The Disenchanted Duke

by Marie Ferrarella

"I am not an animal," he shouted at her, yanking hard at the strap she tethered the other cuff to. It didn't give and he cursed loudly. "When I get loose, you will pay for this, whore."

  "You're not getting loose," she informed him tersely, "so you might as well save your breath with those threats."

  With one eye on the interior of the car, she hurried around to the back. It was all she could do to contain herself as she popped open the trunk and took out the small valise she'd tossed in there with her change of clothes.

  Max emerged from the small store just as she closed the trunk. He held out the rest-room key to her. It was mounted on a huge block of wood. She snatched the key from him so quickly, she almost whacked herself with the wood.

  "Five minutes is all I need," she told Max, flying by him. "Less."

  With that, she hurried into the rest room, praying that she hadn't made a mistake in trusting him. She would have felt better if she'd managed to let air out of one of the tires. By the time he would have gotten it filled again, she knew she would have been able to make it out.

  She glanced over her shoulder before she shut the door.

  Max waved her inside. "Go," he ordered. "We'll be right here, waiting."

  Muttering a fragment of a prayer that he wasn't lying and she wasn't being incredibly naive, Cara let the door close behind her.

  Chapter 9

  Cara's fingers flew as she shed her dress.

  The last time she'd gotten dressed this quickly, the house she was living in at the time had been on fire in the middle of the night. The clothes she'd hastily thrown over her nightgown had been the first she'd owned that hadn't been hand-me-downs cast off by someone else, bought with money she'd earned herself. There was no way she was going to allow them to be consumed by a fire.

  Foolish, she knew, looking back, but at the time the clothes had represented her first real step toward independence, a badge she wore with pride, and she'd hung on to them.

  This time it wasn't pride that spurred her on, but fear.

  Grabbing the white dress and stiletto heels, not bothering to check anything as nonessential as her makeup and hair, Cara burst out of the rest room much the way she'd burst into it a few minutes earlier. Striding quickly, she hurried back to the gas pump, half convinced that though she'd rushed and still had the car keys clutched in her hand, Max had left with the prisoner and without her.

  It took a second for the sight to register.

  Max was leaning against the hood of the car, obviously finished pumping gas, obviously waiting for her.

  Breathless looked appealing on her, Max thought almost against his will.

  "You certainly do know how to make an entrance," he commented wryly.

  She took a deep breath, hoping her voice wouldn't give her away. "You're still here."

  "Why shouldn't I be? I gave you my word," he replied simply. "Unlike some, I keep my word." He looked at her pointedly. "It means something to me."

  "That would be a first." He raised a quizzical eyebrow at her cynical comment. Since he'd been considerate, she elaborated. "Most of the people I know don't keep their word."

  That would explain a great deal. Max straightened. "Maybe you should think about getting to know a new set of people."

  "Maybe." Opening the trunk, she tossed in the white dress and heels, then closed it again. "All right, let's get going."

  "Not just yet." She looked at him uncomprehendingly. "My turn," he informed her easily. "Or rather, our turn." He peered into the back seat at Weber. "How about it, 'Weber'? Care to have a bonding moment and accompany me to the rest room?"

  If looks could kill, Max thought, the one from their mutual prisoner would be driving the last nail into his coffin even as he stood there.

  "Go to hell," Weber spat.

  "Possibly," Max allowed, "but not today. And, unless you're part camel, my guess is that you have to make use of the facilities as much as either one of us." Max put his hand out to Cara. "I need the key for the handcuffs. The car won't fit in there."

  For a moment, she hesitated. Suspicion reared its head. Old habits died hard.

  But then she took the key out of her purse and handed it to Max. After all, she still had the car keys and the car. And there was thirty miles of nothing around them. Where could he go?

  The last time there had been an abundance of nothing, she reminded herself, Ryker had managed to find transportation. A car, it had turned out, that only had enough life left within it to reach her. They'd left it where it had died. But that didn't negate the fact that the man seemed to lead a charmed life. She couldn't help but admire that. And him, though she didn't dwell on that. Extraneous emotions only got in the way.

  She held her breath, watching him.

  Max unlocked the handcuff that was attached to the overhead strap inside the car and snapped it around his own wrist. He tugged on the handcuff to get the prisoner moving. The latter looked at him malevolently.

  "Let's go, 'Weber.' I'm not going to enjoy this any more than you are."

  * * *

  When they came back out again several minutes later, Max found Cara leaning against the building, situated less than five inches away from the rest room door. She made no effort to hide the fact.

  He shook his head. "Still don't trust me?"

  "Oh, I trust you," she assured him innocently. "I just got lonely."

  Max laughed and shook his head. "Right."

  Her eyes slid over to Weber. The man was becoming surlier with every mile that went by. He looked capable of killing them both where they stood. "Did he wash his hands and remember to behave?"

  "He was a perfect gentleman—after a slight debate." Max strode to the car, pulling Weber in his wake, then stopped short of the driver's side. He looked back at Cara. "Tell you what. I'm beat. How about I stay in the back with our friend here and you drive? And take that suspicious look off your face, I'm not trying to put anything over on you, I'm just tired of driving, that's all."

  She held up her hands in mute protest. "Never said a word."

  "No, but you thought it."

  He was right, she had. Cara opened up the driver's side and got in.

  "So when did you become a mind reader?"

  "Too general a term," he contradicted. "I'm not a mind reader. But I can read women." Opening the rear passenger door, he pushed Weber in first, then got in himself.

  She would have thought as much. What kind of a woman appealed to Ryker, she wondered. Did he like leather or lace? To wrestle or to play the conqueror? It was hard to say, he gave out too many signals and not enough information.

  "Do much 'reading' in your spare time?"

  "Enough," he answered.

  She could hear the smile in his voice. A man who looked the way he did probably had women strewn all around like dirty socks in a bachelor pad. Didn't matter to her how many dirty socks he had scattered around, she told herself. Nope, not one wit.

  Turning the key in the ignition, she stepped down on the accelerator and tore out of the gas station.

  Thrown back against his seat, Max caught hold of the back of the driver's headrest and leaned forward.

  "Hey, Mario Andretti, we're not going to make Shady Stone—"

  "Rock," she corrected tersely, her eyes glued to the darkened road.

  "Whatever, before nightfall no matter how fast you drive so you might as well slow down." Damn it, he'd forgotten that the woman drove like a maniac. "Something along the lines of the speed of sound would be nice."

  He was right. The man was making a habit out of it. Holding her tongue, she eased back from the gas pedal. She had no idea where that burst of uncharted energy had come from.

  * * *

  The nearest town with any law-enforcement officials turned out to be almost one hundred miles away. La Cuchara Del Oro. The golden spoon.

  "Sounds more like a restaurant than a town," Max commented when she told him the name. He looked at the prisoner. "Maybe we can just leave him in the freezer overnight."r />
  He was kidding, but housing the prisoner could be a problem, which was why she'd targeted the town they were going to. It was the only town on the way with a jail cell.

  "I figure your people want him alive as much as mine do. That means if we want to get any sleep tonight, we need a cell to put him in."

  But something else she'd said had already caught his attention. "What do you mean, my people?"

  If Cara didn't know any better, she would have said he was being touchy. Probably just the monotony of the road getting to him. Even the songs on the radio had begun to repeat themselves for a third time since they'd started on this trip.

  "Your client, the people or person from Monticello who sent you to bring this guy back. What else could I mean?"

  "Montebello," Max corrected automatically.

  When she'd said "your people," he'd thought that she'd recognized him. Maybe he was being needlessly paranoid, but he didn't want to be associated with his father's country. Though he didn't include his brother or his uncle's family, for the most part the people born to royalty had always struck him as a group of vain, empty-headed people who were in positions of power and luxury through no actual effort of their own other than being lucky enough to be born to that world.

  He hadn't considered himself lucky to be born to it. He considered himself cursed. Cursed because there was almost always a spotlight to record not just the good moments, but the bad. Especially the bad. Cursed because he hadn't been free to do what he'd wanted to do, but had always been reminded by his father to "set an example."

  Right, an example, like his father had with all his flagrant marital transgressions, his endless parade of mistresses.

  "Something wrong?" Cara asked, looking at his face in the rearview mirror.

  His eyes met hers in the mirror, his face noncommittal enough to play winning hands of poker with. "No, why?"

  She shrugged, feeling stupid to have been concerned. "No reason. You just had a funny look on your face, like you're working up your anger."

  He looked at Weber, who had taken one side of the car and was now apparently sleeping. Just like that. "My anger doesn't need to be worked up, it needs to be toned down."

  She took him at his word and decided that for the time being, she would leave him to his thoughts.

  Sheriff Joe Adler took off his hat and scratched his balding head. A good-natured man with the body of a well-ripened pear, the request put to him by this young woman had left him baffled. He looked from one handcuffed man to the other. "Which one's the prisoner?" Cara laughed. "The smaller one. Then you'll hold him for me until morning?" Joe seemed genuinely sorry to offer them any less than complete cooperation. Finally, a decent man. Cara felt like proposing to him, but he was probably married. The best ones usually were. "I dunno, I've gotta look this up in the rule book, ma'am. I'm kind of new at this," the man confessed. "Won the election unopposed," he told them both in a whisper. "The last man didn't want the job anymore and so now it's mine."

  She knew every aspect of her job, knew just where she could rely on the law and where she was on her own. This was one small area where the police department was required to come through. That was why she had made sure she had all of Weber's paperwork in hand before she got rolling.

  "Trust me," Cara said, "we can leave the prisoner here overnight. I have all the appropriate paperwork with me, signed and notarized."

  As Max watched, she produced several official documents from her gargantuan purse, testifying that she was acting on behalf of Philip Stanford, a licensed Colorado bail bondsman as well as at the behest of the Shady Rock sheriff's department. She showed Adler the original bounty poster with Kevin Weber's likeness plastered all over it.

  "This is his offense," she said, pointing to the paper where the official charges were drawn up. She let the sheriff look over the sheet before continuing. "You don't want this man running loose in your town, now do you?"

  He handed back the documents to her. "No ma'am, I don't," he agreed, then looked at Max. "How do you figure into all this?"

  "You might say her bodyguard." He ignored the incredulous look Cara sent him. "I get to watch her back."

  The sheriff glanced at the kind of view that afforded and couldn't help the grin that came to his lips. He loved his wife dearly, but a man could always look. And dream a little.

  "Nice work if you can get it," he murmured.

  Cara walked up to the single holding cell. The very fact that there was only one testified to the fact that any crimes in Del Oro were of the venial variety. Wrapping her hand around the bars, she gave them a tug.

  "They certainly feel strong enough." She turned around and tried to appeal to the man's sense of fair play. "Sheriff, I promise we'll be gone by morning. We just need a place to put the prisoner while we get a little sleep." Both of them were tired and there was no pretending otherwise. Determined as she was to get Weber back to Shady Rock, she knew her own limits. "By the way, where's the nearest motel?"

  "Ain't got one. Had one," he quickly added, not wanting them to think of Del Oro as a two-bit hick town, "but it burned down. Town counsel's trying to raise funds for a new one."

  That didn't do them much good tonight. "Where do people who come through stay?" she wanted to know.

  "They don't. They just go through. Keeps the town peaceful," he attested. Adler looked at them for a moment, then made a value judgment. "Tell you what. You two look like decent folks. I've got a room over my garage. It's not much, but there's a bed in it and you're welcome to it. Had Martha's nephew staying with us for a while. He used the room, but he's moved on now. I can have Martha put some clean sheets on the bed for you. Martha's my wife," he added belatedly.

  Cara smiled. "I rather thought that."

  She looked at Max, remembering the last time they'd shared a bed together. Something had come over her and she'd almost made a mistake. There was no guarantee that the same something wouldn't rise up again to trouble her. But she was too exhausted to consider sleeping in the car and too tired to go back on the road to try to find suitable accommodations tonight. The room over the garage with its single bed was going to have to do.

  "That's very generous of you, Sheriff. But don't you think you should check with your wife first before you make the offer?" Max suggested politely. "Mrs. Adler might not like the idea of you bringing home strangers to spend the night."

  Adler's wide belly shook beneath his drooping gun belt as he laughed.

  "You obviously don't know my Martha. Woman talks to flowers just to keep in training," he told Max fondly. "She'd love to talk to real people." He reached for the telephone on his desk. "But I will call her so she can have two extra places set for dinner. Martha loves company, she purely does."

  "If you're sure we're not putting you out," Cara added in her two-cents worth.

  Surprised by the sensitivity he'd just displayed, she looked at Max. She didn't know any other man who would have thought of asking if the man's wife was agreeable to a suggestion that was tendered by her husband, not where his own comfort was concerned.

  Ryker was in a class by himself.

  Max could feel her eyes boring into him. Now what had he done? "What?"

  The sheriff was busy calling his wife. Turning away, she lowered her voice.

  "Just trying to figure out if you're on the level. Most men I know wouldn't have given the sheriff's wife a second thought."

  Sixteen hours on the road and she still smelled good enough to arouse him. Maybe this idea of sharing a bed for the night wasn't such a good one, Max thought.

  "Like I said, you need to get to know a better class of people."

  Adler let the receiver drop back into its cradle. A wide grin split his round face. "It's all set. She's tickled pink."

  "Urn, and what about my—our," Cara amended, "prisoner?"

  Adler nodded at the purse where Cara had returned the documents. "Since you've got the paperwork making this all legal and tidy, we'll just keep him here, tucked
away for the night like you said."

  She shook her head. "No, I mean, is there somewhere we can go to get him some dinner?"

  Adler waved the question away. "Don't worry about it. Martha'll rustle up something for him, too. Great little cook, my Martha." He looked at Weber. "You're in for a treat."

  In response, Weber swore at him viciously.

  Taken aback, Adler looked at Max. "My, he's a mean one, isn't he?"

  "That he is," Cara readily agreed.

  She thought of the way that Weber had looked at her in the hotel bar, the way he almost stole her air within the elevator as he was bringing her to his room. She had no doubts that he was the kind who liked his women weak, submissive and subservient. The thought made her shudder.

  "You're going to need to unlock the cuffs, unless you want to spend the night with him," the sheriff told Max. The latter held out a hand to Cara. She was quick to supply the key.

  Cara watched intently as the sheriff opened the cell door and ushered the prisoner inside. Max took the handcuffs from Adler and handed them to her.

  Locking the door and testing to make sure it was secure, the sheriff shook his head as he turned back to look at Cara. "A lady bounty hunter. Now don't that just beat all?"

  Max grinned, placing his hand to the small of her back as he began to usher her from the room. "My sentiments exactly."

  "Hadley," the sheriff addressed the lone man sitting with his feet up on the scarred desk in the back room. The deputy immediately put his feet down and stood up at attention. "We got ourselves a prisoner tonight, so don't slack off and go to steal some time with that Melinda of yours. You can make eyes at her on your own time, not mine. I'll be by later with some dinner for him."

  The deputy was almost salivating as he asked, "Martha's cooking?"

  Adler beamed. He always liked hearing his wife being appreciated. The woman put her heart and soul into her cooking.

  "Yup." And then he smiled at his subordinate. "I'll have her pack a little something extra for you, too, Hadley," he promised.

  * * *

  It was a surprisingly sweet evening.

  The Adlers, Cara discovered, had been together close to forty years and looked as if they would be perfectly content to spend another forty in each other's company. Their only regret, Martha didn't mind telling them, was that they had never been able to have children of their own.