Romancing the Crown: Max & Elena: The Disenchanted Duke

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?”