Romancing the Crown: Max & Elena: The Disenchanted Duke

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?”