Romancing the Crown: Max & Elena. Linda Winstead Jones
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?”
Well that answered that. Blowing out an angry breath, calling himself several kinds of a fool for not handcuffing her to the bedpost the way instinct had told him to, Max strode out the door.
“Does this mean you’ll be checking out?” the man called after him, leaning as far over his desk as he could manage. “There’s a half day charge after six in the morning, you know.”
Max ignored him.
Trying to think, he walked into the courtyard again. He scanned the area, looking out onto the street, hoping against hope.
Hope died a quick, harsh death.
Rivers was nowhere in sight. Somehow, she’d managed to start up his car and make good her escape. The woman had too many hidden talents.
Hurrying back to their room Max took a fast inventory of what was there. Her things, including the laptop she’d brought in with her, were gone.
Rivers had played him for a fool.
Again.
Chapter 7
Stupid Americans.
Toying with his bourbon and soda, Jalil Salim looked up and studied his own face in the mirror that lined the back of the hotel bar. He watched his mouth curve in a self-satisfied smirk. It had been almost too easy. He would have enjoyed more of a challenge, wanted more of an adrenaline rush than what he’d sustained.
Did they really think they were going to catch me?
The thought seemed ludicrous. Salim raised the two fingers of amber liquid in his glass to his lips and drank deeply. He closed his dark eyes for a moment, savoring the bourbon’s hot, raw burn as it made its way down his throat into his stomach.
Except for the bullet that had grazed his shoulder, the Americans had proven to be unworthy adversaries. A great deal like the fools in Montebello.
Salim set the glass down, wrapping both hands around it and hunching the thin, wiry body beneath the light gray suit, as if he meant to surround his glass. Idly he looked in the mirror and watched the people in the hotel bar come and go without really taking note of them. He was too busy congratulating himself on eluding capture.
The whole thing was rather stupid on his part, he supposed. He shouldn’t have tried breaking into the Chambers ranch. It was beneath him. He should have left it to someone else. The brotherhood could have sent him someone to handle that. He had enough on his mind without looking over his shoulder, trying to elude being captured again by some would-be American law enforcement dolts. If he hadn’t gotten out on