ROMANCING THE CROWN: MAX & ELENA

The Disenchanted Duke

MARIE FERRARELLA

Secret-agent Sheikh

LINDA WINSTEAD JONES

www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Disenchanted Duke

MARIE FERRARELLA

ROMANCING THE CROWN

A kingdom holds its breath…a duke comes out of hiding…trial and temptation meet as the search for the missing crown prince of Montebello stretches across the globe!

Meet the major players in this royal mystery…

Duke Maximillian Ryker Sebastiani: The Disenchanted Duke will do anything to help the search for his missing cousin, the crown prince of Montebello. Even give up his precious anonymity: and maybe his heart!

Cara Rivers: Life has taught the bounty hunter to trust no one. Now her destiny rests in the hands of an intriguing man whose very identity is suspect.

King Marcus Sebastiani: His Majesty hopes the criminal his nephew Max seeks will hold the key to find his missing son and heir.

Kevin Weber, aka Jalil Salim: Is he a petty criminal? Or a threat to the crown of Montebello?

Dearest Reader,

In The Disenchanted Duke you have before you my favourite type of story: the feisty, chipper heroine going toe-to-toe with the strong, handsome, sombre hero. During the course of the story, she shows him it’s all right to be human, and he shows her it’s all right to be vulnerable. Mix in a little danger, a little intrigue, a good dose of banter and healthy sex, and voilà, you have (I hope) a good read to curl up with on a rainy day. Or a sunny day. Or maybe not even a day at all, but an evening. Anyway, the point is that I love writing this kind of story and, I hope, this love translates into a really good read for you, because some of what I’m feeling when I’m getting to know these characters who have leaped off the keyboard and popped up on my computer screen has to filter back to you, the reader. I’ve never tackled a duke or a bounty hunter before, so after one hundred and thirty books, I can honestly say this was a new experience for me. I sincerely hope that it is a pleasing, exciting one for you, as well.

Whatever you do, keep reading! And from the bottom of my heart, I wish you love.

Marie Ferrarella

Chapter 1

“You got a strange call in this morning that you might not want to return.”

Max Ryker had just walked into the first-floor office that he maintained in Newport Beach’s trendy Fashion Island, a warm check in his pocket and the satisfying rush of a job well done still coursing through his veins. He paused before closing the outer door, puzzled by the enigmatic sentence his grandfather had just greeted him with.

“Well, seeing as how I just wrapped up a case for Lilah Beaumont.” He mentioned the name of the most recent Hollywood star who had availed herself of his well-honed investigative services, “if the call is about taking on a new assignment, strange or not, the odds are I’ll be returning it.”

William Ryker pivoted the wheelchair he’d learned to operate expertly like an extension of the legs that no longer obeyed his command and looked at his grandson. A fortuitous twist of fate had brought Max back into his life nearly sixteen years ago after an absence of almost twenty. It wasn’t many men who found themselves learning to become a grandfather to a full-grown man.

For all intents and purposes, he and Max came from two different worlds. But Bill was grateful for the chance to bridge that gap and the years that had come before.

Grateful, too, that even now his handsome, thirty-six-year-old grandson had gone out of his way to find a place for him in his life. Bill spent his days working as Max’s all-around man Friday at the detective agency Max had started up several years after he left his birthplace, the tiny kingdom of Montebello, and came to live in Southern California. Felled by a robbery suspect’s bullet five years ago and confined to a wheelchair by a shattered vertebra, Bill found that working at the agency gave him the opportunity to use the experience he’d amassed in his years on the L.A. police force.

It made him feel useful, something he knew Max acitly understood.

“I don’t know about that,” Bill murmured in response as he moved the large wheels of his chair to the desk where he’d left the carefully written message. His aim was less than perfect, and one of the wheels hit the side of the desk. He cursed quietly, righting his position.

Max watched his grandfather maneuver his wheelchair. He knew better than to get behind Bill and push. A man’s pride was a fragile thing and should be respected. Still, it bothered him to see the man struggle.

Max suppressed a sigh. “I wish you’d let me get you a motorized one.”

It was familiar ground. They’d covered it more than once before. Bill knew the concern came out of love rather than impatience or a tendency to patronize, so it didn’t irritate him. He picked up the phone message, then spun the chair around 180 degrees.

“And I told you I don’t need one of those fancy things. How’m I supposed to get my exercise if I sit on one of those metal magic carpets? Besides,” he snorted, “the batteries could die while I’m out in the middle of nowhere, then what?”

Max shook his head. Sometimes he thought the Rockies would sooner crumble than his grandfather would change his mind once he’d made it up.

But for argument’s sake, he said, “Then you call me on the cell phone you’d have with you and I’d come and get you.”

The answer made no impression. “Supposing you’re occupied?”

Bill emphasized the last word as if there was only one way that someone as handsome as his six-foot-one grandson could be occupied. He raised and lowered bushy black-and-gray brows in a devilish fashion, wishing with all his heart that he was thirty-six again, too, and whole.

Max grinned fondly at the old man. “For you, Grandpa, I’d always make time.”

Funny word, “grandpa,” Bill mused. He’d always thought he’d hate the sound of it, that hearing it applied to himself would make him feel old. But he had been separated from both his grandsons by his late daughter, Helen, for so long that all he felt whenever he heard the name was grateful.

“Here.” Bill held out the yellow piece of paper he’d written the long telephone number on. The former police sergeant fervently hoped that what was on the piece of paper would not ultimately take the young man out of his life again. Not after he’d waited all this time to have Max come into it.

Max’s smile faded just a shade as he read the message. It was just two words: Please call, and a name, followed by a telephone number.

The number was only vaguely familiar, but the name—the name was something else again. The name belonged to a man Max owed his allegiance to. Not as a subject of the man’s country, and not even because King Marcus of Montebello was his uncle, but because the monarch of the small country was his friend as well. At times, when he was growing up, Max had felt that Marcus was the only friend he had in a country where he’d never quite fit in, despite his royal ties and family name.

Max’s full name was Maximillian Ryker Sebastiani and he was a titled member of the royal ruling house of Montebello, a small, proud country that occupied an island located halfway around the world from the United States. But he’d shed his title and then his last name in what had proved to be a semifutile bid for anonymity. He’d wanted no part of a house that had spawned the likes of his father, Antonio, the dashing, womanizing duke who had warmed countless beds and broken Max’s mother’s heart long before she died of leukemia.

His mother had died when Max was fourteen, his father when he was eighteen, and his desire to be part of the royal farce, as he saw it, sometime between the two life-shaping events. Although he’d inherited the title of duke when his father died, he refused to use it. Soon after his father’s funeral, he’d joined the royal army.

But two years later had found him feeling just as restless, just as displaced as ever. So he’d packed up a few belongings and left his father’s country, hoping to find his true destiny somewhere within his mother’s homeland.

To his surprise and relief, his grandfather had welcomed him with open arms and put him up in the house where his mother had known happier days. For Max it turned into the homecoming he’d hoped for. After searching for his roots for twenty years, he’d finally found a place for himself.

He’d conceived of the agency six months after his grandfather’s fateful encounter with a robbery suspect had landed Bill flat on his back with nothing to look forward to. He’d deliberately chosen the detective agency to give his grandfather’s life a purpose. As a bonus, it had given him one, too.

Bill watched his grandson look at the note and could almost hear the wheels turning in the younger man’s head. Max had a call to make. He turned his wheelchair around again, heading for the door.

“Open the door for me, boy. I need to get one of those dinky cups of coffee they overcharge you for at the café,” Bill told him, referring to the small coffee shop located along the outside perimeter of the eight-floor office building.

Max crossed to the door, opening it. He knew what this was about. Nobody respected space the way his grandfather did. “You don’t need to clear out.”

Bill spared him a kindly look. “Figure I’ll give you some privacy.”

Max closed the door after his grandfather and went back to the desk. Taking a seat, he placed the message down on the blotter and studied it for a long, silent moment before he finally picked up the receiver. Blowing out a breath, he pressed the series of numbers that would connect him with the palace. Something akin to a melody resounded as he tapped on the keys.

It took awhile for the connection to kick in. The line, he knew without being told, was a private one which went directly to the king’s own offices, circumventing the army of secretaries and go-betweens that were usually encountered when making such calls.

The only person Max had to go through was the King’s personal secretary, a gruff old man named Albert who was exceedingly protective of the monarch’s time. Only after Max had volunteered the name of his father’s last mistress did Albert believe he was who he claimed to be and put him through.

“I would have thought that old bulldog would have died years ago. What is he, eighty?” Max asked when he finally heard his uncle’s deep voice say hello on the other end of the line.

“Eighty-two,” the king corrected. “And I couldn’t get along without him. Maximillian, my boy.” There was sincere pleasure in the monarch’s deep voice. “How long has it been? Never mind, whatever the time, it has been far too long.”

Max knew exactly how long it had been. Though he cared a great deal for his uncle and aunt, and was very fond of his brother Lorenzo, his visits to Montebello were few and very far between.

“Almost eight years since the last visit.”

“Eight years,” Marcus marveled. Where did time go? It seemed like only yesterday that the boy had gone. “Don’t believe in overstaying your welcome, do you, Maximillian?”

Max knew that his uncle’s time was far too valuable for Marcus to have called only to shoot the breeze. There was some other reason behind the call.

“Something like that. My grandfather said you called with urgent business.” He embellished slightly, but he had a feeling he was on the right track.

“I’m surprised he gave you the message. He was rather evasive about when you’d be in when I told him who I was.”

Max smiled to himself. He knew how cantankerous his grandfather could be. A plainspoken man, Bill made it clear that royalty didn’t impress him. “You have Albert, I have Grandpa.”

“I see your point,” Marcus conceded graciously. He would have liked nothing better than an opportunity to catch up with his dashing, nonconformist nephew, but there were more pressing issues at hand. “Well, then, to business. I need a favor.”

It was rare that Marcus ever asked for anything. Still, time had taught Max to qualify things and not jump in headfirst, eyes shut. “As long as it doesn’t involve returning to Montebello on a permanent basis, you only have to ask.”

Marcus paused. When he spoke, there was a detectable sadness in his voice. “Dislike us that much, do you, Maximillian?”

It wasn’t the country or his relatives that Max disliked, it was the memory of his father that haunted him.

“I’ve always been more American than royal, Uncle Marcus, you know that. I never fit in. Too much pomp and circumstance to suit me. Life is to be savored and explored, not sampled through a gilded cage. What’s the favor?”

Marcus weighed his words carefully. “It would actually be right up your alley, as you ‘Americans’ say. I hear you’re a private investigator these days.”

Max knew that his uncle possessed an extensive network for garnering information, not the least of which was Gage Weston, the nephew of the king of Penwyck. Marcus usually had all the answers to his questions before he ever voiced them aloud.

“Yes, I am.”

“Doing well?”

To the untrained ear, it sounded like a typical conversation between a man and the nephew he hadn’t seen in years.

“Yes,” Max said.

Marcus laughed. “Talkative as ever, I see.” And then his voice became audibly more serious. “All right, Maximillian, I need you to track down a Kevin Weber for me. I’m told he recently—” there was a pause as Marcus hunted for the right words “—jumped bail, I believe it is called. He is wanted for crimes committed in a small town in Colorado.”

“That’s the expression.” Max frowned as he wrote down the name. So far, this wasn’t making any sense. “What do you want with a so-called American bail jumper?”

There was another pause, a longer one this time. And then Marcus said, “Nothing is what it seems, Maximillian, but for now, that is all the information you need. Weber has been spotted in a small town in New Mexico. Tacos or Chaos—”

“Taos?” Max suggested, trying not to laugh.

Even now, he could picture his uncle, his stately brow furrowed as he tried to remember. Marcus was the one his mother should have married, the stable, noble older brother, not his far more outgoing, charming younger brother who broke hearts as a way of feeding his own need for adulation and adoration. Max would have gladly called Marcus “father.”

“Yes,” Marcus declared. “That is the place. I need this Weber brought back to Montebello.”

They both knew that Weber was not the man’s real name, but because, despite precautions, you never knew who was listening, the alias the man went by in America would suffice. In truth, “Weber” belonged to a group that was as evil as its name: the Brothers of Darkness. It was they whom the king suspected might have something to do with Prince Lucas’s disappearance. Ever since the news broke that Lucas had survived the plane crash over the Rockies a year earlier, the royal family had been searching for the long-missing and beloved Prince of Montebello. Ironically “Weber” was wanted for trying to break into the Chambers ranch, the very place Lucas had last been seen. And now that the king’s intelligence agency had positively identified Weber as a member of the Brothers, there was no doubt, in the king’s mind anyway, that Weber had not been a mere burglar, but a man on a mission for the Brothers. A mission that might have resulted in the capture of Lucas, if Weber had had the chance to catch up with him before he was arrested for breaking and entering. Now that Weber had jumped his bail, the king’s only hope was that Max would catch up with him before Weber—or any of the Brothers—did.

“When you bring Weber back,” the king began, for the idea that Maximillian would fail to bring the man to Montebello never entered the king’s mind, “you and I and Tyler will meet. We need to talk. Extensively. But until then—well, I am afraid that these lines are not always secure.”

No, Max thought, remembering life in the palace, they were never that. And the lines were not the only things that weren’t secure. You never knew who might be listening in on a conversation. In Montebello, beneath its clear blue skies and inviting scenery, there was a state of almost constant intrigue, something he’d never gotten used to or appreciated. He liked his intrigue in small doses, wrapped in the cases he handled, not seeping into his personal life.

“I understand. But you have to give me more than that to work with.”

“I’ll have Albert send you a fax of the man’s photograph.”

Max laughed shortly, unable to picture the crusty old man operating anything more complex than a two-line telephone. “How long did it take someone to teach him how to fax?”

“Longer than most people would have been patient with, but the result is what matters. Now, along with the photograph, I can give you a more exact location on Weber, but nothing further right now.”

Max nodded to himself. “Give me what you can.”

Taos, New Mexico, One week later.

As unobtrusively as possible, she checked the small handgun she carried in the holster strapped to the inside of her thigh. Barely the size of a derringer, the weapon contained a clip with a surprising amount of ammunition. It was a specially made gift for her, courtesy of the gunsmith whose family she had once lived with.

There was certainly enough in the clip to bring the bail-jumping scumbag in the motel room just thirty feet away down to his knees. Except that she didn’t need him on his knees, she needed him on his feet. On his feet and walking toward the car she had parked out back.

Cara Rivers hadn’t had time to scope out the rundown motel where Kevin Weber was holed up, but there didn’t seem to be that much to it. There were two sets of stairs, one on either side of the second floor where his room was located.

She figured that if she rushed the front door, she could catch Weber before he had a chance to make his way out the back window. That he had a plan of escape she never doubted. A man on the run didn’t take a second-floor room without working out a way to get out of that room if he needed to. He wouldn’t simply leap down two stories without having some kind of contingency plan, a way to break his fall.

From everything both the bail bondsman she worked for and the sheriff of Shady Rock, who she unofficially worked with, had told her, she knew that Kevin Weber wasn’t stupid. Quite the contrary, the man was nothing if not crafty. So crafty that she wondered what he’d been doing in the likes of Shady Rock. Luckily, she thought as she made her way slowly up the stairs, she was just as crafty.

If she hadn’t been, Cara would have never chosen her present profession, would have never been able to make any sort of a living as a bounty hunter.

Bounty hunting was something she had begun doing shortly after she’d put herself through college and discovered that strict law enforcement, with its binding rules and regulations, just wasn’t for her.

Bounty hunting wasn’t exactly the kind of vocation most people associated with someone who looked the way she did, but that was the kind of advantage she made full use of. Blond, blue-eyed and delicate-boned at five-four, Cara looked as if her biggest concern in life was how to get her tan even and how long she wanted her bangs to be. Men told secrets to women who looked like her. They let their guards down because they thought her IQ was undoubtedly only slightly higher than her supple bust size. They were always unpleasantly surprised to find out otherwise.

Surprising, too, was the fact that she was as tough as she looked soft. But that had been dictated by not only the life she presently lived, but by the one she had lived through her adolescent years, when she was being passed around from one foster home to another. Being soft meant being hurt. Early on she had learned to depend on only herself. That way, there was never anyone to let her down.

Cautiously she made her way toward Weber’s door from the right stairway. She had tailed the man here after putting in more than two weeks of following clues and canvassing the various places he had been known to frequent recently within the Taos area. Weber had been a no-show in all but one of them, and even there, she’d been too late to get the drop on him. She was running out of time.

Wearing a wig with hair down to her waist and a skintight outfit, Cara had planned to proposition Weber and get him into the parking lot. Once there, she’d thought the weapon strapped to her thigh and the handcuffs she kept in her car would do the trick.

But Weber was nowhere to be seen in the seedy, smoky bar. The seat the bartender pointed out where her quarry had been sitting was still warm.

Defeated, she’d sat down at the bar herself and ordered a beer. It was only after she’d hoisted the glass that she noticed there was an empty matchbook carelessly left behind on the table. From the way its edges were bent, Cara figured Weber had used it to pick his teeth.

More important was the imprint on the back. It belonged to a popular, inexpensive chain of motels. Systematically, she’d gone to all of them in the region. As she’d discovered to be par for the course, the one farthest from the bar and the last on her list had turned out to be the right one.

Cara had flashed the photograph she’d gotten from the bail bondsman who signed her checks, showing it to the man at the office. She’d accompanied the photograph with a tearful story involving broken promises and a baby on the way. By the time she was finished, the manager had melted, volunteering that the man she was looking for was staying in Room 218.

A movement on the opposite stairway caught her attention. She saw a tall, somber-faced man walking up the stairs. Dark complexed with dark brown hair and broad shoulders, he could have been a male model in one of those pricey magazines that catered to the upper crust. But the way he had his hand in his pocket alerted her.

There was no doubt in her mind that his hand was covering a handgun.

It was another bounty hunter.

Incensed, Cara would have bet her well-earned reputation on it. She knew a professional when she saw one, even a handsome one. She thought she could make out the glint of steel handcuffs at his waist. Damn it, there was no way he was going to get her man, not after all the woman hours she’d put in tracking him down.

Cara cut the distance between herself and the door to Room 218 in less than a heartbeat. By the time the good-looking stranger approached, she was standing in front of the door in question, blocking his access to it. With a triumphant toss of her head, she knocked on the door.

A moment later, a deep voice from within the room growled “Yeah?”

“Housekeeping,” Cara chirped cheerfully, aware that the man at her side was giving her a very suspicious once-over. Probably because she had no uniform or any of the paraphernalia that would tie her to the profession she claimed.

There was movement behind the door. “They did not say anything about there being any housekeeping.”

Rather than answer, she announced, “I have fresh towels.” Cara saw the stranger look at her empty arms. “You horn in on this and I’ll cut your heart out,” she hissed.

The next moment, she heard the sound of a window being opened from within the room. She knew what that meant. Her quarry was escaping.

There were tools in her small bag for moments like this, but with no time to extract them and use them on the lock, Cara took the easier, albeit noisier, route. She pulled out her gun, flashing a long length of thigh as she secured her weapon. There was no hesitation on her part. Taking aim, she shot the lock.

Cara swung opened the door in time to see someone leap from the window.

“Stop!” she yelled, knowing it was a completely useless order. Weber was already airborne.

Racing to the window, she saw that her quarry had leaped into a Dumpster located just beneath the window. Damn, how could she have missed that? The Dumpster was filled to overflowing.

The next moment, he scrambled out and hit the ground running. Taking aim, Cara managed to wing him in the shoulder.

Weber screamed a curse in a language she didn’t understand and kept running down the alley.

Chapter 2

For a second, Cara debated leaping out of the window into the Dumpster after the fleeing man. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d done something crazy and reckless in pursuit of a bail jumper. And she wasn’t the type to be deterred by a little dirt, or a pile of garbage as in this case.

Before she could act on her impulse, a strong hand gripped her by the arm, stopping her.

“He’s not worth getting hurt over.”

She saw Weber get into a car and pull away. Another opportunity gone. Seething, Cara swung around and glared at the man holding on to her. How dare he presume to lecture her? She shrugged him off with an indignant jerk.

“Well, I hope you’re satisfied. You just cost me $10,000.”

Max frowned at the crazy woman he’d just stopped from flinging herself out the window. What the hell was wrong with her? Didn’t she realize that if she landed wrong, she could easily break her neck or some other part of her body?

Sucking in his breath, he looked down respectfully at the tiny weapon she had in her hand. The one she seemed not to remember she was holding. Right now, the gun was aimed at the part of him that would put a dead halt to his part in propagating the Sebastiani lineage if a stray bullet happened to find its way out of that tiny barrel.

Very carefully, he moved her hand so that the weapon she was holding pointed harmlessly at the floor.

“Look, lady, I’m sorry if your boyfriend ran out on you, but it’s not the end of the world—”

“Boyfriend?”

Astonished at the feeble mind that could possibly couple together a worthless creep like Weber with her, Cara temporarily lost her ability to speak. Hiking her skirt up, she holstered her weapon, then pushed the material back into place, aware that the man was watching her every move.

“Eyes back in your head, mister,” she ordered. “You think that lowlife’s my boyfriend? Are you out of your mind? That was my bounty on the lam, not my booty.”

“Bounty?” the man echoed.

“Yes, bounty.” If he was trying for innocence, the man was a lousy actor. “Don’t say it as if it’s some kind of a foreign word to you. That’s why you’re after him, too, isn’t it? To collect the money?” It wasn’t a question so much as an accusation. “Well, you can’t have him. I spent over two weeks tracking that creep down from Colorado and his tail is mine.”

She was firing words at him like bullets from an automatic weapon and it was all Max could do to hold his own. “You can claim his tail and whatever other parts of him you want once I’m through with him.”

“Through with him?” Cara cocked her head and scrutinized the man who had just cost her the reward money she had all but had in hand. On second thought, she reassessed her initial impression of him. He looked too well dressed and pressed to be a bounty hunter. “Is this some kind of private vendetta?”

Interesting that she should choose those words. He would have thought the same thing, if he hadn’t known what he did about the situation. On the surface he knew it would have seemed odd that the ruler of a faraway, proud country like Montebello would even know about, much less be interested in, an American bail jumper like Kevin Weber.

His expression was cool, detached, as he looked at the woman who had temporarily thrown a wrench into his plans. “I don’t see how what this is could be any business of yours.”

Cara called him a few choice names in her head, but kept the words from her lips. There was nothing to be gained by telling him what she thought of him, and Cara had learned to play games well. Whatever it took to win. She needed that money and soon.

“Anything that involves that scum is my business—until I bring him into the county court system and collect the reward. Once I get what’s coming to me, you can put your bid in for him.” Her smile was smug, confident. She was going to nail that runaway son of a bitch and she knew it. She’d been at this trade too long to think about failing now. “I’m sure something can be arranged in, oh, say about fifteen to twenty years.”

“Is that the sentence Weber’s facing?”

He was getting better at this innocent act, Cara thought, evaluating the very masculine man before her. He made it sound as if he was entirely unfamiliar with Weber’s offense.

Cara folded her arms before her. “He is now,” she told him, although she knew that the sentence depended entirely on the judge and jury. She’d seen hardened criminals go free and hapless losers incur real jail time. She made what she felt was a safe guess. “I don’t see Weber getting any time off for good behavior.”

Dragging a hand through her long, silky hair, she sighed. Now that Weber knew there were people closing in on him, he was going to be even harder to track down. But nobody’d ever said this job was going to be easy. It would have bored her if it was.

The man looked at her. “What’s the offense?”

She narrowed her eyes, studying the man’s face, wondering if he was playing her for a fool for some reason. Could he be that ignorant about Weber and still be after him?

“He’s wanted for an attempted break-in at the Chambers’ ranch.” Cara paused, her eyes washing over the man. “You’re not a bounty hunter, are you?”

“I’m a private investigator.” He put out his hand to her. “Max Ryker.”

“Cara Rivers.” She shook his hand and was pleased that he didn’t seem to be afraid of hurting hers. He returned her strong grip. “Well, Max Ryker, your being in the right place at the wrong time just cost me two weeks’ hard work.” She dropped her hand to her side and went back to looking around the room. The closet had only a couple of changes of clothing and nothing else. “If you’re not after him for the burglary, why are you after him—not that it makes a difference to me as long as you stay out of my way,” she qualified as she pulled open the night-stand drawer. It was empty.

He skipped over the question, going to her final declaration. “Afraid I can’t do that, Cara. My client wants him brought back to Montebello for offenses committed there.”

That was some tiny country halfway around the world, she thought. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t about to turn Weber over once she had him.

She didn’t bother asking who his client was. If Ryker was on the level about being a private investigator, that information was privileged. It was also irrelevant as far as she was concerned.

“Sorry, but the sheriff of Shady Rock might have a few things to say about that. We’ll give Weber back after we’re done,” she promised again, a whimsical smile playing on her lips.

Max looked out the window to the alley where Weber had taken off. Sundown was slowly slipping over the entire region.

“Looks like no one’s getting him right now.” He could leave, but Max believed in getting to know whomever he was up against, and something told him that when he went after Weber, he’d find this woman right behind him—if not in front. “Buy you a drink?”

He had to think she was pretty stupid if he thought she didn’t see through that. Oldest trick in the book. And also one that didn’t work on her.

“And get me smashed so I can’t go after him? Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.” She led the way out of the claustrophobic room. “I don’t get drunk.”

Though it was a pointless gesture, he pulled the door closed after them. “Is that because you don’t drink, or because alcohol has no effect on you?”

He was laughing at her. She’d seen it before. A big, strong, strapping male who thought because she looked the way she did, she was a pushover. Well, they’d just see who was the pushover, wouldn’t they?

“The latter.”

Amused, Max arched a brow as he looked at her. “Oh really?”

For two cents she’d wipe that smirk off his face. “Yes, really.”

He had a man to track down. But now there was no doubt in Max’s mind that when he did go after Weber, this feisty female with the pint-size gun and gargantuan ego would be right there, getting in his way. He couldn’t afford to have that happen twice. She’d already cost him Weber tonight and the sooner he caught the man, the sooner he’d get his own answers.

The best way to proceed was to make sure she was out of commission for the necessary time. He figured that wasn’t going to prove to be a major problem.

“Suppose I buy you that drink,” he suggested, “and see.”

Now there was a challenge if she ever heard one. And one challenge begot another. She looked up at him prettily. “Only if you’ll join me.”

“Done.”

He saw nothing wrong in the bargain. He’d been known to drink more than a few with no ill effects. His time in the Montebellan army had been marked by intense training and even more intense drinking during downtime. There was no doubt in his mind that, given her size and weight, it wouldn’t take much to send the sprightly blonde sliding under the table, unconscious and out of the way.

Cara hesitated for a moment over the invitation. As much as she wanted to see his butt fried, she knew that joining this man for a drink or three, or however many it took to get him drunk enough to be out of commission would still sidetrack her and take precious time away from Weber’s ultimate capture. God knew she needed the money; she’d given her word to Bridgette that it would be there for her when she needed it.

But she had a sneaking suspicion that this stunning specimen of manhood would get in her way again. And she wasn’t entirely sure he was telling her the truth when he claimed not to be a bounty hunter. He might very well be one of those smooth-talking ones, bent on getting her out of the way so he could have sole access to the reward. Phil Stanford, the man she worked for, was not above farming out the work to more than one hunter at a time. All Stanford cared about was getting back the money he’d put up for Weber’s bail, not any possible moral violations he might have committed in getting that money and the bail jumper back.

If Ryker was working for Phil, then it was in her best interests to get him out of her way. Now.

“All right, I know this bar about a mile away. The Saint.” Her eyes washed over him as if she was taking measure. “You don’t have to be one to get in.”

There was something about her smile that got under a man’s skin, Max thought. It was both innocent and calculating at the same time, as if she had a joke she was keeping under wraps, one that he might or might not be in on. Max gestured toward the darkening parking lot. “Lead the way.”

She fully intended to. “I’ll drive.” It wasn’t an offer, it was an assumption.

Model-pretty or not, the woman needed to be taken down a notch. “We’ll both drive,” he told her. “I’ll follow you.”

She had her doubts about that, but there was nothing she could say. After all, it made perfect sense for him to want to take his car. But she didn’t want to risk losing him. Losing him meant failing to eliminate him as competition.

“See that you keep up,” she told him. She knew most men were too full of testosterone to let the challenge fall by the wayside.

Still, she kept an eye on her rearview mirror the entire trip to the bar to make sure he wouldn’t suddenly turn around and disappear on her.

Parking in front of the ramshackle building with its bright neon sign of a stick figure complete with a fallen halo, Cara quickly got out of her rented ’87 Nissan. She was standing beside the driver’s door waiting when Max pulled up. He was driving a sleek, black sports car. The vehicle looked as if it had just rolled out of the factory.

It fit him, she thought, but it was a hell of a car for a private eye, if that’s what he actually was.

“Private eye business must pay well,” she commented, running a hand along the hood as Max unfolded his long torso from the front seat and got out.

Shutting the door, he flipped a switch. The whiny noise told him the antitheft device had been activated. “Can’t complain.”

If he was on the level, Cara judged that Ryker had to do business with a very high-class clientele. “If your clients can afford to pay you fees that allow you to drive something like that around, what are you doing going after scum like Weber?”

Max carelessly shrugged his broad shoulders. “Long story.”

She raised her eyes up to his in a look calculated to make his knees just a little weaker. It annoyed her that he looked unaffected. “It’s going to be a long night,” she countered.

We’ll see, Max thought, opening the door for her. With any luck, he’d have her sleeping it off within an hour, if not less.

Stepping into the Saint was like stepping into a dimly lit, smoky cavern that had faint, piped-in music and was populated by denizens who were more comfortable frequenting the shadows of the night than moving about in the light of day. He’d seen dozen of places like this in as many towns. It was almost painfully stereotypical as far as bars went. He figured that the people who frequented it didn’t care.

The door sighed closed behind him. He saw the bartender nod in their direction. Or was that hers? Lowering his head so that his mouth was level with her ear, he asked Cara, “Come here often?”

A slight shiver danced over Cara’s neck, shimmying down her spine. She kept her eyes forward as she crossed to the bar. She’d passed through here three or four times, always on the trail of a bail jumper. The bartender liked to pass on information, for a fee.

But she wasn’t about to give Ryker any details. “Often enough.”

He couldn’t help wondering what a woman like her would be doing in a place like this. She looked like someone’s little sister, in need of protection from the kinds of people he saw lounging at small tables, sitting on bar stools, all building relationships with the nondescript glasses sitting directly before them.

But then, he reminded himself, she did have that peashooter strapped to her thigh.

Max found himself thinking about that thigh in great detail. He curtailed the mental journey.

He would have rather taken a table, but she selected a spot at the bar. “So, what’ll you have?”

“Whatever you’re having,” she replied cheerfully, making herself comfortable on the stool.

“Scotch, neat,” he told the bartender. Sitting down next to her, Max glanced at the woman he was trying to temporarily put out of commission. She looked as if she weighed somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred and ten pounds, maybe less. He figured he could easily catch her before she hit the floor. He’d rent a room for her at the nearest motel and deposit her there. Maybe she’d learn her lesson and stay out of his way.

“Make it two,” she told the bartender.

Max didn’t bother hiding the smile on his lips. This, he promised himself, was going to be interesting.

The smoky blue mirror over the bar reflected his expression, bouncing it back to her. Cara spared him a look. “Something funny, Ryker?”

If he went strictly by looks, not manner, she looked like someone who could sit under a shady tree, sipping a tall, cool glass of lemonade. “You just don’t strike me as the scotch type.”

She exchanged glances with the bartender, although she was fairly certain that because of the angle of her body, Ryker hadn’t seen anything. “I’ll let you in on a secret, Ryker.” She wrapped her hand around the glass the bartender placed before her. “I don’t have a ‘type.’ I am a unique experience.”

Max couldn’t help the short laugh. He’d run into confidence before, but not on this scale. “Think a lot of yourself, don’t you?”

She’d gone the shy, retiring route and it had gotten her abuse and heartache. Cara tossed her honey-blond hair over her shoulder. “Contrary to the popular hope, the meek don’t inherit the earth, Ryker. All they get is the dirt.”

She caught him off guard. That was surprisingly harsh. “Meek is one word I wouldn’t have thought of when looking at you.”

The bartender handed Max his glass. Once the bartender withdrew, Max picked up his drink and touched the rim of his glass to hers. “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

She smiled, then threw the drink down in a long gulp that had Max staring at her incredulously. “Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.” She placed her glass down on the counter. “Don’t you have any better lines?”

“Actually that was from Key Largo,” he informed her. “Common mistake.”

Maybe, she thought, but you just made another one.

Waving to snag the bartender’s attention, she held up two fingers, then turned her attention back to Max. “So, who are you working for?”

Because he knew a silent challenge when it was given, Max downed his drink and offered his empty glass for a refill as well when the bartender approached. As an afterthought, he took out his wallet and peeled off the appropriate amount of money to cover the four drinks, plus a healthy tip. He placed the bills on the counter.

“You know I’m not at liberty to say.”

The question was her way of feeling him out to see what kind of effect the drink had on him.

Taking a breath, she downed the second drink. Glass bottom met countertop with a resounding smack. “That’s all right, I already know.”

Max followed her lead and downed his drink, although he had to admit that he preferred taking in his alcohol at a slower pace. But then, going this route only meant the lovely creature sitting beside him would cease to be a problem that much quicker.

He was amused at her certainty that she knew who he worked for. There was no way she could be privy to his work for his uncle. But for the sake of distracting her from his true goal, he played along.

“You do?”

“Sure. It’s Phil.”

“Phil,” he echoed. The name seemed to resound briefly in his head as he said it.

“Phil,” she repeated, holding her glass aloft so that the bartender could see her from the other end. “Phil Stanford.”

Damn it, how was she holding all that alcohol so well and where was she putting it? She should have been slipping off her stool by now. These drinks were potent. His eyelids were beginning to feel as if they could easily peel off.

“I don’t know who that is.”

Maybe he wasn’t lying at that. Cara pushed the conversation another notch to see if she’d stumbled across the truth.

“Sure you do. The nasty son of a bitch who doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘ethics.’ He hired you because he was afraid I couldn’t deliver Weber.” Which was a prime insult in her book, seeing as how she had always, always gotten her man—or woman—before. “But I still have almost another week before Phil has to forfeit his bail money and I’ll have Weber safely locked up long before then. So don’t get any ideas.”

The ideas he was getting, fueled with two shots of scotch and working on a third, had very little to do with the swarthy man he’d been sent to round up and everything to do with a woman who made him think of warm, moonlit nights and dancing along the banks of a tranquil river. Barefoot.

Max took a deep breath before addressing the glass in his hand again. He wouldn’t mind seeing her barefoot. Up to the neck.

“What makes a woman become a bounty hunter?” He was aware that it took effort for him not to slur the last word.

It wasn’t a new question. She’d heard it before. A dozen times.

“Opportunity,” she replied mechanically.

It had been that, pure and simple. She’d spent six months on the Denver police force, feeling hemmed in by all the rules she seemed to always be tripping over, when she spotted the ad in the newspaper, of all places, for a bounty hunter. The notion struck her fancy. She already knew she was a good cop, she was just a bad bureaucrat and not much of what the sergeant liked to call a team player. Becoming a bounty hunter seemed to emphasize all the right things for her.

A new song came on the jukebox. Cara perked up just as Max was going to say something to her. She raised her hand. “Shhh, I like this song.”

Max found himself reaching for the hand she’d raised, folding his fingers around it.

Surprised, Cara looked at him questioningly.

“Like it enough to dance to it?” he asked.

A faint smile played along her lips. “Are you asking me to dance, or taking a survey?”

He got off his stool still holding her hand. “The former.”

“Then yes.” Cara slid off her stool.

Holding her hand, he led her to the tiny, dirty space before the jukebox. His legs felt oddly wobbly, but Max ignored the feeling. The desire to hold this woman came out of nowhere and was suddenly far too great to ignore.

Dancing seemed like the best solution.

Chapter 3

Maybe it was just his imagination gone into overdrive, but it felt as if the beautiful bounty hunter he had in his arms was teasing him with her body. She was teasing him without doing anything more than swaying quietly to the throbbing tempo of the song on the jukebox. It was a love song from the days when couples shared a melody they referred to as “their” song and would exchange secret smiles every time it came on the airwaves.

Max didn’t know if it was him or the room, but one of them seemed to be spinning. He wasn’t sure if he was rooting for him or the room.

Holding Cara’s hand within his, he kept it lightly pressed against his chest and looked down at her. Thoughts he couldn’t quite grasp hold of were crowding into his head. She was petite, though far from fragile. Even so, Max had a suspicion that she wasn’t quite as indestructible as she presented herself. Almost, but not quite.

Maybe if he focused on talking, the spinning would go away.

“So, what else do you like besides love songs from the forties?”

She raised her eyes to his, an enigmatic smile playing on her lips. “Men who don’t ask too many questions comes to mind.”

He laughed softly. The exotic scent she was wearing seeped into his consciousness, arousing him. “Sorry, occupational habit.”

She cocked her head, amused. “I thought detectives were just supposed to detect.”

He stopped dancing altogether and just stayed in place, holding her and pretending to move to the music. “They have to ask questions to do that.”

Cara nodded. “All right, you’re allowed one question,” and then she qualified it. “And I’m allowed not to answer it if I don’t want to.”

Even standing still was beginning to take effort. And it was having no effect on decreasing the velocity of the room.

“Hardly seems fair.”

She raised one shoulder and let it drop. “That’s life.”

She seemed to be swaying more, he thought. Had the tempo gotten faster? “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a job like this?”

Her eyes glinted slightly, though her expression never changed. “Making a decent living the fastest way I know how.”

Her scent was beginning to swirl around his senses. He was having difficulty focusing on the conversation instead of wanting her, but he forged on. “Why not try for something less dangerous?”

She shook her head. “That’s two questions. You’ve exceeded your quota.”

He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself, telling himself that everything wasn’t tilting—the way he could have sworn it was. “It’s an off-shoot of the first questions. Call it 1a.”

“I’d call you conniving.”

He smiled. Or thought he did. It was getting harder and harder to tell.

“I’ve been called worse.” The room was beginning to go at a really dangerous speed. Sweat popped out on his brow. “Is it me, or is it hot in here?”

The look she gave him was purely innocent. “Is that a line?”

“No, that’s—” He lost his train of thought, even as he was attempting to reach for it. “Maybe we should sit the rest of this one out.”

Placing his hand to her spine, he escorted her from the floor. Max’s head was starting to feel as if it weighed a ton. The bar appeared to be much farther away than it had just a moment ago.

Each step back took more and more effort on his part. He found he had to rest his arm across her shoulders just to keep from falling over.

He tried to focus on her face, hoping that would negate or at least balance out the spinning. “What was in those drinks?”

“Just scotch. But the glasses probably don’t always get washed properly,” she guessed. “Maybe there was something else left over from the last…”

He didn’t hear the end of her sentence. The buzzing in his head became too loud.

And then the room around him folded itself up until it became less than a tiny pinprick. The next second, the pinprick had disappeared entirely.

Max thought he was falling, but that might have been his imagination.

Everything stopped.

Nothing looked familiar.

Max had absolutely no idea where he was, only that his head was killing him and the effort to open his eyes cost him dearly. Each lid felt as if it was glued in place and had to be pried open.

When it was, he found the immediate area encased in a milky shroud. Repeated blinking finally made the shroud disappear.

He’d had hangovers in his time, royal ones if he could be forgiven the pun, and he’d never felt like this before. Neither had he passed out on three drinks before, no matter how potent they’d been.

Just what the hell had happened, and how did he get here, wherever “here” was?

He smelled a proverbial rat. A honey-blonde one with gray-blue eyes, fantastic legs and one hell of a well-shaped butt.

Holding on to the wall beside him, he sat up. Max had to really concentrate to keep the world from tilting over on its side. Only when it was in its rightful place did he finally try to take in his surroundings.

He was in a small area that appeared to be a storage room of some kind. There were broken chairs tucked away in one corner beside unopened cases of liquor. He realized that he’d been lying on a cot that smelled of beer and various other things, some of which were hard to place, others far too easily identified. He hadn’t been the first to sleep on it.

He pressed a hand to his stomach, willing himself not to throw up.

Rising on shaky legs, he made his way over to the closed door and tried it.

To his surprise, the knob turned. He wasn’t locked in. Opening the door, Max discovered that he was inside the bar he’d come to with Cara. Last night, if the thin beams of sun that were pushing their way through the partially closed slats at the window were any indication of the time.

Like so many things, the room had looked a lot better in semidarkness. There were dust motes everywhere he looked.

“Anybody here?” he called out.

No one answered.

Gingerly he touched the back of his head, looking for telltale knots that would have indicated his getting hit, which would have explained his sudden passage into darkness.

There were none. No one had hit him in the head to eliminate his presence on the scene.

The odd taste in his mouth told him that scotch hadn’t been the only thing he’d ingested last night.

She’d drugged him.

Somehow, when he hadn’t been looking, the sharp-tongued bounty hunter with the killer body had slipped something into his drink and drugged him.

Why?

The most obvious reason, he decided, struggling to curb his anger at being duped like some kind of novice, was that she thought he was a threat to her getting the bounty on Weber.

He heard a noise to his left and immediately reached for the weapon he always kept strapped around his ankle. It wasn’t there.

The woman must have taken it, he thought, cursing under his breath. Why should that surprise him?

Wary, Max grabbed a bottle from the counter behind the bar and held it by its neck, ready to smash the bottom off on the bar and use the jagged portion as a weapon at a moment’s notice.

“You break that, you pay for it,” the man who had tended bar last night told him, coming into the room. He set down the broom and dustpan he was carrying and scratched his thin, concave chest. A cigarette butt hung out of the corner of his mouth as if it was permanently fixed there. The bartender indicated the other bottles behind Max. “You might want to use something less expensive.”

Annoyed, Max put the bottle back down on the bar. “Where is she?”

The man coughed before finally asking, “Who?”

Impatience clawed at Max as he struggled to clear his head. It still felt as if all his thoughts were under water.

“The woman I was in here with last night. And before you tell me that you don’t know who I’m talking about, I saw the way you looked at her. Like you’d already met. If you didn’t know her, you wouldn’t have put me in your back room to sleep it off.”

The bartender laughed. It sounded more like a cackle and was followed up by a hacking cough. “I don’t know her. Not in any real sense of the word. She’s been here a few times and she gave me fifty bucks to let you sack out in the back room.” He picked up the broom again and began sweeping halfheartedly. “Would’ve given me ten more if the lock on the door worked, but it’s busted, just my luck.”

Max didn’t know if he was buying into this, but the buzz in his head was making it hard to think. “So you don’t know her.”

The man paused again, his expression wistful beneath the day old stubble. “No, but I’d sure like to. Don’t meet many of those in my line of work—fiery, not used up,” he clarified, then gestured around the establishment. “’Case you hadn’t noticed, this isn’t exactly an upscale club.”

Max didn’t bother commenting. He needed answers and if he wasn’t going to get them from this character who was little more than one step removed from a barfly himself, he had to fall back on a tried-and-true method. “Got a phone around here?”

The bartender reached behind the bar and brought out an old-fashioned, stark black dial-up telephone straight out of the last century. He placed it on the bar in front of Max.

“But it’ll cost you,” he said as Max reached for the telephone.

Digging into his pocket, Max pulled out a bill, glanced at it to see the denomination and slapped it down on the counter. Pulling the telephone over, Max dialed his office number back in Newport Beach. Three rings later, he heard his grandfather pick up and give the name of the agency.

“Hi, it’s Max,” he said into the receiver. He talked quickly, before his grandfather could ask any questions. “I need you to look someone up for me. Cara Rivers. Get me everything you can find: driver’s license number, address, priors if there are any, everything,” he emphasized again.

“What state am I looking in?” Bill asked, knowing better than to assume anything. Max got around.

Max paused, thinking, trying to pluck facts out of the murky sea that still surrounded his brain. Concentrating, he remembered the woman mentioning something about Shady Rock, Colorado. Maybe that was her point of origin. It was worth a try.

“Colorado.” He saw the bartender looking his way. The man made no effort not to look as if he was listening. “Start with a place named Shady Rock.”

“Shady Rock, huh?” Bill chuckled. “That’s almost as good as Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, or that other place, Hot Coffee.”

Max was not in the mood to see the humor in anything, least of all his condition. He was supposed to be able to see through people like Cara Rivers. And most of all, he wasn’t supposed to get himself drugged.

“Almost,” he agreed. Covering the receiver as he heard his grandfather begin to slowly type on the computer keyboard, Max looked at the bartender. “Got any coffee around here?”

He knew that this was going to take more than a little while. Though he liked to keep on top of the latest technology, his grandfather’s idea of typing fast amounted to three words a minute. Tops.

The bartender jerked a thumb toward the small table that was set up against the back wall. A coffee-maker, its pot half empty, was standing there. “Yeah, but it’ll cost you.”

Way ahead of the man, Max had already produced another five-dollar bill and placed it next to its mate on the bar.

Cara tried not to dwell on the man she’d left drugged in the bar. She knew it went with the territory but she couldn’t help feeling guilty, even though she’d slipped the bartender fifty bucks to let Ryker sleep it off in the back room. She forced her thoughts back on her job.

It amazed Cara how the simplest things often tripped people up.

Using credit cards had become an established way of life. People did it without a second thought, not realizing that they were simultaneously generating a paper trail as they paid for their entertainment, or their shoes or their gas.

Weber might be able to do without the entertainment or the shoes, but the gas, she was betting, since he was driving a car in his getaway attempt, was another story.

With her cell phone and her portable fax machine, along with several other state-of-the-art items stashed in the trunk of her car, Cara had managed to track Weber down via the activity on his credit card.

It helped having connections in the right places, she thought with a smile as she looked at the latest reported transaction.

Weber had purchased not only gas, but a burrito and a giant-size soft drink at a convenience store on highway 25. It was only fifteen miles away.

Putting pedal to the metal, she was there faster than the law would have smiled upon, the worn photograph of Kevin Weber she’d been showing around sitting on the passenger side beside her.

Screeching to a halt next to the small, squat convenience building, its paint peeling away under the unrelenting sun, Cara grabbed the photograph and dashed inside the store.

The temperature in the interior was only marginally cooler than it was outside. The air felt almost thick as she crossed to the counter. The man behind it looked as if he was ready to wilt.

Cara held up the photograph. “Hi, I’m wondering if you’ve seen this man in the last few hours?”

The man took only a couple of seconds to study the photograph. The other minute and a half were spent studying her.

“He did and Weber’s heading north. My guess is that he might be working his way to Canada.”

The clerk in front of her nodded in affirmation.

For the first time, Cara fully understood what was meant when someone said they could have been knocked over by a feather.

That voice could only belong to—

She swung around, her eyes wide, her mind racing. She knew who she was going to see even before she looked at him. Max Ryker.

Her mouth went dry. “You’re better than I thought you were.”

“And you’re more underhanded than I gave you credit for.” Taking her by the arm, he pulled her aside. He saw the way the man behind the counter was looking at them, his hand hovering over the telephone receiver. “Just a family spat, mister. If you don’t want any trouble, just go about your business,” Max told the barrel-chested man. His smile faded the moment he had her a safe distance away from her would-be protector. “What the hell did you put in my drink?”

Cara raised her chin. She’d never reacted well to being questioned. Her eyes swept over him. He looked none the worse for wear. The sleepy look in his eyes gave him a sexy appearance from where she stood.

“Nothing fatal.”

He snorted. “Obviously.” As she began to pull away, his grip on her upper arm tightened. “I don’t appreciate being drugged and then dumped.”

She looked at him indignantly. “I paid the bartender fifty dollars to let you sleep it off on a bed in the back room.”

“It was a cot and it wasn’t worth even fifty cents and change,” he informed her. But where he’d slept wasn’t the issue. What he’d had was. “Now, what the hell did you put in my drink—the truth,” he warned.

“Clonazepam.” She gave him the generic name. “It puts you out, that’s all.”

Max was familiar with the drug. It had made the rounds as everything from a tranquilizer to a sleeping pill to a recreational drug for what he deemed to be the mentally arrested, but predominantly was prescribed for seizures.

He arched a brow, looking at her, trying to make a judgment call that was right for a change when it came to her.

“Yours?”

Cara shook her head. She didn’t believe in taking anything more powerful than aspirin, and then only under extreme conditions.

“I know this pharmacist who isn’t exactly always on the straight and narrow.”

The man was only one of an arsenal of people she’d compiled over her lifetime, people who she turned to whenever she needed a favor that didn’t exactly fall within the proper lines smiled upon by society. She figured it was her due, after all the time she’d spent being passed from one house to another, trudging from one closed-clique class to the next over the process of transplantation.

“You wake up a little out of focus,” she told him, “a little sluggish, maybe with a fuzzy coating on your tongue, but with no harm done.”

If that was a “little” out of focus, then he was Santa Claus’s helper. He narrowed his eyes, looking directly at her.

“No harm done—except that you took off.”

She shrugged nonchalantly, wishing he’d release her. “Hey, it was just one of those things.”

“Don’t get cute with me, Rivers. I don’t appreciate being drugged and abandoned.”

At his raised tone, her own temper flared. “And I don’t appreciate being aced out of ten thousand dollars or strong-armed by a bully.” This time, she pulled harder against his grip.

Frowning, he released her. “Nobody’s strong-arming you.”

“Oh, no?” She rubbed her arm to get the circulation going. The man had one hell of an iron grip. “Then what do you call insisting on taking my bail jumper to Outer Slobovia?”

“That’s Montebello,” he informed her, struggling not to allow the corners of his mouth to curve.

He could almost see the fire leaping in her eyes. Though he was annoyed as hell about her costing him Weber, not to mention time, he had to admit there was something appealing about the way lightning bolts all but came shooting from every part of her.

“And we have jurisdiction,” he pointed out. “The U.S. and Montebello have had a mutual extradition treaty for some time now.”

“We?” she echoed. She thought she’d heard an accent of some sort. Where the hell was this place he claimed to be from? “Are you a Montebellian?”

“Montebellan,” Max corrected. “And that ‘we’ was just a figure of speech.” He didn’t want to tell her more than he absolutely had to, and certainly not that he was a duke. The last thing he wanted was annoying attention thrown his way. For some people, anything that had to do with a royal family—and it didn’t matter which one—was exciting. “But in any case, Weber’s going there when I get him.”

She begged to differ with his well-laid plans. “No, he’s going to Shady Rock when I get him.”

Max blew out a breath. “You’re going to be a royal pain in the posterior about this, aren’t you?”

She smiled sweetly at him. “Until I get my way, you might say that, yes.”

He had a feeling that she would cost him every time he got close to Weber. He didn’t need any more slipups. Time was money and he wasn’t making any on this venture. This was a favor to his uncle. “Allright, what do you say we team up?”

It was absolutely the last thing she’d expected him to say—unless he wasn’t on the level.

“Team up?”

“Yes, work together to get him.”

Cara looked at him suspiciously. Not that she was buying into this for a minute. “And then what?”

“And then we’ll work it out.”

Just as she’d thought. He was being evasive. Which meant that he didn’t want to tell her. Which meant, in turn, that he intended to shaft her.

She shook her head. “And then we bring him to the sheriff of Shady Rock. The office is closer than wherever the hell Montebello is.”

“It’s an island near Cyprus,” he told her automatically. Max couldn’t argue about Colorado being closer and he didn’t want to waste time arguing about any of the rest of it, either. Every minute that went by, Weber was getting farther and farther away. “Okay.” He put out his hand.

Taking his hand in hers, Cara shook it as she looked up at him. “All right, then it’s a deal.”

“A deal,” he echoed.

Her smile never wavered.

She didn’t trust him any farther than she could throw him.

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.

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.

Chapter 6

Max liked staying abreast of current events and watched the nightly news whenever he could. But the reception on the small television set within the rundown motel room left a great deal to be desired. Mainly a picture and clear sound. Giving up, he shut the set off and decided to turn in.

He noted that Rivers seemed to be of like mind. She was already in bed. Or rather, on top of it. She looked exhausted and more than a little disgruntled. She was also still wearing the clothes she’d put on again after her shower.

He looked down at her from the foot of the bed. “Aren’t you going to change?”

The mattress beneath Cara felt as if it predated the Second World War. She sincerely doubted it had a comfortable place to offer up. Turning, she laid flat on her back and laced her hands beneath her head. Looking up, she didn’t particularly like the way he was looming over her.

“I like me just the way I am.”

She was playing with words again, he thought. “I meant your clothes.”

Her expression remained unchanged. “I like those just the way they are, too.”

He wondered if she enjoyed being perverse and decided that she must. She was so good at it. “What do you normally sleep in?”

“A bed.”

Games, she was in the mood for games. Crossing to his side of the bed, Max dipped into his dwindling supply of patience and tried again. “What do you have on when you get into bed when you’re home?”

“Generally a very tired expression.”

And then it hit him, she wasn’t playing games, she was being evasive. And he had a feeling he knew why. “You sleep in the raw?”

Cara felt freer that way, but it wasn’t any business of his that she did. She knew she should just turn her back on him and ignore the question, but something goaded her to respond.

“What of it?”

He gave her a careless shrug. “Just a coincidence, that’s all. I sleep in the raw, too.” Sitting down on the bed, he took off his socks and then began unbuttoning his shirt.

An edgy feeling caught hold of her stomach. Cara propped herself up on her elbow. “Well, not tonight you don’t, Ryker. Stop right there,” she ordered him.

He’d already peeled off his shirt and was sitting there, bare-chested. She forced her eyes to his face.

“What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing,” she snapped. “Because you’re not going to do anything.” It was an order, not an observation. “Except to lay down on your side and drop off to sleep—now.”

The dulcet tones were certainly missing. He laughed. “You’re going to make one hell of a mother someday, you know that?”

She took offense at his tone. It was her heart’s longing to have children. And to give them all the love she’d never had, the love she’d been storing up all these years.

“Yeah, I will. And let me worry about that, you just get some shut-eye. Now. Or I’ll leave without you.” The threat slipped out before she could think to stop it. She didn’t ordinarily overplay her hand. She told herself it was because she was tired.

“You can’t. I have the only set of keys.”

Max held them up for her benefit. Then, he made an elaborate show of pushing them down deep into his front pocket. He knew she wouldn’t attempt to go digging there while he was asleep.

She looked at where he’d tucked the keys. Her mouth curved wryly. She knew exactly what he was thinking. “Aren’t you afraid of sustaining permanent injury if you should roll over during the night?”

He laid down on the bed. “I’ll risk it.”

Cara was acutely conscious of the way the mattress had dipped down, acutely conscious of the man laying less than two feet away from her.

“Does that mean you don’t trust me?” she asked flippantly.

His eyes met hers. “No more than you trust me.”

Something tightened within her. She inclined her head. “Fair enough.”

Lying back down, she realized that he’d propped himself up on his side and was looking at her. A jittery feeling snaked its way through her body. And then Max moved closer to her until the top of his torso was almost directly over her. Her heart began to hammer harder than she was happy about, the beat keeping abreast of the throbbing in her pulse.

She needed him back in his space, not invading hers. “Unless you’re looking to pick bullets out of your teeth, Ryker, I’d back off right now if I were you.”

Max heard the slight thread of tension in her voice, felt the crackle of electricity between them. “You need to relax, Rivers.”

The jerk was being condescending, as if he could read what was in her mind. How could he? She couldn’t even read what was in her mind right now. Except that she didn’t want him so close to her. “And you need to back off, Ryker. Now.”

He didn’t move a single muscle. “Is that a challenge?”

Was she going to have to fight him off after all? Every muscle in her body tensed. “If that’s what it takes to get you back on your side.”

She had pretty eyes, Max thought. Even when they darkened. He’d never been partial to blue-gray before. “You know, as a young boy, I could never resist a challenge. My mother said I was a constant source of worry for her.”

His mother used to despair, he remembered fondly, that he would die an early death, led there by his own recklessness. Instead she had been the one to die too early, through no fault of her own.

“At least you had a mother,” Cara heard herself murmuring, her voice hardly audible above the rushing noise in her ears.

She knew she should push him away, knew that all it would really take would be one quick turn and a well-placed flexing of her knee and any impromptu moves on his part would be summarily terminated.

But curiosity got the better of her. Curiosity and a strange physical pull that crept out of nowhere and presented itself to her with his name on it. Desire unfolded within her like a deck of cards being fanned out before a magic trick took place.

“You have a death wish.” Her lips practically touched his as she uttered the declaration.

“Maybe.”

And maybe he just had an insatiable thirst to discover what it felt like to kiss her. An insatiable thirst that wouldn’t be quenched until he found out on his own what her lips tasted like.

And then he wasn’t speaking any longer and neither was she.

Contact occurred and the air around them suddenly became even warmer than it already was, its edges singeing the instant their lips met.

He gathered her to him. Or perhaps she pulled him in toward her. The logistics weren’t clear. They overlapped. All that mattered was that they occurred.

He tasted of something dark and sweet and compelling. She felt like she was a dried flower getting its first taste of summer rain with the promise of more lingering in the air.

Cara wound her arms around his neck, telling herself she was anchored in reality so it was all right if, just for the moment, she lost herself in this sensation. Purely for reasons of edification. A woman always had to know exactly what she was up against.

Max felt Cara’s heart hammering against his chest as he drew her still closer against him, felt the heat of her body infiltrate his.

Or maybe that was his heart suddenly going into double-time. He couldn’t tell. He’d done this simply on a whim, because he couldn’t resist certain challenges, just as he’d told her. But once he’d thrown his hat in the ring, he found himself being sucked in completely as he reached to retrieve it.

If he’d had socks on, she would have knocked them off. Or at least curled them.

What he was entirely certain of was that Cara Rivers had created this itch, an itch so intense, it was almost impossible to scratch.

Or to bury.

But he knew he had to. Business and this kind of thing really didn’t mix.

More’s the pity.

Okay, time was up. It was time to come up for air, Cara’s brain pleaded, before it became completely oxygen deficient.

With more than a little effort, Cara finally managed to wedge her hands against his chest. She pushed with all her might, which, to her surprise, had decreased considerably. Still, she did manage to create a very small space between them.

She could only pray she didn’t sound as breathless as she felt. “Curiosity satisfied?”

She certainly didn’t pull any punches, Max thought. A smile curved his mouth. He ran the back of his knuckles slowly along the silky skin of her face and watched her eyes widen before she got better control over herself.

“Not in the least. Whetted, actually.”

“Too bad,” Cara said, finding a ribbon of strength to tap into. She pushed him back even farther, then struggled up into a sitting position. “Because that’s all she wrote.”

Intrigued, Max drew his thumb along her bottom lip, allowing his mind to wander a little further. Watching her veiled reaction in her eyes. There was a complete untapped vein of sensuality right before him.

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m not interested in what you think, Ryker. Just in what you do. And for your own well-being, what you should do is go lie down on your side of the bed.” She felt under her pillow and produced her gun. She pointed it at him, leaving the safety on. “Now.”

He didn’t believe in forcing himself on someone. Especially someone with gun, safety or no safety. Besides, the world seemed to be just the slightest bit tilted at the moment. Just like in the bar last night. Except that this time, he hadn’t been deliberately drugged by anything. Only her.

He struggled not to show Cara that he was searching for his bearings and that she was the cause of this disorientation.

“I never argue with a lady.”

“Hah,” was her only response. What a crock. He’d argued with her the better part of the time they’d been together.

With exaggerated movements, she turned her back on him and punched up her pillow. She knew damn well that she wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight. But that was all right. Not sleeping fit in with her plans.

Several minutes went by. Max found that his curiosity hadn’t abated. “What did you mean by that?”

She sighed. It was obvious that the man wasn’t going to just peacefully drop off to sleep. He was going to give her trouble.

So what else was new?

She kept her back to him, feeling it was a lot safer that way. “Mean by what?”

“That at least I had a mother.”

He would have picked up on that, she thought in annoyance. Why had she let that slip? “I wasn’t speaking in tongues.”

There was something defensive in her voice. His curiosity peaked, he turned around, only to find himself looking at her back. He squelched the impulse to turn her toward him. No use borrowing trouble. “Didn’t you have a mother?”

She didn’t bother suppressing a sigh. The man was making things difficult for her on a whole host of levels. She tried to ignore the restlessness she felt, the kind she couldn’t put a name to but bothered her nonetheless. “Are you getting paid extra to annoy me?”

“I’m not getting paid to do anything at all with you,” he told her mildly. “For the record, I was just being curious.”

“Well, don’t be.”

Struggling with her exasperation, and the nameless feeling that insisted on continuing to grow within her, a feeling that might have been labeled attraction if she wasn’t so damn sure it wasn’t, she punched her pillow again, trying to add dimension to it. It couldn’t have been flatter than if it had been run over by every single one of the wheels on an eighteen-wheeler. It was obvious that comfort was not the byword of this motel. Several attempts later, she bunched the pillow beneath her head, folding it as much as possible.

Cara stared at the rusted handle on the bureau. “No, I didn’t,” she finally said quietly.

He’d thought she’d lapsed into total silence. Hearing her answer, he turned back to look at her again. “Divorced?” he guessed.

She’d never known her mother or her father. She’d overheard one of the social workers say that she’d been found on a park bench when she was only several days old. Her parents hadn’t even thought enough of her to leave her on a hospital or church doorstep. For all they knew, a stray, hungry animal could have come across her and ended her life before it ever began.

Cara’s laugh was short and without any accompanying humor. “From me, maybe.”

She could feel him propping himself up on his elbow by the movement of the mattress. There were going to be more questions. As she had done most of her life, going from one school system to another more times than she wanted to ever remember, Cara headed him off at the pass. It was always easier fighting on her own terms than waiting for the first jab to be thrown.

Refusing to turn around, to see pity in his eyes, she addressed the dingy mirror over the bureau.

“You’re sharing your bed, so to speak, with a bona fide orphan. I spent the first seventeen and a half years of my life in foster homes. Sad music accompanying credits. End of story. Now go to sleep.”

Her answer only raised another question. “Aren’t you supposed to be in the system until you’re eighteen years old?”

She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck rising. He was prying. Served her right for saying anything at all.

“Yeah.”

“But you only stayed seventeen and a half—” He left the sentence open-ended, waiting for her to fill in the blank.

Annoyed, she finally turned around to look at him. Ryker seemed much too close for either their own goods. She pretended not to notice.

“I ran away for the last six months. When I was eighteen, the system was through with me.” And so would life have been, if it hadn’t been for Bridgette Applegate. Cara believed that from the bottom of her soul. “Now shut up and let me get some sleep before I really do shoot you.”

He’d opened up old wounds. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to realize that. Part of him wanted to ask why she’d run away, but he knew how dear privacy was, how precious it was especially when you were denied it. He’d been there. Had seen its effects on his mother when the press wanted to know how she felt about her husband’s flagrant indiscretions.

It was in his mother’s memory that he backed off. If Rivers wanted him to know the reason she ran away, she’d tell him on her own. If not, well there were a lot of questions in life that went unanswered.

Such as why someone as good and kind as his mother had remained with the likes of his father. And why his father had felt the need to indulge in cheap affairs when there was someone waiting for him at home who could love him unconditionally. Someone, according to what his aunt Gwendolyn, the queen, had once told him that the duke had loved in return. But he just couldn’t conquer the lust that governed him.

Since both his parents were now gone, “why” was a puzzle he wasn’t destined to ever solve. And one, heaven willing, he wouldn’t be destined to repeat in his own life. For apples did not fall far from their trees and children were often doomed to repeat the sins of the fathers. He knew that he would rather remain unmarried all of his life than to bring the kind of grief to a woman that he had seen in his own mother’s eyes.

Max laid down again, staring at the ceiling. “Good night, Rivers.”

“Good night, Ryker,” she growled into her pillow.

For some reason, her response made him smile. Max closed his eyes. They had to get an early start in the morning if they were going to catch up to Weber. Lying here, wondering about the woman beside him wasn’t going to help him do that.

He thought about her anyway. Eventually he managed to drift off to sleep.

* * *

The early-morning sun was just beginning to feed its way through the spaces in the curtains where the weave had thinned when Max opened his eyes again.

It felt as if he’d just closed them and he gradually became aware of his body. It ached as if he’d spent the night sleeping on a pile of stones. He supposed that getting up was actually a relief.

Stretching, Max sat up and scrubbed his hands over his face in an attempt to get his mind focused and into gear.

It was then that he realized the place beside him was empty.

Instantly alert, he looked to the bathroom. The door was closed. She was probably just in there, he told himself, but still, he was taking no chances. He knew better when it came to Rivers.

On his feet, he crossed to the paint-scarred door and rapped on it.

“Rivers, you in there?”

There was no response.

He put his ear to the door and heard nothing. No running water, no movement of any sort. An uneasy feeling got more than a toehold on him.

“Rivers?” he called again, more urgently this time. When there was still no response, he tried the knob and found it locked. Was she inside and playing games just to get to him? He had no idea how her mind worked, only that she was perverse.

“Look, if you’re in there, open the damn door. Now.” Still nothing. “Okay, I’m coming in. If you’re in there naked, that’s your problem.”

Throwing his shoulder against the door, he nearly took it completely off its rusted hinges.

Cara wasn’t in there naked. She wasn’t in there at all.

Max cursed roundly. This definitely did not look good.

Spinning on his heel, he ran outside into the courtyard to where he’d parked his car. He knew that she could have just gotten up and was out, getting breakfast at the small café they’d passed on their way here, but somehow, he didn’t think his luck was particularly running that way.

He was right.

The car wasn’t where he’d left it. She’d taken it. Suppressing another curse, Max immediately checked for his keys. Shoving his hand into his pocket, he found them exactly where he’d put them.

How the hell had she managed to steal the car without the keys?

This woman appeared to have more hidden talents than a con game had angles.

Max looked around, hoping that he was wrong, that he’d somehow just forgotten where he’d parked the vehicle in the dark.

But there weren’t that many places to look. He hadn’t forgotten where he’d parked the car. It was gone and she had taken it.

Storming into the small office, he saw the office manager dozing in a corner, his head forward, small drool marks forging a trail down his faded shirt. The picture on his small television set was rolling so that it appeared the woman’s waist was on her head as she pitched a set of knives guaranteed to cut through steel and the hardest man’s heart with ridiculous ease.

Fisting his hand, Max rapped on the desk hard and the man jumped up, bumping his shins against a chair as he scrambled forward. Focusing on Max, the man blinked, then sank back into his semistupor state.

“What?”

Max knew it was useless to ask, but he did anyway. “The woman who was with me last night when I checked in, did you see her leave?”

The man stared at him slack-jawed. He scratched the stubble on his face.

“You mean she’s gone?”

Well that answered that. Blowing out an angry breath, calling himself several kinds of a fool for not handcuffing her to the bedpost the way instinct had told him to, Max strode out the door.

“Does this mean you’ll be checking out?” the man called after him, leaning as far over his desk as he could manage. “There’s a half day charge after six in the morning, you know.”

Max ignored him.

Trying to think, he walked into the courtyard again. He scanned the area, looking out onto the street, hoping against hope.

Hope died a quick, harsh death.

Rivers was nowhere in sight. Somehow, she’d managed to start up his car and make good her escape. The woman had too many hidden talents.

Hurrying back to their room Max took a fast inventory of what was there. Her things, including the laptop she’d brought in with her, were gone.

Rivers had played him for a fool.

Again.

Chapter 7

Stupid Americans.

Toying with his bourbon and soda, Jalil Salim looked up and studied his own face in the mirror that lined the back of the hotel bar. He watched his mouth curve in a self-satisfied smirk. It had been almost too easy. He would have enjoyed more of a challenge, wanted more of an adrenaline rush than what he’d sustained.

Did they really think they were going to catch me?

The thought seemed ludicrous. Salim raised the two fingers of amber liquid in his glass to his lips and drank deeply. He closed his dark eyes for a moment, savoring the bourbon’s hot, raw burn as it made its way down his throat into his stomach.

Except for the bullet that had grazed his shoulder, the Americans had proven to be unworthy adversaries. A great deal like the fools in Montebello.

Salim set the glass down, wrapping both hands around it and hunching the thin, wiry body beneath the light gray suit, as if he meant to surround his glass. Idly he looked in the mirror and watched the people in the hotel bar come and go without really taking note of them. He was too busy congratulating himself on eluding capture.

The whole thing was rather stupid on his part, he supposed. He shouldn’t have tried breaking into the Chambers ranch. It was beneath him. He should have left it to someone else. The brotherhood could have sent him someone to handle that. He had enough on his mind without looking over his shoulder, trying to elude being captured again by some would-be American law enforcement dolts. If he hadn’t gotten out on bail because of a technicality, he might be rotting in jail right now.

Bail, what a foolish, foolish concept. That was why his country was so superior. It didn’t have such things as bail. If you were believed to be guilty, justice was swift. It did not mince around.

Lucky for him the authorities here in the United States could be easily circumvented. Here people took you at your word and believed in an honor system.

As if they were on the same plain as he, Salim sneered into his drink. Why else would they have released him, believing that he would be back when the time for trial came.

Idiots.

Jalil laughed to himself. If those poor fools only knew what his true mission here was, they would be stunned and horrified. As well they should be. He liked the idea of striking fear into people’s hearts. Fear was a way of controlling people, of wielding power. The more fear you struck, the more powerful you were.

And he belonged to a very powerful organization. He’d been sent to this country to find a way to build up the depleted coffers of the Brothers of Darkness, the terrorist group he had pledged his allegiance to when he was just a boy. The organization was his mother, his father, his god and he would gladly die for it.

But not yet.

He sighed, frustrated. He needed to be in Austin by the end of the week. His contact would be there, the man who could put him in touch with others who thought the way he did, who believed in their cause. But it was moving far too slowly for his tastes. Finding a way to rebuild resources, to make connections that would allow a way for money to begin flowing back to his organization, took too much time.

And once that was started, he would go on to an even bigger mission. Killing the son of the king of Montebello. This time, for good. According to the intelligence network, Prince Lucas had escaped the jaws of death despite the plane crash.

But not for long.

Right now, though, Salim was getting bored, restless. From where he was sitting, he could see into a booth that was to his left. A man occupying it was there with a woman who was obviously not his wife. The man was running his hand up her skirt.

Salim shifted on the stool. He needed diversion. He needed a woman.

Being on the run this way hadn’t left him much time for the simpler, necessary pleasures of life. A man needed to feel like a man once in a while and though these western women were inferior to the women in his country and far too stubborn for his tastes, with their big breasts and tempting hips, they had their uses.

A slight movement in the mirror caused him to look to his right, toward the bar’s entrance. A dark-haired woman wearing a clingy white dress walked in. The wide folds of the short dress caressed her body with every step she took. She made his mouth water.

She seemed to smile right at him, though his back was to her. Their eyes met in the mirror.

A working woman, by his estimation.

He could smell them. High-class from the looks of her. A woman who knew how to work a room, who knew how to say the things a man wanted to hear. Do the things a man wanted done. Obviously a whore, but still infinitely superior to the ones he saw frequenting selected corners and streets, offering instant gratification in the time it took to pull down a zipper.

There was a time and a place for instant gratification, but not from a common slut ripe with diseases.

He liked quality, even in his whores. Salim was willing to pay if it meant that his needs would be pleasured, that the woman was clean and attractive, not used-looking or cheap.

The very word turned his stomach. He’d had enough of “cheap” hiding in those run-down motels, staying ahead of that bounty hunter who had been after him. But now the hunter was behind him, most likely gone for good. He was through running, through with the game. The next encounter, if there was to be one, would be deadly. And he intended to be the one walking away.

The stool beside him was empty. The woman in white had crossed to him, standing behind it.

“Is this seat taken?” she purred in a voice that seemed to have been dipped in honey.

He could feel his arousal beginning. This one he would have, first quickly, then slowly, until he was tired of her.

“If you sit down, it will be.”

She took it as an invitation. Smiling, she sat down beside him, adjusting her skirt so that he could see her long legs, her bare, silky skin. As she turned toward him, the neckline of her dress dipped down. The firm cleavage that was exposed to his hot gaze rose and felt seductively with each breath she took.

Salim was fairly salivating.

“Would you like a drink?” he offered.

She lowered her eyes to the one on the counter. “I’ll take a sip of yours,” she murmured, her voice low, husky. She took the glass from his hand. Slowly she ran the tip of her fingernail along one edge of the rim. “Is this where your lips touched the glass?”

He felt his throat and his loins tightening. “Yes.”

As Salim watched, the woman pressed her own lips to the spot and took a long sip. Her eyes never left his. He found that his breath caught in his throat.

The drink was a particularly strong one. He expected to see her eyes water. Instead she merely smiled as she placed the glass on the counter.

“Smooth,” she whispered. The word seemed to graze his very skin.

His arousal increased. He inclined his head toward hers. “Perhaps you would like to leave here for a little while?”

“Perhaps,” the woman echoed. Her blue-gray eyes danced as they teased his. “Just what did you have in mind?”

She was being coy. It was part of the game. “I think you know.”

Leaning her elbow on the bar, she rested her chin on her hand. Her eyes smiled up into his. “Why don’t you tell me, anyway?”

He skimmed her bare arm with his fingers, envisioning his hands on her breasts instead. “We could go back to my room and I could appreciate you the way a woman such as you should be appreciated.”

She exhaled a long, sensuous breath, as if she could read his mind, feel his touch. His excitement mounted. “Sounds good to me.” Slipping from her stool, she watched him toss a couple of twenties onto the bar before he got off his stool. She nodded at the money. “Pretty free with your money. Are there any more like that?”

His smile broadened. He’d been right. A working woman. Well, he was going to make her work.

“A great many.” He placed one proprietary hand on her shoulder, steering her toward the entrance. “In my hotel room.”

Her smile was inviting, seductive. “Then show me your hotel room.”

Slipping his hand from her shoulder, he took her arm. “That is not all I will show you.”

She leaned into him, laughing, filling his space with the perfume she’d put on only half an hour ago. “I’m counting on it.”

* * *

Damn it, she was here. Intent on finding his quarry, Max had almost missed her. As if a body like that could be overlooked.

What the hell did she think she was doing?

Didn’t she have any idea how dangerous the man was and what could happen to her?

Obviously not, Max thought in disgust.

The woman was a myopic fool.

Making his way out of the bar again, he followed them, keeping a discrete distance behind.

As they walked out of the bar and toward the elevator, Cara planned how and when to make her move. Weber’s room was both the best place and the riskiest. Best because there was no one to get in her way, no one he could use as a shield to make his getaway. And, since the room was on the sixth floor, there was only one way out for Weber. He certainly wasn’t going to leap out the window and suddenly sprout wings. This time, there would be no Dumpster to catch him.

But it was the riskiest place because there would be no witnesses, no one for him to fear if he suddenly turned on her or tried to overpower her.

The operative word here was “tried.”

Which was why she had her gun very strategically planted beneath the slinky white skirt of her dress. She could easily draw it out when the time came.

Cara stole a glance at the man at her side as he jabbed again for the elevator. She’d known what he looked like, had carried around his likeness to hold up in front of people and help jar their memories, but she hadn’t realized just how unnerving he was in person. There was an aura around him. Though it seemed foolish, it felt as if she was in the presence of pure evil.

It wasn’t often that her imagination ran away with her.

The elevator opened. She felt his hand at the small of her back, pushing her forward. They were the only two occupants.

Cara could feel her nerves jumping. As before, she’d managed to track Weber down by the activity on his charge card. When she saw that he’d checked into the Excelsior Hotel in Dallas, she’d felt as if she’d hit pay dirt. Different than the hotels he’d stayed in previously, the Excelsior catered to a whole different breed of people. The man was moving up. Her guess was that Weber had to be feeling pretty cocky about his getaway. Maybe he actually thought he’d lost them.

Pride went before a fall, she thought smugly. Which meant that she couldn’t get too confident or she would be sharing his fate.

Turning toward her, he nuzzled her neck. “How do you like to do it?”

Cara was struggling not to have her skin crawl off her body. “Slowly. All night.”

He ran his hands up and down her bare arms, his breathing becoming audible, heavy. “And what will this night of ecstasy cost me?”

Steady, just a little while longer, she counseled herself. For Weber’s benefit, she smiled seductively. “We’ll talk terms in your room,” she promised.

“Why wait until we’re in my room to get started?” Grabbing her roughly, he pulled her to him, his hand going up her skirt.

Quickly Cara pulled away. When he protested, his temper flaring, she pointed to the small camera mounted in the corner.

“Security cameras,” she told him. “You don’t want some underpaid, pimply-faced adolescent getting his rocks off by watching us, do you?”

He grunted something completely unintelligible under his breath as he fisted his hands at his sides and glared at the camera.

The woman with him was hot and he wanted to take her now, while his loins throbbed.

“Americans,” Weber jeered. “Always watching everything. A nation of voyeurs.”

Thank God for small blessings, she thought. He’d almost slipped his hand over her weapon.

Once they were in his room, Cara knew she was going to have to act fast. There would be no time for slipups and what she had going for her was the element of surprise. The man was thinking so hard with his organ that he hadn’t recognized her. She’d gone through a lot of trouble not to look like herself, but a real professional would have noticed the similarities between the pro he was bringing to his room and the woman who had pounded on his door a short while ago.

Lucky for her, she thought.

Now all she needed was for her luck to hang on a little longer. There were handcuffs in her purse. It might have been safer for her to have placed her weapon in there, too, but she’d wanted to feel the reassuring press of metal against her flesh and had opted to strap her gun to the inside of her leg.

Her quarry brought her to his door, unlocking it. Anticipation rushed through his veins.

“I want you to strip for me.” He locked the door behind her. “Slowly.”

Cara turned around, stepping back coyly out of his reach. “We still haven’t talked terms.”

Pulling out his wallet, he yanked out several large bills, tossing them on the floor between them. “There. Terms. Now do your part.”

It was now or never, she thought. Even if she began to go through the motions to distract him further, dropping her dress would leave her wearing matching bra and panties and a gun that didn’t match either.

As his eyes bored into her, Cara began to slowly hike her skirt up, swishing the material along her legs, knowing that she was going to have to be fast to get the drop on him. She hadn’t gotten to where she was by underestimating the people she was up against.

Her eyes never leaving him, Cara slipped her hand beneath her skirt, her fingers securing the hilt of her gun. She froze when she heard the knock on the door. The sound vibrated in her chest, blending with the hammering of her heart.

Distracted, angry at being interrupted, Weber growled, “Yes?”

“Room service,” a Southern voice twanged.

“Go away. You have the wrong room,” Weber barked. “I did not order anything.”

“No, sir, this is the right room,” the voice insisted. “Compliments of the house. Champagne and a basket of fruit.”

Weber took a step toward the woman whose obedience he’d just bought. “Leave it in the hall.”

“Can’t, sir. I need you to sign that you got it. Otherwise, they’ll think I took it and I’ll lose my job. I’ve got a family to support—”

“Enough!” Weber shouted. Swearing, he swung around and unlocked the door again. He looked at the table that was before the bellman. There was nothing on it. Incensed, he looked up at the tall bellman. “Where is my champagne?”

“Right here.”

The next moment, the table was being shoved into Weber. Caught off guard, Weber stumbled backward and fell.

Cara’s mouth dropped open in surprise. She’d been so busy not underestimating Weber that she’d wound up underestimating his pursuer.

Ryker.

It took her less than a split second to come to. Cara pulled out her weapon, training it on Weber, who was sprawled out on the floor.

“Don’t move a muscle,” she ordered. “Kevin Weber, you’re under arrest by order of the sheriff’s department of the town of Shady Rock, Colorado.”

Max was shrugging out of his bellman’s jacket. There was a gun in one hand and she saw the handcuffs at the back of his belt. “He’s my prisoner, Rivers,” he informed her as he tossed the jacket aside.

She smiled at him serenely, shaking her head. “Uh-uh. I had him first. And possession, Ryker, is still nine-tenths of the law.”

On the floor, Weber looked angrily from the call girl to the bellman. “Who the hell are you people?”

Cara smiled broadly. She really enjoyed saying this line. “Your worst nightmare, Weber.” Gun trained on the man on the floor, her eyes pinning him in place, she asked, “What are you doing here, Ryker?”

He didn’t want her to get away with it, but right now wasn’t the time to challenge her. If they started arguing, Weber or whoever he really was might get away.

“Trying to get back my car and my prisoner,” Max told her.

She could afford to be magnanimous. Up to a point. “The car’s downstairs. Valet parking. Just let me get my stuff out of it and you can have it back.” She spared Ryker one quick glance. She knew her answer wasn’t going to sit well with him. Too bad. She had no intention of giving up custody. “But the prisoner’s mine.”

The woman was nothing short of infuriating. “I can have you up on charges of grand theft, auto. Like the idea of doing time, Rivers?” He didn’t tell her that he didn’t want too much attention drawn to Weber, that if the police were called in to arrest her, things might get dicey about Weber and the matter of jurisdiction. Besides, when he really got down to it, he didn’t like the idea of the woman being arrested. He admired her creativity and spirit. And he liked besting her on his own without outside help.

Her eyes darted to his face. And then she smiled. “You can,” she allowed, sensing that he wasn’t the type to follow the strict letter of the law, “but you won’t. Like it or not, you admire resourcefulness.” Slowly, her gun still raised, she opened her purse. “Speaking of which, how’d you get here?”

“I got the desk clerk to sell me his car.” It hadn’t been easy. The man insisted on being paid a lot more than the vehicle had been worth, but he’d been desperate.

Thinking back, Cara vaguely recalled seeing an old, rusting jalopy parked in front of the motel office. It hadn’t looked as if it could even run.

“You’re kidding.”

She was smirking. He didn’t particularly like being the source of her amusement.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” He had a question of his own for her. “Now you tell me how you managed to get my car started without my keys?”

She shrugged carelessly. That had been a lot simpler than sneaking out of the room with all her things. She’d held her breath the entire time, positive that Ryker would wake up and stop her before she managed to get out the door.

“I hot-wired it, only to discover a second set, deep in the folds of the seat cushion.”

“I thought I lost those keys,” Max muttered. “I even had a second set made.”

“Where the hell did you learn to hot-wire cars?”

She supposed it did no harm to tell him. “During my nomadic childhood, I lived with the family of an auto mechanic. He showed me a few things that he thought might come in handy. How to tune up a car, how to jump-start it if the battery’s dead—”

“How to hot-wire it if you can’t steal the keys, too.” The whole story sounded incredible. He had a feeling she was lying to him on principle.

“No, he thought showing me how to hot-wire a car would come in handy if I lost my keys,” she corrected. Realizing she’d turned her eyes away from Weber, she looked back and saw that the man was inching his way over to a chair. She cocked the hammer of her gun, aiming it directly at his heart. “Don’t even think about it. On your knees, Weber,” she ordered.

Holstering his gun, Max took out his handcuffs, but Cara beat him to it and slapped her own cuffs on Weber. Slipping them on Weber’s wrists, she tested their integrity before stepping back.

“I’m impressed,” Max said to Cara.

She couldn’t quite gauge by his tone if he was mocking her or not, but it didn’t matter. “Just stay out of my way.”

Max loomed over her. She might be clever, but if she thought he was backing off, she was also very naive. “Afraid I can’t do that.”

Her brows narrowed. “And I’m afraid you have no choice. He’s my prisoner, not yours, and he’s going back to Shady Rock. I need that ten thousand dollars.”

She kept throwing that number around. “What ten thousand?” he wanted to know.

“The ten thousand dollars bounty that Phil Sanford is willing to pay for his safe return before the trial. Phil stands to lose a lot of money if I don’t get this scum back in time.” She looked at Weber. “Get on your feet,” she ordered. “Now.” Cursing her ancestry and her soul, Weber rose. “Like you’re doing this for the fun of it,” she jeered, glancing at Max.

“I’m doing it because I made a promise.”

She didn’t know if he was serious or not, but his reasons didn’t really interest her. Only the ten thousand did. “And I’m doing it because that ten thousand dollars means an awful lot to someone I care a great deal about. To her, it’s the difference between life and death.”

She was pulling his leg, he thought, trying to play on his sympathies. But the look in her eyes was so sincere, he wasn’t sure. What he did know was that arguing over this was wasting precious time.

“All right then, let’s go.”

She made no move to go. “You’re not coming with me.”

“The hell I’m not.”

The next thing he knew, she was pointing the gun at him.

Chapter 8

“No,” she said very evenly. “You’re not. I’m not about to take a chance on losing him again. Weber has a date with the sheriff in Shady Rock and that’s where we’re going. Without you.”

Though he’d raised his hands to placate her, Max was certain that Cara wouldn’t pull the trigger. He’d looked down more than one gun barrel in his lifetime and was a fairly good judge when it came to the person who trained the weapon on him.

It wasn’t that he thought the woman holding the gun was all talk and no action, he already had proof of the contrary. But he also felt that she wasn’t a cold-blooded killer.

His eyes met hers. “You don’t have a car,” he pointed out calmly.

Damn it, why did he have to keep showing up and messing everything up? If not for him, she would have had Weber in her custody over two days ago.

“I have yours.”

Max lowered his arms slowly, though he didn’t move forward. Just in case he was wrong.

“One step away from grand theft, auto,” he reminded her. “And I think you probably know that the police have no soft spot in their hearts when it comes to bounty hunters.”

Her mouth curved disdainfully. “Oh, like they’re completely enamored with private detectives.”

He lifted one shoulder, letting it drop carelessly. Watching Weber on the floor, Max continued to keep a respectful distance from her weapon. “I don’t need the police to be enamored with me. I’m not the one who stole a car.”

She blew out a breath. Ryker probably hadn’t had time to file a report anywhere, but that was his registration in the car. All he had to do was get on the phone and report his car stolen. She didn’t have time to take an indirect route back to Shady Rock, she had a deadline to beat. If Weber wasn’t in court in three days, the bondsman forfeited his bail and she lost the ten thousand.

Cara glared at him. “I can rent another one.”

“That’s going to take time. And you have a prisoner in tow. That doesn’t exactly make a rental agency eager to do business with you. Why go through the hassle? And one more thing,” he said as she began to respond. “You know if you walk out that door, I’m going to follow you. You might as well have me next to you where you can keep an eye on me than turning around and looking over your shoulder all the time.”

Max looked contemptuously at the man on the floor. If the man’s real name was Weber, then he was the Easter Bunny.

“Besides, with this one, it wouldn’t hurt to have two sets of eyes watching him. He looks like the kind who’ll slit your throat if you let your guard down even for a minute.”

Cara took a deep breath. He was right. On several counts. But she still didn’t feel easy about the arrangement. And she questioned his reasons.

“Why would you do anything for me?” she wanted to know.

“Not for you,” Max said honestly, “but for a fellow human being. I hate to see a life wasted.” And after looking into Weber’s eyes, there was no doubt in his mind that the man could kill as easily as he could breathe, with no compunction whatsoever. “Besides, maybe I can talk some sense into your sheriff and get Weber released to me—since you won’t listen to reason.”

“Once Weber is behind bars and I get my ten thousand, I don’t care if you go dancing with the sheriff—or Weber,” she added.

Cara chewed on her lower lip, debating. What Ryker said made sense she supposed. But if the tables were turned and she talked him into letting her come along, she knew she’d try to get Weber away the first moment the opportunity presented itself. It didn’t matter that she was beginning to be really attracted to the guy. Another time and another place, if things were different… But they weren’t. The bottom line was that, handsome or not, Max was the competition, if not the enemy. She was going to have to be on her toes.

“Okay, Ryker, you can come along. But just as long as we’re clear on one fact: You try to take him from me and I will shoot you.”

He lowered his eyes to her weapon, then raised them again to hers.

“I never doubted it for a second.” Passing Cara, he reached over and grabbed Weber by the arm, dragging him up. The gun in his other hand was a silent warning to the man not to try anything. “On your feet, scum.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Cara cross to the phone and pick it up. “Who are you calling?”

She held up her hand for him to be quiet as she heard someone on the other end pick up.

“Front desk? Room 618 is checking out. Quickly. Just put the tab on his credit card.” Hanging up, she saw the questioning look on Max’s face. “I hate loose ends. Why not let them know that he wasn’t going to be here? Someone else can use this room.” And then she grinned. “Aren’t credit cards wonderful?”

She knew that Ryker had to have tracked Weber here the same way she had, by the man’s unwitting use of his credit card. Pausing to raise her skirt, she holstered her weapon, not unaware that Ryker was watching her every move and that there was an appreciative look in his eyes.

She had to admit that, in part, she was playing up to it.

Lowering her leg, she adjusted her skirt, allowing it to fall back into place. There was an amused smile on her face.

“Careful, Ryker, or your eyes are going to fall out of your head.”

It was beyond him how she could move so fluidly under the circumstances. He couldn’t picture moving around with a gun between his legs.

“Doesn’t it chafe that way?”

The question almost made her laugh. “Let me worry about that.”

To his surprise, she took out her key and unlocked one of the handcuffs on Weber’s wrist.

Had she changed her mind about leaving? “What are you doing?”

As Max watched, she snapped the cuff on her own wrist. “Making sure that Weber doesn’t go anywhere without me.” She looked at Max innocently. “Ready? Let’s go.”

Before he could say anything, she passed him and went out the door, pushing Weber out before her.

They made an unsettling trio walking through the lobby, the woman in white handcuffed to the thin, well-dressed man in gray, with the tall, dark, solemn-faced man flanking him on the other side. They garnered more than their share of stares as they made their way to the front entrance.

Bypassing the revolving door, they took the regular one, going through it single file. The man in the gray suit was between them.

Once outside the entrance, Cara produced a ticket from her purse and handed it to Max.

“What’s this?”

“Your car, or it will be once the valet drives it up.” She shifted slightly, wishing she had on something other than a clingy dress with layers of material adhering to her. The day promised to be a scorcher and traveling on the road was going to be no picnic. Ryker was probably the type who made you roll down your windows instead of using the air conditioning.

He looked at the ticket incredulously. “You put a stolen car in valet parking.”

“Borrowed,” she corrected. “I placed a borrowed car in valet parking.” She smiled, as if it was a no-brainer. “Made it easier that way.”

It was also safely out of the way rather than in plain sight the way it wouldn’t have been if she’d parked it on one of the adjacent streets.

“Borrowed,” Max repeated, shaking his head. The woman was in a class by herself. “And just when did you intend on returning the ‘borrowed’ car?”

Also simple. “After I brought my man in.”

“Where would you know where to find me?” he pressed, wanting to see how far she would carry the charade out. He thought she was just making this up as she went along. But to his surprise, she rattled off his address. “How did you—?”

She looked at him as if he had suddenly turned simple-minded. “The registration is in the glove compartment,” she reminded him. Cara pointed to the uniformed man hurrying toward them. Dressed in green livery complete with a hat, the valet looked as if he was barely out of high school. “Give the ticket to the nice man and we’ll be on our way.”

Coming to a halt before them, the valet seemed to immediately hone on the steel bracelet linking Cara and Salim together. His eyes grew large.

“Are those handcuffs?” he asked in almost hushed reverence.

“Magic trick gone bad,” Cara told him matter-of-factly.

“We’ve got a hacksaw around here somewhere,” the valet offered, his eyes bobbing up and down like tiny black bouncing balls from her face to her cleavage.

Because the attention the valet tendered was so awkward and fumbling, Cara found it almost sweet. She smiled at him and could have sworn that he blushed in response.

“Don’t worry yourself about it. It’s under control.” She slanted a look toward Max. “Give him the ticket, Ryker.”

“I am being taken prisoner against my will,” Weber suddenly yelled, pushing himself forward.

Though Salim was handcuffed to Cara, it was Max who pushed him back with the flat of his hand.

Surprised, the valet looked from Cara, to the man she was handcuffed to, to the other man with them, clearly in a quandary.

“Help me and I shall reward you,” Weber promised urgently.

Cara twisted Weber’s arm behind his back while smiling sweetly at the valet.

“Don’t let him fool you,” she warned. “Kevin kids like this all the time. We’re professional actors. We give shows in front of children’s groups all over the state. Kevin just did a line from A Thousand and One Arabian Nights. Pretty good, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, ma’am, um—” At a loss who to believe, the valet plucked the ticket from Max’s hand and hurried off to retrieve the car that corresponded to the number on it. He was too nervous to look back.

One corner of Max’s mouth curved upward. “A Thousand and One Arabian Nights?”

She shrugged. “It was the first thing that came to mind.”

It had just popped into her head when she’d looked at Weber’s olive complexion. It struck her that the man looked a little like he might have come from some country in the Far East.

She had no idea how close to the mark she’d come, Max thought. There was no doubt in his mind, now that he had seen “Weber” and listened to him speak that the man had to have originated from Tamir, the small island country that was not too far from Montebello. There were dark forces that originated from Tamir, forces that formed terrorists groups who disagreed with the current house in power there. And with nearly everyone else as well.

Silent up until this outburst, Weber cursed their souls to eternal hell.

“You will pay for this,” he growled. “Both of you.” He glared at Max contemptuously, his eyes becoming tiny, dark slits. “Especially you.”

“No,” Cara corrected. “You’ll pay—or at least the bail bondsman will.”

She looked from the prisoner at her side to Max, getting an uneasy feeling that there was a piece of the puzzle that she was missing or had somehow overlooked. Was she going to be in any kind of danger, going off with these two? Had she let her guard down already with the wrong person?

“You two know each other?” Weber lapsed into sullen silence. Turning, Cara looked at the private detective. “Well?”

He’d never seen Weber before he’d dispatched to bring him home. But that wasn’t to say that Weber didn’t know him. Half of Europe probably did, thanks to the tabloids. It had made big news when he’d disappeared off the face of the earth, only to eventually turn up in the States. “By reputation.”

Cagey, she thought. He wasn’t really answering her. “So what’s he supposed to have done?”

He might have not known “Weber” but he knew his type. “Blown up a few things,” Max said matter-of-factly.

She looked at Weber just as the valet finally drove up Max’s car.

“Are you a terrorist, Weber?” There was a momentary flash of recognition in his eyes, but only surly silence met her question.

The valet hopped out of the black sports cars, looking at it enviously. He held the keys out to Max.

“It’s all yours.” He grinned from ear to ear like a friendly puppy when Max took the keys from him and handed him a twenty-dollar bill. “Sure I can’t get that hacksaw for you?”

“We’re sure,” Max told him. He realized that Cara was moving toward the driver’s side. “Where do you think you’re going?”

She stopped, her hand on the driver’s door. “I’m driving.”

“Not attached to him you’re not. Besides, it’s my car, remember?” He could see that she was debating unhandcuffing herself so that she could take control of the vehicle. But her desire not to lose control of the prisoner won out.

“I’ll get in the back,” she muttered.

Max nodded. “Good idea.”

She pushed Weber ahead of her into the vehicle, then slid in after him. It was going to be a long trip, she thought.

She shouldn’t have had the extra large cola.

Her thirst had been overwhelming and gotten the better of her. When they had pulled into the last drive-through, over two hours ago, she hadn’t really cared about getting anything to eat, but she had been eager to get something to drink.

Now she regretted it.

She needed to go to the bathroom. Bad. But there was no way she was going to bring Weber into the rest room with her. Neither did she want to leave him outside with Ryker and take a chance on being left stranded at some rundown gas station on highway 25, halfway between Colorado and hell.

Cara squirmed as discreetly as possible, telling herself it was merely a case of mind over matter. If she could just wrap her mind around something else, this urgent feeling she had wouldn’t matter.

They’d driven in relative silence for the last hundred miles, rock songs from the eighties on the radio filling the emptiness within the car. The emptiness outside the car was almost overpowering.

In the distance, to the far left, Max saw what looked to be a vulture circling over something. It didn’t give him a warm feeling.

This truly was a desolate country, he thought. At least, large sections of it were. His own country was little more than the size of New Mexico itself, with about as many people. It filled him with awe to be within a country that was so large, it could fit scores of countries within its borders.

Max looked in his rearview mirror, not at the road he’d just passed, but at the woman in the back. Unaware of his scrutiny, she appeared to be in a great deal of discomfort. He smiled to himself. It undoubtedly had to do with that huge container of soda she’d consumed.

He was beginning to know the way she thought. She was probably afraid that if she took off her handcuff and made a stop at a rest room, he’d take off with the prisoner. The way, he had no doubt, that she would—unless he actually got her to give him her word. The fact that she had called room service before they left with the prisoner had shown him that she was honorable in her own way. It just took a bit of doing to tap into that honor.

As he’d told her earlier, he really wasn’t sure just what to make of her.

Max glanced at the fuel gauge on the dashboard. The needle was beginning to dip below the quarter of a tank mark. They could definitely use a refill at the next station. Looking at the GPS monitor on his dashboard for his location, he hit the sign to locate the closest gas station in the area. The answer came up almost immediately. God, but he loved technology.

“There’s a gas station five miles down the road.” He watched her face for a reaction as he added, “What do you say we get some gas and get out to stretch our legs? I’m getting a little punchy playing chauffeur up here.”

To his surprise, she looked more distressed than relieved. That didn’t make any sense.

A gas station. That meant a bathroom. Oh God, why had she thought of that?

She pressed her legs together beneath the white dress, the gun digging into her skin. Cara shifted uncomfortably. “Okay by me.”

They were there almost before the conversation was finished.

Pulling the car up to the pump, Max got out first. Instead of beginning to fill the tank, he opened the rear door.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

He took her arm and ushered her out. She was forced to pull Weber in her wake, but Max stopped her before she allowed the man to get out.

“Why don’t you uncouple yourself from Weber and use the facilities?” Max suggested, lowering his voice. “Maybe change out of that dress into something a little more practical?”

Although, from where he stood, he could just as easily watch her wear that dress all the way back to Shady Rock. The perspiration had the material sticking to her breasts, reminding him just why God had gone to work so diligently on Adam’s rib.

She looked at him knowingly, a frown curving her mouth.

“While you take off with Weber? I don’t think so.” To her surprise, Max handed her the keys he had just taken out of the ignition. “What’s this?”

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