Romancing the Crown: Max & Elena: The Disenchanted Duke

The woman was nothing short of infuriating. “I can have you up on charges of grand theft, auto. Like the idea of doing time, Rivers?” He didn’t tell her that he didn’t want too much attention drawn to Weber, that if the police were called in to arrest her, things might get dicey about Weber and the matter of jurisdiction. Besides, when he really got down to it, he didn’t like the idea of the woman being arrested. He admired her creativity and spirit. And he liked besting her on his own without outside help.

Her eyes darted to his face. And then she smiled. “You can,” she allowed, sensing that he wasn’t the type to follow the strict letter of the law, “but you won’t. Like it or not, you admire resourcefulness.” Slowly, her gun still raised, she opened her purse. “Speaking of which, how’d you get here?”

“I got the desk clerk to sell me his car.” It hadn’t been easy. The man insisted on being paid a lot more than the vehicle had been worth, but he’d been desperate.

Thinking back, Cara vaguely recalled seeing an old, rusting jalopy parked in front of the motel office. It hadn’t looked as if it could even run.

“You’re kidding.”

She was smirking. He didn’t particularly like being the source of her amusement.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” He had a question of his own for her. “Now you tell me how you managed to get my car started without my keys?”

She shrugged carelessly. That had been a lot simpler than sneaking out of the room with all her things. She’d held her breath the entire time, positive that Ryker would wake up and stop her before she managed to get out the door.

“I hot-wired it, only to discover a second set, deep in the folds of the seat cushion.”

“I thought I lost those keys,” Max muttered. “I even had a second set made.”

“Where the hell did you learn to hot-wire cars?”

She supposed it did no harm to tell him. “During my nomadic childhood, I lived with the family of an auto mechanic. He showed me a few things that he thought might come in handy. How to tune up a car, how to jump-start it if the battery’s dead—”

“How to hot-wire it if you can’t steal the keys, too.” The whole story sounded incredible. He had a feeling she was lying to him on principle.

“No, he thought showing me how to hot-wire a car would come in handy if I lost my keys,” she corrected. Realizing she’d turned her eyes away from Weber, she looked back and saw that the man was inching his way over to a chair. She cocked the hammer of her gun, aiming it directly at his heart. “Don’t even think about it. On your knees, Weber,” she ordered.

Holstering his gun, Max took out his handcuffs, but Cara beat him to it and slapped her own cuffs on Weber. Slipping them on Weber’s wrists, she tested their integrity before stepping back.

“I’m impressed,” Max said to Cara.

She couldn’t quite gauge by his tone if he was mocking her or not, but it didn’t matter. “Just stay out of my way.”

Max loomed over her. She might be clever, but if she thought he was backing off, she was also very naive. “Afraid I can’t do that.”

Her brows narrowed. “And I’m afraid you have no choice. He’s my prisoner, not yours, and he’s going back to Shady Rock. I need that ten thousand dollars.”

She kept throwing that number around. “What ten thousand?” he wanted to know.

“The ten thousand dollars bounty that Phil Sanford is willing to pay for his safe return before the trial. Phil stands to lose a lot of money if I don’t get this scum back in time.” She looked at Weber. “Get on your feet,” she ordered. “Now.” Cursing her ancestry and her soul, Weber rose. “Like you’re doing this for the fun of it,” she jeered, glancing at Max.

“I’m doing it because I made a promise.”

She didn’t know if he was serious or not, but his reasons didn’t really interest her. Only the ten thousand did. “And I’m doing it because that ten thousand dollars means an awful lot to someone I care a great deal about. To her, it’s the difference between life and death.”

She was pulling his leg, he thought, trying to play on his sympathies. But the look in her eyes was so sincere, he wasn’t sure. What he did know was that arguing over this was wasting precious time.

“All right then, let’s go.”

She made no move to go. “You’re not coming with me.”

“The hell I’m not.”

The next thing he knew, she was pointing the gun at him.

Chapter 8

“No,” she said very evenly. “You’re not. I’m not about to take a chance on losing him again. Weber has a date with the sheriff in Shady Rock and that’s where we’re going. Without you.”

Though he’d raised his hands to placate her, Max was certain that Cara wouldn’t pull the trigger. He’d looked down more than one gun barrel in his lifetime and was a fairly good judge when it came to the person who trained the weapon on him.

It wasn’t that he thought the woman holding the gun was all talk and no action, he already had proof of the contrary. But he also felt that she wasn’t a cold-blooded killer.

His eyes met hers. “You don’t have a car,” he pointed out calmly.

Damn it, why did he have to keep showing up and messing everything up? If not for him, she would have had Weber in her custody over two days ago.

“I have yours.”

Max lowered his arms slowly, though he didn’t move forward. Just in case he was wrong.

“One step away from grand theft, auto,” he reminded her. “And I think you probably know that the police have no soft spot in their hearts when it comes to bounty hunters.”

Her mouth curved disdainfully. “Oh, like they’re completely enamored with private detectives.”

He lifted one shoulder, letting it drop carelessly. Watching Weber on the floor, Max continued to keep a respectful distance from her weapon. “I don’t need the police to be enamored with me. I’m not the one who stole a car.”

She blew out a breath. Ryker probably hadn’t had time to file a report anywhere, but that was his registration in the car. All he had to do was get on the phone and report his car stolen. She didn’t have time to take an indirect route back to Shady Rock, she had a deadline to beat. If Weber wasn’t in court in three days, the bondsman forfeited his bail and she lost the ten thousand.

Cara glared at him. “I can rent another one.”

“That’s going to take time. And you have a prisoner in tow. That doesn’t exactly make a rental agency eager to do business with you. Why go through the hassle? And one more thing,” he said as she began to respond. “You know if you walk out that door, I’m going to follow you. You might as well have me next to you where you can keep an eye on me than turning around and looking over your shoulder all the time.”

Max looked contemptuously at the man on the floor. If the man’s real name was Weber, then he was the Easter Bunny.

“Besides, with this one, it wouldn’t hurt to have two sets of eyes watching him. He looks like the kind who’ll slit your throat if you let your guard down even for a minute.”

Cara took a deep breath. He was right. On several counts. But she still didn’t feel easy about the arrangement. And she questioned his reasons.

“Why would you do anything for me?” she wanted to know.

“Not for you,” Max said honestly, “but for a fellow human being. I hate to see a life wasted.” And after looking into Weber’s eyes, there was no doubt in his mind that the man could kill as easily as he could breathe, with no compunction whatsoever. “Besides, maybe I can talk some sense into your sheriff and get Weber released to me—since you won’t listen to reason.”

“Once Weber is behind bars and I get my ten thousand, I don’t care if you go dancing with the sheriff—or Weber,” she added.

Cara chewed on her lower lip, debating. What Ryker said made sense she supposed. But if the tables were turned and she talked him into letting her come along, she knew she’d try to get Weber away the first moment the opportunity presented itself. It didn’t matter that she was beginning to be really attracted to the guy. Another time and another place, if things were different… But they weren’t. The bottom line was that, handsome or not, Max was the competition, if not the enemy. She was going to have to be on her toes.

“Okay, Ryker, you can come along. But just as long as we’re clear on one fact: You try to take him from me and I will shoot you.”

He lowered his eyes to her weapon, then raised them again to hers.

“I never doubted it for a second.” Passing Cara, he reached over and grabbed Weber by the arm, dragging him up. The gun in his other hand was a silent warning to the man not to try anything. “On your feet, scum.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Cara cross to the phone and pick it up. “Who are you calling?”

She held up her hand for him to be quiet as she heard someone on the other end pick up.

“Front desk? Room 618 is checking out. Quickly. Just put the tab on his credit card.” Hanging up, she saw the questioning look on Max’s face. “I hate loose ends. Why not let them know that he wasn’t going to be here? Someone else can use this room.” And then she grinned. “Aren’t credit cards wonderful?”

She knew that Ryker had to have tracked Weber here the same way she had, by the man’s unwitting use of his credit card. Pausing to raise her skirt, she holstered her weapon, not unaware that Ryker was watching her every move and that there was an appreciative look in his eyes.

She had to admit that, in part, she was playing up to it.

Lowering her leg, she adjusted her skirt, allowing it to fall back into place. There was an amused smile on her face.

“Careful, Ryker, or your eyes are going to fall out of your head.”

It was beyond him how she could move so fluidly under the circumstances. He couldn’t picture moving around with a gun between his legs.

“Doesn’t it chafe that way?”

The question almost made her laugh. “Let me worry about that.”

To his surprise, she took out her key and unlocked one of the handcuffs on Weber’s wrist.

Had she changed her mind about leaving? “What are you doing?”

As Max watched, she snapped the cuff on her own wrist. “Making sure that Weber doesn’t go anywhere without me.” She looked at Max innocently. “Ready? Let’s go.”

Before he could say anything, she passed him and went out the door, pushing Weber out before her.

They made an unsettling trio walking through the lobby, the woman in white handcuffed to the thin, well-dressed man in gray, with the tall, dark, solemn-faced man flanking him on the other side. They garnered more than their share of stares as they made their way to the front entrance.

Bypassing the revolving door, they took the regular one, going through it single file. The man in the gray suit was between them.

Once outside the entrance, Cara produced a ticket from her purse and handed it to Max.

“What’s this?”

“Your car, or it will be once the valet drives it up.” She shifted slightly, wishing she had on something other than a clingy dress with layers of material adhering to her. The day promised to be a scorcher and traveling on the road was going to be no picnic. Ryker was probably the type who made you roll down your windows instead of using the air conditioning.

He looked at the ticket incredulously. “You put a stolen car in valet parking.”

“Borrowed,” she corrected. “I placed a borrowed car in valet parking.” She smiled, as if it was a no-brainer. “Made it easier that way.”

It was also safely out of the way rather than in plain sight the way it wouldn’t have been if she’d parked it on one of the adjacent streets.

“Borrowed,” Max repeated, shaking his head. The woman was in a class by herself. “And just when did you intend on returning the ‘borrowed’ car?”

Also simple. “After I brought my man in.”

“Where would you know where to find me?” he pressed, wanting to see how far she would carry the charade out. He thought she was just making this up as she went along. But to his surprise, she rattled off his address. “How did you—?”

She looked at him as if he had suddenly turned simple-minded. “The registration is in the glove compartment,” she reminded him. Cara pointed to the uniformed man hurrying toward them. Dressed in green livery complete with a hat, the valet looked as if he was barely out of high school. “Give the ticket to the nice man and we’ll be on our way.”

Coming to a halt before them, the valet seemed to immediately hone on the steel bracelet linking Cara and Salim together. His eyes grew large.

“Are those handcuffs?” he asked in almost hushed reverence.

“Magic trick gone bad,” Cara told him matter-of-factly.

“We’ve got a hacksaw around here somewhere,” the valet offered, his eyes bobbing up and down like tiny black bouncing balls from her face to her cleavage.

Because the attention the valet tendered was so awkward and fumbling, Cara found it almost sweet. She smiled at him and could have sworn that he blushed in response.

“Don’t worry yourself about it. It’s under control.” She slanted a look toward Max. “Give him the ticket, Ryker.”

“I am being taken prisoner against my will,” Weber suddenly yelled, pushing himself forward.

Though Salim was handcuffed to Cara, it was Max who pushed him back with the flat of his hand.

Surprised, the valet looked from Cara, to the man she was handcuffed to, to the other man with them, clearly in a quandary.

“Help me and I shall reward you,” Weber promised urgently.

Cara twisted Weber’s arm behind his back while smiling sweetly at the valet.

“Don’t let him fool you,” she warned. “Kevin kids like this all the time. We’re professional actors. We give shows in front of children’s groups all over the state. Kevin just did a line from A Thousand and One Arabian Nights. Pretty good, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, ma’am, um—” At a loss who to believe, the valet plucked the ticket from Max’s hand and hurried off to retrieve the car that corresponded to the number on it. He was too nervous to look back.

One corner of Max’s mouth curved upward. “A Thousand and One Arabian Nights?”

She shrugged. “It was the first thing that came to mind.”

It had just popped into her head when she’d looked at Weber’s olive complexion. It struck her that the man looked a little like he might have come from some country in the Far East.

She had no idea how close to the mark she’d come, Max thought. There was no doubt in his mind, now that he had seen “Weber” and listened to him speak that the man had to have originated from Tamir, the small island country that was not too far from Montebello. There were dark forces that originated from Tamir, forces that formed terrorists groups who disagreed with the current house in power there. And with nearly everyone else as well.

Silent up until this outburst, Weber cursed their souls to eternal hell.

“You will pay for this,” he growled. “Both of you.” He glared at Max contemptuously, his eyes becoming tiny, dark slits. “Especially you.”

“No,” Cara corrected. “You’ll pay—or at least the bail bondsman will.”

She looked from the prisoner at her side to Max, getting an uneasy feeling that there was a piece of the puzzle that she was missing or had somehow overlooked. Was she going to be in any kind of danger, going off with these two? Had she let her guard down already with the wrong person?

“You two know each other?” Weber lapsed into sullen silence. Turning, Cara looked at the private detective. “Well?”

He’d never seen Weber before he’d dispatched to bring him home. But that wasn’t to say that Weber didn’t know him. Half of Europe probably did, thanks to the tabloids. It had made big news when he’d disappeared off the face of the earth, only to eventually turn up in the States. “By reputation.”

Cagey, she thought. He wasn’t really answering her. “So what’s he supposed to have done?”

He might have not known “Weber” but he knew his type. “Blown up a few things,” Max said matter-of-factly.

She looked at Weber just as the valet finally drove up Max’s car.

“Are you a terrorist, Weber?” There was a momentary flash of recognition in his eyes, but only surly silence met her question.

The valet hopped out of the black sports cars, looking at it enviously. He held the keys out to Max.

“It’s all yours.” He grinned from ear to ear like a friendly puppy when Max took the keys from him and handed him a twenty-dollar bill. “Sure I can’t get that hacksaw for you?”

“We’re sure,” Max told him. He realized that Cara was moving toward the driver’s side. “Where do you think you’re going?”

She stopped, her hand on the driver’s door. “I’m driving.”

“Not attached to him you’re not. Besides, it’s my car, remember?” He could see that she was debating unhandcuffing herself so that she could take control of the vehicle. But her desire not to lose control of the prisoner won out.

“I’ll get in the back,” she muttered.

Max nodded. “Good idea.”

She pushed Weber ahead of her into the vehicle, then slid in after him. It was going to be a long trip, she thought.

She shouldn’t have had the extra large cola.

Her thirst had been overwhelming and gotten the better of her. When they had pulled into the last drive-through, over two hours ago, she hadn’t really cared about getting anything to eat, but she had been eager to get something to drink.

Now she regretted it.

She needed to go to the bathroom. Bad. But there was no way she was going to bring Weber into the rest room with her. Neither did she want to leave him outside with Ryker and take a chance on being left stranded at some rundown gas station on highway 25, halfway between Colorado and hell.

Cara squirmed as discreetly as possible, telling herself it was merely a case of mind over matter. If she could just wrap her mind around something else, this urgent feeling she had wouldn’t matter.

They’d driven in relative silence for the last hundred miles, rock songs from the eighties on the radio filling the emptiness within the car. The emptiness outside the car was almost overpowering.

In the distance, to the far left, Max saw what looked to be a vulture circling over something. It didn’t give him a warm feeling.

This truly was a desolate country, he thought. At least, large sections of it were. His own country was little more than the size of New Mexico itself, with about as many people. It filled him with awe to be within a country that was so large, it could fit scores of countries within its borders.

Max looked in his rearview mirror, not at the road he’d just passed, but at the woman in the back. Unaware of his scrutiny, she appeared to be in a great deal of discomfort. He smiled to himself. It undoubtedly had to do with that huge container of soda she’d consumed.

He was beginning to know the way she thought. She was probably afraid that if she took off her handcuff and made a stop at a rest room, he’d take off with the prisoner. The way, he had no doubt, that she would—unless he actually got her to give him her word. The fact that she had called room service before they left with the prisoner had shown him that she was honorable in her own way. It just took a bit of doing to tap into that honor.

As he’d told her earlier, he really wasn’t sure just what to make of her.

Max glanced at the fuel gauge on the dashboard. The needle was beginning to dip below the quarter of a tank mark. They could definitely use a refill at the next station. Looking at the GPS monitor on his dashboard for his location, he hit the sign to locate the closest gas station in the area. The answer came up almost immediately. God, but he loved technology.

“There’s a gas station five miles down the road.” He watched her face for a reaction as he added, “What do you say we get some gas and get out to stretch our legs? I’m getting a little punchy playing chauffeur up here.”

To his surprise, she looked more distressed than relieved. That didn’t make any sense.

A gas station. That meant a bathroom. Oh God, why had she thought of that?

She pressed her legs together beneath the white dress, the gun digging into her skin. Cara shifted uncomfortably. “Okay by me.”

They were there almost before the conversation was finished.

Pulling the car up to the pump, Max got out first. Instead of beginning to fill the tank, he opened the rear door.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

He took her arm and ushered her out. She was forced to pull Weber in her wake, but Max stopped her before she allowed the man to get out.

“Why don’t you uncouple yourself from Weber and use the facilities?” Max suggested, lowering his voice. “Maybe change out of that dress into something a little more practical?”

Although, from where he stood, he could just as easily watch her wear that dress all the way back to Shady Rock. The perspiration had the material sticking to her breasts, reminding him just why God had gone to work so diligently on Adam’s rib.

She looked at him knowingly, a frown curving her mouth.

“While you take off with Weber? I don’t think so.” To her surprise, Max handed her the keys he had just taken out of the ignition. “What’s this?”

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