Читать книгу Romancing the Crown: Max & Elena: The Disenchanted Duke - Marie Ferrarella - Страница 7

Chapter 4

Separating their hands, she dropped hers to her sides. “So now what, ‘partner’?”

Max studied her, wishing he knew what was going on in that attractive head of hers. He always liked to know which way the wind was blowing before he set sail. His gut instinct was that, despite the so-called truce between them, he was in danger of standing right in the path of a full-scale gale.

“Why do I get the feeling that you think that’s a dirty word?”

Her expression couldn’t have been more innocent than if it had been on the face of an angel in a Renaissance painting.

“Interpretation, like beauty, is in the eye—or ear—of the beholder, Ryker. I’m just asking a simple question. You’re the one who wanted the partnership.”

That was like saying he wanted to play with a basket full of snakes. “Wanted might not be the right word here, but in any case, it’s the expedient thing to do, seeing as how we both want Weber and we seem to keep getting in each other’s way.”

Her eyes narrowed. The innocent expression evaporated. “None of which would happen if you’d get out of my way.”

About to answer her, Max noticed that the convenience store clerk was unabashedly watching them and all but hanging over the counter. “Something I can do for you, mister?”

The young man grinned broadly at them, completely missing the implication. “Hey, man, you’re doing it. We don’t get much entertainment around here and my satellite dish is busted. Don’t know when I can get it fixed. This is the most fun I’ve had in weeks.”

Max took hold of Cara’s arm. “Let’s take this outside.”

She shrugged him off. “I can walk on my own.”

“Then walk,” he said, holding the door open for her.

Miffed, she walked by him, calling him names under her breath that his ancestors might have taken exception to.

“Spoilsport,” the clerk muttered, returning to his copy of a much folded Victoria’s Secret catalog.

Max stopped on the sun-rotted wooden porch. “When I got here, just a few minutes ahead of you,” Max added the piece of information before she could ask, “the clerk told me Weber had driven off heading north.”

Still, that didn’t explain the leap on Ryker’s part. “What makes you think Canada? There’s an awful lot of territory between here and there, a whole battalion of cities and states.”

He shrugged. “Just a guess. It seems to me that a man with two people coming after him from different directions might just want to get out of the country.”

That had a germ of truth in it, she grudgingly admitted to herself. But there was still a flaw. “Mexico’s closer.”

“Yes, but he’s heading north. Last time I checked, Mexico was south.”

“Maybe he’s trying to confuse us by taking a roundabout route.”

Max paused. She had a point. “All right, but while we’re standing here, talking, he’s out there, driving.” He indicated the highway. “Let’s just follow the road and see where it leads.”

Straight to trouble was her guess, but she kept to herself.

“Fine,” Cara murmured. “I’ll ride point.”

“Good.” He started to turn to go to his car and realized that she wasn’t following. Turning around, Max saw Cara hurrying to her vehicle. She got in before he had a chance to say a word. The car revved up and was heading up the road in less time than it took to process the image.

The woman was a loose cannon.

She had every intention of leaving him in the dust, Max thought with a shake of his head. He’d had a feeling she wouldn’t stick to her end of the bargain. Which was exactly why he’d planted a small homing device, no larger than a spot of lint, on her back as he’d put his hand against her shoulder and escorted her from the store. Shrugging him off hadn’t dislodged it. Once she took off her clothes, of course, she’d notice it, but for the time being, he was assured that she couldn’t get too far away from him.

Cara Rivers drove like a maniac, he thought, after starting his car and getting on the road. The road stretched out before him and she was nowhere in sight.

Except on the screen of his monitor.

A smile curved his mouth. Max took the jacket he’d purposely thrown over the tracking device on the passenger seat of his car and tossed the garment over his shoulder into the back. Rivers was heading due north, just the way she expected Weber to be going.

Why bother losing him if she meant to go in the direction they’d already agreed on? It didn’t make any sense to him, but then, he thought with an inward, patient sigh, neither did the woman.

He watched the blip on his monitor and drove due north.

Twilight was beginning to paint the lonely landscape with long, broad strokes when he caught up with her. It wasn’t through any fancy driving on his part, but a slowdown on hers. More specifically, a complete stop. Her vehicle apparently had died.

She was on the side of the road, circling the dormant car and yelling at it. He couldn’t quite make out what she was saying, but he had a feeling that he was better off that way. The angry expression on her face was enough to send a lesser man running for cover.

Slowing down, Max stuck his head out the window, a mildly amused, mildly curious expression on his face. “Something wrong?”

Cara was angry enough to spit. There was no way to avoid throwing her lot in with this man now. Worse, she needed him. The next town was too far up the road for her to walk to in the dark on her own.

She hated the dark.

“Yes, something’s wrong.” For good measure, because she was so furious, she kicked one of the tires. “Bargain rentals rent cars that should have been sent off to the glue factory.”

“I think that’s supposed to be horses that go to the glue factory,” he corrected, not bothering to hide his amusement.

“Not in this case.” She snorted. “I would have been better off with a horse. At least with a horse if you feed it and take care of it, it’ll take you where you want to go.”

“Not in my experience,” Max muttered.

He wasn’t much for horseback riding, despite the fact that riding to the hunt was supposed to be the sport of kings. But he could easily picture her on the back of a horse. A purebred stallion. Black as the night to contrast with her fair skin.

An image of her riding bareback in the fine old tradition of Lady Godiva suddenly flashed through his brain.

With a start, Max jerked himself to attention. “What seems to be the trouble? With the car,” he added, looking at her pointedly as he got out of his vehicle.

Max walked over to her and took a cursory look beneath the hood. There was hardly enough light left to make out the separate parts, much less what was wrong.

Her frowned deepened. There was no point in wasting time tinkering with it. “The distributor cap is burned through.”

That was far more specific than he’d ever gotten with a car. He knew enough to keep the fluid levels up, the oil new and jumper cables in his trunk. “And you know this how?”

“I lived with a mechanic for a while.”

He looked at her. “Lover?”

She thought of Roy Anderson, potbelly, booming laugh and perpetual grease on his hands. His wife had been a short-order cook in the diner next to his repair shop. One of the many homes she’d passed through in her life in the system.

Roy was roughly forty years her senior and basically a decent guy, but she laughed at the thought of his being anyone’s lover, even his wife’s.

“Hardly.”

Max was tempted to ask her to elaborate, but she didn’t look inclined and it was none of his business. He only figured on getting as personal as was necessary with her in order to capture Weber.

“Well, since you’re so sure, there’s nothing much to be done here.” He opened the door to the passenger side. “Hop in. We can call for towing from that town just up ahead.”

She’d already seen the faint lights being turned on in the town down the road. Tiny pinpricks against the horizon. They’d been the only thing sustaining her, even though there didn’t seem to be enough lights on to properly accommodate the top of a moderate-size birthday cake.

She frowned. She knew towns like that. Small, terminal things where people’s souls shriveled up, yearning for something better. Mechanics were not always on hand. Took talent to fix things, make them right. People with talent moved on to where the pay was better, the life more exciting.

“Don’t count on it.”

“Now aren’t you glad I came along?”

She ignored the annoyingly cheery note in his voice. Turning her back to Ryker, she popped her trunk. There was no way she was leaving her equipment behind.

“Otherwise,” he was saying, watching her, “it might just be you and the coyotes before long.”

The thought was far from thrilling, especially given the way she felt about the dark, a feeling that dated back to the time she was eight and had lived with a minister and his wife who never raised a hand to her, but believed that leaving her in a locked closet for hours would make her submissive to their authority and save her immortal soul.

Cara looked at Ryker and wondered just how much better off she was with this man, who professed to want a partnership with her, than the coyotes. At least with the coyotes, you were aware of the immediate danger.

Leaning into the trunk, she took out the portable fax machine and her notebook computer. She stopped to take her oversize purse out of the front seat along with her shapeless overnight bag and then, arms loaded, trudged over to his car.

“Pop your hood.”

Max moved to take something from her, but she pulled back. She was being territorial. Why didn’t that surprise him?

“Is that anything like ring my chimes?”

“The car’s hood,” Cara said from between clenched teeth. The grin on his face was beginning to annoy her immensely. More annoying still was the way his grin made her feel. As if she were a ball of yarn about to tumble down a hill, in imminent danger of unraveling.

He popped the hood as she asked, and Cara placed her things inside the trunk, taking care to secure them as best she could. Rounding the back, she came up to the passenger side and slid in. She hit her feet against something on the floor. Curious, she bent over and picked up the device he had only moments earlier pushed to the floor when he’d seen her.

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the rectangular object. “What’s this?”

He always felt that using the truth as far as it could go was easier than inventing lies from start to finish. He kept his face forward as he started the car. “A tracking device.”

Cara examined the lit screen. The cursor was dormant. “Doesn’t seem to be tracking anything.”

“It’s not.” Reaching over, he pressed the button and shut it off. The screen went blank. “Got everything you need?”

She traveled light. Her requirements were few. “Except for Weber.”

He nodded, taking the car back on the road. “We’ll get him, too.”

We.

It sounded odd, hearing the pronoun applied to her. She’d never really been part of “we” before. Oh, occasionally the word was bandied about in reference to her within the family she was currently staying with. But no one really meant it. She was Cara and they were “we.” If the two mixed, it was only for the moment.

Reality was always waiting for her around the bend. A new family, a fresh separation. She learned to rely only on herself. Cut down on the people to blame as well.

Cara raised her chin, slanting a glance at him. “I don’t know about ‘we’ catching him, but I know I will.”

“Certainly not a shy, shrinking violet, are you?”

But she had been, more than once. And learned the hard way that selling her soul just for a pat on the head, a hug, a kind word, was selling herself far too short.

“Shrinking violets get their roots pulled up, they get stuck in a vase, then tossed out when they’re no longer pretty.”

The road ahead was flat, with no headlights coming at Max from the opposite side. He spared her a long look. She made it sound personal. Had she been dumped by a lover? he wondered.

If she had, it would have been because of that razor-sharp tongue of hers, not because her looks had anything to do with it. As far as that went, the woman was a keeper. He bet she’d just love to hear that.

“Sounds as if you’ve got firsthand knowledge about that.”

Cara absolutely hated being analyzed. “Maybe you should hang out a shingle and go into the head shrinking business instead of tailing people other people are after.”

He smiled, more to himself than at Cara. “I’ve had enough career changes for the time being.”

She pretended to raise a brow in surprise. “You were something else before you made a habit of getting in other people’s way?”

Max thought of life in the palace. If he’d followed in the footsteps of his father, he would have learned how to look down on people and use them to his own advantage. That life had never been for him, even though he’d been trained for it from the day he was born.

“I ran a charm school,” Max said sarcastically. He glanced at her again before looking back at the lonely road. “You might have benefited from it.”

Cara crossed her arms before her, sitting back in the seat. She promised herself that at the first opportunity, she was going to ditch him again. All she needed was to catch him off guard. She wouldn’t even need his car keys, she knew how to hot-wire just about any vehicle. By the time he thought to call the police, she’d be gone and renting another car.

“I really doubt there’s anything you could teach me.”

Some very personal things, completely unrelated to the situation, came to mind. Max hadn’t realized that his mouth had curved into a smile. “You’d be surprised.”

“Yes,” she said pointedly, “I would be.”

The conversation was veering into territory he felt it was best not to enter. He was having enough stray thoughts about the woman at his side as it was. Max nodded at the lights of the town up ahead. “Let’s see if we can find someone to tow your car.”

“It’s not mine,” she reminded him. “I just rented it.”

Something told him that the woman didn’t allow herself to get too attached to anything. Seeing as how Rivers was on the trail of a bounty, she was traveling incredibly light. Other than her equipment, all she had with her was an oversize purse and what looked like a duffel bag that had seen better days. There was only so much it could hold.

“Then I guess it’s the rental agency’s problem.”

“Guess so,” she murmured.

“By the way, you have something of mine.”

She braced herself for a trite line. “Oh?”

“My gun. I had one when you left me in that poor excuse for a bar last night. I didn’t have it when I woke up. I’d like it back.”

Pressing her lips together, she opened her purse and took out the weapon she had lifted. It made a good backup gun. Not saying a word, she placed it on the dashboard between them.

“Thanks.” Taking it, Max leaned forward and slipped it into his waistband at the small of his back. He could put it back in its holster once they got into town.

The town they pulled into looked hardly bigger than a truck stop. There were a handful of streets with stores scattered about and a flock of houses just beyond that. Old, weather-beaten houses that had been baking in the sun for a long time, sea lions turning up their faces to the sky.

It didn’t look too promising. “I doubt if the rental agency where I got the car has even heard of—Buford,” Cara read the town’s name on the sign as they drove past it.

He doubted if anyone except for the people who made maps had heard of Buford. “Maybe not, but it’s still their problem.”

Frustration chewed away at her. Not having a car seriously cut into her independence. “No, it’s mine. How am I supposed to get around?”

“Seems to me that you are getting around.” Max nodded at the car they were in. “It makes combining our efforts a lot simpler.”

He didn’t intend to combine their efforts, she thought, he intended to use her efforts to secure what he felt was his man. Not going to happen. Somehow, someway, she was going to make sure that she had first claim. She couldn’t afford not to. Literally.

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.