Roman Holiday: The Complete Adventure (2-Book Bundle: The Adventure Begins and The Adventure Continues) (38 page)

“You mean there really was a Key deer?” Roman asked. “You didn’t just invent that?”

“Of course I didn’t. It was in the pool, drinking from a puddle when you pulled up. If you’d looked, you would have seen it run away.”

He sat back in his chair. Ashley was caught in his stare, her foot snared in his hand, his thumb idly strumming over her arch.

“Roman?”

“I’m thinking. It’s funny—” He looked at Nana and Stanley. “ ‘Of course,’ she says to me. ‘Of course I didn’t make it up.’ As though she would never do something so unethical as
invent
a Key deer to blackmail me with. It’s only
aboveboard
blackmail for our Ashley.”

Ashley thought there might have been something to take exception to in this appeal to Stanley and Nana, but she was stuck on the words
our Ashley
, so she tasted her coffee.

Sweet and dark, slightly bitter. Just how she liked it.

“Blackmail?” Stanley asked.

“You don’t know this story?” Nana chirped. “It’s a good one. See, it was Mitzi’s idea. Ashley needed a way to keep Roman from bulldozing Sunnyvale, so Mitzi said—” She broke off, turning to Ashley. “Is it all right if I tell it?”

Ashley made a lazy go-ahead motion with her hand, too in love with her coffee and the curious light in Roman’s eyes to take the mug from her mouth.

Nana told the story while Roman rubbed Ashley’s foot and then her ankle. When Nana got to the part where Roman sank his Escalade up to the axles in the mud, Stanley laughed so hard that he choked on his own spit and turned red.

Roman leaned toward her and asked in a low voice, “How many?”

“How many what?” she whispered, not wanting to interrupt Nana and Stanley’s entertainment.

“How many Key deer did you see at Sunnyvale?”

“Just one. I mean, they were always on the beach, and there’s the refuge right across on the other key, but I only ever saw that one drinking in the pool. Why?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure yet.”

Stanley pounded the tabletop, breaking into their conversation. He was beaming. “Ashley-girl, I didn’t know you had it in you!”

“Had what?”

“This whole thing! Blackmail. Chaining yourself up. Sittin’ out there in the rain and in the dark, taking a stand. I’m proud of you.”

“Why? It didn’t work. And plus, it was kind of stupid.”

“No ‘kind of’ about it. But it’s the first time since I knew you that you stood up for something you really cared about.”

“I stand up for myself all the time,” she protested.

“You stand up for other people.”

“She stands up for causes,” Nana said. “Remember when she was with that Sierra Club guy?”

“But that was for him,” said Stanley. “She’ll do it for a no-account man, or if it’s going to tick off her daddy, or because Susan was doing it.” He looked at Ashley again, eyes bright with conviction. “But this—this was
you
, wanting something, sticking with it even when it got rough. I can’t remember you ever doing that before.”

“Really?” Roman asked. “She’s a natural.”

“Well, sure,” Stanley said. “I knew she had it in her. I just wasn’t sure when it was going to come out.”

“Isn’t there a saying about that?” Nana asked. “Something about desperate times?”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures?” Ashley asked.

“Not that one. About rising to the occasion? Or the chips being down … Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The point is, you kicked ass when ass needed kicking.”

“I object to being referred to as ass,” Roman said mildly.

“Oh, but honey, you’re
my
ass,” Ashley said.

The eyebrow rose again, amused this time. She wanted to lean across the table and kiss him right on that lifted-eyebrow spot, but he was too far away, and she’d probably knock over the jam jar with her boobs. Instead she wiggled her toes against his palm. He squeezed her foot with just enough pressure to anchor her amid all this giddy lightness.

Nana looked back and forth between them. “So where do we stand now?”

“My colleagues want to knock the place down this morning,” Roman said. “They’ve probably got all the equipment there, ready to go, and they’re just waiting to make sure they’re not going to get sued for it. That’s my end—making sure Ashley doesn’t sue over the imaginary Key deer.”

“The presumed-to-be-imaginary Key deer,” Ashley corrected.

“Which are not, in fact, imaginary,” Roman agreed.

“Right. At least, one of them isn’t.”

“But since I’m not holding up my end, and I can’t put off calling Carmen back too much longer, we need to start formulating a plan.”

“What kind of plan are you open to?” Ashley asked. “I mean, you’re still the one who wants to build the resort right smack dab on top of Sunnyvale.”

“Not just on Sunnyvale, all over that side of the key. Sunnyvale is where the hotel is supposed to go.”

“Is there anywhere else the hotel could go?”

Roman took a moment to consider. “We had second- and third-choice sites, sure. At one point I wanted to do several smaller hotels, at different price ranges, scattered around the properties. Heberto rejected that idea. He said there’s more money in a large one, because then you get the conferences along with the vacationers. So, yes, there are other possibilities. Sunnyvale is just the best one.”

“And are you willing to let go of the best possibility?”

He gave her the smile she got when she was yanking him around and he didn’t want her to know how much he hated it. “Are you giving me a choice?”

“Yes,” she said. “I trust you.”

Roman watched her, that unfortunate smile lingering at the edges of his mouth.

“Sunnyvale is yours,” she said. “Not mine. That means no more blackmail. If you need to knock it down, you do that.”

“Why?”

She considered how best to put it.

Because I can’t be my best self if I’m not playing fair
.

Because I want to find out what kind of future I can make for myself honorably
.

Because I’m starting to think I might want
you
to be part of my future
.

Too soon. Too complicated.

“You told me you’re on my side. I believe you. What I want to do, if you’ll let me, is help find some other future for Sunnyvale—one I can live with, one that preserves the Little Torch Key I love. But I think if we’re going to be a team, we have to start like this. As equals.”

His phone buzzed again, and he stood up.

He came around the table with his right hand extended. When she offered him her own, he clasped it in his warm, firm grip and shook it.

“It’s a deal,” Roman said.

Then he smiled, dipped his head, and kissed her once, hard, squarely on the mouth.

Only then did he take Carmen’s call.

Standing on the front porch of the Sunnyvale office building, Carmen balanced her clipboard over one forearm and used her free hand to press the phone harder against her ear. The heavy thrumming of a diesel engine made it almost impossible to hear Roman.

“…  put on hold until I get back,” he was saying. “I’ve been thinking, and—”

“We’re done with
on hold
,” she broke in. “We’re done with thinking, too. The thinking part already happened. We called it the planning phase. Now we’re at the
doing
part.”

“Who’s the
we
here, Carmen?”

She lost him for a minute as high-pitched backup beeping pierced through the equipment noise.

“…  time I checked, this was
my
project,” Roman said.

Carmen stalked away from the noise to the far end of the porch, where she stood with her back to the parking lot. There was way too much déjà vu going on here. The porch, the clipboard, yesterday’s white suit buttoned over her stained blouse.

Yesterday’s panties, washed out in Noah’s sink, dried over his shower rail.

The overbright mid-morning sun made her skin feel too tight. Her rumpled skirt heated her thighs. Between her legs, she pulsed with the aftermath of those stolen hours with Noah.

She was cheap elastic, snagged and unraveling.

“You brought us into this project,” she said to Roman. “Now it’s ours.”

“That answers my question.
Us
means you and Heberto.
Ours
means your father’s.”

She heard a smile in his voice, which made her want to bare her teeth. Nothing about this conversation amused her. “I was referring to the partnership between your business interests and my father’s.”

“Partnership? Partnership is what Heberto—”

More beeping drowned him out.

“—went well. We don’t have a partnership, we have a handshake agreement to develop this resort together
if and only if
I do everything the way your father thinks I should.”

“And that’s suddenly a problem?” Carmen set down her clipboard so she could cup both
hands over her ears to hear better. “A month ago, it was the best thing that had ever happened to you. We went out for sushi to celebrate, or have you forgotten?”

“…  forgotten … even been gone two weeks.”

The noise had to stop. She searched the lot for someone to receive her silencing glare, but only a few of the workers were in view, and none were paying her any attention.

“So what’s changed?” she asked. “Are you playing for a partnership? You think you can railroad Heberto into making you his partner when you can’t even manage to get eight measly buildings knocked down on schedule?”

With a volcanic rumble, another piece of equipment started up, and all she caught of Roman’s reply were the words
fucking unfair
.

From the far end of the property, behind one of the buildings, came an enormous crash, followed by a silence into which Roman roared, “For Christ’s sake, you’re knocking down
now
?”

“Settle,” she said sharply. “That wasn’t what it sounded like.”

She hoped.

She spotted Noah crossing the parking lot. “Hang on a minute.”

Plunking down her phone on the railing, Carmen waved both arms at him. When he didn’t look her way, she put two fingers in her mouth and whistled like a street whore.

His head snapped around. He smiled, his delight an arrow that pierced clean through her lungs and left her breathless.

You just saw me an hour ago
, she thought.
You can’t go through the world smiling that way. Someone will hurt you
.

She beckoned him close enough to hear her shout, “Do you have the keys?”

“What keys?” he called.

“To the office!”

He jogged across the lot, leaping from paving stone to paving stone in his eagerness. “Thought you were talking to Roman,” he said when he got close.

“I am,” she explained. “I can’t hear him.”

Noah didn’t stop moving—bounding, and wasn’t it odd that such a large man could bound and make it look so appealing—until he was inside her zone of personal space. Well inside it. Reaching into his pocket, giant belt buckle glinting in the sun, happiness gleaming from
his eyes and his teeth and everything about him, he retrieved his keys.

He reached for the handle of the office door, fitting his key into the lock. “Sorry, I’ll tell the guys to cool it. I thought we were just about ready to go, so I let them start firing everything up.”

Carmen gathered her phone and clipboard. “No, let them. This won’t take long.”

“That’s weird,” Noah said.

“What?”

“The door wasn’t locked. I’d swear I closed the place up tight yesterday.”

“You must have forgotten.”

He frowned at the handle in his grip. “I never forget.”

“Never say never,” Carmen snapped, and then wished she’d kept her mouth shut. She wanted to tell him she believed him, to say
I’m just in a mood. I’m freaking out. It’s not you
.

But it
was
him. It was him and what he did to her.

It was Roman on the phone, and this feeling she couldn’t shake that all the pieces of herself were tumbling off the shelves where she stored them, striking her shoulders and arms with glancing blows as they fell, making a mess that she wouldn’t be able to clean up.

His eyes narrowed in confusion. “You seem pissed at me,” he said.

“No.”

“No, you’re not pissed, or …?”

“I’m always this way,” she said. Because she
was
. She was direct and businesslike, not soft and fuzzy. She didn’t belong with this soft, fuzzy man.

He shook his head, smiling a little. “You really believe that, don’t you, baby?”

Carmen shifted her feet, bracing her stance a little wider. “Look, Noah—”

“Shh. Later. Finish your phone call.” He brushed a kiss over her cheek as he left, closing the door behind him.

Her phone beeped. A notification flashed on the screen. Her father again. He’d been blowing up her phone all morning, but she’d delayed getting back to him until she had this situation under control.

She would bring it under control. Beginning with Roman.

Carmen put the phone to her ear.

The silence echoed inside her head.

“Roman?” A hoarse rasp, barely more than a whisper. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Roman.”

“Yes.”

“Where do we stand?”

It was the first question that came to mind, the logical next step to getting this conversation back on track. But it made her sound as though she were talking about
them
rather than the demolition. Her and Roman. The woman he’d taken up with. The man who’d just called her
baby
.

“We stand for ourselves,” he said. Which didn’t mean anything. She didn’t know how to respond to such a non sequitur, especially when he’d delivered it in a voice that was so … so what?

Kind. Understanding.

Not qualities she associated with this man.

She’d known him since she was a teenager. Been naked with him. Shared his bed. His face was as familiar to her as her own, and she’d relied on his mind operating as an extension of hers.

So many years they’d wanted the same things, and Roman had never asked for more than she was willing to give. She’d never wanted more from him than she had.