diverted from the flickering screen, the clerk turned the registration book around for her benefit.
“Wonderful. Sign here.” He shifted slightly at the surprised look on her face. “I’ve been meaning to save up for a computer, but this kind of gives it the homey touch, don’t you think?”
“Homey,” Cara murmured. If home was some backwater, shanty town struggling its way into the second half of the twentieth century. Cara skimmed down the column of names that appeared on the discolored pages. “Looks like you’ve got a lot of people named Smith and Jones coming through here.”
“Yup.” He seemed utterly clueless about her inference. “Popular names,” the clerk agreed guilelessly.
Hell, she decided, would be being stuck in a place like this for all eternity. Cara quickly signed her name, then handed the pen to Max.
He added his on the line below.
The clerk turned the register around after Max signed in and read their names.
“Welcome, Ms. Rivers, Mr. Ryker. I’m sure you’ll find your stay in La Casa Del Sol a pleasant one.” The way he pronounced the motel’s name testified to the fact that English was by far his first and only language. He leaned over the counter to glance down at the floor.
“No luggage?” His thin lips curved in a knowing smile as he straightened up again.
“We plan to make mad, passionate love and wear each other,” Cara told him matter-of-factly. “Can we have the key, please?”
His eyes big as saucers, he mumbled, “Sure thing.”
Taking the key from the battered rack behind him, the clerk held it out to Cara. But as she reached for it, Max intervened, taking the key from the clerk.
She turned on her heel and walked out of the tiny, airless office.
“What made you say something like that to him?” Max wanted to know.
She shrugged. “I thought he needed a little spice in his life.”
No two ways about it, the woman definitely was not easy to read. One moment she was flippant, teasing, the next minute she was reserved, private, like a nun in training.
“I don’t know what to make of you.”
“Don’t worry about it. We won’t be together long enough for you to have to ‘make’ anything of me. All you need to know is that I always get my man. Always. Oh, and by the way, you take the sofa,” Cara informed him.
“I told you,” Max reminded her innocently, “I have a bad back.”
She shot him a look that was clearly nothing short of lethal. “Mister, you don’t know what bad is.”
He laughed softly under his breath, leading the way to Room 6. “I’ve traveled with you for a few hours. Trust me, I know.”
“All right.” She blew out a breath. “I’ll take the sofa.”
But then they entered the small room that overlooked the highway and discovered that decorating hadn’t been the management’s top priority. It hadn’t even made the top five list.
A huge bed dominated the room, its frayed leopard comforter clearly intended for the next size down. At the wall beside the tiny bathroom was a dresser that had seen better decades. Two nightstands that someone had obviously put together out of a box somewhere in the early seventies 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
