Читать книгу Romancing the Crown: Max & Elena - Linda Winstead Jones - Страница 9

Chapter 5

She’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 attention 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 wondering 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.

“Are you planning on dripping dry, or do you intend to get dressed sometime in the next decade or so?”

He raised a dark, inquisitive brow, throwing her into a tailspin.

“Does this make you uncomfortable?”

She shrugged, refusing to give him any satisfaction, even if something in the pit of her stomach was turning cartwheels.

“Not particularly. If you want to walk around in your birthday suit, that’s up to you. I just want to go on record as saying that I sleep with my gun under my pillow and I tend to be rather jumpy where there’re any sudden moves involved.” She purposely dipped her line of vision to take in the towel he had draped around his hips and parts beyond.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Turning around, he reached for the clothes he’d hung on the hook behind the bathroom door and took them down. “It’s all yours. No insects.” He walked past her, then added in a stage whisper, “Just one small mouse.”

“The only rodents that make me uneasy are rats.” Her eyes locked with his. “Big ones.”

His laugh followed her into the bathroom, skimming along her skin even after she shut the door and took her clothes off.

Perhaps more so.

Cara took a quick shower, washing the dust of the road from her body as fast as she could. She was toweling herself dry in less than five minutes. Rather than securing the towel around her the way he had, she hurried back into her clothes if for no other reason than she could swear she could smell him on the now-damp towel.

It made her uneasy, wrapping the towel around herself.

Dressed, her hair damp and curling around her face, she opened the door. Nine minutes, start to finish, she silently congratulated herself.

Max had his back to her and was talking in a low voice. It took her a second to realize he was on his cell phone. So he’d known who was calling. Probably his mysterious client, the one who wanted Weber taken back to Monticello, Montebello, or wherever it was he’d said he was taking the man.

Over her dead body, she countered pugnaciously. Weber was going back to Shady Rock, Colorado, and that was that. The ten thousand dollars she was going to get was earmarked for Bridgette Applegate and Cara meant to get it to her or die trying. She owed Bridgette a lot.

Bridgette Applegate was the last woman who had taken her in. Unlike the others, Bridgette hadn’t been part of the foster care merry-go-round. Bridgette had been a woman she’d met while she’d lived under that bridge in Denver, fighting off a fever of 103. Broke, desperate, she’d tried to take Bridgette’s purse and had collapsed in the struggle when Bridgette had fought back. She was close to being unconscious.

Rather than call the police, Bridgette, a part-time nurse, had taken her home, put Cara in her own bed and tended to her as if she was her own daughter instead of a would-be mugger.

After she got well, Bridgette insisted she remain with her until she figured out just what it was she was going to do with her life now that she was no longer going to throw it away. Bridgette Applegate had been the turning point in her life, the reason she believed in good instead of caving in before evil.

And now Bridgette needed her help and she was damned if she wasn’t going to come through for the woman. And no sexy, flat-stomached, ripped P.I. was going to get in her way, with or without his towel.

Max sensed Cara standing behind him. As politely as he could, he ended the conversation with his uncle. Everything that needed to be said had been covered, in terse, veiled language, leaving anyone eavesdropping in the palace and beyond in the dark.

True, he still didn’t know why he was bringing Weber in, but all would be made clear once he was on Montebellan soil again. His uncle had promised as much and although Max had no desire to return to the country where the bad memories outweighed the good and his mother had been so unhappy, he knew his duty.

Besides which, he had to admit that his curiosity about the matter was getting the better of him. He considered curiosity both his failing and his talent. Without it, he wouldn’t have pursued the career he had, wouldn’t have been as good at it as he was.

But it also had a tendency to get him entangled in matters another man might have easily been able to walk away from.

Like letting his imagination wander and get the better of him when it came to his new roommate.

“Eavesdropping?” Max flipped his cell phone closed before turning around.

Cara strode into the room as if she owned it. She’d learned a long time ago that bravado made people sit up and take notice and think twice before attempting to run right over you.

“In case you haven’t noticed, it’s a small room. I don’t have anywhere to go and the bathroom was becoming claustrophobic.”

He liked the way her wet hair framed her face. It occurred to him that the woman was completely unaware of her looks and totally unpretentious. He’d known so many women who were, if not vain about the gift genes and nature had bestowed on them, at least always fussing with their hair, their makeup, their clothes, paying far more attention to themselves than anyone else was.

He’d yet to see Cara even glance at a mirror to check her appearance.

He smiled at her. “You mean you were.”

Her days of being shoved into a closet had created not only an underlying fear of the dark, but of tiny, confining places as well. But she’d be damned if she was going to say anything about it to him.

Instead her eyes narrowed as she looked at his face. “You like correcting me all the time? Or am I getting some kind of a free demonstration of the way you ran that charm school of yours?”

“Neither.” He rose to his feet, refusing to rise to her bait. His eyes skimmed over her. Her shirt was clinging to her chest, a damp spot where she’d failed to dry herself off forming just above where he imagined her cleavage to be. “You’re dressed.”

There was only one large bath towel available beside the two hand towels. Had he expected her to come out wearing the towel like a sarong? Just because he liked to flaunt his attributes didn’t mean she did.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t wear hand-me-downs anymore.” She nodded toward the bathroom. “That includes someone else’s towel.”

“Anymore? You come from a large family?”

Damn, it was as if he had some kind of homing device, zeroing in on the one word she’d slipped up on.

“I don’t come from any family at all, if it’s any business of yours, Ryker,” she informed him icily, calling an end to the conversation.

His broad shoulders rose in a blameless half shrug. “Just making friendly conversation.”

The hell he was. She raised her chin. She knew exactly where he was coming from. “Prying is never friendly.”

Well, maybe he was, but any information he really wanted, he could always get from his grandfather and another wild ride on the information highway. He had the urge to drape his arm around her small, ramrod straight shoulders, but he squelched it.

“Look, Rivers, you and I are going to be together for at least a little while, don’t you think we should have a truce?”

Anything to get him to lower his guard again. “Fine with me.”

He glanced over her head at the headboard. There were tacky posts on either side. Not aesthetically pleasing, but it might be strong enough to do the trick—if necessary.

“And in the spirit of that truce, am I going to have to handcuff you to the bed, or can I have your word that you won’t suddenly try to take off with my car in the middle of the night?”

“You have my word.” She had no intention of trying. She intended to succeed.

After his conversation with his nephew, King Marcus replaced the telephone receiver in its cradle. He refused to believe that Lucas was dead, despite all the facts to the contrary. His son had been too full of life, too bright to have been extinguished so suddenly without a trace the way it appeared to all the world that he had.

The plane had gone down somewhere in the Rockies, but someplace, somehow, Lucas was alive. Marcus knew it in his heart. And this man, this vermin who now called himself Kevin Weber, might hold the key to that as well as many other things.

Marcus knew he would rest easier once Weber was brought back to Montebello. And Max was just the man to do it.