Romancing the Crown: Max & Elena: The Disenchanted Duke

“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.