Roman Holiday: The Adventure Continues (31 page)

“Don’t catch your belt buckle, baby,” Carmen called to Noah from the lounge chair where she’d parked herself upon arrival. “I want that grand prize.”

The prize for the winner of the limbo contest was a bottle of rum and a box of Cuban cigars donated by Heberto, who’d bought a ten-year supply in the spring, when he and Roman went to visit Havana.

“What do you want it for?” Heberto asked. “You can’t drink or smoke.”

“Noah can, and when he drinks enough rum he—You know what? Never mind.” Carmen broke out in a crimson flush. Seven months pregnant, she’d spread out and blossomed into the most glorious advertisement for human reproduction Ashley had ever seen. Noah couldn’t keep his hands off her. Ashley couldn’t keep her eyes off her. She kind of wanted to lick her, she looked so delicious, but she’d decided not to mention it to Roman, who would only use it as an excuse to ramp up the baby-making campaign.

We’ll talk when I finish school
, she’d told him, and he’d agreed, but that didn’t keep him from holding Sam’s newborn, patting her teeny little back, and looking at Ashley from across the pool deck, like,
Yes? Please? Soon?

Twenty-two more credits until she had her degree. Until then, Roman could give her that look all he wanted, but babies were not on the agenda.

Between studying for her B.A.—major in Spanish, minor in Communications, according to the change of major forms she’d signed just a few weeks ago—and working with Roman on the resort, Ashley had more than enough to fill her days.

Her daydreams weren’t of babies. They were of stealing Roman away from the office. Taking him to Mexico to drink cold beer and have dirty, loud sex on some out-of-the-way stretch of beach where no one would recognize the developer and the resort’s activities director or care how frequently they got it on.

Mocha skin and dark eyes, sunshine and sleeping in late and Roman’s crazy morning curls before he tamed them—that was what Ashley wanted.

Cheering broke out in the limbo zone. Noah arched up to standing, grinning in triumph. Gus dropped his end of the pole and high-fived him. Mitzi handed over the bottle of booze and the cigars. “You owe me a rum runner,” she said.

“It’s a deal,” Noah replied. “What goes in it?”

“Everything. Come on, we’ll have the bartender make one.” She hooked her hand in his elbow and pulled him toward the poolside bar, where a knot of Ashley’s friends from campus had gathered, joking and laughing.

“You need anything, baby?” Noah called to Carmen as he was dragged away.

She waved her hand. “Go ahead. I’m fine.” But he didn’t stop watching her over his shoulder until he stumbled over a deck chair and nearly did a face-plant.

Roman moved behind Ashley, his hands stealing over her stomach and pulling her back against his hard thighs. He exhaled mojito breath against her ear, which would have been annoying if he were another man, but he was Roman, buzzed and handsy from drinking too much with his sister. He smelled minty and felt wonderful, and she loved him.

“This is your favorite time of day,” he said.

“Mmm. In my favorite spot. With my favorite person.”

“Flatterer.” He put his face against her neck.

Ashley rubbed his forearms and took in the view. When she stood right here, poolside at Sunnyvale, she could watch the sun set over the stretch of beach that formed the backdrop of so many of her memories.

Searching for beach glass with her grandmother.

Crying, throwing rocks and seaweed into the ocean until she exhausted herself.

The long walk she’d taken a few years ago with her dad—miles of waves and difficult conversation that had spit them out in a place where it became possible, finally, for them to be friends.

Holding hands with Roman, exchanging vows with sand between her toes. The thunderstruck way he’d looked at her, as though he couldn’t believe his luck. How stupefied she’d been to stand with him in her white dress, feeling the same way.

And mixed in with all of that, the new resort rising from the deep pit of the foundation. Every visit to the construction site had revealed a new angle or detail she’d missed when she first studied Roman’s plans and realized he’d known what he was doing all along.

Not that there hadn’t been room for improvement.

Some days, she could smell roasting coffee from the hotel cafe, staffed by a couple from Key West who imported and prepared their own fair-trade beans. Off to the left you could watch people bustle in and out of the staff bungalows—one of Ashley’s additions to the plan. She’d pitched the staff housing to Roman as an employment perk that would make it possible to get the very best workers, but it also made it possible for hotel employees to stay on Little Torch affordably rather than drive eighty miles from Marathon, as so many service workers in the Keys had to do.

Ashley had also gotten her way on the green laundry, the vegan and local dining options, and a gorgeous garden of native plants where guests loved to eat breakfast and take pictures of the Key deer.

So, yes, she liked nothing better than to stand right here, in the middle of the little empire she and Roman had built together—were still building together—and gloat over her good fortune.

Here, she was among friends, with Roman’s arms around her.

There was no better place. Not anywhere.

Roman Holiday
took a long time to write, and I’m in debt to many people for their help along the way.

My agent, Emily Sylvan Kim, sat poolside with me at the Romance Writers of America meeting in Anaheim, California, and brainstormed the basic outlines of this book over strawberry daiquiris. The experience was exactly as awesome as it sounds. Emily has been an enthusiastic reader and a total believer in Roman and Ashley from the beginning, and I can’t thank her enough for that. Also, she bought my drinks.

My husband kindly let me borrow his interlibrary loan privileges as I researched the Mariel boatlift and its effects on small-town Wisconsin. I tried to remain true to the realities of that event and its real ramifications, but I’m a novelist—I used artistic license whenever it served my purposes. Heraly, Wisconsin, is not a real place, and none of the characters in this novel are based on real people.

I owe a debt to Silvia Pedraza for her excellent scholarship on Cuban emigration and her assistance with this project.

Mary Ann Rivers, Serena Bell, Shelley Ann Clark, and Audra North all read the episodes as I produced them and offered numerous suggestions for improvement. I’m grateful for their kindness, their support, and their constructive criticism.

At Random House, Gina Wachtel, Sue Grimshaw, Dana Isaacson, Shauna Summers, and copyeditor, Pam Feinstein, all helped
Roman Holiday
along its journey. I’m indebted to each of them for their contributions to the final product—and of course, as ever, all the remaining mistakes and flaws are my sole responsibility.

Thanks, finally, to my readers, and particularly to those of you who read
Roman Holiday
serially as it was released. You’ve made it a great ride.

Ride with Me
About Last Night
Along Came Trouble
Flirting with Disaster
Truly (Coming Spring 2014)

Novellas

Room at the Inn
How to Misbehave
Making It Last
Roman Holiday (Serialization)

USA Today
bestselling author R
UTHIE
K
NOX
writes contemporary romance that’s sexy, witty, and angsty—sometimes all three at once. After studying British history, she became an academic editor instead. Then she got really deep into knitting, as one does, followed by motherhood and romance novel writing.

Her debut novel,
Ride with Me
, is probably the only existing cross-country bicycling love story. She followed it up with
About Last Night
, a London-based romance whose hero has the unlikely name of Neville, and then
Room at the Inn
, a Christmas novella—both of which were finalists for the Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award. Her four-book series about the Clark family of Camelot, Ohio, has won accolades for its fresh, funny portrayal of small-town Midwestern life.

Ruthie moonlights as a mother, Tweets incessantly, and bakes a mean focaccia. She’d love to hear from you, so visit her website and drop her a line.

www.ruthieknox.com

He wasn’t the kind of guy a woman wanted to pin her hopes and dreams on.

Not that May knew the man sitting all the way down at the other end of the bar. She didn’t. But she didn’t have to know him to understand that he was a bad bet. He’d walked in with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his black hoodie, taken one look at her, and planted himself on a stool as far away from her as possible.

Not very friendly.

And there were other clues. The scowl, for one. He couldn’t be out of his thirties, but his full lips turned down decisively at the corners, the lines bracketing his mouth so deeply grooved that it seemed obvious he made a habit of disapproval. His three-day stubble said he didn’t care how he looked because he’d prefer it if no one was looking.

Or maybe his stubble didn’t carry secret messages. Some guys hated to shave. He could be too busy. It was possible he had a beautiful heart, and he would light up and beam as soon as someone gave him a reason to. She’d known people like that.

May doubted it, though. When she’d tried to catch his eye, venturing a friendly smile in his direction, he’d pulled a paperback book out of his back pocket and propped an elbow on the bar between them.

Do not disturb
, that elbow said.

And also, just possibly,
I am a dick
.

He’d ordered two beers. He was probably here to meet someone, and she was probably being oversensitive and judgmental because she was tired and mixed up, her craving for companionship outweighing her common sense.

So, fine. She’d give him his space. She wasn’t the type to impose. Well-behaved girls from Manitowoc, Wisconsin, didn’t approach men in New York City bars and ask them for help anyway—not if they had better options. If she’d somehow randomly lost half her leg on her way to the bar, she would be justified in penetrating his bubble of isolation.
I’m not sure if you noticed
, she would say,
but I seem to have a problem with my leg
.

Short of that … well, short of that, she sat here trying to be invisible. Which was difficult when you were five foot, eleven-and-three-quarters inches and had some meat on your bones. Difficult, but necessary.

She nursed the last inch of warm lager in her pint glass and avoided looking at the bartender. If she looked at him he might ask if she wanted another drink, and if he did
that
, she would have to say no.

Which would make it perfectly obvious to all three of the people in the bar that she should be moving along.

The bartender might even ask her to go, because they did that if you hung around too long in New York. In Manhattan, loitering was a real
thing
, as opposed to just an accusation leveled against teenagers who looked like they might be thinking about ripping off junk food and porno from the Quik Stop.

May was loitering.

She had no money.

She had nowhere else to go.

Almost.

It was true that she could retrace her path, rewalk the blocks she’d journeyed in a daze, and ask the front desk to buzz her back into Dan’s apartment.
Sorry
, she’d tell them.
I lost my keys. But you know me, right? You’ve seen me with my boyfriend. Can you let me in?

A totally manageable series of white lies. In fact, she hadn’t lost her keys, but it was true that she didn’t
have
them. They’d been stolen, along with her purse and the rest of its contents.

And really Dan wasn’t her boyfriend anymore, but even Dan didn’t seem to accept that yet—although he might change his mind when he came home from his emergency strategy session and found her gone.

It wasn’t too late to take back the note she’d left. She could walk into his empty apartment and pull the paper off the fridge, stuff it in the garbage can under the sink. She could pretend when Dan returned that none of this had happened, and she could talk to him tonight—really
talk
to him—about what she’d done at the luncheon yesterday.

She could find something to say to him other than
I don’t think this is working
and
I don’t want to be with you anymore
and
I want to go home
.

Not home to Dan’s apartment nearby or his Mansion of Ostentatiousness in New Jersey, where she’d been living with him for the past six weeks. Home to Wisconsin.
Home
.