by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)
She would have thought as much. What kind of a woman appealed to Ryker, she wondered. Did he like leather or lace? To wrestle or to play the conqueror? It was hard to say, he gave out too many signals and not enough information.
"Do much 'reading' in your spare time?"
"Enough," he answered.
She could hear the smile in his voice. A man who looked the way he did probably had women strewn all around like dirty socks in a bachelor pad. Didn't matter to her how many dirty socks he had scattered around, she told herself. Nope, not one wit.
Turning the key in the ignition, she stepped down on the accelerator and tore out of the gas station.
Thrown back against his seat, Max caught hold of the back of the driver's headrest and leaned forward.
"Hey, Mario Andretti, we're not going to make Shady Stone—"
"Rock," she corrected tersely, her eyes glued to the darkened road.
"Whatever, before nightfall no matter how fast you drive so you might as well slow down." Damn it, he'd forgotten that the woman drove like a maniac. "Something along the lines of the speed of sound would be nice."
He was right. The man was making a habit out of it. Holding her tongue, she eased back from the gas pedal. She had no idea where that burst of uncharted energy had come from.
* * *
The nearest town with any law-enforcement officials turned out to be almost one hundred miles away. La Cuchara Del Oro. The golden spoon.
"Sounds more like a restaurant than a town," Max commented when she told him the name. He looked at the prisoner. "Maybe we can just leave him in the freezer overnight."
He was kidding, but housing the prisoner could be a problem, which was why she'd targeted the town they were going to. It was the only town on the way with a jail cell.
"I figure your people want him alive as much as mine do. That means if we want to get any sleep tonight, we need a cell to put him in."
But something else she'd said had already caught his attention. "What do you mean, my people?"
If Cara didn't know any better, she would have said he was being touchy. Probably just the monotony of the road getting to him. Even the songs on the radio had begun to repeat themselves for a third time since they'd started on this trip.
"Your client, the people or person from Monticello who sent you to bring this guy back. What else could I mean?"
"Montebello," Max corrected automatically.
When she'd said "your people," he'd thought that she'd recognized him. Maybe he was being needlessly paranoid, but he didn't want to be associated with his father's country. Though he didn't include his brother or his uncle's family, for the most part the people born to royalty had always struck him as a group of vain, empty-headed people who were in positions of power and luxury through no actual effort of their own other than being lucky enough to be born to that world.
He hadn't considered himself lucky to be born to it. He considered himself cursed. Cursed because there was almost always a spotlight to record not just the good moments, but the bad. Especially the bad. Cursed because he hadn't been free to do what he'd wanted to do, but had always been reminded by his father to "set an example."
Right, an example, like his father had with all his flagrant marital transgressions, his endless parade of mistresses.
"Something wrong?" Cara asked, looking at his face in the rearview mirror.
His eyes met hers in the mirror, his face noncommittal enough to play winning hands of poker with. "No, why?"
She shrugged, feeling stupid to have been concerned. "No reason. You just had a funny look on your face, like you're working up your anger."
He looked at Weber, who had taken one side of the car and was now apparently sleeping. Just like that. "My anger doesn't need to be worked up, it needs to be toned down."
She took him at his word and decided that for the time being, she would leave him to his thoughts.
Sheriff Joe Adler took off his hat and scratched his balding head. A good-natured man with the body of a well-ripened pear, the request put to him by this young woman had left him baffled. He looked from one handcuffed man to the other. "Which one's the prisoner?" Cara laughed. "The smaller one. Then you'll hold him for me until morning?" Joe seemed genuinely sorry to offer them any less than complete cooperation. Finally, a decent man. Cara felt like proposing to him, but he was probably married. The best ones usually were. "I dunno, I've gotta look this up in the rule book, ma'am. I'm kind of new at this," the man confessed. "Won the election unopposed," he told them both in a whisper. "The last man didn't want the job anymore and so now it's mine."
She knew every aspect of her job, knew just where she could rely on the law and where she was on her own. This was one small area where the police department was required to come through. That was why she had made sure she had all of Weber's paperwork in hand before she got rolling.
"Trust me," Cara said, "we can leave the prisoner here overnight. I have all the appropriate paperwork with me, signed and notarized."
As Max watched, she produced several official documents from her gargantuan purse, testifying that she was acting on behalf of Philip Stanford, a licensed Colorado bail bondsman as well as at the behest of the Shady Rock sheriff's department. She showed Adler the original bounty poster with Kevin Weber's likeness plastered all over it.
"This is his offense," she said, pointing to the paper where the official charges were drawn up. She let the sheriff look over the sheet before continuing. "You don't want this man running loose in your town, now do you?"
He handed back the documents to her. "No ma'am, I don't," he agreed, then looked at Max. "How do you figure into all this?"
"You might say her bodyguard." He ignored the incredulous look Cara sent him. "I get to watch her back."
The sheriff glanced at the kind of view that afforded and couldn't help the grin that came to his lips. He loved his wife dearly, but a man could always look. And dream a little.
"Nice work if you can get it," he murmured.
Cara walked up to the single holding cell. The very fact that there was only one testified to the fact that any crimes in Del Oro were of the venial variety. Wrapping her hand around the bars, she gave them a tug.
"They certainly feel strong enough." She turned around and tried to appeal to the man's sense of fair play. "Sheriff, I promise we'll be gone by morning. We just need a place to put the prisoner while we get a little sleep." Both of them were tired and there was no pretending otherwise. Determined as she was to get Weber back to Shady Rock, she knew her own limits. "By the way, where's the nearest motel?"
"Ain't got one. Had one," he quickly added, not wanting them to think of Del Oro as a two-bit hick town, "but it burned down. Town counsel's trying to raise funds for a new one."
That didn't do them much good tonight. "Where do people who come through stay?" she wanted to know.
"They don't. They just go through. Keeps the town peaceful," he attested. Adler looked at them for a moment, then made a value judgment. "Tell you what. You two look like decent folks. I've got a room over my garage. It's not much, but there's a bed in it and you're welcome to it. Had Martha's nephew staying with us for a while. He used the room, but he's moved on now. I can have Martha put some clean sheets on the bed for you. Martha's my wife," he added belatedly.
Cara smiled. "I rather thought that."
She looked at Max, remembering the last time they'd shared a bed together. Something had come over her and she'd almost made a mistake. There was no guarantee that the same something wouldn't rise up again to trouble her. But she was too exhausted to consider sleeping in the car and too tired to go back on the road to try to find suitable accommodations tonight. The room over the garage with its single bed was going to have to do.
"That's very generous of you, Sheriff. But don't you think you should check with your wife first before you make the offer?" Max suggested politely. "Mrs. Adler might not like the idea of you bringing home strangers to spend
the night."
Adler's wide belly shook beneath his drooping gun belt as he laughed.
"You obviously don't know my Martha. Woman talks to flowers just to keep in training," he told Max fondly. "She'd love to talk to real people." He reached for the telephone on his desk. "But I will call her so she can have two extra places set for dinner. Martha loves company, she purely does."
"If you're sure we're not putting you out," Cara added in her two-cents worth.
Surprised by the sensitivity he'd just displayed, she looked at Max. She didn't know any other man who would have thought of asking if the man's wife was agreeable to a suggestion that was tendered by her husband, not where his own comfort was concerned.
Ryker was in a class by himself.
Max could feel her eyes boring into him. Now what had he done? "What?"
The sheriff was busy calling his wife. Turning away, she lowered her voice.
"Just trying to figure out if you're on the level. Most men I know wouldn't have given the sheriff's wife a second thought."
Sixteen hours on the road and she still smelled good enough to arouse him. Maybe this idea of sharing a bed for the night wasn't such a good one, Max thought.
"Like I said, you need to get to know a better class of people."
Adler let the receiver drop back into its cradle. A wide grin split his round face. "It's all set. She's tickled pink."
"Urn, and what about my—our," Cara amended, "prisoner?"
Adler nodded at the purse where Cara had returned the documents. "Since you've got the paperwork making this all legal and tidy, we'll just keep him here, tucked away for the night like you said."
She shook her head. "No, I mean, is there somewhere we can go to get him some dinner?"
Adler waved the question away. "Don't worry about it. Martha'll rustle up something for him, too. Great little cook, my Martha." He looked at Weber. "You're in for a treat."
In response, Weber swore at him viciously.
Taken aback, Adler looked at Max. "My, he's a mean one, isn't he?"
"That he is," Cara readily agreed.
She thought of the way that Weber had looked at her in the hotel bar, the way he almost stole her air within the elevator as he was bringing her to his room. She had no doubts that he was the kind who liked his women weak, submissive and subservient. The thought made her shudder.
"You're going to need to unlock the cuffs, unless you want to spend the night with him," the sheriff told Max. The latter held out a hand to Cara. She was quick to supply the key.
Cara watched intently as the sheriff opened the cell door and ushered the prisoner inside. Max took the handcuffs from Adler and handed them to her.
Locking the door and testing to make sure it was secure, the sheriff shook his head as he turned back to look at Cara. "A lady bounty hunter. Now don't that just beat all?"
Max grinned, placing his hand to the small of her back as he began to usher her from the room. "My sentiments exactly."
"Hadley," the sheriff addressed the lone man sitting with his feet up on the scarred desk in the back room. The deputy immediately put his feet down and stood up at attention. "We got ourselves a prisoner tonight, so don't slack off and go to steal some time with that Melinda of yours. You can make eyes at her on your own time, not mine. I'll be by later with some dinner for him."
The deputy was almost salivating as he asked, "Martha's cooking?"
Adler beamed. He always liked hearing his wife being appreciated. The woman put her heart and soul into her cooking.
"Yup." And then he smiled at his subordinate. "I'll have her pack a little something extra for you, too, Hadley," he promised.
* * *
It was a surprisingly sweet evening.
The Adlers, Cara discovered, had been together close to forty years and looked as if they would be perfectly content to spend another forty in each other's company. Their only regret, Martha didn't mind telling them, was that they had never been able to have children of their own.
Cara found herself wishing that she had met people like the Adlers when she had been in the system. Living with people who had such genuine affection for each other would have painted a completely different picture of the world for her. There would have been depth instead of shallowness, affection instead of fear.
During the course of the meal, she watched them exchange secret glances, saw the sheriff pat his wife affectionately several times and watched Martha Adler reciprocate in kind.
Words weren't necessary, they had their own brand of communication.
Serving coffee after the best meal Cara could remember having in recent history, Mrs. Adler cozied up to her guests on the worn Herculon sofa in the family room. Cara couldn't help smiling to herself. For all the world the woman looked exactly like the image she'd had as a child of Mrs. Santa Claus.
Before she'd been stripped of her fantasies and her innocence.
"So how long have you two been together?" Martha wanted to know.
"Martha, you don't ask those kinds of questions of guests," the sheriff chided.
Her eyes were almost violet in their innocence as she looked at first her husband, then the pair she was entertaining. "But how else am I going to know things, Joe?"
Max began to answer, but Cara was quick to intercede. "Five years."
"You've been married that long?" Martha asked. To Max's continued surprise, Cara nodded. "But where's your wedding ring, dear?"
All right, let's hear this one, Max thought, leaving the floor opened to her.
Cara bit her lower lip, as if she were debating admitting the woman into this portion of her life. It gave Max pause. Rivers was a great little actress. Which meant she could use her skills on him. How was he to trust anything she told him?
"We were too poor to afford a ring," Cara finally said. "When we were married by the justice of the peace, he had to used one of the judge's cigar bands." She smiled warmly at Max. "I wore it until it ripped. Now, nothing else seems good enough to replace it."
There were tears in Martha's eyes. She placed her hand over the sheriff's. "Is that the sweetest thing you've ever heard, Joe?"
Her husband nodded in agreement.
Max shut the door behind him to the small room the Adlers had brought them to. It was a step up from the last motel room they'd shared. Smaller, it had only a tiny shower stall and toilet for a bathroom, but it was bright and clean and reflected the same kind of love he'd witnessed in the Adlers's home.
His mother would have thrived with a man like that, he thought. She would have been far better off if she'd fallen for someone as simple as Joe Adler rather than losing her heart to a dashing prince who never realized the gift he'd been given.
Turning around, Max looked at Cara. The woman was a constant source of confusion for him. "Why did you tell them we were married?"
She would have thought he'd understand.
"That was a sweet, conventional woman and I didn't want to shock her. The sheriff said there was only one bed," she reminded him. "It doesn't matter what century it is, that woman is of the mom-baseball-apple-pie generation."
He supposed he could see her point. But where had the details come from? "Cigar band?" he queried. "What made you come up with that?"
Cara laughed softly to herself. "Saw it in a movie on TV once. At the time I thought it was hopelessly romantic. When the couple finally got rich, he bought her a wedding ring fashioned exactly like a cigar band, using diamonds and rubies to form the Indian chief's features." She remembered praying with all her heart that there would be a man like that in her life someday.
"You don't strike me as the type to like sentimental things like that."
When she turned around, she found he was right behind her. There wasn't all that much space in the room. It was difficult not to bump up against each other.
Taking a step back, she tossed her head, shutting down. She had to learn to stop sharing tiny things with him. It compromised her somehow.
&n
bsp; "I'm not." Cara indicated the bed. "Same arrangement as last time?"
He'd taken the right side, she the left. "Fine with me."
* * *
The problem was, she thought as she lay down half an hour later, that it really wasn't fine with her. The bed was smaller than the one in the motel room, the walls were closer and as for him, well, Ryker was far too close for comfort.
It didn't look as if sleep was going to be in her immediate future, Cara prophesied, scrunching up her pillow beneath her.
She was wrong.
She was asleep within ten minutes.
It was Max who couldn't sleep.
Chapter 10
"No, Ted. Don't. Please, don't. Don't."
Max had just spent the last few hours watching the woman beside him sleep, alternating between feeling something for her he didn't want to put into any sort of a context and being aroused by Cara's close proximity. Just when he thought it was hopeless, he started to drift off.
The words, the heart-wrenching plea, penetrated his brain, breaking up the haze of sleep that was beginning to descend over him.
Max woke with a start, instantly becoming aware that the woman he was sharing a bed with was thrashing from side to side as if she were desperately trying to avoid something.
Or someone.
But she was sound asleep.
Hesitating, Max thought of letting whatever she was dreaming about play out its course. She was obviously having a nightmare and he knew that if he woke her up, Rivers would lash out at him for touching her, accusing him of trying to take advantage of her while she was asleep.
He knew without it being said that the woman was highly protective of her boundaries. If he deigned to wake her up from a nightmare, she'd probably have his head for seeing her in such a vulnerable light.
He watched her for a moment, the way he had for most of the night.
The nightmare didn't abate.
It was hard to ignore what was happening and impossible to fall back asleep when Rivers was breathing so hard. It was as if she were running.
Or suffering.