Romancing the Crown: Max & Elena: The Disenchanted Duke

“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.