Fate crying out?
Rom gathered her into his lap and tore the front of her dress wide open to see the wound. Blood went everywhere.
As gently as he could he felt her back, searching for the bullet’s exit.
Shit. It hung up inside somewhere doing who knew what kind of internal damage. Rom looked up and found Orti at his back, a gun raised on Mascaro.
“I suggest you leave. Quietly. Back up will arrive shortly as will the police,” Orti said.
Mascaro didn’t move. Didn’t even blink.
“We’ve got to get her to the hospital. Now!”
“Rom, no,” Jule whispered. She was conscious. “We need to finish this. Break the curse. Might not have another opportunity.”
“Screw opportunity, Jule. If I don’t get you to an ER right now, we’re in serious trouble.”
She raised a shaky hand and touched his face. Her hands were cold. “Take me down to the tomb, Rom. We have to do this now, with Paris here.”
Rom turned to look at Mascaro, still holding his gun ready. Waiting.
“My job is only half complete. Let’s finish this Romeo. The way it was meant to be.” Mascaro raised his gun and fired a second time, past Orti. The bullet hit Rom in the shoulder as he heard another shot from close range. Orti?
Pain licked at the edges of his consciousness.
He heard Orti shout and a third shot echoed. Sounds of a struggle reached his ears, but danced just out of sight.
The way it was meant to be.
Rom didn’t know what fate had in store for him and what simply fell under the big bold heading of circumstance. Jule was dying. Rom was still immortal. Nothing had changed.
“Orti,” he rasped, refusing to relinquish Jule to the cold ground. “Luigi, are you all right?”
Orti emerged from the darkness, a hand pressed to a bloody wound in his side. He collapsed at Rom’s feet as Mascaro followed on his heels.
“The Prince doesn’t like to lose kinsmen, but it’s the terrible price of blood feuds, eh, Romeo?”
He’d completely reverted to the fifteenth century. Mascaro could no longer tell the difference between reality and the past.
This blood feud would end tonight.
Rom took off his shirt, ignoring the pain. He balled it into a pillow and rested Jule’s head off the cold gravel path.
“No, Rom. Don’t waste time. Take me down to the tomb,” she said, her words growing more faint. She fought to hang on to consciousness.
Rom knelt and rubbed his knuckles against her cheek. “I’ve already wasted so much time. You’re right. It’s time to end this.”
He recovered her dagger from where it had fallen next to her body. Time for the blade to taste someone else’s blood.
He stood, bare-chested in the chilly night air, the sting of cold serving to distract him from the pain of the gunshot wounds.
“Always the hero to the end,” Paris said.
“And you’re the fool who doesn’t know when he’s been bested,” Rom growled back.
They danced around each other. Paris with a gun and Rom with the dagger.
Sirens sounded in the distance. “Not much time now,” he told Paris.
“I’ll see you in hell,” Paris snarled and fired.
Rom dodged left, but he wasn’t fast enough. The bullet hit him below the first shoulder wound, close to his heart. The impact sent him reeling back, but by force of will he reversed the momentum and met Paris with an upward thrust of Jule’s dagger.
The blade found its target and sank under Paris’s ribcage, crossing under the sternum to pierce his heart. Rom pulled back and let him fall, first to his knees and then on his face.
Paris didn’t move. Rom watched his still form for several seconds, not believing it could be so easy.
He kicked Mascaro over onto his back. His eyes were open, unseeing. A ragged breath moved through his chest, but Rom knew it wouldn’t be long now.
Paris would die.
“And you’re not coming with us this time, you bastard,” Rom told him. “You’re dying here, outside, bereft of sanctuary. Hope you like hell.”
He dragged his feet back to Jule, falling to his knees. He used his one good arm to gather her close.
“Goddamnit, Jule. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. Lawrence said it would be different this time. I found you again. We are fated to be together.” Tears fell to his cheeks as he leaned over to press a kiss to her forehead.
Jule’s eyes opened. “Fill the chalice with water, Rom. Take me down to the tomb. Bring the dagger.”
Rom looked around for the cup. It lay where he’d dropped it, still tightly wrapped in the burlap.
Could he do this? By God, yes. If Jule wanted it so, he’d walk to the ends of the earth.
The sirens drew closer as he lifted Jule and cradled her to his chest, his good arm supporting most of her weight while his spent arm bore her knees.
The tomb was dark, cold, and empty, save for a single bulb in the antechamber. As he passed through and into the doorway of the barrel-vaulted tomb, he heard her breath catch and then nothing.
He laid her on the raised dais as careful as his injured body would allow, his insides screaming in pain.
“Jule? You still with me?”
“Yes,” she moaned, fainter now. “Chalice,” she whispered.
Rom turned to head for the stairs, but her voice stopped him. “Dagger?”
“That, too,” he said, running now for the stairs.
What was he doing? He should be racing for the hospital, not running around the crumbling ruins of the monastery.
Rom returned to the courtyard to find Orti swaying on his feet, awaiting the arrival of the police.
“How bad is it?” Rom asked him, nodding at Orti’s seeping wound.
“I’ll live. You have unfinished business, yes?” he raised his chin to the tomb entrance.
He nodded.
“I will await the police and keep them occupied for as long as I can. Go on my friend.”
Rom filled the chalice with water and headed back down the worn stairs.
Fear filled every corner of his being, making his hands tremble and sloshing water from the cup. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt real and true fear.
Maybe he never had.
But he did now. He recognized it by the way his hands shook, his breath came labored and shallow in his chest, spots danced in front of his eyes, and an overwhelming desire to grab Jule and run. Run until he couldn’t.
He was afraid of failing. Again. Of losing her. Again.
Of living. Forever forbidden to join Juliet.
Light from the tomb spilled out into the antechamber and Rom wondered suddenly if the cops had turned the lights on. Reaching the threshold he saw it wasn’t electricity making the room light up, it was Juliet’s sarcophagus.
The brick and stone rectangle glowed under her body. Glowed as if powered by some internal source. The room warmed, warding off the chill of the winter night.
Jule’s eyes were closed and her body still. Rom saw her breaths and the even rise and fall of her chest.
She lived yet.
He stepped up to the dais and set the dagger on the bricked floor. Taking her hand, Rom leaned over and kissed her lips.
“Wake, my love.”
Her eyes fluttered open and stared straight through him to his soul. Rom felt an internal pull, a warm and comforting invitation that started in his abdomen and spread outward to his limbs.
Jule smiled at him.
And he felt the heavens open up.
“Drink from the chalice, Romeo,” she whispered.
Rom didn’t want to pull away or sever the contact they shared. When she sensed his hesitation she closed her eyes and smiled brighter.
“It’s all right now, love.”
Rom leaned back and the heat followed him, spiraled up his shoulders, to his neck and his head. His scalp tingled and felt hot.
In the bright light of
the tomb, Rom noticed the blood from their wounds had mixed. He wore hers and she his. Before taking the drink Jule demanded, he ran his fingers over them both, mixing their heart’s blood further and touching it to his lips and then hers.
He had no idea what he did, but it felt right. True.
Her lips shone scarlet with their blood.
Rom lifted the chalice and drank deeply, leaving some for Jule, too.
“Now, me,” she said when he lowered the cup from his mouth.
He helped her into a sitting position and held the cup to her lips as she drank. Water dribbled from the sides of the cup and down her chin, falling onto the wound in her chest.
Exhausted, Jule’s head fell back and Rom lowered the chalice. Her eyes closed and her breathing stopped.
“Jule! Juliet, don’t leave me now.”
Tears fell from his cheeks to her upturned face. Rom wiped them away as he held her body close. Footsteps descended the stairs.
“Juliet. Juliet. Come back to me,” his voice echoed in the chamber, but the light that had lit the tomb faded.
“God damn you, Lawrence. Bring her back!”
“She won’t come back unless you give her a reason to.”
Rom flinched, recoiling at the sound of another voice inside his misery.
“Get out,” he told Rossi.
“But it’s not done, yet. The cycle is not complete.”
Rom slid his eyes sideways, taking in Rossi leaning heavily against the arched entry. He looked like hell.
“What are you talking about?”
“She has done everything to save you. Return you to your mortal form. And I say she’s been successful.” Rossi nodded at Rom’s chest.
Rom followed his gaze to see blood still seeping from his wounds. Wounds that should have already begun to heal.
“I’m mortal?”
“Looks that way to me,” Rossi breathed on the verge of a cough attack.
“How? And what do I do now? I’m lost Goddamn it and don’t know how to stop this.”
Rossi sank to his knees and let his taxed lungs struggle for breath. When he could talk again, he lifted his heavy head.
“Give her what she wants.”
Rom looked away from Rossi and back to Jule’s face. Her skin had paled.
Give her what she wants.
Love. A home. Someplace to feel safe.
“Jule. I love you. Do you hear me? I love you. Come back. Marry me. Have a family. Half a dozen kids if you want.” He clutched her to him, rocking back and forth on the dais, refusing to give her up.
Ah, dear Juliet,
Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?
For fear of that I still will stay with thee
And never from this pallet of dim night
Depart again. Here, here will I remain.
Rom reached for the dagger at his feet. If he was mortal, then he could die.
“Don’t,” Rossi whispered.
Rom hesitated, the dagger’s point drawing more blood upon his naked chest.
“Don’t. Wait.”
He closed his eyes, ready to drive the blade home, ready to join Juliet.
A light glowed beyond his eyelids, growing stronger and brighter until Rom opened his eyes. The dais pulsed with light once again, filling the tomb with warm hues of gold and ruddy browns.
Jule’s eyes opened.
…
“Rom?”
He stared down at her from a distance, his head and shoulders surrounded by a beautiful warm light.
“I’m here,” he spoke softly.
“Where is here?”
“The hospital. You’re fine. Recovering.”
His hand tangled in her hair and he leaned in, kissing her lips. Jule closed her eyes again and allowed the sensation to wash over her—all the way from her head down to her toes.
She was alive. He was alive.
Whoa. Wait a minute—
Jule opened her eyes and saw Rom sitting in the chair next to her bed. His left arm rested across his chest, bound tightly by a sling.
“You were shot.”
He smiled, his heart in his eyes. “So were you. But we made it. Both of us. And soon as you’re able, we’re going home.”
Home? To Chicago?
He must have read the look in her eyes. “Not to Chicago. To the house on Lake Garda.”
“I thought that part of your life was over,” she said, trying not to ball like a baby in front of him.
“The part about being without you is, but the part about living happily ever after, is, hopefully, just beginning.”
She blinked at him. Happily ever after? Them?
“Jule,” he said, getting down on one knee, “I’m doing my best here and asking you to marry me.”
“Do you really want to marry me? Me, Jule?”
Rom grabbed her hand in his. “God, yes. If you want me, Rom Montgomery, and not that other guy.” He offered a lopsided smile.
And what would Jule Casale say to such a marriage proposal?
“When’s the ceremony?”
Acknowledgments
To the wonderful team of people at Entangled Publishing. It truly has been a pleasure working with all of you. You’re committed, thoughtful, responsive individuals who deeply care about the quality of product you put forth to readers. Thank you, so very much!
About the Author
Growing up in Hell’s Back Forty, Shannon Leigh developed a fierce loyalty to all things Texas and pledged to share the romance of small town dance halls and the flavor of brisket BBQ with readers. Currently, she lives in Fort Worth with an extensive cowboy boot collection, a red and white, ’67 Chevy pickup and a mission to find the best taco stands in the city. You can reach her at: [email protected]. Find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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Covet.
Where PARA meets NORMAL…
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Forbidden Kiss Page 18