Roman Holiday: The Complete Adventure (2-Book Bundle: The Adventure Begins and The Adventure Continues) (60 page)

“Babies?”

“Yeah.” He kissed her neck. “Remind me sometime that I want to talk about babies.”

“You’re making me nervous.”

Roman reached past her into the nightstand drawer where he kept the condoms. Ashley took advantage of the opportunity to unfasten his pants and get her hands on his ass, because despite what she’d said, she wasn’t all that nervous.

She was supposed to be. They’d only known each other two weeks.

On the other hand, it had been a hell of a two weeks—a lifetime compressed into experience so intense, she felt she knew Roman better than she’d ever known anyone.

“Don’t think about it yet,” he said. “We’re still negotiating how long you’re going to stay. Once I talk you into forever, we’ll get to the babies.”

“You’re—”

He covered her mouth with his palm. “Awesome. You love me. Right?”

Ashley nodded until he took his hand away. “I do. You are.”

“I’ll be even more awesome in about thirty seconds, after we get naked.” Roman dropped the condom on her pillow, and then there was a lot of awkward bending and some huffing as they worked their pants off, and also the part where he said, “Ow!” because she accidentally elbowed him in the throat.

When he came back over her, he was wearing an unbuttoned dress shirt and one sock. Ashley still had on her halter top, untied and rucked up over her stomach.

Roman kissed her neck. Then he kissed her cheek. Then he kissed her lips and fixed her with the same expression of command he’d worn the first time she saw him—the expression that said,
I get whatever I want, so don’t bother fighting me on this
. “Stay here at least until we get the resort built.”

“Okay.”

He kissed her breasts. Pinned her down with the look again. “Stay until we buy a house together. Or build a house. Or rescue some cracked-foundation heap and gut it and renovate it even though that costs more than it would to build a new one, except you like it better because you can pretend it’s old. Or we’ll live in the fucking Airstream. I’ll buy three Airstreams and daisy-chain them together so we can occupy eight hundred square feet of vintage land yacht.”

“I’d be okay with a house.”

He kissed his way down her stomach, pausing to yank her top over her hips and down her legs.

Ashley watched him, soaking up the echoes of the words she’d just said.

She’d be okay with a house.

Four walls—and inside of them, the life she and Roman would make together.

She could do it, with him. She was already doing it.

It was the most ordinary sort of miracle—that she had become, in just a few weeks, a woman who could claim this man and mean it. That there was a way in which she didn’t even feel changed. As though she’d never truly been the Ashley Bowman who didn’t stick.

She’d just taken a while to find the life she was meant to stick to.

“Stay forever,” he said.

“Mmm-hmm.”

Head down, he kissed her lower.

Lower still.

“Stay,” he said, although by now he was pretty much addressing her labia.

“I’m staying.”

“Good.”

What he did to her next—it was so much better than good. It was magic. The kind of magic made of clever tongues and wicked banter, pressing fingers and lifting hips, rising tides of joy and one man.

One devoted, loving, beautiful man, who wanted to give her everything.

One man whom she could safely take everything from, because she fully intended to love him with her whole heart for the rest of her life.

Roman used his fingers and tongue to take her up and up and up some more until she was gasping and moaning and clamping her thighs around his face. He seemed to like that, which was good, because her thighs gave her no alternative.

After she came down, Ashley pressed her cheek against the shiny softness of her pillow. She sifted her fingers through his hair, cherishing the heavy weight of his head in the hollow of her hip.

He kissed her there. “Be my home, Ash. I’ll buy you a ring with a cruelty-free diamond, and we’ll get married on the beach.”

“Can we have a drum circle after?”

“Yes. But no Flossie.”

She pretended to need to consider the offer, just to tease him, but his arm started to tense where it lay across her thighs, and she relented. “Okay. But only if you come up here.”

He crawled on top of her. “That’s it? Okay?”

“Yep.” She opened her legs and wrapped herself around him. “Come a little closer. I want to show you something. You’re going to need the condom.”

She showed him a few things. He liked them.

They stayed in bed all afternoon, talking and laughing, loving and belonging.

It was magic.

Three years later

“That’s sick,” Roman said. “Sick and wrong.”

Ashley smiled and poked him in the side. “You’re jealous.”

“I could never be jealous of someone with whatever condition it is that makes it possible for him to—holy
fuck
.”

Samantha tsked from the spot where she squatted ten feet away, holding up one end of the very low limbo bar that Noah was inching his way under. “Language, Uncle Roman.”

“The kids are all down by the beach.”

Ashley did a quick scan of the crowd and found he was right. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen any of the kids since they’d last run by in a pack—Noah’s son leading the way, trailed by both of Jamie and Carly’s, the oldest three of Sam’s four, and the resort babysitter Ashley had paid to keep them out of the grown-ups’ hair.

Probably for the best they weren’t around. There was something indecent about watching Noah contort himself into that position.

Ashley moved closer to Roman and put her arm around his waist, bumping their hips. “It’s a good turnout, huh?”

“You always get a good turnout.”

“It’s because I beg and make extravagant promises.”

“How much of our money are you being extravagant with this time?”

“Oh, the promises don’t cost anything. I told your sister that Heberto would make her a real mojito, and I told Heberto he would get to hold Samantha’s baby. Nana came because I
promised her Stanley and Esther were bringing Michael and that I would make sure she got to monopolize him.”

“Nana and Michael are a thing?”

“They hook up every time they’re both here. You didn’t know that?”

“I’m actively trying to erase the knowledge from my brain even as we speak.”

“Ageist.”

“Dude, they’re like
family
. Our family is having sex.”

“If you don’t stop calling me dude, I’m going to lick your face right here, where everyone can see.”

“If you lick my face, you’ll have to deal with the consequences.”

“Are they sexy consequences?”

Roman turned to face her, dropping one hand to squeeze her ass. “Dude. It’s like you don’t know me at all.”

Ashley kissed him. “I like sexy consequences, but not in front of family. And not with men who call me dude.”

“It’s Samantha’s fault. Every time she comes to visit, I revert to my high school vocabulary.”

“I’m aware.”

Roman smiled and groped her some more. Ashley allowed it because today was their anniversary. Groping was practically a requirement.

“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.