Roman Holiday 1: Chained: A Loveswept Contemporary Romance

by Ruthie Knox

  An odd agreement to strike, but that was one of several conditions Susan had demanded, and the sale had been too good to pass up. Sunnyvale sat smack dab in the middle of a prime stretch of real estate whose owners had purchased the land when it was going cheap after World War II and then refused to release their choke hold until the string of hurricanes in ’04 and ’05 had pushed up insurance rates and driven them out. Roman had snapped up as many as he could get the financing on, and when he’d run out of credit, he’d gone to Heberto on his hands and knees.

  In a gratifying display of faith, Heberto had bought in. Big. Roman had most of the property, the vision, and the plan: exclusive architecture in a gorgeous setting, high-end shops, a small-town feel. Heberto owned the parcels of land Roman hadn’t been able to afford. More important, Heberto’s funding and Heberto’s reputation would make it possible to build the resort hotel—a much bigger project than Roman could swing on his own.

  Coral Cay would make him, and Sunnyvale was the keystone—situated at the center of the spot where the hotel would go, with a marina that he intended to turn into a world-class beach.

  All he had to do was remove the woman who had padlocked herself to his keystone.

  He could think of any number of ways to shear her off, but he preferred to let her do it herself.

  The sort of person who bolstered her courage by singing show tunes in the dark—who cared enough for a falling-down collection of crappy 1960s rental units to plead for their rescue—she wouldn’t last long.

  He’d studied Ashley Bowman. She floated through life without attachments, never sticking to anything or anyone. She had no will. No backbone.

  Roman knew what it felt like to be in her shoes. Stunned by grief, clinging desperately to the flotsam of the life you’d just lost. Alone. Frightened and helpless.

  But he also knew how to survive it, how to wash up on the other side. His experiences had taught him how to do it.

  Hers hadn’t.

  He’d be surprised if she made it through the night.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was harder with an audience.

  Sitting alone by the tree last night hadn’t been so great, but sitting here knowing Noah was out there in his truck, listening to music, running the AC, counting down the minutes until her next sip of water?

  Much worse.

  Robbed of all dignity, Ashley felt like a performance of herself. A tasteless melodrama with a silly protagonist. If she were in the audience for this play, she would be full of critical thoughts.

  Why doesn’t she just give up?

  What does she think she’ll achieve here, heatstroke?

  But Roman had robbed her of even that outcome. He’d protected her from the elements and left her to stew in the consequences of her own choices, accompanied only by her gritching belly and a lot of self-sabotaging mind noise.

  Because he didn’t understand her at all, he thought it would take nothing more than the passage of time to break her.

  Ashley didn’t break. She bent. People who bent were nearly impossible to defeat.

  The trick was to stay flexible. She had to pee, but she had no access to a bathroom, no privacy, and no use of her hands. The only solution that offered even a modicum of dignity required her to unlock herself—not easy to achieve, but just possible.

  Ashley waited until she was sure Noah was distracted by his phone. She spent five minutes fiddling behind her back with swollen fingers and stiff wrists until she’d managed to fish out the key and release the padlock. Then she’d peed in the mulch like a sad little animal. Trembling all over, sick to her stomach, with black spots floating at the edges of her vision, she locked herself back up.

  Victory.

  Of course, the key sank into her butt crack, but that was a comparatively comfortable place for it to be.

  Later, the ants arrived. A few of them found a pathway into her bikini bottoms, and she learned that she had been wrong to think she could no longer feel her butt. Wrong to assume she’d completely lost sensation in her labia.

  She felt the ants. She felt them everywhere—their itchy, filthy little feet an outrage that made her violently wiggle, hoping to drive them out, squish them, or at least make their stay in her crotch so inhospitable that they’d be driven out in alarm.

  She must have looked like she was having a seizure because Noah came to check on her, asking what was wrong. When she told him, he repositioned her umbrella, which she recognized as the only thing he could think of to do, since he could hardly scratch her crotch for her.

  The day wore on. Roman didn’t come back. The temperature climbed toward 90 before the rain knocked it down a few degrees. The parasol funneled water directly onto her head. Rain dripped off the tip of her nose and wet her lips, gluing her hair to her neck and washing away the ant feeling.

  Ashley fell asleep with her toes twitching, dreaming of spiders crawling up her legs. She woke up unrefreshed, unsure whether seconds or minutes had passed.

  She heard Roman and Noah in the parking lot, a low murmur of sound from which individual words emerged to drift inside her ears. Quiet … water … bathroom … sandwich.

  She would kill for a sandwich.

  Noah’s truck drove off, and Roman strolled over with a white paper sack in one hand and a lawn chair in the other. The bag smelled like meat—sweet, spicy barbecue squashed inside a yeasty roll—and the fact that Ashley had been a vegetarian since shortly after her twelfth birthday did absolutely nothing to diminish the appeal of that aroma.

  Even Roman couldn’t compete, appeal-wise. He wore dark blue jeans and a short-sleeved red button-up shirt, his version of casual so straitlaced that she was surprised not to find creases ironed into his jeans. She wondered if he owned a pair of shorts. If he even had legs under there, and a pair of Jockeys with all the bits and bobbles beneath.

  Of course, she’d seen the general size and shape of the bits, if not the bobbles, when he hunkered in front of her this morning, and so far she hadn’t completely succeeded in repressing the memory.

  Nor had she forgotten the way he smelled, close up.

  He cleared his throat.

  She was staring at his crotch.

  Son of a bitch. It was his fault. The scent of barbecue-slathered pork had deranged her.

  He opened the lawn chair, sat down, and dug into the bag. Two sandwiches. After lining them up on top of the flattened paper bag on his thigh, he ate them right in front of her, one after another.

  The last time she’d had a barbecue tempeh sandwich, she’d managed to get it in her hair, but Roman didn’t even drip on his pants. His hair was as precise as the rest of him: a quarter of an inch long all over, black, shining, with a clean, straight edge at the nape of his neck. She bet he got it cut every week.

  Even his fingers were unaffected by the mess, though he carefully wiped them on a clean napkin after he’d finished.

  Ashley gave up. She hated him.

  Hated him, hated him, hated him.

  When he offered her a bottle of water, she turned her face away.

  He loped back to his hideous grinning deathmobile, and she resumed her project of staring into space, which she alternated with catnapping until one part of her body or another went numb and the pins-and-needles sensation of oxygen-deprived tissue woke her up.

  The sun set. The interior of Roman’s car glowed an eerie white-blue. It took her a while to figure out that he was reading, and whatever device he was using had a light. He sat with his head bent, his face in profile. Unmoving. Unaffected.

  She wondered if he would sleep.

  She wondered how she would last the night.

  But the time passed, and she endured it. She had done this before—kept breathing, kept going, even when she didn’t feel like it. Even when she couldn’t remember why she was bothering, why it mattered to keep fighting, why she cared.

  You have a spark of starlight in you, her grandmother had said once.

  Ashley had been thirteen ye
ars old and furious. She didn’t remember her reply. Something rude, certainly. Packed off by her father to live with an old lady she barely knew, freshly motherless, unwanted, she had converted her pain into anger and spewed it at anyone who came in range.

  A spark of starlight. So typical of her slightly mystical, open-to-anything grandmother to use words like that. Words that had sounded like a bunch of crap to Ashley.

  But they had power, too. They’d struck her and sunk inside, taken hold with gentle barbs. Because who wouldn’t want to believe that about themselves?

  And if you accepted the premise—if you acknowledged the spark—you found yourself trying to deserve it, hoping to be worthy of such a phrase. Less venomous. Less toxic.

  You found yourself changing.

  Whether the spark of starlight had been there all along or her grandmother had put it there, a seed of aspiration, Ashley didn’t know. But she knew that it was because of Susan Bowman that the light hadn’t gone out.

  Which only made the clamor of the questions more confusing. Why Grandma hadn’t given Sunnyvale to Ashley in her will, as she always used to say she would. Why she hadn’t told Ashley that the cancer was back. Why she’d chosen not to call, instead growing sicker and going into hospice care and dying without Ashley knowing any of it was happening.

  Why she hadn’t called Ashley home from Bolivia when she must have known—simply must have known—that Ashley loved her more than anyone on this earth, and that she would have considered it a privilege to hold her hand and smooth her blankets, to ease her from this world into the next.

  So many things Ashley didn’t understand. So many questions, and the burning brick of pain at the base of her spine made it impossible to think very hard about answers.

  But some things didn’t require thinking. Some things she just knew.

  The wind was picking up—a storm coming.

  She had a spark of starlight in her.

  And if Roman Díaz thought she would beg, he had another think coming.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Roman skirted around the hood of the Escalade, transferring his phone from one ear to the other as he reached for the door handle. The wind pushed hard against his back, and he had to wrench the car open. When he let the wind shove it closed behind him, the sudden silence inside the vehicle put Carmen’s voice at far too high a volume.

  “—that’s a problem? Because Heberto was not thrilled when he heard about the woman. Not thrilled at all, Roman.”

  “She’s not a problem.”

  In truth, Roman had upgraded Ashley Bowman from problem to threat at sunrise, when he’d carried her a bottle of water. The wind whipping her hair around had put him in mind of Medusa, her head covered with snakes, her narrowed eyes too cool, too calm. She’d looked seductively dangerous.

  Not as though she might turn him to stone, because that didn’t seem like her style. No, the thought he’d had was that she was the sort of woman who could lure a man into the rocks and destroy him.

  He wouldn’t be lured. Not by her.

  Not by anyone.

  But it was clear that no easy capitulation would be forthcoming from Ashley. It was time to negotiate.

  “And by ‘not a problem’ you mean she’s gone, you’ve got the site locked down and secure, and you’re prepared to evacuate?” Carmen asked.

  Roman wiped his free hand over his face. Stubble rasped against his palm, and he yearned, briefly, for a hot shower and clean clothes. He would feel more in control of the situation if he looked more like a man who had control.

  How you feel is unimportant.

  The point is not to feel anything at all.

  “No, she’s still here,” he clarified. “But in an hour, she’ll be gone.”

  “I don’t need to tell you what happens if she gets hurt.”

  “No. I’ll handle it.”

  “You’d better. Are you going to make it back to go with us to New York?”

  Carmen’s father had a penthouse apartment in Manhattan that he flew to whenever a hurricane threatened South Florida. This one didn’t look like it would make it to Miami—Dade County wasn’t evacuating—but Heberto wouldn’t let that keep him from using it as an excuse for a change of scenery. “What time are you leaving?”

  The rain began, loud as gunshots against the windshield. Roman could barely hear Carmen when she replied, “Sometime in the next few hours.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Give me a call and let me know.”

  “Will do.”

  The call disconnected. Carmen rarely wasted time on goodbye. She wasn’t a big fan of hello, either, or of the sort of pleasantries that might slow her down. It was one of the things Roman found so appealing about her. Married to Carmen, he would be able to cut out so much of the bullshit.

  He put his phone away and allowed himself a moment to appreciate the appeal of that life—the big, expensive house he didn’t own yet. The walk-in closet, his row of suits opposite hers, their dressing and undressing a neat, effortless trick that repeated itself endlessly.

  They could talk business over the dinner table. Attend social events together. It would be secure, and it would be easy.

  He looked out the window. The sky had disappeared, or perhaps encroached. Everything was gray, the palm fronds like open arms, thrashing toward the heavens. A helpless, unpleasant landscape that he would prefer not to enter.

  But his preferences didn’t matter.

  Roman got out of the car.

  By the time he reached the palm tree, his socks were wet. The umbrella Noah had set up to protect Ashley from the weather had tipped even farther askew, dumping rainwater onto the back of her neck.

  Her eyes remained defiant.

  “The worst of the storm’s supposed to arrive by late afternoon, but I don’t know,” he said. Turning up one palm, he let the stinging rain pelt it and manufactured a concerned sort of wince. “I think it’ll be sooner than that.”

  She pressed her lips together.

  “It’s dangerous to be out here,” he said. “We could be killed.”

  “In a Category Three? Ha. We’ll get wet, that’s about it.”

  “It’s a Four now.”

  Her forehead wrinkled, as he had known it would. This woman was carefree, not careless. She would evacuate for a Category Four, and it would never occur to her to wonder if he was lying.

  “The situation has changed.” He made his voice gentle—tough to do, with the rain so loud, but he tried to project the feeling with his eyes, too. Sincere concern.

  He dropped to his knees, allowing the water to soak through his jeans because he knew she would notice, and she would think it meant something.

  Her nose twitched. She blinked rapidly, clearing water from her lashes. “Wow,” she said breathlessly, and he anticipated her capitulation.

  Wow. you’re right.

  Which is why it startled him when she said, “You are so full of shit.”

  For a moment he forgot to be smooth, and he forgot to calculate. He just shot back, “I am not.”

  “You are, too. you’re trying to make me think you care about me, that you’re actually worried for me. You. The man who ate two barbecued sandwiches right in front of the starving woman last night. How gullible do you think I am?”

  “I don’t think you’re gullible. I admire your tenacity.”

  That startled him, too. To realize, after he said it, that it was true.

  “Well, admire this. I’ve weathered a lot of hurricanes, and I’m smart enough to understand that this storm is worse news for you than for me. You need my cooperation more than ever.”

  “If you stay here, you could be killed.”

  “And if I get killed, you’re completely fucked.”

  Roman sat back on his heels.

  She was right. This skinny, sunburned, irritating woman with mulch sticking to her legs held all the cards, and she knew it.

  “Why so quiet?” she asked.

  He could hear
her glee now. How had he missed it before? She had been waiting for this moment, and he should have guessed. He’d done his homework. He should have known that the daughter of a university chemist and a U.S. senator would be intelligent enough to trap him, even if she had frittered away all the advantages she’d been given on a string of pointless jobs and worthless affairs.

  He’d underestimated her.

  Heberto would be disappointed in him.

  “Don’t you want to ask me if I’m cold?” she asked. “Maybe bring me a raincoat? Or, oh! I know! You could tell me how if something happened to me, it would weigh on your conscience.”

  “I don’t have a conscience.”

  He’d managed not to snap at her. Just.

  “Yeah, Ace, I’d kind of figured that out.”

  “What do you want?”

  “A phone.”

  “No.”

  “I want to call my friend to come pick me up.” She threw him a smile that showed small, uneven teeth.

  He imagined two rows of them, sharp and deadly as a shark’s.

  He imagined her taking a bite out of his thigh. Blood and exposed bone.

  Why did that make his dick throb? Something wrong with him.

  He shut it down.

  “If I give you a phone, you’ll use it to call the Herald to tell them how your life is in danger, but your cause is too righteous to abandon.”

  “Ooh, that’s a good idea. I hadn’t thought of the Herald, but you’re right, the story is totally strong enough to hook them. Especially if you’re a big deal in Miami.” She bounced up and down against her restraints, as though her happiness might burst out everywhere if she didn’t express it somehow. “You are, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  Not yet. But there were people at the Herald who would recognize his name. People who would know of his connection to Heberto Zumbado and enjoy splashing this story of big-business greed victimizing a defenseless woman all over the front page.