Page 61 of Royal Games (The Royals of Monterra)

Rafe glanced at me in the rearview mirror. The air in the car felt oppressive and awkward. I couldn’t forget what he had said or how he had touched me. To distract myself, I opened up my purse and got out the envelope, which was full of one-hundred-dollar bills. There were a lot of them. Eleven thousand dollars’ worth. It was so much. I held out fifty-five hundred of it to Rafe, his half of the fee. The federal government would take most of what I had left.

“Keep it.”

“I can’t keep it. You earned it.”

He sighed. “I don’t want it. So either keep it, throw it out the window, or we can take it back to Frank.”

Of the three options, the first did sound the best. I could catch us up on our mortgage. This would make a huge difference in our lives. The desire to accept was overwhelming.

“Don’t decide now. You can think about it for a while.”

I should probably do something more noble with it. Like help repair the church roof. I’d get a tax deduction and possibly buy myself a spot in heaven.

But I had to put my family first. I closed my purse again and hoped God and Pastor Dave would understand. Rafe turned the radio on again, to my relief. I wasn’t ready to talk about what had just happened.

We weren’t far outside the city when the wall of snow slammed into us again, obscuring our view. I’d hoped the storm would have let up by now, but it hadn’t.

My phone buzzed, and there was a text from Whitney.

How are things going? Are you back in love yet?

I started to text a reply when my phone went dead. I tried turning it back on, but the little battery picture popped up, showing I had no juice. I probably should have charged it before we left, but I was mad and distracted. No big deal. I slid it back in my purse.

We were nearly back to the town when Rafe murmured, “Uffa!”

He had told me once that the word meant uh-oh. I remembered it because it sounded funny. I could see a light flashing on his dash. “What is it?”

“Flat back tire. On both sides,” he said incredulously. He turned on his blinkers and pulled over onto the shoulder. “I’ll be right back.” He left the car running and went out to investigate. The headlights were shining on a busted mile marker sign that I recognized.

He got back in the car, snow glistening in his hair and on his coat. He held his bare hands in front of the vents. “No mistake. Both of the back tires are flat. Someone caused a slow leak.”

That must have been what I saw back at the club. The man who had been crouched next to the SUV. Why did people do stuff like this? “How did it take them so long to go flat?”

“They were really good tires,” he said, reaching into his pockets.

“Now what?”

“It is too dangerous for us to be driving in these conditions on two flat tires, and I only have one spare. I was going to call Marco, but I can’t find my phone.” He kept checking his pockets while I looked around on the seat and on the floor.

“My phone is dead. Do you have a charger in here? We could plug it in,” I offered.

“No,” he said, sounding more frustrated with each passing moment.

“When do you last remember having your phone?”

He blinked a couple of times. “I texted Marco right after I got my coat. I distinctly remember sliding it into my front pocket.” He put his hand on his chest over the spot where it had been.

I gasped as I remembered the events that had occurred as we were leaving the club. “That drunk guy! He totally Keyser SÖze-d us! He was pretending to be drunk to mug you, and then he just walked away!”

“He was hardly a criminal mastermind. He wasn’t even a very good thief. He completely missed my wallet.”

So going to Iowa City had led to a nexus of crap—it left us stranded in the middle of a snowstorm, without a phone to call for help, and it had made me even more confused on where things stood with Rafe.

All in all, not a good night.

He rested his forehead on one of his hands. I knew that gesture. He was severely stressed. My hand reached out of its own volition, squeezing his shoulder. “It’s just a phone. You can replace it.”

“It’s not that. The phone itself doesn’t matter. It’s what’s on the phone that’s the problem.”

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