Roman Holiday: The Complete Adventure (2-Book Bundle: The Adventure Begins and The Adventure Continues) (47 page)

She couldn’t tell her own story anymore. She needed Esther to tell it to her so she could hold Esther’s version up to the other versions she’d heard and listen for the parts that resonated because they were right, because they were true, because they were
her
.

What she hoped for was the truth—the grace—to be able to tell her own story in her own
words. Because if she could do that, she could move forward.

Forward was where she wanted to go.

“Do you know what you’re going to talk about?” he asked.

“I have some ideas.”

“You’ll do fine. You’re braver than I am.”

The sun went behind a cloud. Ashley shivered. “Stop saying stuff like that, or I’m going to punch you.”

“Bet you hit like a girl.”

Ashley turned around and socked him in the arm. Her fist bounced right off, but he hissed, rubbed his biceps, smiled.

He’d skipped shaving at the campground. His hair was quite obviously beginning to curl at his nape. She wanted to ruffle it with her fingers and kiss his cheek.

She also wanted to hit him again.

“Why are you so smug?” she asked. “It’s like you’ve completely forgotten I’m ruining your life.”

“I like this place. I like being with you. I keep getting texts from Carmen saying things like,
Where are you? Where are you
exactly?
What’s going on there? Where’s Ashley? What are we going to do?
And instead of making me freak out, they just make me think,
Shit, I
really
needed a vacation
.”

“You’re having too much sex,” Ashley said. “It’s turning your brain to mush.”

“Yeah, that’s probably it.” He moved her hair out of the way and pressed his nose into her skin. “Or maybe the real world just sucks.”

Ashley smiled and tried to focus on the trail of warm kisses he was planting along her neck. It helped distract her from the racing poison of her dread.

After a while, Roman lowered her hair back down. She sighed. “It’s terrible, though, if that’s what this quest is all about,” she said. “I mean, other people just buy self-help books, you know? Or talk to a therapist.”

Roman snorted. “You, sweetheart, are
not
other people.”

Ashley was still trying to figure out what to think about that when a car pulled up and parked in the spot next to the Escalade. Her equilibrium slipped away as she got a look at the driver.

Dark hair, dark suit … Not just a vaguely familiar face. Not a coincidence.

Fuck.

“Roman,” she said. “I think—”

But even as she spoke, the car’s doors opened as if synchronized, and a man and a woman stepped out.

“That’s Carmen,” Roman said.

Ashley barely heard him.

She was looking at her father.

Ashley got to her feet without any trouble. The lawn was uneven, the downhill slope steeper than she’d accounted for, but she only reeled on the inside.

Her father was here. Her
father
.

And Carmen. Who looked pretty much exactly as she had in Ashley’s imagination: like a Latina
Maxim
cover girl in a power suit and four-inch heels.

Roman had called this woman
Kitten
.

“Holy shit, and that’s the senator,” Roman said. “What’s he doing here?”

Roman’s hand found her elbow, as if he could steady her that way.
Ha
.

“Capturing me,” Ashley said. “He forgot to check his fence lines, and I got away.” She glanced behind her at Roman. “I’m a wayward calf,” she explained. “Not a person.”

“He can’t be that bad.”

He wasn’t—not by himself. Practically every Republican voter in Florida loved her father. He was their smiling Senator Bowman, so handsome, so sure of himself.

Ashley loved him, too, so long as they were separated by hundreds of miles.

“Just wait and see,” she replied. But then she made the mistake of imagining how it would go. How she would explain Roman to her dad. “Actually, on second thought, I would rather you two didn’t … Stay right here, okay?”

Before she could second-guess herself, Ashley took off across the lawn, meeting her father in the middle.

“Ashley.” His smile came a few beats too late to be genuine. Flashed in televised interviews and behind campaign-trail podiums, this particular smile of his made her think of hair oil and firm handshakes.

“Dad.”

His eyebrows were lifting, his attention focused over her shoulder. Ashley turned around to see Roman had come after her.

“Mr. Díaz.” Her father extended his hand. “I’m Bill Bowman. I believe we’ve met.”

Roman shook it. “Yes, sir.”

“The Miami Entrepreneurs dinner, wasn’t it? In the spring.”

“I’m surprised you remember.”

“I try not to forget the up-and-comers. Heberto told me you were going places in the Keys. It’s always a pleasure to meet one of our Florida businessmen.”

Roman’s return smile chilled Ashley’s blood. She’d forgotten that he could do that with his face.

He’d never told her he’d met her father.

“Thank you,” Roman said. “And I appreciate your work for us in Washington. The industry press has nothing but good things to report.”

“I’m glad to hear that. I’m a big believer in growth. We grow or we die, that’s an economic fact.”

“I hear you.”

“Guys?” Ashley cut in. “Maybe we could not do the bullshit?”

There was a moment’s awkward silence. Her father bounced once on the balls of his feet and cleared his throat. “Ashley,” he said. “I’d almost forgotten how … refreshingly honest you can be.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“Right. Well. Can we talk?”

“Go ahead. I’m listening.”

“Privately,” her father said.

Ashley sighed. And then, internally, sighed at herself for sighing.
Don’t go down this old road with him
, she warned herself.
Don’t instigate, don’t react
. When she did that, she and her father created a feedback loop of rancor. He accused her; she antagonized him. “Fine. Let’s
walk.”

She started moving away. Roman caught her elbow. Leaning close, he spoke in her ear. “You sure, Ash?”

“He won’t leave until I talk to him,” she whispered.

“I could take care of this for you.”

She closed her eyes, because it was such a sweet idea, and so completely untrue.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I can handle him.”

She kissed Roman’s temple and walked away, crossing the lawn toward the corner of the parking lot. Her father followed.

“You could have called,” Ashley said.

“You don’t return my calls,” her father answered.

“I don’t return calls from your aides.
You
haven’t called me in years.”

“Let’s not start this.”

This
, meaning Ashley being a brat.

Which she was. She
was
. He was pompous, and she was a brat. She never could help it. Her relationship with her father had been arrested when he turned her over to her grandmother at thirteen. Though she tried to fight it, her feelings toward him remained a thirteen-year-old’s—yearning and resentment, unpleasantly mingled.

“How did you even know where to find me?” she asked.

“Carmen told me where to go. There’s an airstrip a few miles from here.”

When they reached the edge of the lawn, her father caught her arm and steered her toward the road. Ashley floated along, insubstantial as a piece of dandelion fluff in the breeze.

It was like this with him. He made her feel invisible.

There had been a time, once, when she loved her father without reservation. Before the divorce, before her mom had died. She’d often wished she knew how to get back to that version of their relationship, but she could never figure out how to rebuild all the bridges they’d burned—how to forget what had come after her mother’s death, when Ashley was taken by a nanny to live with her dad, like so much unwanted property.

He’d been a state senator then, focused on his campaign and his work, with no time for a grieving daughter he barely knew. Ashley had done everything she could think of to make him see her. She’d chopped off her hair and shortened her skirts. She used to clomp around the house
in Tallahassee wearing huge boots and a dog collar, her black eye makeup smeared so thick that she looked like a cartoon.

When he’d finally noticed—when she’d finally managed to antagonize him into anger—their relationship had shifted for good.

She still remembered the strange expression that had passed over his face the first time he accused her of thinking of no one but herself.
You’re inexcusably selfish
, he’d said, and it was as though the conclusion quenched something in him. As though it
relieved
him, because he’d finally figured out how to slot her into place.

Selfish.

Ashley was selfish, just like his mother—two selfish people—and after that, it had only been a matter of time before she was banished to live with her grandmother.

She pulled her arm from her father’s grip.

“You know why I’m here,” he said.

“Not really.”

“Carmen called me. She filled me in on the situation at Sunnyvale.”

“What does it have to do with you?”

“There’s a video on the Internet with people talking about you chaining yourself to the palm tree. You didn’t think that would get back to me?”

“What video?” Roman had taken pictures with his phone, but no video. She couldn’t think how anything might have leaked to her father, not unless he had spies or something, and even then—

“We had an arrangement,” he said. “I’ve got to protect my image, and you’re jeopardizing it.”

“I’m not jeopardizing anything,” she shot back. “I’m on vacation.”

“Spare me, Ashley. Carmen told me what’s going on. You’re sleeping with the developer, manipulating him, lying about seeing Key deer—it’s unconscionable.”

His volume was rising now. When his voice boomed this way, her heart raced.

Shouldn’t there be some cutoff, an age she could reach after which her father could no longer make her feel like a badly behaved child just by raising his voice and using five-dollar words like
unconscionable
?

Ashley looked toward the water. You couldn’t see it through the brush and the trees
unless you knew it was there, but if you knew, it winked at you. It reminded you that there were open spaces to counteract suffocation. Cool breezes that settled and soothed.

If you looked.

She had to keep looking, because she wasn’t a child, and if she’d behaved badly, she could take responsibility for her own mistakes. She was a woman worth loving, whether her father could see that or not.

“That’s not what’s going on,” she said slowly. “Roman and I—”

Her father raked both hands down his face, and that was all it took to bring her to a halt. She’d seen that gesture hundreds of times. The precursor to countless lectures. He wouldn’t hear her. Nothing she said would get through to him.

He began to pace. “You know, whatever you think is going on, it doesn’t even matter. What matters is how this is going to look—my daughter the leader of some rogue protest at the property my mom used to own. Can you imagine the headlines? Because I can.”

“I don’t see how—”

“You get yourself into these situations—”

“I’m not in a
situation
.”

“You’re in a classic Ashley situation. This is your M.O. You find the last man alive who might be good for you and throw yourself at him. I keep thinking you’re going to grow out of this phase.”

“I’m not in a phase.”

“You’re in your tenth year of a childish, rebellious phase where you do everything you can to make me pay attention to you.”

Anger welled up, knocking against the wall of her chest, and it was all she could do to keep it contained. “I didn’t call you here. You’re free to go anytime—I’m just trying to have lunch.”

“That’s another thing,” he said. “Why are you visiting Esther? Your grandmother’s dead.”

“I’m aware of that. Esther, however, is still alive.”

“Dragging that trailer around all over the country, talking to my mother’s friends—what’s your agenda? Did you run out of other ways to get at me?”

“Do you actually have spies?”

“She’s
dead
, Ashley. She’s dead and buried, and you’re making a spectacle of yourself to humiliate me because humiliating me is the only way you know to make yourself feel better.”

“This has nothing to do with you!”

“It has everything to do with me. She was my mother!”

“You never even talked to her!”

“I don’t talk to you, either, but you’re still my goddamn daughter!”

Bellowing now, with sweat beading at his temples, her father appeared utterly rattled, and she was so small. She tried to search for the water. The shine of the sun, a wink of light. She
tried
, but she felt …

She
felt
.

Ashley felt the whistling breath of the cool, damp air of the well. The lid torn off.

She felt everything inside her rising up, reminding her of what it was like to be around this man. How much she’d needed him to love her. How, instead of loving her, what he did—what her father always did—was tell her what she was like.