by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)
Frustrated, she dragged her hand through her hair, torn. Was her word worth less than his?
No, damn it, it wasn't. It was just that...just... It was understood between them that she wouldn't try to take the prisoner. Was her tacit word less than his?
More angry with herself than ever, she dropped the things she was carrying on the floor and turned back around. Only to find Ryker sitting up in bed, watching her. The blanket was strategically planted on his torso, but not so strategically that it could make her forget or block out the hard body that she damn well knew was just beneath it.
Her mouth suddenly went annoyingly dry.
Max's lips curved in amusement. "Change your mind about leaving?"
She squared her shoulders. There was nothing she hated more than being second-guessed. Or being predictable. "And if I haven't?"
She had. She'd already given herself away by the way she'd hesitated at the door. "You'd be surprised how fast I could get out of this bed and get dressed." ">
Standing where she was, Cara arched one knowing brow. "Get lots of practice with irate husbands coming home unexpectedly?"
Max looked at her, trying to figure out what was going on in her head. By the expression on Rivers's face, he judged that she had rebuilt some of the barriers that had been taken down last night.
"I've never made love to anyone's wife," he told her simply.
Cara believed him.
She had no idea why. There was no reason for her to believe that a man who looked the way he did, who despite his chosen profession had raw charm coming out of every pore, would draw the line about the type of willing women he would take to his bed. But she did.
It made him more honorable. She didn't want to like him. It made things harder for her.
"Hooray for you," she said crisply. She looked down at the things she'd dropped, her purse, the small bag with the change of clothes. "We need to get going if we're to stay on schedule."
They were back in their corners, he thought, with an entire boxing ring between them. Maybe it was better that way. Last night she'd opened up a door to things that were better left untouched as far as he was concerned. He didn't like being confronted with feelings that weren't cut-and-dried.
He'd never liked things getting any more complicated than they already were and bringing this prisoner back to his uncle and Montebello was complicated enough for him right now.
"Be right with you, Rivers," he promised, hurrying out of bed. Max heard her suck in her breath and turned toward her, his discarded pants in his hand. Amusement teased his mouth as he looked at her expression. "Something wrong?"
Cara gritted her teeth together. Damn him. Ryker looked even better in the daylight than he had last night. Last night she hadn't really looked, only reacted. The full impact of his body hadn't completely registered.
It did now and she could feel adrenaline beginning to race through her. Could feel color beginning to heat her cheeks.
She turned away, pretending to be impatient. Pretending not to suddenly be getting very, very warm.
"Nothing," she snapped. "Just hurry up. We've still got five hundred miles to cover before we get to Shady Rock and in order to get the bounty, we need to get there before tomorrow."
"Ah, the bounty. Right."
She resented the almost mocking tone he took. Probably didn't know what it meant to do without, she thought. Probably had women paying his way all along.
"Then I guess we'd better get going," he agreed, coming up behind her.
Cara stiffened. He couldn't have possibly gotten dressed that fast. And if he hadn't, if he was standing there behind her in all his glory, she wasn't entirely sure she could make it out the door.
No matter what her feelings were about the rest of it, about what had happened last night, there was no way she could deny that Ryker was one magnificent specimen of manhood.
Cara realized that she was holding her breath just as he circled around and came to stand in front of her. The rat was dressed.
Reaching for the door, Max looked at her innocently. "Well?"
Grabbing her things, Cara yanked open the door and sailed passed him without deigning to give him so much as a single glance.
* * *
They were on the road an hour later. Cara would have preferred to be gone sooner, but Mrs. Adler had refused to let either of them leave without making what she called a small breakfast.
Martha Adler was of the old school and felt that breakfast was the most important meal of the day —and the more of it you had, the better. She also insisted on packing a substantial lunch for them "in case you don't find a good place to stop along the road."
In less than a couple of hours, Cara felt closer to Mrs. Adler than she ever had to any of her foster mothers.
Martha embraced them both before sending them on their way. Cara knew that it didn't make any sense, but she felt as if she were leaving behind family.
"Nice woman," Max commented once they were outside the house.
The sheriff beamed with pride at the compliment. "The best."
Cara could only agree.
* * *
The road from La Cuchara Del Oro to Shady Rock was marked with sun, heat and huge pockets of silence that the music from the car radio did nothing to dispel.
Because Cara appeared to need to work things through, Max let her take the wheel when they left the sheriff's office with Weber in tow.
He lived to regret it.
She drove like a bat out of hell, taking her aggressions out on the empty road. Small towns whizzed by, mere blurs in the rearview mirror.
As long as the road was level and there were no cars traveling in either direction, he silently argued with himself, they were safe enough—barring a blowout. From either tire or woman, Max qualified.
After two hundred miles had gone by, Max found himself wanting to talk to her, to slowly broach the subject of what had been, he judged for both of them, not a night to carelessly throw away.
But that kind of a discussion, even in part, didn't belong within the confines of a car that was being shared by their mutual prisoner.
So he kept his peace and waited for the journey to be over.
They ate on the road and stopped only twice. Each time Cara got back behind the wheel. He was beginning to think of it as her car.
"Sure you don't want me to take over?" he asked as they got in after the second gas station stop.
Her hands tightened around the wheel and she peeled out. "I'm sure. You've taken over enough."
He knew she wasn't talking about driving, but there as nothing he could do, other than keep his own counsel. For the time being, he did.
She wasn't the only one who needed to work a few things through.
* * *
They reached Shady Rock, Colorado, just a hairbreadth before six o'clock in the afternoon. Max looked around as they entered the town. For all the world, it looked almost exactly like half a dozen other towns they had just passed along the road. A general store, a gas station, a diner and a sheriff's office, with several scores of houses and some apartments thrown in for good measure.
It didn't look like much, but he kept that thought to himself, along with everything else he'd wanted to say. At the moment, he didn't feel very diplomatic. He was hot, tired and not exactly in the best of spirits. Beside him, Weber was beyond surly, cursing at them in a language that Max surmised was entirely unfamiliar to Cara.
But not to him.
Cara glanced over her shoulder at Weber after his latest outburst. The papers she had in her purse from the bondsman gave her no particulars on the prisoner's background. All she knew was that he was guilty of burglary.
But she was beginning to suspect that there was more to it. Especially since he was wanted in another country.
"If that guy's real name is Weber," she commented to Max as she pulled his car up in front of the sheriff's office, "I'll eat my hat."
Max got out first and rounded the trunk. No l
onger handcuffed to the prisoner, he reached in through the partially opened window and unlocked one handcuff from the strap.
"You don't have a hat," he pointed out.
"I'll buy one."
They were home, she thought. There was no feeling of finally having arrived, but this was as much home as any place she'd lived in. Shady Rock was where her travels had brought her. Where her longing for stability had propelled her once she had discovered that the only person who had ever mattered in her life, Bridgette Applegate, had returned here to live out the rest of her years in the house where she had grown up.
Cara had envied Bridgette that, having somewhere to retreat to that contained warm, heartening memories of her childhood. Her own childhood had been scattered across three states and far more towns than she cared to ever remember.
"Got him?" she asked Max.
He held up the handcuff that was now snapped onto his wrist.
She had a flashback from last night, remembering the way his hand had felt along her flesh. Warm, soothing. Gentle.
She shook off the memory and turned on her heel. Leading the way, she breezed into the sheriff's office. The man looked as if he was preparing to go home.
"Hi, Bryce, I've got him. Just like I promised."
Sheriff Bryce Allen looked up from his desk, his prematurely lined face wreathing in a smile once he realized who had walked in. Sharp brown eyes washed over the tall man with her before Bryce turned his attention to the woman he had come to respect a great deal in the last three years. She didn't look the part, but Cara Rivers was the best damn tracker he'd ever come across.
"Knew you'd bring him back, Cara." He rounded his desk, picking up the keys to the cell in the back. "You're like one of those damn Canadian Mounties, except a lot better looking." He winked at her, then glanced toward the tall, thin young woman sitting at the desk on the side. There was a phone with several lines lit on her desk but she was ignoring them, her face buried in a magazine. "Look alive, Alice, time to earn your paycheck and do a little paperwork."
Alice Horton, secretary and chief dispatcher for the Shady Rock Sheriff's Department, tore her gaze away from the story about the latest Hollywood divorce she was reading and looked at the sheriff. She wasn't supposed to call him Uncle Bryce here, although it was that very connection that had landed her this job in the first place.
She also looked, for the first time, at the three people who had entered the office.
The magazine she was reading slid from her limp fingers, falling to the tall, precariously stacked pile of magazines that were tilted haphazardly against her desk. Magazines that dealt with people who led lives that were far more exciting and glamorous than hers.
Her mouth was already hanging open. Somehow, clutching the arms of her chair, Alice somehow managed to rise to her feet.
"You're him." The words dragged themselves across an entirely dried throat. She began to pick up speed. "Tell me you're him. You've got to be him, you look just like him," she all but squealed. Her head swiveled around toward her uncle. "It's him. He's here."
The sheriff had seen her like this before, so star-struck that she was completely incoherent, like the time that country singer's bus broke down right outside of town. She'd been a babbling idiot for more than a week after that.
But as far as he knew, there was no rock star, no movie star within a fifty-mile radius, give or take a few miles.
"Alice, what the hell are you babbling about?"
She pointed one slightly chipped, red-tipped fingernail at Max. She looked at the sheriff incredulously. "Don't you know who he is?"
"Yes," Cara quipped. "A royal pain in the butt."
"Royal," Alice echoed. "He's royal all right." Alice's eyes were in jeopardy of bugging out as she stared at Cara. "How could you not know?"
Cara fished out the handcuff keys and unlocked the cuff that was on Max, snapping it in place around Weber's other wrist instead. She gave the man a push to move him in the sheriff's direction.
"Here, Bryce, put this man in jail so you can sign the papers. I want to collect my money and be on my way," Cara said to the sheriff. "Know what?" she demanded, turning toward Alice.
The woman had always struck her as being more than a little ditzy, her face stuck in a magazine, her head in the clouds. She knew the sheriff kept Alice on despite her lack of professionalism because she was his wife's niece. Bryce was nothing if not loyal, but even he knew that the young woman would have never made it in the real world.
Max frowned. Damn it, he'd have thought that in an out-of-the-way place like Shady Rock, he wouldn't encounter what he was always on his guard against. Being recognized. One look at the young woman's face and Max knew that the charade was up. He'd seen the same starstruck expression ad nauseum before he had finally decided to abandon the merry-go-round he was on and cleave to a life of anonymity across the ocean.
Because the tabloids referred to him by an alliterated nickname he found irritating—the disenchanted duke—and the infernal paparazzi who were pedaling photographs taken of him almost a decade ago, his former life insisted on haunting him and disrupting the life he had made for himself here in the States.
Trying to ignore the adoring stare the receptionist had fixed on him, Max turned toward the sheriff. He had to put in his claim to the prisoner before things blew up in his face.
"Sheriff, I need to speak to you regarding the prisoner."
The sheriff looked at him uncertainly, trying to figure out why Alice looked so loopy. He kept one eye trained on the man Cara had brought in. "What about the prisoner?"
Max glanced at Cara. He could see that she was rapidly becoming annoyed. "It seems that Ms. Rivers and I have equal claim to him."
"I got to him first," Cara insisted, still leery of being aced out of the bounty money. Just because Ryker had been everything she'd needed last night didn't mean that she was going to allow herself to get blindsided by him when it came to the bounty.
Trying to remain impartial, the sheriff shook his head. "Sorry, but as far as I know, there's only one bounty on him and if Cara says she got to him first, then it belongs to her."
As they negotiated, Weber became more and more verbally abusive, while Alice looked as if she was alternating between wanting to jump out of her skin and being struck dumb.
Trying to ignore the latter, Max kept his eye on the former. "It's not about a bounty, it's about getting this man back to Montebello."
"Montebello?" The sheriff wasn't surprised. The mystery of the missing prince had been on TV again recently. Then a man—Tyler Ramsey, if he recalled correctly—had shown up on behalf of the Montebellan authorities, asking about the bail jumper.
Alice finally found her tongue. "That's what I've been trying to tell you. This is Maximillian Sebastiani. The Disenchanted Duke."
She triumphantly held up a magazine, then flipped to the proper page. There was a family layout, taken when Max was thirteen. The year before his mother died.
Seeing the photograph of his mother, sitting serenely beside her husband, bracketed by her sons, made Max's heart ache. He would have given anything if that smile on her face had been genuine, had been merited.
But even as the photograph was being taken, his mother had been dealing with his father's latest infidelity. The man had never made an effort to be discreet. He hadn't cared enough about her feelings to do that.
Pushing herself in front of the sheriff and directly in Max's face, Alice curtsied awkwardly. "Pleased to meet you, Your Highness. I'm Alice Horton."
Taking her hand, he drew the woman to her feet. "I'm not 'Your Highness.' That title is strictly for my uncle."
"Your uncle?" Cara echoed, staring at Max, completely stunned. What the hell was going on here? Just who had she made love with last night?
"The king," Alice told her importantly. She pointed to a man in the background of the photograph. "King Marcus of Montebello."
Looking at the photograph, Cara's eyes grew wide. She looked back
at Max. "Your uncle's a king?" This all sounded too implausible for words. Yes, he was charming in a rugged sort of way, but a duke? This had to be some kind of joke.
Trapped, Max had no recourse but to tell the truth. "Yes. It's a small country." He realized that he was apologizing for his identity. He hadn't meant to, but Rivers looked so astonished, and not in a good way, he felt the need to try to smooth things over.
"Kingdom," Alice interjected with a heartfelt sigh, pressing the magazine to her chest, her eyes fastened on Max as if they would never turn elsewhere again. "It's a kingdom."
This was a little too much to digest. The sheriff looked from his niece to the man she was mooning over. "All right. What do you need with regard to this prisoner?"
Without realizing it, Cara fisted her hands on her hips. She glared at Max. He made her feel like a complete idiot. Had he been laughing at her the entire time he'd made love with her?
"Yes, that's what I want to know."
For the moment, Max ignored the furious woman next to him. His duty came first. "My country has a warrant out for this man's arrest and my uncle, King Marcus, would consider it a political favor on the part of your country if you would allow me to bring him back to face official charges in Montebello. There is an extradition treaty in effect. I will bring him back once things are squared away."
But Cara had only heard one thing. "Your country," she jeered. "And here I thought that 'your country' was the U.S."
Max glanced at her, perturbed. Calling Montebello his country had been an unfortunate slip on his part, made necessary by the circumstances. After all, he was representing Montebello in this.
"It is, now," Max clarified. "But I was born in Montebello." He lost the first layer of his patience. "Look, Sheriff, I don't have time to argue about this. I need to return to Montebello with this man as soon as possible."
Rather than let the sheriff answer, Cara broke in. This wasn't acceptable. There was too much at stake. "He's not going anywhere until I get my bounty money."
The money again. It just didn't add up for him. Rivers didn't seem like the obsessively greedy type. But then, maybe he'd misread her. Considering the short time that they'd been thrown together, he couldn't exactly call himself an expert on the woman.