaction, even if something in the pit of her stomach was turning cartwheels.

“Not particularly. If you want to walk around in your birthday suit, that’s up to you. I just want to go on record as saying that I sleep with my gun under my pillow and I tend to be rather jumpy where there’re any sudden moves involved.” She purposely dipped her line of vision to take in the towel he had draped around his hips and parts beyond.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Turning around, he reached for the clothes he’d hung on the hook behind the bathroom door and took them down. “It’s all yours. No insects.” He walked past her, then added in a stage whisper, “Just one small mouse.”

“The only rodents that make me uneasy are rats.” Her eyes locked with his. “Big ones.”

His laugh followed her into the bathroom, skimming along her skin even after she shut the door and took her clothes off.

Perhaps more so.

Cara took a quick shower, washing the dust of the road from her body as fast as she could. She was toweling herself dry in less than five minutes. Rather than securing the towel around her the way he had, she hurried back into her clothes if for no other reason than she could swear she could smell him on the now-damp towel.

It made her uneasy, wrapping the towel around herself.

Dressed, her hair damp and curling around her face, she opened the door. Nine minutes, start to finish, she silently congratulated herself.

Max had his back to her and was talking in a low voice. It took her a second to realize he was on his cell phone. So he’d known who was calling. Probably his mysterious client, the one who wanted Weber taken back to Monticello, Montebello, or wherever it was he’d said he was taking the man.

Over her dead body, she countered pugnaciously. Weber was going back to Shady Rock, Colorado, and that was that. The ten thousand dollars she was going to get was earmarked for Bridgette Applegate and Cara meant to get it to her or die trying. She owed Bridgette a lot.

Bridgette Applegate was the last woman who had taken her in. Unlike the others, Bridgette hadn’t been part of the foster care merry-go-round. Bridgette had been a woman she’d met while she’d lived under that bridge in Denver, fighting off a fever of 103. Broke, desperate, she’d tried to take Bridgette’s purse and had collapsed in the struggle when Bridgette had fought back. She was close to being unconscious.

Rather than call the police, Bridgette, a part-time nurse, had taken her home, put Cara in her own bed and tended to her as if she was her own daughter instead of a would-be mugger.

After she got well, Bridgette insisted she remain with her until she figured out just what it was she was going to do with her life now that she was no longer going to throw it away. Bridgette Applegate had been the turning point in her life, the reason she believed in good instead of caving in before evil.

And now Bridgette needed her help and she was damned if she wasn’t going to come through for the woman. And no sexy, flat-stomached, ripped P.I. was going to get in her way, with or without his towel.

Max sensed Cara standing behind him. As politely as he could, he ended the conversation with his uncle. Everything that needed to be said had been covered, in terse, veiled language, leaving anyone eavesdropping in the palace and beyond in the dark.

True, he still didn’t know why he was bringing Weber in, but all would be made clear once he was on Montebellan soil again. His uncle had promised as much and although Max had no desire to return to the country where the bad memories outweighed the good and his mother had been so unhappy, he knew his duty.

Besides which, he had to admit that his curiosity about the matter was getting the better of him. He considered curiosity both his failing and his talent. Without it, he wouldn’t have pursued the career he had, wouldn’t have been as good at it as he was.

But it also had a tendency to get him entangled in matters another man might have easily been able to walk away from.

Like letting his imagination wander and get the better of him when it came to his new roommate.

“Eavesdropping?” Max flipped his cell phone closed before turning around.

Cara strode into the room as if she owned it. She’d learned a long time ago that bravado made people sit up and take notice and think twice before attempting to run right over you.

“In case you haven’t noticed, it’s a small room. I don’t have anywhere to go and the bathroom was becoming claustrophobic.”

He liked the way her wet hair framed her face. It occurred to him that the woman was completely unaware of her looks and totally unpretentious. He’d known so many women who were, if not vain about the gift genes and nature had bestowed on them, at least always fussing with their hair, their makeup, their clothes, paying far more attention to themselves than anyone else was.

He’d yet to see Cara even glance at a mirror to check her appearance.

He smiled at her. “You mean you were.”

Her days of being shoved into a closet had created not only an underlying fear of the dark, but of tiny, confining places as well. But she’d be damned if she was going to say anything about it to him.

Instead her eyes narrowed as she looked at his face. “You like correcting me all the time? Or am I getting some kind of a free demonstration of the way you ran that charm school of yours?”

“Neither.” He rose to his feet, refusing to rise to her bait. His eyes skimmed over her. Her shirt was clinging to her chest, a damp spot where she’d failed to dry herself off forming just above where he imagined her cleavage to be. “You’re dressed.”

There was only one large bath towel available beside the two hand towels. Had he expected her to come out wearing the towel like a sarong? Just because he liked to flaunt his attributes didn’t mean she did.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t wear hand-me-downs anymore.” She nodded toward the bathroom. “That includes someone else’s towel.”

“Anymore? You come from a large family?”

Damn, it was as if he had some kind of homing device, zeroing in on the one word she’d slipped up on.

“I don’t come from any family at all, if it’s any business of yours, Ryker,” she informed him icily, calling an end to the conversation.

His broad shoulders rose in a blameless half shrug. “Just making friendly conversation.”

The hell he was. She raised her chin. She knew exactly where he was coming from. “Prying is never friendly.”

Well, maybe he was, but any information he really wanted, he could always get from his grandfather and another wild ride on the information highway. He had the urge to drape his arm around her small, ramrod straight shoulders, but he squelched it.

“Look, Rivers, you and I are going to be together for at least a little while, don’t you think we should have a truce?”

Anything to get him to lower his guard again. “Fine with me.”

He glanced over her head at the headboard. There were tacky posts on either side. Not aesthetically pleasing, but it might be strong enough to do the trick—if necessary.

“And in the spirit of that truce, am I going to have to handcuff you to the bed, or can I have your word that you won’t suddenly try to take off with my car in the middle of the night?”

“You have my word.” She had no intention of trying. She intended to succeed.

After his conversation with his nephew, King Marcus replaced the telephone receiver in its cradle. He refused to believe that Lucas was dead, despite all the facts to the contrary. His son had been too full of life, too bright to have been extinguished so suddenly without a trace the way it appeared to all the world that he had.

The plane had gone down somewhere in the Rockies, but someplace, somehow, Lucas was alive. Marcus knew it in his heart. And this man, this vermin who now called himself Kevin Weber, might hold the key to that as well as many other things.

Marcus knew he would rest easier once Weber was brought back to Montebello. And Max was just the man to do it.

Chapter 6

Max liked staying abreast of current events and watched the nightly news whenever he could. But the reception on the small television set within the rundown motel room left a great deal to be desired. Mainly a picture and clear sound. Giving up, he shut the set off and decided to turn in.

He noted that Rivers seemed to be of like mind. She was already in bed. Or rather, on top of it. She looked exhausted and more than a little disgruntled. She was also still wearing the clothes she’d put on again after her shower.

He looked down at her from the foot of the bed. “Aren’t you going to change?”

The mattress beneath Cara felt as if it predated the Second World War. She sincerely doubted it had a comfortable place to offer up. Turning, she laid flat on her back and laced her hands beneath her head. Looking up, she didn’t particularly like the way he was looming over her.

“I like me just the way I am.”

She was playing with words again, he thought. “I meant your clothes.”

Her expression remained unchanged. “I like those just the way they are, too.”

He wondered if she enjoyed being perverse and decided that she must. She was so good at it. “What do you normally sleep in?”

“A bed.”

Games, she was in the mood for games. Crossing to his side of the bed, Max dipped into his dwindling supply of patience and tried again. “What do you have on when you get into bed when you’re home?”

“Generally a very tired expression.”

And then it hit him, she wasn’t playing games, she was being evasive. And he had a feeling he knew why. “You sleep in the raw?”

Cara felt freer that way, but it wasn’t any business of his that she did. She knew she should just turn her back on him and ignore the question, but something goaded her to respond.

“What of it?”

He gave her a careless shrug. “Just a coincidence, that’s all. I sleep in the raw, too.” Sitting down on the bed, he took off his socks and then began unbuttoning his shirt.

An edgy feeling caught hold of her stomach. Cara propped herself up on her elbow. “Well, not tonight you don’t, Ryker. Stop right there,” she ordered him.

He’d already peeled off his shirt and was sitting there, bare-chested. She forced her eyes to his face.

“What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing,” she snapped. “Because you’re not going to do anything.” It was an order, not an observation. “Except to lay down on your side and drop off to sleep—now.”

The dulcet tones were certainly missing. He laughed. “You’re going to make one hell of a mother someday, you know that?”

She took offense at his tone. It was her heart’s longing to have children. And to give them all the love she’d never had, the love she’d been storing up all these years.

“Yeah, I will. And let me worry about that, you just get some shut-eye. Now. Or I’ll leave without you.” The threat slipped out before she could think to stop it. She didn’t ordinarily overplay her hand. She told herself it was because she was tired.

“You can’t. I have the only set of keys.”

Max held them up for her benefit. Then, he made an elaborate show of pushing them down deep into his front pocket. He knew she wouldn’t attempt to go digging there while he was asleep.

She looked at where he’d tucked the keys. Her mouth curved wryly. She knew exactly what he was thinking. “Aren’t you afraid of sustaining permanent injury if you should roll over during the night?”

He laid down on the bed. “I’ll risk it.”

Cara was acutely conscious of the way the mattress had dipped down, acutely conscious of the man laying less than two feet away from her.

“Does that mean you don’t trust me?” she asked flippantly.

His eyes met hers. “No more than you trust me.”

Something tightened within her. She inclined her head. “Fair enough.”

Lying back down, she realized that he’d propped himself up on his side and was looking at her. A jittery feeling snaked its way through her body. And then Max moved closer to her until the top of his torso was almost directly over her. Her heart began to hammer harder than she was happy about, the beat keeping abreast of the throbbing in her pulse.

She needed him back in his space, not invading hers. “Unless you’re looking to pick bullets out of your teeth, Ryker, I’d back off right now if I were you.”

Max heard the slight thread of tension in her voice, felt the crackle of electricity between them. “You need to relax, Rivers.”

The jerk was being condescending, as if he could read what was in her mind. How could he? She couldn’t even read what was in her mind right now. Except that she didn’t want him so close to her. “And you need to back off, Ryker. Now.”

He didn’t move a single muscle. “Is that a challenge?”

Was she going to have to fight him off after all? Every muscle in her body tensed. “If that’s what it takes to get you back on your side.”

She had pretty eyes, Max thought. Even when they darkened. He’d never been partial to blue-gray before. “You know, as a young boy, I could never resist a challenge. My mother said I was a constant source of worry for her.”

His mother used to despair, he remembered fondly, that he would die an early death, led there by his own recklessness. Instead she had been the one to die too early, through no fault of her own.

“At least you had a mother,” Cara heard herself murmuring, her voice hardly audible above the rushing noise in her ears.

She knew she should push him away, knew that all it would really take would be one quick turn and a well-placed flexing of her knee and any impromptu moves on his part would be summarily terminated.

But curiosity got the better of her. Curiosity and a strange physical pull that crept out of nowhere and presented itself to her with his name on it. Desire unfolded within her like a deck of cards being fanned out before a magic trick took place.

“You have a death wish.” Her lips practically touched his as she uttered the declaration.

“Maybe.”

And maybe he just had an insatiable thirst to discover what it felt like to kiss her. An insatiable thirst that wouldn’t be quenched until he found out on his own what her lips tasted like.

And then he wasn’t speaking any longer and neither was she.

Contact occurred and the air around them suddenly became even warmer than it already was, its edges singeing the instant their lips met.

He gathered her to him. Or perhaps she pulled him in toward her. The logistics weren’t clear. They overlapped. All that mattered was that they occurred.

He tasted of something dark and sweet and compelling. She felt like she was a dried flower getting its first taste of summer rain with the promise of more lingering in the air.

Cara wound her arms around his neck, telling herself she was anchored in reality so it was all right if, just for the moment, she lost herself in this sensation. Purely for reasons of edification. A woman always had to know exactly what she was up against.

Max felt Cara’s heart hammering against his chest as he drew her still closer against him, felt the heat of her body infiltrate his.

Or maybe that was his heart suddenly going into double-time. He couldn’t tell. He’d done this simply on a whim, because he couldn’t resist certain challenges, just as he’d told her. But once he’d thrown his hat in the ring, he found himself being sucked in completely as he reached to retrieve it.

If he’d had socks on, she would have knocked them off. Or at least curled them.

What he was entirely certain of was that Cara Rivers had created this itch, an itch so intense, it was almost impossible to scratch.

Or to bury.

But he knew he had to. Business and this kind of thing really didn’t mix.

More’s the pity.

Okay, time was up. It was time to come up for air, Cara’s brain pleaded, before it became completely oxygen deficient.

With more than a little effort, Cara finally managed to wedge her hands against his chest. She pushed with all her might, which, to her surprise, had decreased considerably. Still, she did manage to create a very small space between them.

She could only pray she didn’t sound as breathless as she felt. “Curiosity satisfied?”

She certainly didn’t pull any punches, Max thought. A smile curved his mouth. He ran the back of his knuckles slowly along the silky skin of her face and watched her eyes widen before she got better control over herself.

“Not in the least. Whetted, actually.”

“Too bad,” Cara said, finding a ribbon of strength to tap into. She pushed him back even farther, then struggled up into a sitting position. “Because that’s all she wrote.”

Intrigued, Max drew his thumb along her bottom lip, allowing his mind to wander a little further. Watching her veiled reaction in her eyes. There was a complete untapped vein of sensuality right before him.

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m not interested in what you think, Ryker. Just in what you do. And for your own well-being, what you should do is go lie down on your side of the bed.” She felt under her pillow and produced her gun. She pointed it at him, leaving the safety on. “Now.”

He didn’t believe in forcing himself on someone. Especially someone with gun, safety or no safety. Besides, the world seemed to be just the slightest bit tilted at the moment. Just like in the bar last night. Except that this time, he hadn’t been deliberately drugged by anything. Only her.

He struggled not to show Cara that he was searching for his bearings and that she was the cause of this disorientation.

“I never argue with a lady.”

“Hah,” was her only response. What a crock. He’d argued with her the better part of the time they’d been together.

With exaggerated movements, she turned her back on him and punched up her pillow. She knew damn well that she wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight. But that was all right. Not sleeping fit in with her plans.

Several minutes went by. Max found that his curiosity hadn’t abated. “What did you mean by that?”

She sighed. It was obvious that the man wasn’t going to just peacefully drop off to sleep. He was going to give her trouble.

So what else was new?

She kept her back to him, feeling it was a lot safer that way. “Mean by what?”

“That at least I had a mother.”

He would have picked up on that, she thought in annoyance. Why had she let that slip? “I wasn’t speaking in tongues.”

There was something defensive in her voice. His curiosity peaked, he turned around, only to find himself looking at her back. He squelched the impulse to turn her toward him. No use borrowing trouble. “Didn’t you have a mother?”

She didn’t bother suppressing a sigh. The man was making things difficult for her on a whole host of levels. She tried to ignore the restlessness she felt, the kind she couldn’t put a name to but bothered her nonetheless. “Are you getting paid extra to annoy me?”

“I’m not getting paid to do anything at all with you,” he told her mildly. “For the record, I was just being curious.”

“Well, don’t be.”

Struggling with her exasperation, and the nameless feeling that insisted on continuing to grow within her, a feeling that might have been labeled attraction if she wasn’t so damn sure it wasn’t, she punched her pillow again, trying to add dimension to it. It couldn’t have been flatter than if it had been run over by every single one of the wheels on an eighteen-wheeler. It was obvious that comfort was not the byword of this motel. Several attempts later, she bunched the pillow beneath her head, folding it as much as possible.

Cara stared at the rusted handle on the bureau. “No, I didn’t,” she finally said quietly.

He’d thought she’d lapsed into total silence. Hearing her answer, he turned back to look at her again. “Divorced?” he guessed.

She’d never known her mother or her father. She’d overheard one of the social workers say that she’d been found on a park bench when she was only several days old. Her parents hadn’t even thought enough of her to leave her on a hospital or church doorstep. For all they knew, a stray, hungry animal could have come across her and ended her life before it ever began.