Marie Ferrarella - Romancing the Crown - Max & Elena - The Disenchanted Duke

The Disenchanted Duke

MARIE FERRARELLA

Secret-agent Sheikh

LINDA WINSTEAD JONES

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA

ROMANCING THE CROWN

A kingdom holds its breath…a duke comes out of hiding…trial and temptation meet as the search for the missing crown prince of Montebello stretches across the globe!

Meet the major players in this royal mystery…

Duke Maximillian Ryker Sebastiani:The Disenchanted Duke will do anything to help the search for his missing cousin, the crown prince of Montebello. Even give up his precious anonymity: and maybe his heart!

Cara Rivers:Life has taught the bounty hunter to trust no one. Now her destiny rests in the hands of an intriguing man whose very identity is suspect.

King Marcus Sebastiani:His Majesty hopes the criminal his nephew Max seeks will hold the key to find his missing son and heir.

Kevin Weber, aka Jalil Salim:Is he a petty criminal? Or a threat to the crown of Montebello?

Dearest Reader,

In The Disenchanted Duke you have before you my favourite type of story: the feisty, chipper heroine going toe-to-toe with the strong, handsome, sombre hero. During the course of the story, she shows him it’s all right to be human, and he shows her it’s all right to be vulnerable. Mix in a little danger, a little intrigue, a good dose of banter and healthy sex, and voilà , you have (I hope) a good read to curl up with on a rainy day. Or a sunny day. Or maybe not even a day at all, but an evening. Anyway, the point is that I love writing this kind of story and, I hope, this love translates into a really good read for you, because some of what I’m feeling when I’m getting to know these characters who have leaped off the keyboard and popped up on my computer screen has to filter back to you, the reader. I’ve never tackled a duke or a bounty hunter before, so after one hundred and thirty books, I can honestly say this was a new experience for me. I sincerely hope that it is a pleasing, exciting one for you, as well.

Whatever you do, keep reading! And from the bottom of my heart, I wish you love.

Marie Ferrarella

Chapter 1

“You got a strange call in this morning that you might not want to return.”

Max Ryker had just walked into the first-floor office that he maintained in Newport Beach’s trendy Fashion Island, a warm check in his pocket and the satisfying rush of a job well done still coursing through his veins. He paused before closing the outer door, puzzled by the enigmatic sentence his grandfather had just greeted him with.

“Well, seeing as how I just wrapped up a case for Lilah Beaumont.” He mentioned the name of the most recent Hollywood star who had availed herself of his well-honed investigative services, “if the call is about taking on a new assignment, strange or not, the odds are I’ll be returning it.”

William Ryker pivoted the wheelchair he’d learned to operate expertly like an extension of the legs that no longer obeyed his command and looked at his grandson. A fortuitous twist of fate had brought Max back into his life nearly sixteen years ago after an absence of almost twenty. It wasn’t many men who found themselves learning to become a grandfather to a full-grown man.

For all intents and purposes, he and Max came from two different worlds. But Bill was grateful for the chance to bridge that gap and the years that had come before.

Grateful, too, that even now his handsome, thirty-six-year-old grandson had gone out of his way to find a place for him in his life. Bill spent his days working as Max’s all-around man Friday at the detective agency Max had started up several years after he left his birthplace, the tiny kingdom of Montebello, and came to live in Southern California. Felled by a robbery suspect’s bullet five years ago and confined to a wheelchair by a shattered vertebra, Bill found that working at the agency gave him the opportunity to use the experience he’d amassed in his years on the L.A. police force.

It made him feel useful, something he knew Max acitly understood.

“I don’t know about that,” Bill murmured in response as he moved the large wheels of his chair to the desk where he’d left the carefully written message. His aim was less than perfect, and one of the wheels hit the side of the desk. He cursed quietly, righting his position.

Max watched his grandfather maneuver his wheelchair. He knew better than to get behind Bill and push. A man’s pride was a fragile thing and should be respected. Still, it bothered him to see the man struggle.

Max suppressed a sigh. “I wish you’d let me get you a motorized one.”

It was familiar ground. They’d covered it more than once before. Bill knew the concern came out of love rather than impatience or a tendency to patronize, so it didn’t irritate him. He picked up the phone message, then spun the chair around 180 degrees.

“And I told you I don’t need one of those fancy things. How’m I supposed to get my exercise if I sit on one of those metal magic carpets? Besides,” he snorted, “the batteries could die while I’m out in the middle of nowhere, then what?”

Max shook his head. Sometimes he thought the Rockies would sooner crumble than his grandfather would change his mind once he’d made it up.

But for argument’s sake, he said, “Then you call me on the cell phone you’d have with you and I’d come and get you.”

The answer made no impression. “Supposing you’re occupied?”

Bill emphasized the last word as if there was only one way that someone as handsome as his six-foot-one grandson could be occupied. He raised and lowered bushy black-and-gray brows in a devilish fashion, wishing with all his heart that he was thirty-six again, too, and whole.

Max grinned fondly at the old man. “For you, Grandpa, I’d always make time.”

Funny word, “grandpa,” Bill mused. He’d always thought he’d hate the sound of it, that hearing it applied to himself would make him feel old. But he had been separated from both his grandsons by his late daughter, Helen, for so long that all he felt whenever he heard the name was grateful.

“Here.” Bill held out the yellow piece of paper he’d written the long telephone number on. The former police sergeant fervently hoped that what was on the piece of paper would not ultimately take the young man out of his life again. Not after he’d waited all this time to have Max come into it.

Max’s smile faded just a shade as he read the message. It was just two words: Please call, and a name, followed by a telephone number.

The number was only vaguely familiar, but the name—the name was something else again. The name belonged to a man Max owed his allegiance to. Not as a subject of the man’s country, and not even because King Marcus of Montebello was his uncle, but because the monarch of the small country was his friend as well. At times, when he was growing up, Max had felt that Marcus was the only friend he had in a country where he’d never quite fit in, despite his royal ties and family name.

Max’s full name was Maximillian Ryker Sebastiani and he was a titled member of the royal ruling house of Montebello, a small, proud country that occupied an island located halfway around the world from the United States. But he’d shed his title and then his last name in what had proved to be a semifutile bid for anonymity. He’d wanted no part of a house that had spawned the likes of his father, Antonio, the dashing, womanizing duke who had warmed countless beds and broken Max’s mother’s heart long before she died of leukemia.