Romancing the Crown: Max & Elena: The Disenchanted Duke

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.”