Romancing the Crown: Max & Elena: The Disenchanted Duke. Marie Ferrarella

buffered the bed. They did not match the scarred, dark bureau.

      Two lamps, one tall, one short, were perched on top, providing the illumination, such as it was.

      “No sofa,” she muttered. Why didn’t that surprise her? Cara looked down at the floor. “I guess I should consider myself lucky that they sprang for a rug.”

      “That all depends on your definition of luck,” Max commented.

      The rug was matted down from years of wear and from all appearances, had never been cleaned. It was hard determining just exactly what color it had originally been. Currently it was mud-brown.

      “The bed’s big,” Max pointed out. “Plenty of room for two people who don’t want to have anything to do with one another to sleep on.”

      His phrasing caught her attention and not in a favorable way. “You don’t want to have anything to do with me?”

      “Just following your lead,” he told her innocently.

      It was just as he’d suspected earlier. Beneath the bravado and tough talk, she was more sensitive than she would have liked.

      “I’m dog tired and really don’t want to argue about anything anymore, including sleeping arrangements,” he told her, curtailing, he hoped, any further debate about who went where.

      Protesting that he’d always been nothing less than a gentleman would have undoubtedly fallen on deaf ears anyway. He was sure that she had her own preconceived notions that had little or nothing to do with him.

      “Do you want to use the bathroom first?” he offered gallantly.

      She wanted a few minutes to unwind first. Away from him. “No, you can check out if they have hot and cold running insects coming out of their faucets.”

      “Glad I can do something for you.”

      Cara watched as Max walked into the minuscule bathroom and shut the door. It took a little jiggling before the lock finally caught. Two minutes later, she heard the shower water running.

      She released the breath she suddenly realized she was holding. Sitting down on the bed, she found her thoughts fixing themselves on what was going on behind the door. It was hard not to imagine him naked, the water cascading down a wall of what appeared to be solid muscle and was otherwise seen as his chest.

      What the hell was the matter with her?

      She needed a man, she decided. The sooner the better. It had been a long time since she’d talked to someone of the male persuasion in any other capacity than something having to do with her work.

      All work and no play, Cara… she upbraided herself.

      A ringing noise broke into her thoughts. The sound was coming from the other end of the room, and not from the old-fashioned dial telephone that was resting precariously on the edge of the nightstand, vying for space with the smaller of the two lamps.

      The sound was coming from the jacket Max had haphazardly thrown on the edge of the bureau.

      Crossing to it, she dug into a pocket and located his cell phone on the first try.

      She flipped it open and placed it against her ear, not certain just why she felt it necessary to play the part of Ryker’s secretary.

      “Hello?”

      There was silence for a beat, and then the sound of a deep, crisp masculine voice on the other end. “Hello, who is this?”

      The voice had a commanding tone to it and Cara heard herself saying, “Cara Rivers.”

      “Oh, I am sorry, I must have gotten the wrong number—”

      Cara snapped to attention before the man hung up. “Wait, are you trying to reach Max Ryker?”

      “No—” The voice paused. “Yes, yes I am. Then this is his cell phone?”

      “Yes, it is. He’s in the shower right now. Can I take a message?” She looked around for a piece of paper and a pen, then crossed to the bed and pulled her purse over.

      “The shower?” Was that a chuckle she heard? “Please forgive me, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I will call back later.”

      “You’re not interrupting anything,” she protested. “It’s not what you think—”

      She was talking to dead air. Frowning, she closed the cell phone and placed it back in Max’s pocket. About to put the jacket down where she’d found it, she hesitated, wrestling with a conscience that wasn’t always as vigilant as it might have been.

      Self-preservation got the better of her and she began to systematically go through the other pockets in his jacket.

      “Looking for something? Maybe I can help.”

      Startled, she nearly dropped the jacket. Intent on finding something before he was finished in the bathroom, she hadn’t heard him come out.

      Composing herself, Cara turned around.

      And immediately became uncomposed again.

      He was standing in the doorway, an almost threadbare towel draped around his hips, dipping lower where he’d tucked it in. There was still water beading on the downy hair that ran along his chest. A single ribbon of fine hair fed down his abdomen, disappearing under the rim of the towel.

      The man had a stomach you could bounce quarters off of. She caught herself wondering if the same could be said of his butt before she managed to regain control of her runaway thoughts.

      Cara casually dropped the jacket back where she’d picked it up. “Your phone was ringing.”

      And she had answered it. His eyes darkened just a shade.

      “Who was it?”

      She shrugged, looking straight at him, knowing that if she attempted to avoid looking his way, Ryker would find it amusing.

      “He didn’t say. I told him you were in the shower and he apologized for interrupting. I guess he thought you were entertaining.”

      Rather than say anything, Max crossed to where she’d dropped his jacket and took his cell phone out. Flipping it open, he pressed a button. The word Private appeared in the small LCD. That could be a lot of people, but his mind gravitated to one.

      “What did he sound like?”

      When was the man going to put some clothes on? And why was the room getting so damn warm? Couldn’t the management at least put in some fans?

      “Nice voice. Deep, cultured. Like he’d never met a dangling modifier in his life.”

      She was describing the king. It had been more than a week since he’d gotten the assignment and he hadn’t checked in with his uncle because he’d wanted something positive to report. Not that he was on Weber’s trail, but that he’d captured him.

      Max supposed that he should have called. It wasn’t fair to leave the king twisting in the wind, although as far as patience went, his uncle seemed to possess an infinite supply. The man had gone through a great deal in the last year, the worst of which was facing the loss of his beloved only son and heir, although King Marcus still hadn’t given up hope that Lucas was alive. The plane Lucas had been flying had gone down in the Colorado Rockies and so far, only bits and pieces had been recovered.

      The king believed that no news was good news, even though he prayed nightly for word. The last he’d heard, his uncle was still praying.

      Colorado.

      He glanced toward Cara.

      The man was having an unnerving effect on her, standing around half naked like that and staring at her. Cara looked at him with all the coolness she could muster. Given the situation, she thought she did rather well.

      “Are you planning on dripping dry, or do you intend to get dressed sometime in the next decade or so?”