Roman Holiday: The Complete Adventure (2-Book Bundle: The Adventure Begins and The Adventure Continues) (39 page)

Carmen tried to imagine Roman behaving as Noah did. Loving her the way Noah had last night.
Looking
at her with the kindness she heard in his voice reflected in his eyes.

She would have pushed him away. He would have let her.

Carmen wished suddenly—fervently—that Roman were home where he belonged. Just so she could see what he looked like when he sounded this way.

Just to be able to ask him what the hell was happening to him. To both of them.

“Roman. My father has been calling me all morning. If these buildings don’t come down … What am I supposed to say to him? I’m supposed to be in charge of this.”

“You’re supposed to be in charge of me,” he corrected.

“Yes! And now—”

“Now I’m in charge of myself.”

The idea clearly pleased him, even as it made her feel as though her head might explode.

“What’s up with you and Noah?” he asked.

“That’s not—I’m not—”

“Did I just hear him call you
baby
?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Silence stretched out on the other end of the line, and she tried to imagine how Roman felt. She hadn’t liked it when he spoke of Ashley to her. She’d tried to shut down her jealousy, her unreasonable hatred, but she couldn’t deny its existence. Would he feel the same cold slap of surprise she’d felt? The misplaced possessiveness that said
She’s mine
, even when she wasn’t—even when she never truly had been?

She wanted to apologize, but there were no Hallmark-card platitudes appropriate to a situation like this.

When he spoke, his voice was mild. “All right,” he said. “We don’t have to talk about it. But you could do worse. He’s a good guy. I think he’d treat you better than I ever did.”

Carmen covered her mouth with her hand, her gratitude too much like anguish. She breathed, eyes closed, and searched for something to hold on to.

Let’s get back to the subject
. That’s what she meant to say to Roman. But when she opened her mouth, she confessed through her fingers, “He calls me
baby
.”

“I heard. Do you like him?”

“I don’t know.”

Roman exhaled, an amused sound. “Well, give him a shot. He might grow on you.”

“Roman?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t—I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“I get it,” he said. “It’s okay.”

“It doesn’t feel okay.”

“I know. But bear with it a while anyway. You might be surprised.”

She didn’t have a reply to that.

“Listen,” Roman said. “What you do next is, you tell your father that I own Sunnyvale. I’ll knock down those buildings when I’m damn good and ready. You tell him I’m pursuing business opportunities in Wisconsin, and I’ll be in touch with him to talk about a modified development plan as soon as it’s practical and convenient for me.”

“He’ll lose his fucking
mind
if I tell him that.”

“He might.”

“He’ll knock the place down without you here.”

“If he does, I’ll sue him.”

“He’ll destroy you.”

Roman laughed. “He can try. But I’m willing to chance it.”

“Why?”

The question burst out of her before she could stop it—not brusque, not businesslike. Primal.
Demanding
.

What’s changed in you?

How can you do this to me?

Why do you sound so sure of yourself?

“Your dad’s been telling me for years it’s every man for himself,” Roman said. “That it doesn’t matter who we love or whether our actions are moral or anything. It only matters how much money we make, how much power we can gather around ourselves. But, you know, Carmen, he sent me to college. He gave me a place to stay over break when I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and he brought me to Miami. He even gave the two of us his blessing, and there was no advantage in that for him, business-wise. I have to think Heberto doesn’t believe half the stuff he’s said to me over the years. I have to think he actually cares about me.”

“He doesn’t.”

He did. Very much.

But what people never seemed to understand about her father was that he could separate what he felt from how he behaved. He could care for Roman deeply and still disappoint him, attack him, cast him aside. Carmen had seen him do it.

“Maybe not,” Roman said. “But I’ve figured something out about myself this past week. I’m hopeful.”

“Hopeful of what?”

“No, I mean, I’m hopeful. I like to hope. I enjoy the sensation of hoping for things.”

“You sound like a child.”

But she thought of Noah, bounding over the pavers to do her the small service of unlocking the office door. Was it childish to be hopeful?

If she’d ever had that sort of ease in her body, she’d lost it long ago. The option of a
childhood unburdened with adult concerns had never been available to her. Perhaps that was why she found it so impossible to imagine an adulthood that encompassed childish things. It required a quality of faith she didn’t possess.

In all things, faith eluded Carmen. Another gift of girlhood, taken from her by a man who enjoyed speaking of the beauty of her soul. Her innocent heart, her open face, her body an offering that he claimed for himself.

Eleven years ago, and she’d never told. Even after she seized an opportunity and drove him off with a golf club, she’d denied herself the right to speak, as he had denied it to her.

Who had denied her the right to hope?

“Take care of yourself,” Roman said. “I’ll call back in a few days when I have a plan. Until then, don’t bother calling. I’m not going to pick up.”

“Roman—”

“Bye, Carmen.”

Her hand dropped away from her face. She tapped the glass screen of her phone, wishing for a hard plastic flap to flip shut.

What she needed was a way to impose closure, divide past from present, organize the world into
then
and
now, right
and
wrong, progress
and
decline
.

She wanted the world to be a clean white sheet of paper held unmoving on her clipboard.

She wanted her hand to wield a thick black pen, making and unmaking reality with brisk flicks of her wrist.

“Goodbye,” she said aloud in the empty room.

She wished she knew who she was talking to.

Ashley watched as Roman set his phone on top of Nana’s kitchen table.

Nana sipped her tea.

Stanley sat like a stone, arms folded, taking everything in.

All of them waiting to hear more about the phone call they’d been so blatantly eavesdropping on.

Roman turned his chair around and straddled it. The smile he’d worn for most of the call still lingered at one corner of his mouth. She gave him five seconds to speak, and then she couldn’t stand it anymore. “What made you laugh?”

“You remember back at the commune when I told you I’d destroy you?”

“How could I forget? Nobody’s ever threatened to destroy me before.”

“Carmen said the same thing to me—that Heberto will destroy me. It made me realize, I picked that up from him. He’s the only person I’ve ever met who goes around threatening to destroy things.”

“I figured it was your Latin blood.”

Roman grinned, infectiously cheerful. “Yeah, right. We Wisconsin Cubans are known for being hot-tempered.”

Ashley snorted.

“You seemed pretty hot-tempered in the car,” Stanley observed.

“You worked hard enough to get me that way,” Roman replied. “I should have tried it out on you.
I will destroy you!
” He shook his fist vigorously. “I bet you would’ve backed right off.”

Stanley ducked his head, but he wasn’t quite quick enough for Ashley to miss the smile breaking over his face.

“Until Stanley found an alligator to sic on you,” Nana said.

“Listen, old woman”—Roman had his forearms draped over the back of the chair, fingers laced together; he leaned in—“this was a four-hundred-pound alligator. It could have taken off my right arm with one snap. I was the
only person on that porch
who wasn’t
out of his fucking mind
.”

“Four hundred pounds, Roman?” Ashley asked. “Really?”

“Okay, three hundred.”

“This is like one of those fish stories, isn’t it?” Nana asked. “The alligator’s going to keep getting bigger.”

“That’s okay with me as long as Roman doesn’t start leaving out the part where he fell on his ass and scrambled backward across the porch,” Ashley said.

“Or the part where you saved my life by throwing a beach ball into the swamp?” Roman found her foot with his and knocked them together.

“Exactly.”

“My hero.”

It was silly, but Ashley felt her cheeks warm with the praise. “What’s the deal now?” she asked. “We have a stay of execution, so …”

“You tell me. You said two weeks. If you still want them, they’re yours.”

“Why, though? I mean, it’s a nice gesture and all, but I’m not sure I get why you’re not going to just hightail it back to Florida now that I’m not holding the Key deer over your head.”

“You don’t?”

He held her gaze. There was heat in his eyes, humor in his expression.

Because of you
. That’s what his eyes were telling her.
Because I want to be with you
.

“All the business I need to do, I can do over the phone,” he said. “I’d just as soon keep some distance from Heberto, at least until I’ve got an alternate plan to offer him. I know you want to talk to Esther about your grandma, so I think it would be good for you to do that.”

Ashley thought it over. “You know what I want?” she asked. “I want Esther to tell me why Grandma felt like she needed to keep so many secrets. I wouldn’t have been upset with her for selling Sunnyvale—at least not for long. It was hers to sell, but it hurts that she didn’t tell me. It hurts that she got sick and didn’t want me there, and then she arranged everything so that when she died there wouldn’t be a funeral. I need to understand why.”

“That sounds like a good enough reason to me.”

“You think?”

“Sure. Plus, we promised Stanley a ride.”

Ashley looked at Stanley, who was watching the conversation with his arms folded. “That’s true,” she said. “It would be kind of rude to abandon you here.”

“Ya think?” the old man countered.

“On the other hand, if we had a compelling
reason
to take you to Wisconsin, that might make it more enticing. Like, if we knew
why
you wanted to go so badly—”

“It’s because of Esther,” Nana said. “Didn’t he tell you that?”

“Shut your mouth,” Stanley said.

Nana perked up, eyes widening. “Ooh, he
didn’t
tell you!”

“Tell us what?” Ashley asked.

“Didn’t tell
her
nothing, either—”

Nana kept talking right over Stanley’s protests. “He’s in love with Esther. Has been for years. I imagine he’s figured out that with Sunnyvale gone, he’ll never see her again, so he latched onto your star to take him up north. Maybe he’ll finally declare himself. Get down on one knee and ask the woman to marry him. Is that your plan, Stanley? Because I have to say—”

“—just wanted to see the Great Lakes,” Stanley grumbled. “Got nothing to do with Esther.”

Ashley looked from Stanley to Nana and back again. “You’re serious,” she said.

“Dead serious,” Nana confirmed.

“How did I not know this?”

“I don’t know!” Nana said. “I thought everybody knew.”

Stanley was still emitting a nearly incomprehensible stream of muttering. “—get me wrong, she’s a nice lady, a
fine
lady, but I ain’t about to make a fool of myself at my age, declaring feelings that aren’t shared, and at any rate …”

When he realized they were all looking at him, he trailed off.

“His neck is actually
crimson
,” Ashley said to Nana. “I didn’t know it went that color.”

“Sometimes it gets redder than that around Esther,” Nana said.

“I can’t wait.”

“I can’t believe I’m going to miss it,” said Nana. “Stanley declaring himself to Esther at last—it’s a once-in-a-decade event.”

“You should come,” Ashley urged.

Roman coughed, and she looked up to see him drawing one finger across his throat.

“What?” she asked. “We have room! Nana and Stanley can sleep in the Airstream, and you and I can share the tent if we get the pole fixed.”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t want to impose—” Roman said.

“Oh, I love imposing,” Nana interrupted. “Plus, I have this thing where I pretty much have to say yes whenever anyone invites me to do something I’ve never done before. This counts, since I’ve never been to visit Esther in Wisconsin, or been involved in any sort of …” She waved a hand at Roman, Ashley, and Stanley. “Whatever this is.”

“Clusterfuck?” Stanley suggested.

“Holiday,” Roman said. “Holiday-slash-road-trip-slash-protest-movement.”

“No,” Ashley corrected. “It’s a quest. You said.”

“I never said that.”

“To Prachi!”

His forehead creased. “She called it a quest. I think I called it a crusade. But on second thought, she had it right.”

“I’ve always wanted to go on a quest,” Nana said. “The good news is, I have my own transportation. We can take Carly and Jamie’s camper. And can we ask Carly? Because I have a feeling she could use a break from the press, and plus she’s the kind of girl who likes quests, too.”

“And the baby?” Ashley asked.

“That’s a given—you take Carly, you take the baby. And probably Jamie, because he’s always game. So it’s you and me and Roman and Stanley and Carly and Dora, and Jamie if he’s free. I’ll have Carly bring the backgammon board and some card tables. And she’s got a blender in that mobile home for daiquiris. It’ll be a party on wheels!”

Ashley checked to see how Roman was taking all this. He looked good. Shoulders still relaxed. Just that one lifted eyebrow.

“What do you say?” she asked.

“Your quest, Ash. Your rules.”

She reached out to cover his clasped hands. Her other hand found Nana’s and squeezed it, and she met Stanley’s eyes across the table.

“Ashley-girl, you don’t know what you’re getting into,” he said.