Roman Holiday: The Complete Adventure (2-Book Bundle: The Adventure Begins and The Adventure Continues) (15 page)

Ashley knew that voice.

Roman.
Angry
Roman.

She rushed out onto the deck, where she encountered the improbable sight of Roman sprawled on the planks, brandishing his iPhone at a snapping, capering Flossie.

“Nice,” Mitzi said breathlessly behind her.

“She won’t really bite him, will she?” Ashley asked.

“I don’t think so. She never has before. I think she’s trying to play with him.”

“Yeah, well, the thing is, Roman doesn’t play.”

He scrabbled as Flossie stalked him and everyone offered advice he gave no sign of hearing.

“Stand up, if you want her to keep off you.”

“Give her that phone. That’s all she wants, and you’ll just get brain cancer from it. I read this article—”

“—not supposed to be on the porch. That ranger will have a
fit
if he knows she’s been up here again, and he’ll give us all a lecture about—”

“—throw your arms around her neck, she’ll give you a ride on her back.”

“See if you can make the music again.” This from Don. “I bet she’ll smile for you.”

Roman crab-crawled backward another few feet, launched himself to standing, and flung his phone at the alligator’s head.

It hit her squarely between the eyes.

She blinked.

Ashley leaned over, grabbed a beach ball from beneath the porch, and waved it at the alligator. “Flossie?” she called. “You want to play, baby girl?”

Flossie tracked the ball with her head. Ashley tossed it onto the lawn, where it rolled downhill and into the swamp.

The alligator turned slowly and lumbered down the steps after it.

Ashley dared a glance at Roman. He’d planted his hands on his hips, spreading his suit jacket and revealing his half-untucked shirt, more open than usual at the collar. A button must have lost traction.

His color was high, his chest rapidly rising and falling.

Their eyes locked, and everything he felt seemed to pound inside her. His fury. His humiliation. All the chemicals in his bloodstream wordlessly dumped into hers, and she thought he might do anything next—bellow, or kick the picnic table, or tell everyone on the porch off at once, inventing swearwords Ashley had never heard before. Poisonous, taboo words to match his eyes and the tattoo of his heart.

He raised his hands, as though he were about to grab her and … and—she didn’t know what. She didn’t know, but the possibility was electrifying. Just to see Roman lose it so completely. To see him prove he was
alive
, as vulnerable and stupid and prone to emotional storm surges as she was.

“A ball?” His voice dripped with sarcasm, but he couldn’t control the rising pitch. The crack in it. “You threw the alligator a fucking
ball
?”

“She likes to play fetch.”

Roman pointed across the porch at Kirk. “
He
said Flossie was wild. That they’re not allowed to tame her because she lives in the refuge.”

Ashley raised one shoulder, then let it drop. “They’re not supposed to. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t.”

“So I was never in any danger.”

“Of course not.”

She watched the knowledge soak in. Watched him pull his dignity back on. Tuck in his shirt. “You were all
laughing
at me.”

He said it quietly.

“No, Roman—”

“Did you enjoy that, Ashley? Was it as good as the drum circle, seeing the uptight Miami guy lose his shit over a pet alligator?”

“God, Roman, no. I wouldn’t do that. Listen, the thing about Flossie is, we all kind of forget that she’s an alligator, because she’s—”

He wasn’t listening. He’d blanked his face, turned his back, and as she spoke, he slid open the door and disappeared inside the dining hall.

“Damn it,” Ashley said.

“He really doesn’t like alligators,” Don said helplessly.

“No one likes alligators, Don,” Ashley said. “They kill people.”

“Not Flossie, though.”

“No. Not Flossie.”

Roman didn’t know Flossie—hadn’t grown up visiting the commune, seeing the animal gain length and weight but never fearing her because she was
Flossie
, the eight-inch-long baby who’d been stranded on the lawn after a bad storm, and who’d taken to the commune residents as much as they took to her.

Roman saw her for what she was. Hundreds of pounds of teeth and muscle, born to stalk and kill.

“Bet he has nightmares about gators for a year,” Mitzi said at her elbow.

“Would you blame him?”

Mitzi gripped Ashley’s biceps and gave her arm a shake. “Don’t start feeling sorry for him.”

She didn’t feel
sorry
for Roman. Empathy was not the same as pity. She felt like an asshole.

“I need to talk to him.”

“And tell him what?”

“I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.”

“Don’t mess this up, Ash. This is your chance. He’s already shaky—now you go for the jugular.”

Ashley pulled her arm out of Mitzi’s grip, seeing her intensity, her near-frenzy, in a way she never had before.

The word Grandma always used about Mitzi was
single-minded
. She had a certainty, a strength of purpose, which Ashley fiercely admired because she didn’t possess it herself.

But Mitzi could be blind about things, too. She’d been blind about Kirk for ten years—scorning his devotion and sleeping around, always looking for the right guy when she already had him.

She could be rude, too, in her self-centeredness. That sex marathon last night—that had been rude. And taking Ashley out in the swamp while Roman was in the shower … not a move Grandma would have approved of.

Grandma would have made sure Roman’s car had been towed by now. She’d have located a cutting torch and fed him and found him a fresh toothbrush, and if Ashley had argued with her, she would have said that hospitality was non-negotiable.

But Grandma wasn’t here.

“I’ll do my best,” Ashley said.

She leaned down, scooped up Roman’s phone, and set out after him.

She found him in his car. Sitting in the driver’s seat, hands in his lap, face completely empty.

Ashley opened the passenger door and levered herself up. The car was insanely hot—a hundred degrees or more. She began to sweat instantly, but she pulled the door shut anyway. “Roman?”

“What?”

Completely toneless. He was really upset.

“I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted.”

“I should have warned you about the alligator. And I shouldn’t have gone off with Mitzi while you were in the shower. That was rude. And last night—”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s really not fine.”

He turned to look at her. “We’re not friends, Ashley. I don’t have friends. It’s fine.”

Nothing about him looked sad when he said it—not his eyes, not his face, not his beautiful mouth or his overabundant eyebrows. That was the part that made her want to cry.

She handed him his phone.

He opened the console between their seats, extracted a cord, and inserted it into the phone, then plugged the other end into the lighter. The wire curled and flopped unattractively in the gap between the phone and the console. Roman frowned at it, then looked away.

With his right hand, he dug deep into his pants pocket. Suddenly, air began blasting from the vent in front of her, making her jump.

“Remote starter,” he said.

She blinked.

“In my pocket.”

“Oh. Right.”

The air rapidly cooled. She cast around for something to say. “Did you get in touch with the tow-truck guy?”

“I’m supposed to call him back.”

“I can ask Mitzi about Jerry.”

“Don’t put yourself out.”

“Roman—”

“Oh, knock it off.”

“I can’t. I just want you to know how sorry I am about—”

He flung his door open and hopped down from the car. Abruptly, the cool air cut out, and the car fell silent. Roman slammed his door shut.

Ashley flung open her door and followed him out. “Where are you going?”

But he was twenty feet away already, with his head down. She had to run to catch up. “Roman, where are you
going
?”

“Away from you.”

“You can’t. I need to talk to you.”

“I can’t talk to you right now.”

But he had to. If not now, when?

He would leave. He would leave, and she would lose her chance to make him see all the things she needed him to see. What Sunnyvale was all about. What her grandmother had meant to her.

She would lose her chance to make him see
her
.

“You don’t have a choice,” she said.

“Don’t I?”

He walked faster. He had longer legs, and he was in better shape, and she got a stitch in her side almost immediately. She pushed her fingers into it hard and kept going, but she fell behind anyway.

“You’re being so immature!” she called. He didn’t stop. He didn’t care. He just hated her, couldn’t stand to be around her, wanted her gone.

Roman hated her.

The force of it brought her to a halt with an upwelling pain that choked her throat and filled her eyes with tears.

It wasn’t right to care what Roman thought, wasn’t right to cry, and she wouldn’t. She
wouldn’t
, not over him, not after all the tears she’d shed lately.

She was supposed to be the one who hated him. That was the natural order of things, and she wanted to. She wanted to so
much
.

She wanted to be angry at her grandma for shutting her out and taking away the life Ashley had been waiting to live for so long, the future she’d been grooming herself for, and she wanted to despise Roman for being the one who was there to grab the property when it had been grabable.

But instead she liked him. She liked him a
lot
, and she loved her grandma, and it hurt too much, being left behind to deal with all this shit. It wasn’t fair. And for Roman to make it even
worse?—well, fuck him. If that was how he felt, if he couldn’t endure her company, just … fuck him.

“I’m filing a complaint against your resort!” she called.

He stopped. His back heaved and sank beneath his jacket. A black suit jacket in the ninety-degree heat. Something weird there. Some compulsion to always look good, always seem calm, always be perfect.

No wonder she got under his skin. She’d never been perfect for one second of her existence. Not even close. He hated her for getting her grubby fingers in his business? Fine. Let him hate her. She would make him hate her more. She would twist her hands up in all the wires and cords of his life and tangle them mercilessly until he couldn’t find a way to sort himself out again. Wipe her grubby palms on his perfect chest and smear all her disgusting emotional secretions on him.

And he would have to take it, because he didn’t have the upper hand. He couldn’t have it back. She was keeping it. Her hold on him was the only thing that felt good in her life right now.

He could hate her all he wanted. She would
like
him back, and he could hate that, too. She would keep him with her, screw with his head, make him as twisty and confused as she was.

Fuck him.

“There are Key deer on the property. They’re a protected species, and if you knock down Sunnyvale, you’ll be destroying their habitat.”

Roman turned around.

His eyes weren’t blank. They were squinting and mean, fired up with rage.

Good
.

“Sunnyvale is not a habitat,” he said. “It’s a bunch of shitty apartments.”

“They drink in the pool. It’s a source of freshwater.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Tell it to the EPA.”

His face filled with scorn. “The EPA’s got nothing to do with it. It’s Fish and Wildlife, but they won’t care, either, because I have a permit to build from Monroe County Planning, and it’s totally aboveboard.”

“I knew that.”

Roman stepped closer and put his hands on his hips. A performance of control, but his
face—his mouth—still looked like she’d punched him and he wanted to punch her back. “No, you didn’t.”

“Whatever. The point is, I’m going to find the right allies—the Save the Key Deer people, or whoever—and they’ll help me hire a lawyer who knows all about this stuff, and we’ll file a complaint, and a judge will stop the demolition.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Not for my own sake, Roman. Just to save the baby Key deer.”

“You sanctimonious, conniving little—” He punched himself in the thigh. Hard. “You
suck
, you know that?”

The question hit her hard, because it had come from some deeper part of him that had never spoken to her before. This wasn’t groomed, perfect Miami Roman. It was some older Roman. The real Roman, maybe.

He hated her, too.

But oh, he didn’t like it that she’d seen that. Nostrils flared, Roman sucked in a breath and did that screwing-down thing with his mouth. His shoulders dropped. The lines of his suit fell into better order.

He stepped close enough that she could see the whites of his eyes and feel the tension coming off his body. The barely restrained energy. “You can’t stop it,” he said quietly. “This kind of thing—it’s not your game. It’s another whole league from your game. I’ll destroy you, Ashley. Don’t think I won’t.”

But she was already destroyed, and she’d been here before. When she was nine and her parents split up and put her in the middle of their endless, bitter custody dispute, and she’d tried to save her family but failed miserably—she’d been here.

When her mother won full custody and then proceeded to spend seventy hours a week in the lab, proving how little she cared for Ashley—when she got liver cancer and kept working with dangerous solvents anyway, when she died when Ashley was thirteen—she had been here.

When her father took her in and fought with her, ignored her, turned her over to the grandmother she’d never known—destroyed again—she’d been here.

She’d
been
here.

God. What was she doing?

Ashley took a deep breath and exhaled, looking down at her sandals. She took another
one and released the fear and the hatred she’d clung to as an adolescent. She imagined her own negative feelings as a dark shadow in her breath, twisting through the hazy humidity and dissipating. Dissolving.