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?”
He raised a dark, inquisitive brow, throwing her into a tailspin.
“Does this make you uncomfortable?”
She shrugged, refusing to give him any satisfaction, even if something in the pit of her stomach was turning cartwheels.
“Not particularly. If you want to walk around in your birthday suit, that’s up to you. I just want to go on record as saying that I sleep with my gun under my pillow and I tend to be rather jumpy where there’re any sudden moves involved.” She purposely dipped her line of vision to take in the towel he had draped around his hips and parts beyond.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Turning around, he reached for the clothes he’d hung on the hook behind the bathroom door and took them down. “It’s all yours. No insects.” He walked past her, then added in a stage whisper, “Just one small mouse.”
“The only rodents that make me uneasy are rats.” Her eyes locked with his. “Big ones.”
His laugh followed her into the bathroom, skimming along her skin even after she shut the door and took her clothes off.
Perhaps more so.
Cara took a quick shower, washing the dust of the road from her body as fast as she could. She was toweling herself dry in less than five minutes. Rather than securing the towel around her the way he had, she hurried back into her clothes if for no other reason than she could swear she could smell him on the now-damp towel.
It made her uneasy, wrapping the towel around herself.
Dressed, her hair damp and curling around her face, she opened the door. Nine minutes, start to finish, she silently congratulated herself.
Max had his back to her and was talking in a low voice. It took her a second to realize he was on his cell phone. So he’d known who was calling. Probably his mysterious client, the one who wanted Weber taken back to Monticello, Montebello, or wherever it was he’d said he was taking the man.
Over her dead body, she countered pugnaciously. Weber was going back to Shady Rock, Colorado, and that was that. The ten thousand dollars she was going to get was earmarked for Bridgette Applegate and Cara meant to get it to her or die trying. She owed Bridgette a lot.
Bridgette Applegate was the last woman who had taken her in. Unlike the others, Bridgette hadn’t been part of the foster care merry-go-round. Bridgette had been a woman she’d met while she’d lived under that bridge in Denver, fighting off a fever of 103. Broke, desperate, she’d tried to take Bridgette’s purse and had collapsed in the struggle when Bridgette had fought back. She was close to being unconscious.
Rather than call the police, Bridgette, a part-time nurse, had taken her home, put Cara in her own bed and tended to her as if she was her own daughter instead of a would-be mugger.
After she got well, Bridgette insisted she remain with her until she figured out just what it was she was going to do with her life now that she was no longer going to throw it away. Bridgette Applegate had been the turning point in her life, the reason she believed in good instead of caving in before evil.
And now Bridgette needed her help and she was damned if she wasn’t going to come through for the woman. And no sexy, flat-stomached, ripped P.I. was going to get in her way, with or without his towel.
Max sensed Cara standing behind him. As politely as he could, he ended the conversation with his uncle. Everything that needed to be said had been covered, in terse, veiled language, leaving anyone eavesdropping in the palace and beyond in the dark.
True, he still didn’t know why he was bringing Weber in, but all would be made clear once he was on Montebellan soil again. His uncle had promised as much and although Max had no desire to return to the country where the bad memories outweighed
