by Ruthie Knox
Bare legs and tall red shoes because she loved the way they clicked against the sidewalk when she walked, and she loved that she’d taught herself to walk in them with a Cuban girl’s sway in her step.
He touched the freckle at the corner of her eye with his fingertip. Unnaturally calm.
“I have to talk to my crew,” he said.
“I’ll wait near the highway on-ramp. Fifteen minutes. If you take any longer, I’ll go home and take care of this myself.”
That did the trick, finally. He closed his eyes for just a second, and she was able to slip out from under him and walk onto the porch, across the pavers to the parking lot. Not too fast or too slow. Not clutching her clipboard or limping. Just the right speed.
She got into her Mercedes, started the engine, and backed out of the lot.
But when she got beyond the place where someone might see, Carmen pulled over and dropped her head onto the wheel, because she was shaking and cold, and she didn’t know how to get warm.
Roman put the receiver back on the hook and let his hand fall.
From this vantage by the open front door of the office, he could take in the entire expanse of the campground. A kid skipping toward the bathhouse. The Escalade with the Airstream hitched to it, the campsite empty now of his tent and the ephemera they’d strewn around yesterday.
Ashley, Stanley, and Michael were huddled together in a conference by the picnic table. He’d thought at first they were saying their goodbyes, but this didn’t look like a fond farewell. Michael was leaning in, saying something to Ashley. Stanley stood with his arms crossed, silent. Ashley was seated below them at the table, nodding her head, listening.
All of them there, and in his mind’s eye: Carmen in Florida. Noah at Sunnyvale, the crew ready, and the only thing stopping them from knocking it all down was Roman’s word transmitted over the line.
Even without his word, it would be so easy for Carmen to knock it down. A quick job, over and done with and then too late to take it back. Roman didn’t think she would do that. But maybe he didn’t know her as well as he’d thought.
She’d threatened him.
She’d threatened to use Ashley’s father as a lever, and Roman knew just enough about Ashley to understand what a dangerous idea that was.
He knew just enough to be all caught up in her, but not enough to make him feel safe. He’d lain awake in the half-collapsed tent, green nylon six inches from his nose, and made a list in the quietest hours of the night of all the things that could go wrong if he took her to bed.
Anything.
Everything.
He’d decided he shouldn’t pursue this attraction to her any further.
He’d known he would do it anyway.
Now he went inside the store and bought some snacks for the road. Chips. Candy. Gum, because she seemed to like gum. Since Michael was occupied, Roman left twenty dollars on the counter beneath a can of soda.
After finding a place in the Cadillac for his purchases, he walked into the uncomfortable tension at the picnic table. “Everything okay?” he asked Ashley.
“Yeah.”
“You ready to go?”
“Yeah. But, uh, we’re going to have another passenger.”
“What do you mean?”
But he understood even before he finished articulating the question, because when he lifted his eyes, Stanley was there with his arms crossed, his gaze steely and determined. Michael looking apologetic but resigned.
“Stanley’s coming with us,” Ashley said.
“Why?”
She looked at her toes. “He won’t say.”
Michael started spewing out information then, something about Stanley’s right hip and North Korea, he didn’t drive anymore, Michael would take him but the campground needed tending, somebody had to, and Ashley was headed up north anyway, so they’d got to talking—
Busy sorting through all the implications of this announcement, Roman tuned him out.
Stanley’s demand. Ashley’s assent. The way she didn’t seem to want to meet his eyes today. Those were the key elements.
“Do I have any say in the decision?”
Her shoulders straightened, and her chin came up.
He’d seen her do that before. She’d been chained to a palm tree at the time.
Whatever this was about, Ashley had already made up her mind.
“Where’s he going to sleep?”
“I told him he could have the spare bed in the Airstream.”
“Did you?”
Her arms went around her stomach.
He’d seen her do that, too. In the trailer. Her pose for doubt and discomfort.
Those kisses on the steps, beside the campfire—she regretted them now. He’d taken advantage of her sympathy, but the more she’d considered his life, the shape of it, the less sympathy she must have had. He’d never been anything but hard on her. He was her enemy still, and one step back must have been all it took for her to see how inadvisable last night had been.
He was the son of a killer, as inept at human connection as his father. A bad bet.
She knew he had nothing to offer.
Roman thought all this automatically, the fear sweeping in and then just as quickly sweeping back out.
Something was going on, but it wasn’t that. There were women who’d change their mind about him, and then there was Ashley, who never changed her mind about anyone, even when she should.
“He can’t sleep on the ground,” she said quietly.
“No. I don’t suppose he can.”
Her blue toenail polish had chipped. Her toes were wet with dew from the grass, and they looked a little blue themselves. He resisted the urge to cup her face in his hand and bring his mouth to her ear and whisper, What’s going on?
He wanted to seduce the truth out of her, each kiss softening its tiny barbs until she let go of it with a happy sigh.
He wanted to kiss her until she took him back, gave him again what he’d had with her last night by the fire. That easy heat. Her smoky laugh and the slide of her tongue against his.
The peace. The hope.
But he shut it down. This trip—this morning—this awkwardness. None of it was about him. Not in any way that was simple.
What he had to do next was calculate a way to win Ashley’s assent to the demolition before Carmen’s deadline. Not because he wanted to, but because if he didn’t, he would lose the development. He would lose Heberto, and he wasn’t prepared for that.
He wasn’t prepared to reconfigure his entire future for Ashley Bowman, and short of that, he had no business wanting anything when it came to her. No business staking claims.
“Load him up,” he said. “I’ll wait in the car.”
Finding her bag beside another that had to be Stanley’s, he loaded them both into the back of the Escalade. He climbed behind the wheel and turned over the engine, satisfied when it roared to life.
He looked on from the outside as Ashley hugged Michael goodbye and led Stanley toward the car. He tolerated the forced cheer in the jokes she made as she buckled herself into the backseat.
He tossed her the pack of gum.
They were on the road by eight. Ashley turned her focus out the window, and Roman watched in the rearview mirror as all the false happiness drained from her face.
He told himself it was better this way—better not to insinuate himself between Ashley and her problems. Better not to try to force some kind of impossible relationship that would never survive the trip. Better, in fact, not to hope.
But then he wondered … better for whom? Because Ashley didn’t look better. She looked as unhappy as he felt.
It occurred to him for the first time that maybe—just maybe—he wasn’t the same man he’d been yesterday morning. Maybe when he’d told Ashley his story, the telling had opened something up in him. Cut a knot loose. Freed him from his false belief that there was only one way, and he’d already found it.
There were other ways—of
course there were. There were countless paths through life, and Roman was starting to believe he’d taken the wrong one.
He couldn’t know where today’s journey would lead them. Ohio was all Ashley had said.
He couldn’t know whether, when they got to the end of this trip, Ashley would keep Sunnyvale or he would pursue his vision for Coral Cay. Whether he would have Ashley in his life. Whether he’d have anything at all.
But the sun was coming up over the green-carpeted Pennsylvania hills. The Escalade pulled a shining silver bullet down the road. The woman he wanted more than he wanted to be sensible sat in his backseat, chewing gum that smelled like synthetic cherries and lime, and Roman began to think that maybe—just maybe—they would both find what they needed in the nine days they had left.
Possibilities.
Moments alone, and the chance to make the most of them.
Time together that could resolve the impasse dividing them.
It could happen. Maybe he could even make it happen.
Roman smoothed his hands over the steering wheel. When he caught Ashley’s eye in the rearview, she quirked an eyebrow at him, and he winked.
Her eyes widened.
He smiled.
He lowered the window, breathed in the morning air, and followed the ribbon of road where it took him.
BY RUTHIE KNOX
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)
PHOTO: MARK ANDERSON, STUN PHOTOGRAPHY
USA Today bestselling author RUTHIE KNOX 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
Be sure to continue your Roman Holiday with Episode 6: Mistaken
“Look, now you made the girl cry,” Stanley said to Roman.
“Me? How is this my fault?”
“Treating her like garbage.” Stanley scratched his ear, squinting at a sign. “You want to turn right up here.”
Roman glanced at his navigation system. “GPS says to go another four miles.”
“The GPS is full of it. This way’s faster. Turn right.”
Roman passed the turn.
Stanley cleared his throat, lowered the window, and spat. The gob landed against the passenger-side window, where Ashley watched it smear across the glass, its stop-and-go progress a disgusting measure of their velocity.
Fuck, she thought. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
She should have pulled Roman aside and given him some pointers on how to handle Stanley. He had to be handled, or else he got defensive and prickly, and when he was in this mood, he did things like accidentally-on-purpose spit on your car, just to see if he could wind you up.
Winding people up was kind of a sport for Stanley, and Ashley absolutely hated it. But maybe Roman hadn’t noticed.
She glanced at his shoulders. Tight. Very tight.
Fuck.
Stanley began clearing the phlegm from his throat again.
“You spit on my car twice, there’ll be consequences,” Roman said evenly.
“I didn’t spit inside the car, son.”
“I’m not your son.”
“Thank the lord for small favors,” Stanley muttered.
“What did you say?”
“Guys—” Ashley interrupted.
“I said ‘Thank the lord for small favors.’ ”
“Guys—”
Season 2 begins March 3, 2014. Preorder now!
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Visit the Roman Holiday forum at http://forum.ruthieknox.com and join the conversation!
Or subscribe to the Roman Holiday mailing list at http://www.ruthieknox.com/roman-holiday-mailing-list/ to be notified when new episodes are available.
And don’t miss the Camelot series which begins with a deliciously sexy original novella, in which a good girl, Amber Clark, learns, How to Misbehave. Her brother Caleb meets headstrong Ellen and the two bump noggins—and bodies—in, Along Came Trouble. Sister Katie Clark enters a no-strings fling that looks an awful lot like falling in love—or, Flirting with Disaster. Lastly, revisit Amber and a story that will take you to new heights with a desire reinvented, Making It Last.