Romancing the Crown Series

by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)

  Shifting, she peered out through the windshield. "Speaking of simple, do you think this lovely little town has a hotel?"

  Hotels invited a higher clientele than he guessed usually passed through Buford, New Mexico.

  "More likely a motel or a motor inn, if anything." He glanced at her, making a judgment call. "Probably not what you're used to."

  She laughed softly, thinking of some of the places she'd been in. In foster care all of her life, she'd run away several times when the family she was with had made life unbearable for her. She'd also stayed with some very nice people—people she hadn't allowed herself to grow attached to because there was always a separation waiting for her in the wings.

  But the other families were the ones that had left the deepest impression on her, though she pretended, even with herself, that they hadn't.

  It was while living with one of the latter, a family named Henderson whose older son had thought that having her stay with them entitled him to gaining access to her body whenever he felt the need, that she had learned how to make do on next to nothing and live by her wits on the street. She'd celebrated her eighteenth birthday living in a discarded refrigerator box beneath a bridge in Denver, Colorado.

  Her smile was enigmatic. "You have no idea what I'm used to."

  There were scars there, Max suddenly realized. His grandfather had only given him a quick summary of Cara Rivers, Bounty Hunter. But Cara Rivers, the woman, and the person who went into forming that woman, was something that had been left out.

  At the time, he hadn't thought it was necessary for him to know.

  Now he wasn't so sure.

  "Maybe you'll tell me what you're used to over dinner," he suggested.

  She looked at him and slowly, her lips peeled back into a smile. It was a line. She knew all about lines—and what was at the end of them.

  "Yeah, I can see you running a charm school all right," she quipped. "But you can save your breath, Ryker. It's wasted on me."

  His smile matched hers and made her all the more wary because she couldn't read what was behind it. "I'll be the judge of that."

  "You can be anything you want, but I've had my shots against pretty boys." The Henderson's son, Ted, had been almost too beautiful for words. He'd used his looks to his advantage like a skilled swordsman wielded a weapon. She'd been flattered that anyone as good-looking as Ted would pay attention to her. Until she'd realized what he actually wanted.

  Max had been called a lot of things in his time, but pretty boy wasn't one of them. And when she said it, the connotation was far from flattering.

  "Maybe you're putting me in a category where I don't belong," he told her.

  "I'll be the judge of that," she said, throwing his words back at him.

  There was no point in sparring this way. He nodded at the obligatory diner that stood like a tarnished, elongated silver can on the edge of the road. "Think the food here is decent?"

  She sincerely doubted it. But since it appeared to be the only place in town to serve food and they needed to eat, the point was moot.

  "Does the fact that it's such a small town give you a clue?" she asked him.

  He wondered if she always saw the glass as half empty, or if this was a part she was playing for his benefit, the reason behind it being something he wasn't allowed access to yet.

  "We could drive to the next town," he offered.

  She had no idea how far that might be and it was already nightfall. Now that she thought back, she hadn't eaten since around one. That had been a burger and fries as she had driven to her latest Weber sighting. A large container of coffee had been breakfast.

  "We're here, we might as well give it a try. It might surprise us."

  "Always up for a pleasant surprise," he told her, pulling up next to a dusty blue pickup truck.

  * * *

  The food turned out to be tolerable, though nothing Cara would have wanted to repeat on a regular basis. And the waitress was talkative enough. She looked at the photograph Cara gave her in between ongoing tirades about the condition of her tired feet.

  Studying the man's face, the orange-haired woman nodded as she refilled their coffee cups.

  "Yeah, I seen him. Not much of a tipper," she said regretfully. She looked around at her clientele. The diner was only one-third full. Cara was the only other woman in the place. "You get used to that kind of thing around here."

  Cara tucked away the photograph. "How long ago did he leave?"

  "From here?" The waitress considered. "About two hours ago. Looked like he was in a hurry."

  Listening, Max took a sip of the coffee. It only got worse with time, but it was hot and black and for now that was enough. "Got a mechanic?"

  "We've got Luther, but he's away on vacation." She grinned their way. "Likes to go fishing this time of year."

  Well, that was one strike, Cara thought. "How about a hotel?"

  The waitress shook her head. A man at the end of the counter waved to get her attention. She waved back. "Nope, don't have one of those. But there's a motel a few miles up the road. They should have a vacancy." She chuckled. "Hell, they always got a vacancy." Coffeepot in hand, she began to retreat to the counter and the customer. "Make sure they give you clean sheets."

  "This place just keeps getting better and better," Cara murmured to Max after the woman left.

  He thought of the time he'd bummed around Europe before coming to his senses and heading out to where his grandfather lived.

  "I've been in worse."

  She looked at him and sincerely doubted it.

  Chapter 5

  Ohe'd had a bad feeling the moment she saw the so-called motel.

  Single story, the motel had rooms that were all connected to one another, fashioning a semicircle around a courtyard that had a dry, decaying fountain in the middle surrounded by dead, brown grass and dirt.

  Calling the motel run-down would have been kind, but in addition, the rear section of the structure resembled a burnt-out shell whose insides had all been painstakingly scraped away.

  With a shake of her head, Cara had marched into the manager's office. It was too late to go hunting for another motel somewhere down the road. For now, this was going to have to do.

  Things only became more complicated.

  When she requested separate rooms for the night, the clerk shook his head.

  Keeping one eye on a television show about aliens turning up in a small, desolate, southwestern town, he told them, "Sorry folks. We had ourselves a little fire here last month. Gutted almost half our rooms. This is all we got left." He gestured at the rack on the wall behind him. There was only one key dangling there. "This is our busy season," he added with pride.

  Cara looked at the clerk's balding spot as he glanced back at the television set on his desk and tried to imagine how slow the rest of the year must be if a seven-room occupancy represented the "busy season." A seven-room occupancy in what was now, unfortunately for her, an eight-room motel.

  Standing at her elbow, Max made no secret that the situation amused him. That, and her ill-concealed discomfort over it.

  "You could sleep in the car," he suggested.

  It wasn't what she wanted to hear. She glared at him. "Or you could."

  But Max shook his head. He pressed a hand to the small of his spine. "Bad back. My roughing-it days are over."

  It was a lie, but a small one and he figured he could be forgiven. Besides, spending the night in the car was guaranteed to give him a bad back.

  Yeah, Cara would just bet they were. The man was as physically fit as any she'd ever seen. Maybe even more so. There was no doubt in her mind that when he had a willing partner, consideration for his back was the last thing on the man's mind. He looked capable of making love twisted up like a pretzel.

  "You try anything and you'll find out just how 'rough' rough can be," she warned under her breath, then turning toward the clerk, she exhaled in frustration. "All right, we'll take it."

  His attent
ion momentarily diverted from the flickering screen, the clerk turned the registration book around for her benefit.

  "Wonderful. Sign here." He shifted slightly at the surprised look on her face. "I've been meaning to save up for a computer, but this kind of gives it the homey touch, don't you think?"

  "Homey," Cara murmured. If home was some backwater, shanty town struggling its way into the second half of the twentieth century. Cara skimmed down the column of names that appeared on the discolored pages. "Looks like you've got a lot of people named Smith and Jones coming through here."

  "Yup." He seemed utterly clueless about her inference. "Popular names," the clerk agreed guilelessly.

  Hell, she decided, would be being stuck in a place like this for all eternity. Cara quickly signed her name, then handed the pen to Max.

  He added his on the line below.

  The clerk turned the register around after Max signed in and read their names.

  "Welcome, Ms. Rivers, Mr. Ryker. I'm sure you'll find your stay in La Casa Del Sol a pleasant one." The way he pronounced the motel's name testified to the fact that English was by far his first and only language. He leaned over the counter to glance down at the floor.

  "No luggage?" His thin lips curved in a knowing smile as he straightened up again.

  "We plan to make mad, passionate love and wear each other," Cara told him matter-of-factly. "Can we have the key, please?"

  His eyes big as saucers, he mumbled, "Sure thing."

  Taking the key from the battered rack behind him, the clerk held it out to Cara. But as she reached for it, Max intervened, taking the key from the clerk.

  She turned on her heel and walked out of the tiny, airless office.

  "What made you say something like that to him?" Max wanted to know.

  She shrugged. "I thought he needed a little spice in his life."

  No two ways about it, the woman definitely was not easy to read. One moment she was flippant, teasing, the next minute she was reserved, private, like a nun in training.

  "I don't know what to make of you."

  "Don't worry about it. We won't be together long enough for you to have to 'make' anything of me. All you need to know is that I always get my man. Always. Oh, and by the way, you take the sofa," Cara informed him.

  "I told you," Max reminded her innocently, "I have a bad back."

  She shot him a look that was clearly nothing short of lethal. "Mister, you don't know what bad is."

  He laughed softly under his breath, leading the way to Room 6. "I've traveled with you for a few hours. Trust me, I know."

  "All right." She blew out a breath. "I'll take the sofa."

  But then they entered the small room that overlooked the highway and discovered that decorating hadn't been the management's top priority. It hadn't even made the top five list.

  A huge bed dominated the room, its frayed leopard comforter clearly intended for the next size down. At the wall beside the tiny bathroom was a dresser that had seen better decades. Two nightstands that someone had obviously put together out of a box somewhere in the early seventies buffered the bed. They did not match the scarred, dark bureau.

  Two lamps, one tall, one short, were perched on top, providing the illumination, such as it was.

  "No sofa," she muttered. Why didn't that surprise her? Cara looked down at the floor. "I guess I should consider myself lucky that they sprang for a rug."

  "That all depends on your definition of luck," Max commented.

  The rug was matted down from years of wear and from all appearances, had never been cleaned. It was hard determining just exactly what color it had originally been. Currently it was mud-brown.

  "The bed's big," Max pointed out. "Plenty of room for two people who don't want to have anything to do with one another to sleep on."

  His phrasing caught her attention and not in a favorable way. "You don't want to have anything to do with me?"

  "Just following your lead," he told her innocently.

  It was just as he'd suspected earlier. Beneath the bravado and tough talk, she was more sensitive than she would have liked.

  "I'm dog tired and really don't want to argue about anything anymore, including sleeping arrangements," he told her, curtailing, he hoped, any further debate about who went where.

  Protesting that he'd always been nothing less than a gentleman would have undoubtedly fallen on deaf ears anyway. He was sure that she had her own preconceived notions that had little or nothing to do with him.

  "Do you want to use the bathroom first?" he offered gallantly.

  She wanted a few minutes to unwind first. Away from him. "No, you can check out if they have hot and cold running insects coming out of their faucets."

  "Glad I can do something for you."

  Cara watched as Max walked into the minuscule bathroom and shut the door. It took a little jiggling before the lock finally caught. Two minutes later, she heard the shower water running.

  She released the breath she suddenly realized she was holding. Sitting down on the bed, she found her thoughts fixing themselves on what was going on behind the door. It was hard not to imagine him naked, the water cascading down a wall of what appeared to be solid muscle and was otherwise seen as his chest.

  What the hell was the matter with her?

  She needed a man, she decided. The sooner the better. It had been a long time since she'd talked to someone of the male persuasion in any other capacity than something having to do with her work.

  All work and no play, Cara... she upbraided herself.

  A ringing noise broke into her thoughts. The sound was coming from the other end of the room, and not from the old-fashioned dial telephone that was resting precariously on the edge of the nightstand, vying for space with the smaller of the two lamps.

  The sound was coming from the jacket Max had haphazardly thrown on the edge of the bureau.

  Crossing to it, she dug into a pocket and located his cell phone on the first try.

  She flipped it open and placed it against her ear, not certain just why she felt it necessary to play the part of Ryker's secretary.

  "Hello?"

  There was silence for a beat, and then the sound of a deep, crisp masculine voice on the other end. "Hello, who is this?"

  The voice had a commanding tone to it and Cara heard herself saying, "Cara Rivers."

  "Oh, I am sorry, I must have gotten the wrong number—"

  Cara snapped to attention before the man hung up. "Wait, are you trying to reach Max Ryker?"

  "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 wo
ndering 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.