Romancing the Crown Series

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

  Nina honestly couldn't answer her own question. She liked to think she owed it to Desmond to have a hand in bringing his killer to justice. But a small voice inside her head warned her that her original reason for being in Montebello had evolved into another that had an even less certain outcome.

  * * *

  Ryan parked half on the sidewalk, half in the street just outside Pietro's. Pete served the juiciest hamburgers on this side of the world and the greasiest fries anywhere. Nina could have her blasted oatmeal when she craved comfort food. He hit Pete's place when he needed a brief shot of home. Today was turning out to be one of those days.

  God only knew what she'd try next if he left her anywhere so he could get some work done. He'd just have to haul her with him everywhere he went, he supposed.

  Maybe his stopping for the junkiest food available in Montebello had a little revenge attached to it. She definitely looked like a yogurt-and-bean-sprout kind of girl. Damned yuppie. Graphic designer? What kind of job was that? Probably did those so-called subtle ads with tons of blank space for products that were unidentifiable to the average guy.

  He hadn't asked her about her job because he didn't want to know. The less he knew about her, the better. But then again, he had to find out as much as he could to determine whether he was right about her being innocent. God, he hoped he hadn't misjudged. The king would never trust him with another assignment if he screwed this up.

  Ryan shoved the car into Park and got out. By the time he had gone around and reached her door, she was already standing on the narrow cobbled sidewalk.

  "Where are we?" she asked, slamming her door and adjusting her shoulder bag. She raked her hair behind her ears, baring those model's cheekbones and strong, square chin.

  "This way," he ordered, taking her arm. He knew he shouldn't touch her. Hell, just looking at her messed with his mind, and even through her sleeve, he felt the soft sweetness of her. The warmth. It made him remember how she felt without sleeves. Without clothes. This was not good. It was nonprofessional, and it was wrong.

  When she recoiled a little, he held on, knowing it wasn't wise. Knowing he couldn't help himself and would use any excuse for continued contact. "The walking's hazardous in those shoes," he muttered. Lame reason, but better than none. He tightened his grip and endured—no, enjoyed—the resulting heat that suffused him.

  "Oh," she said, looking down at the rough paving, then back up at him with a bright little smile. "Thanks."

  Scanned with ♥ by Coral

  Chapter 6

  He led her two doors down to the hole-in-the-wall pub, identifiable only by a weathered wooden sign about the size of a car tag sticking out of the stones about ten feet up. Pete didn't believe in advertising much. Word of mouth brought him about as much business as he wanted to handle.

  They entered the dark cavern lit only by candles on the occupied tables and a long fluorescent Bud sign over the bar.

  "Wow, this is some place," she whispered, taking in all the details of the humble little pub's interior. Some might call it picturesque with the beer signs, names carved into the walls with pocket knives and tables covered with mismatched tablecloths.

  Pete looked up from his task of wiping down the bar and grinned, showing a missing eyetooth and the wide, wicked scar on his neck. "Hey, Mac! What's up?"

  "Not a lot, Pete. Bring us the usual and two iced teas, would you?"

  "I'll have coffee," Nina piped up.

  "No, trust me, you don't want to do that," Ryan advised. "Tea," he reaffirmed, looking at Pete.

  "Gotcha, Mac," the man said, then called their order through the door to the kitchen which lay directly behind the bar. "Grab that corner over there," he told Ryan. "More romantic," he added, wiggling his bushy gray eyebrows suggestively. "Who's the babe?"

  Ryan winced, then made the introductions. "Nina Caruso, Pete Jones, a fellow Yank."

  She smiled and gave a small wave. "Hi, Pete. Nice place."

  And thereby won Pete's heart, Ryan thought, unsurprised by it. Reckless as she could be at times, the woman did have class to spare.

  He guided her to the table Pete had indicated and pulled out the chair for her.

  Pete brought over two tall glasses of tea, floating three ice cubes each. On the tray with those sat a long-necked bottle of the off-the-wall brew Pete preferred. He dragged out a chair, sat down with them, pulled a matchbook out of his pocket and lit the candle on the table.

  The candlelight threw a soft glow over Nina's features. Ryan realized he was staring at her and blinked to break the spell. "A singular honor when the proprietor joins you at table," he told her.

  She grinned and nodded, racheting his respect for her up another notch and solidly cementing her new relationship with Pete. She didn't look down that aristocratic nose at the humble surroundings the way he'd thought she might.

  Ryan wasn't sure he was glad about that. It would have thrown up another obstacle between them, and God knows he needed a few of those after last night.

  Pete shifted his three hundred pounds around on the stout oak comb-backed chair to get comfortable, indicating he meant to stay awhile. So much for "romantic."

  After another gap-toothed smile of appreciation accompanied by a closer check of Nina's visible assets, he turned to Ryan. "The sister."

  Desmond Caruso's murder was headline news and Montebello a small island. No doubt most everyone knew who she was by now since the article in the paper yesterday.

  "Half sister," Ryan clarified, reaching for his tea and taking a long swig. Sweet enough to pour on pancakes and only a shade above lukewarm, it tasted almost like home, as close to Savannah fare as he could get here.

  "Too bad, what happened," Pete said to Nina, who merely nodded in reply.

  Ryan set his tea glass down and began to turn it round and round slowly in the puddle of condensation that was forming. "Any scuttlebutt I need to know about, Pete?"

  There was a massive clearing of throat and a marked hesitation.

  "Nina's helping me on the case. You can talk."

  "My girl Jonet says Desmond made a play for Princess Samira Kamal. Succeeded, too. You know about that?"

  "Pete's stepdaughter Jonet works at the palace," Ryan explained to Nina, then answered Pete. "Yeah, we know about Princess Samira. Anyone else?"

  Pete cast a wary eye at Nina. He took the time to down half his beer before answering. "He was seeing somebody else on the sly."

  "Got a name or where she hangs out?" Ryan asked.

  "Nope. Could be somebody just saw him with a pros," he added with a shrug.

  "A pros?" Nina questioned, then seemed to suddenly realize Pete was using street slang for prostitute. "Oh." She blushed.

  "Thanks, Pete. You get anything else, you'll call me?"

  "Natch. If I run across anybody knows who she was, I'll give you a buzz." He upended the bottle and chugalugged.

  Pete was upward of sixty and had come here straight from 'Nam back in the seventies. Ryan felt he had a lot in common with Pete despite totally different backgrounds and the generation gap. Both had run from dreaded reminders of the past and settled in a place that bore no resemblance to home.

  Neither had talked about it much, but they'd made enough oblique admissions in the past couple of years to establish they shared a motive for transplanting here.

  Pete was the only American in residence on the island that Ryan called friend. He had also proved to be a valuable source of information, since he had stepchildren and children by Sophia, his Montebellan wife, working in just about every occupation on the island. There were thirteen of them in all, not counting a slew of grandchildren. Quite a network.

  Pete excused himself, bowing slightly to Nina after he got up. "Pie's on the house," he declared, making the first offer of free food Ryan had heard in the two years he'd been frequenting the place.

  "You made quite an impression," Ryan told her. "Free pie."

  "I like him," Nina said, watching Pete's pillowy frame squ
eeze through the opening to the back of the bar. Then she dropped the smile. "This woman he mentioned that Desmond was seeing. You think she killed Desmond?"

  "Possibly. We'll need to talk to Jonet and see if she can give us a description or tell us who might."

  "I still want to see that statuette," Nina said.

  Ryan smiled. "You want to check the angle of that projection against the wound, right?"

  Her mouth dropped open. Then she recovered, propping her elbow on the table and resting her chin in her palm. "That's why you're the detective, I guess."

  "I already calculated and confirmed it with Doc. We agree the angle of the blow, combined with the force of it, probably indicates the perp was around five-six or -seven and not very strong."

  "Ah, a small wimpy guy or a woman. Is that what you're saying?" She sounded insulted for some reason, but she was right on the money.

  Ryan inclined his head in agreement. "It was a lucky blow. Because of that and the choice of weapon, I really don't think the murder was premeditated."

  Nina huffed. "Maybe not, but last night's fire certainly was."

  "Maybe whoever set it didn't know you were in there. Could have been to destroy any trace evidence."

  "Then why wait until you'd already made the sweep?" she argued. "They knew I was there, all right. I had the distinct impression I was being followed all the way to the guesthouse."

  "Later." Ryan shushed her when Pete's son, Jack, started over with their food.

  Ryan attacked his burger immediately, amazed that Nina did exactly the same.

  "Umm," she crooned, the look on her face one of ecstasy as she chewed a mouthful of the juicy fat hamburger.

  A smudge of mustard dotted her lower lip, enticing him the way mustard never had before.

  The frosty attitude he'd worked up against her that morning had thawed down to acceptance, then warmed up to something he didn't even want to name.

  Ryan reached for the sugary tea, grasping at any kind of reassurance that his life hadn't changed all that radically. He was in trouble here. Even his ice cubes had melted.

  * * *

  When Ryan took her back to the lab over the police station, Nina didn't bother apologizing to Franz Koenig for her earlier escape. As for Franz, he didn't even seem aware that she had been gone.

  Ryan got right down to business, asking Franz to produce the murder weapon from the evidence vault downstairs. Nina felt edgy about seeing the thing that had killed Desmond, but also eager to check out what had occurred to her about it. Ryan remained quiet while they waited, ostensibly reading over a page of notes Franz had been writing when they arrived.

  Once she had the statuette in her hands, she turned the small bronze figure this way and that, holding it by the marble base while she examined the arm of it through the plastic bag. The sculpture depicted a standing nude, one arm fused to the side of the body, the other raised with the hand buried within the hair at the nape of the neck.

  "The bent elbow there inflicted the killing blow," Franz mumbled, pointing clumsily at it.

  "It had been wiped, but we found traces of blood and skin particles in the crevices of the arm where the bronze is textured," the tech related in a monotone with just a hint of a German accent. "We also have isolated a half print, not yet identified."

  She wondered what sort of person would have the presence of mind to wipe off the makeshift weapon after bashing Desmond with it and watching him die. Somehow she couldn't believe it had been someone so stricken with outrage they didn't know what they were doing. Whoever had done it must have recovered their senses pretty quickly after the so-called crime of passion.

  "Not squeamish at all, are you?" Ryan commented, inclining his head toward the object she was holding.

  Nina realized he'd been watching her, his eyes narrowed, as she'd handled the instrument of her brother's death. It did seem strange, even worried her, that she felt so little.

  "I'm being objective, as you suggested," she replied. She could hardly blame him for wondering about her lack of emotion when she wondered about it herself.

  Maybe it was because she really hadn't known Desmond well. Not the man he'd become after he left home. Maybe she had used up all her grief over losing him when he had left the family without a backward look.

  Her little-sister grief had turned to anger eventually, then finally to acceptance. The victim of this crime was a virtual stranger to her. While she truly regretted Desmond's death, Nina knew she would feel almost as distressed about anyone who died so needlessly.

  She was doing this for the memory of that brother she had worshiped so long ago, for her mother's son and especially for a boy who had been so angry he'd allowed no one to get close to him.

  She hefted the slender little sculpture to feel its considerable weight. It was only about sixteen inches high, but could no doubt make a truly serious dent if wielded with some force. Desmond's wound had not looked terribly deep, just lethally placed.

  "Hold it like this." Ryan took her hand and positioned it. "That puts your thumb where we found a partial print. Stand here like this," he told her, moving her in front of Franz. "He's about the same height as Desmond. Draw the thing back naturally and swing in slow motion."

  "Very slow motion, please," Franz said, exhibiting the first sign of full awareness she had noticed in him. She'd pegged him as a space cadet, wrapped up in his work to the exclusion of everything else. She was glad to know he at least had a sense of self-preservation.

  She raised the object and swung. When the plastic-covered arm of the statuette touched the technician's temple, she immediately saw that the angle was wrong to inflict the same kind of blow Desmond had suffered.

  "See that? Your mark would be too vertical," Ryan said, following the angle of the protrusion on the statue with one long finger. "The person who struck him must have been taller than you. Say, around five-seven or -eight, we think."

  "Nearer Desmond's height," she confirmed and he nodded his agreement.

  Nina gladly released the thing when Ryan closed his fingers around hers and took the object with his other hand.

  "It was a woman," she said conclusively. "This demonstration and the earring convince me."

  He shrugged. "Well, you have a fifty-fifty chance of being right."

  "More like eighty-twenty," she argued, hitching herself onto a stool next to the counter by the lab table. "You said a man would probably have hit harder, too, and made a deeper wound. I agree."

  "Okay," he said. "There's a good chance our perp is female. But it could still be a man with a weak swing. Hopefully we'll get something useful on the earring."

  He penned a note in one of the folders and snapped it shut. "We're finished here for today. Let's go back to my place.

  "I'm taking copies of the files with me to go over some of the interviews tonight," he told Franz. "I need to make lists of further questions before I reinterview. You check out the rest of those things that were bagged out of the bathrooms. I want the results in the morning."

  They left Franz bent over a microscope, either engrossed in his work or sulking. Nina couldn't tell. The man was none too happy with their long interruption of his afternoon, or Ryan's berating him for his premature report on the earring to the king's office.

  Despite Franz's pouting and Ryan's gruff manner, Nina realized she was beginning to feel a part of the team. Ryan was now being fairly generous with information and in allowing her access to everything he and his men had discovered.

  "Thanks for not shutting me out," she said as he deposited the box of folders in the back of his SUV.

  "No problem," he muttered, slamming the hatch and walking her to the passenger side. He opened the door, waited for her to fasten her seat belt, then closed it.

  He was lying. He had a problem with it, all right. Though he had apparently relented, he didn't look very happy about it. He hated to relinquish one ounce of control, she decided.

  She had really misjudged him at first, when she'd
assumed he didn't care one way or the other about apprehending Desmond's killer. Everything he did seemed directed toward that end. She could see by the volume of files alone that he had put forth a bigger effort than she could have expected from any police department this quickly.

  After a silent drive through the city, Nina followed him into his apartment without waiting for an invitation. She stood by as he set the box of files on the dining table.

  "I'll help you go through them," she offered. "A fresh eye might help, don't you think?"

  "Right," he snapped. Then, almost as an afterthought, he tossed her a half smile to soften the reply.

  That wasn't exactly a plea for assistance, but she wouldn't quibble. At least he wasn't chasing her out of the place with the broom.

  She looked around. His apartment had the same floor plan as hers, only reversed. There was a living room/dining room combination, separated from the small kitchen by a waist-level bar with stools.

  It looked very similar to any midpriced apartment in the States, only the rooms were more spacious, the unscreened windows larger, offering a view of the distant ocean. And there were no closets, making her wonder whether Montebellans were taxed by the number of rooms as they were in some European countries.

  His furnishings looked expensive, but not outrageously so. The color scheme consisted of beige and browns, more masculine than her rose and green. This decor seemed incredibly boring for a man such as Ryan.

  She noticed no personal items at all. No photos, plants, no original art, no brass or bright colors to spice up the monotony. Maybe he was going for restful here. It was enough to put anybody to sleep immediately, she thought with a yawn.

  "Sleepy?" he asked, almost hopefully.

  "No, wide awake."

  "Hungry?" he asked, this time reluctantly, as he shucked his jacket, hung it on a dining room chair and headed around the breakfast bar to the kitchen.