Roman Holiday 1: Chained: A Loveswept Contemporary Romance (4 page)

The day wore on. Roman didn’t come back. The temperature climbed toward 90 before the rain knocked it down a few degrees. The parasol funneled water directly onto her head. Rain dripped off the tip of her nose and wet her lips, gluing her hair to her neck and washing away the ant feeling.

Ashley fell asleep with her toes twitching, dreaming of spiders crawling up her legs. She woke up unrefreshed, unsure whether seconds or minutes had passed.

She heard Roman and Noah in the parking lot, a low murmur of sound from which individual words emerged to drift inside her ears.
Quiet … water … bathroom … sandwich
.

She would kill for a sandwich.

Noah’s truck drove off, and Roman strolled over with a white paper sack in one hand and a lawn chair in the other. The bag smelled like meat—sweet, spicy barbecue squashed inside a yeasty roll—and the fact that Ashley had been a vegetarian since shortly after her twelfth birthday did absolutely nothing to diminish the appeal of that aroma.

Even Roman couldn’t compete, appeal-wise. He wore dark blue jeans and a short-sleeved red button-up shirt, his version of casual so straitlaced that she was surprised not to find creases ironed into his jeans. She wondered if he owned a pair of shorts. If he even had legs under there, and a pair of Jockeys with all the bits and bobbles beneath.

Of course, she’d seen the general size and shape of the bits, if not the bobbles, when he hunkered in front of her this morning, and so far she hadn’t completely succeeded in repressing the memory.

Nor had she forgotten the way he smelled, close up.

He cleared his throat.

She was staring at his crotch.

Son of a bitch. It was his fault. The scent of barbecue-slathered pork had deranged her.

He opened the lawn chair, sat down, and dug into the bag. Two sandwiches. After lining them up on top of the flattened paper bag on his thigh, he ate them right in front of her, one after another.

The last time she’d had a barbecue tempeh sandwich, she’d managed to get it in her hair, but Roman didn’t even drip on his pants.
His
hair was as precise as the rest of him: a quarter of an inch long all over, black, shining, with a clean, straight edge at the nape of his neck. She bet he got it cut every week.

Even his fingers were unaffected by the mess, though he carefully wiped them on a clean napkin after he’d finished.

Ashley gave up. She hated him.

Hated him, hated him,
hated
him.

When he offered her a bottle of water, she turned her face away.

He loped back to his hideous grinning deathmobile, and she resumed her project of staring into space, which she alternated with catnapping until one part of her body or another went numb and the pins-and-needles sensation of oxygen-deprived tissue woke her up.

The sun set. The interior of Roman’s car glowed an eerie white-blue. It took her a while to figure out that he was reading, and whatever device he was using had a light. He sat with his head bent, his face in profile. Unmoving. Unaffected.

She wondered if he would sleep.

She wondered how she would last the night.

But the time passed, and she endured it. She had done this before—kept breathing, kept going, even when she didn’t feel like it. Even when she couldn’t remember why she was bothering, why it mattered to keep fighting, why she cared.

You have a spark of starlight in you
, her grandmother had said once.

Ashley had been thirteen years old and furious. She didn’t remember her reply. Something rude, certainly. Packed off by her father to live with an old lady she barely knew, freshly motherless, unwanted, she had converted her pain into anger and spewed it at anyone who came in range.

A spark of starlight
. So typical of her slightly mystical, open-to-anything grandmother to
use words like that. Words that had sounded like a bunch of crap to Ashley.

But they had power, too. They’d struck her and sunk inside, taken hold with gentle barbs. Because who wouldn’t want to believe that about themselves?

And if you accepted the premise—if you acknowledged the spark—you found yourself trying to deserve it, hoping to be worthy of such a phrase. Less venomous. Less toxic.

You found yourself changing.

Whether the spark of starlight had been there all along or her grandmother had put it there, a seed of aspiration, Ashley didn’t know. But she knew that it was because of Susan Bowman that the light hadn’t gone out.

Which only made the clamor of the questions more confusing. Why Grandma hadn’t given Sunnyvale to Ashley in her will, as she always used to say she would. Why she hadn’t told Ashley that the cancer was back. Why she’d chosen not to call, instead growing sicker and going into hospice care and dying without Ashley knowing any of it was happening.

Why she hadn’t called Ashley home from Bolivia when she must have known—simply
must have known
—that Ashley loved her more than anyone on this earth, and that she would have considered it a privilege to hold her hand and smooth her blankets, to ease her from this world into the next.

So many things Ashley didn’t understand. So many questions, and the burning brick of pain at the base of her spine made it impossible to think very hard about answers.

But some things didn’t require thinking. Some things she just
knew
.

The wind was picking up—a storm coming.

She had a spark of starlight in her.

And if Roman Díaz thought she would beg, he had another think coming.

Roman skirted around the hood of the Escalade, transferring his phone from one ear to the other as he reached for the door handle. The wind pushed hard against his back, and he had to wrench the car open. When he let the wind shove it closed behind him, the sudden silence inside the vehicle put Carmen’s voice at far too high a volume.

“—that’s a problem? Because Heberto was not thrilled when he heard about the woman. Not thrilled at all, Roman.”

“She’s not a problem.”

In truth, Roman had upgraded Ashley Bowman from
problem
to
threat
at sunrise, when he’d carried her a bottle of water. The wind whipping her hair around had put him in mind of Medusa, her head covered with snakes, her narrowed eyes too cool, too calm. She’d looked seductively dangerous.

Not as though she might turn him to stone, because that didn’t seem like her style. No, the thought he’d had was that she was the sort of woman who could lure a man into the rocks and destroy him.

He wouldn’t be lured. Not by her.

Not by anyone.

But it was clear that no easy capitulation would be forthcoming from Ashley. It was time to negotiate.

“And by ‘not a problem’ you mean she’s gone, you’ve got the site locked down and secure, and you’re prepared to evacuate?” Carmen asked.

Roman wiped his free hand over his face. Stubble rasped against his palm, and he yearned, briefly, for a hot shower and clean clothes. He would feel more in control of the situation if he looked more like a man who
had
control.

How you feel is unimportant
.

The point is not to feel anything at all
.

“No, she’s still here,” he clarified. “But in an hour, she’ll be gone.”

“I don’t need to tell you what happens if she gets hurt.”

“No. I’ll handle it.”

“You’d better. Are you going to make it back to go with us to New York?”

Carmen’s father had a penthouse apartment in Manhattan that he flew to whenever a hurricane threatened South Florida. This one didn’t look like it would make it to Miami—Dade County wasn’t evacuating—but Heberto wouldn’t let that keep him from using it as an excuse for a change of scenery. “What time are you leaving?”

The rain began, loud as gunshots against the windshield. Roman could barely hear Carmen when she replied, “Sometime in the next few hours.”

“We’ll see.”

“Give me a call and let me know.”

“Will do.”

The call disconnected. Carmen rarely wasted time on goodbye. She wasn’t a big fan of hello, either, or of the sort of pleasantries that might slow her down. It was one of the things Roman found so appealing about her. Married to Carmen, he would be able to cut out so much of the bullshit.

He put his phone away and allowed himself a moment to appreciate the appeal of that life—the big, expensive house he didn’t own yet. The walk-in closet, his row of suits opposite hers, their dressing and undressing a neat, effortless trick that repeated itself endlessly.

They could talk business over the dinner table. Attend social events together. It would be secure, and it would be easy.

He looked out the window. The sky had disappeared, or perhaps encroached. Everything was gray, the palm fronds like open arms, thrashing toward the heavens. A helpless, unpleasant landscape that he would prefer not to enter.

But his preferences didn’t matter.

Roman got out of the car.

By the time he reached the palm tree, his socks were wet. The umbrella Noah had set up to protect Ashley from the weather had tipped even farther askew, dumping rainwater onto the back of her neck.

Her eyes remained defiant.

“The worst of the storm’s supposed to arrive by late afternoon, but I don’t know,” he said. Turning up one palm, he let the stinging rain pelt it and manufactured a concerned sort of
wince. “I think it’ll be sooner than that.”

She pressed her lips together.

“It’s dangerous to be out here,” he said. “We could be killed.”

“In a Category Three? Ha. We’ll get wet, that’s about it.”

“It’s a Four now.”

Her forehead wrinkled, as he had known it would. This woman was carefree, not careless. She would evacuate for a Category Four, and it would never occur to her to wonder if he was lying.

“The situation has changed.” He made his voice gentle—tough to do, with the rain so loud, but he tried to project the feeling with his eyes, too. Sincere concern.

He dropped to his knees, allowing the water to soak through his jeans because he knew she would notice, and she would think it meant something.

Her nose twitched. She blinked rapidly, clearing water from her lashes. “Wow,” she said breathlessly, and he anticipated her capitulation.

Wow. you’re right
.

Which is why it startled him when she said, “You are so full of shit.”

For a moment he forgot to be smooth, and he forgot to calculate. He just shot back, “I am not.”

“You are, too. you’re trying to make me think you care about me, that you’re actually
worried
for me. You. The man who ate two barbecued sandwiches right in front of the starving woman last night. How gullible do you think I am?”

“I don’t think you’re gullible. I admire your tenacity.”

That startled him, too. To realize, after he said it, that it was true.

“Well, admire this. I’ve weathered a lot of hurricanes, and I’m smart enough to understand that this storm is worse news for you than for me. You need my cooperation more than ever.”

“If you stay here, you could be killed.”

“And if I get killed, you’re completely fucked.”

Roman sat back on his heels.

She was right. This skinny, sunburned, irritating woman with mulch sticking to her legs held all the cards, and she
knew
it.

“Why so quiet?” she asked.

He could hear her glee now. How had he missed it before? She had been waiting for this moment, and he should have guessed. He’d done his homework. He should have known that the daughter of a university chemist and a U.S. senator would be intelligent enough to trap him, even if she had frittered away all the advantages she’d been given on a string of pointless jobs and worthless affairs.

He’d underestimated her.

Heberto would be disappointed in him.

“Don’t you want to ask me if I’m cold?” she asked. “Maybe bring me a raincoat? Or, oh! I know! You could tell me how if something happened to me, it would weigh on your
conscience
.”

“I don’t have a conscience.”

He’d managed not to snap at her. Just.

“Yeah, Ace, I’d kind of figured that out.”

“What do you want?”

“A phone.”

“No.”

“I want to call my friend to come pick me up.” She threw him a smile that showed small, uneven teeth.

He imagined two rows of them, sharp and deadly as a shark’s.

He imagined her taking a bite out of his thigh. Blood and exposed bone.

Why did that make his dick throb? Something wrong with him.

He shut it down.

“If I give you a phone, you’ll use it to call the
Herald
to tell them how your life is in danger, but your cause is too righteous to abandon.”

“Ooh, that’s a good idea. I hadn’t thought of the
Herald
, but you’re right, the story is totally strong enough to hook them. Especially if you’re a big deal in Miami.” She bounced up and down against her restraints, as though her happiness might burst out everywhere if she didn’t express it somehow. “You
are
, aren’t you?”

“No.”

Not yet. But there were people at the
Herald
who would recognize his name. People who
would know of his connection to Heberto Zumbado and enjoy splashing this story of big-business greed victimizing a defenseless woman all over the front page.

She would even photograph well, despite being all wet.
Because
she was all wet. Her T-shirt stuck to her body, accentuating the inadequate swell of her breasts. Her legs were sticks, her hips practically nonexistent.

Too blond, too thin, too helpless. Just the sort of woman three-quarters of American men wanted to bang.

Or rescue.

Both, really.

The publicity would ruin him.

“No phone,” he repeated. “What are your other demands?”

“What is this, a hostage negotiation?”

The question made him queasy—a sudden, dizzying heaving in his stomach as he dragged his eyes away from her face. His gaze settled on a palm tree. Its widespread, waving arms made him think, inanely, of a starfish that had been flipped onto its back and left without hope of rescue.