by Ruthie Knox
She would even photograph well, despite being all wet. Because she was all wet. Her T-shirt stuck to her body, accentuating the inadequate swell of her breasts. Her legs were sticks, her hips practically nonexistent.
Too blond, too thin, too helpless. Just the sort of woman three-quarters of American men wanted to bang.
Or rescue.
Both, really.
The publicity would ruin him.
“No phone,” he repeated. “What are your other demands?”
“What is this, a hostage negotiation?”
The question made him queasy—a sudden, dizzying heaving in his stomach as he dragged his eyes away from her face. His gaze settled on a palm tree. Its widespread, waving arms made him think, inanely, of a starfish that had been flipped onto its back and left without hope of rescue.
She hadn’t meant to do it. That hadn’t been a sly reference to the worst day of his miserable childhood, because she knew nothing of that. No one knew.
No one knows you. You have no people.
He had only this life that he’d made for himself, and it hung in the balance now. It dangled from her fingertips.
He would give her anything she demanded. Anything.
But she didn’t know that.
Roman inhaled deeply, willing his disobedient stomach to settle.
So long as she never found out, he should be fine.
CHAPTER FIVE
The thing about bluffing was that everybody thought they were good at it, but that didn’t mean they were.
She’d learned from the best, though. Stanley, one of her favorite Sunnyvale regulars, had taught her not to commit to a hand too soon. To watch and wait for her moment.
Some people can bluff by keeping their face blank, but that’s not you, he’d said, in a rare burst of effusiveness. You got to bluff by pretending to feel something you don’t.
Confidence, usually. But disappointment also worked. Adolescent anger, and then, when she raked the chips across the table, saucer-eyed surprise. Oh, golly! How did that happen?
Ashley was good at bluffing, so it didn’t surprise her that she’d managed to bluff her way right into the upper hand. She had Roman Díaz now, and both of them knew it.
The question was, what on earth was she going to do with him?
“What are your other demands?” he’d asked, and she’d been flippant, because she had no demands. She was outmatched here—planless, pantsless, cold and sore and hungry and stupid.
But he didn’t seem to get that. He’d seemed to go still in the face of her flippancy, to turn to stone for a moment, as though she’d said something horribly, deeply hurtful when she asked if this was a hostage negotiation.
She hadn’t, though. There was no reason for her to feel this twinge of empathy.
And even if there were a reason, this was war. She had to be ruthless. In a hostage situation, the first order of business was to secure safe passage.
“I want a truce,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
“If I agree to be unlocked and to leave, you have to agree not to knock this place down when my back is turned.”
“You think I’ll demolish a bunch of buildings during a hurricane?”
“I don’t know what you’ll do. That’s why I want a truce.”
“Fine.”
“No, not fine. I’ll say when it’s fine.” She straightened a little, pleased with how ballsy she sounded. The movement made her shoulder feel as though someone was trying to saw it off, dampening her enthusiasm. “I can’t even consider agreeing to a truce with you until I know if you’re a man of your word. Are you a liar, Mr. Díaz?”
“Pointless question. If I’m an honest man, I say no. If I’m a liar, I say no.”
“Yeah, but I want to hear how you say it.”
Rainwater ran in a rivulet down his neck to be absorbed in the collar of his shirt. The same short-sleeved red shirt from yesterday evening—he’d slept in the car, and he hadn’t left or changed his clothes.
He knelt on the ground beside her with bare, wet arms and a night’s beard growth on his jaw, and he looked more human than he had yesterday.
Their eyes met.
There was nothing there.
“I lie,” he said.
And then she had to shake her head, because things were getting seriously fogged up inside her brain. She believed him. She was one hundred percent certain he was telling her the truth about being a liar.
What the hell was she supposed to do with that?
“Did you lie about the hurricane being a Category Four?”
“I might have.”
“It’s still a Three.”
He shrugged. “Either way, they’re evacuating.”
“Why should I believe anything you say?”
“I’ll give you my word. When I give my word, I keep it.”
“What will you swear on, your honor? Your immortal soul? The life of your mother?”
“I don’t swear on anything. I just swear.”
“You’re a liar, but you keep your word-that’s-based-on-nothing when you bother to swear it.”
“Yes.”
God help her, she believed that, too. And it wasn’t like she had much of a choice—she couldn’t remain attached to a palm tree with a hurricane coming.
“So, safe passage. You give me your word. You won’t come back here or send anyone else here to knock this place down until the hurricane’s gone and we’ve both had a chance to—to regroup.”
Though how did you regroup, exactly, when you’d lost everything?
You regroup with your group.
Right. She needed people. Since it was August, not wintertime, her snowbirds were flung all over the country, but she could get to Mitzi—and Mitzi was really the best person, given the situation.
Roman inhaled, preparing to speak, but Ashley cut him off. “And I want you to drive me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You need to evacuate me.”
The plan took shape even as she spoke. Mitzi. Of course. One of her grandmother’s closest friends and a born schemer, Mitzi would know what to do. She would tell Ashley how to save Sunnyvale, and if Ashley brought Roman to her—well, that would be perfect. Ashley would have time to get to know him in the car. She’d discover his weaknesses. Figure out his tells. And then when she turned him over to Mitzi—
Mitzi would fix this.
“You have to give me a ride.” To Georgia. “To the house of a friend of mine, because I need somewhere to stay.” And she’ll know how to cut you off at the knees. “And you have to swear not to knock Sunnyvale down.” Until I’ve had time to figure out how to rescue it. “And you have to give me a chance.” To bluster and flail wildly until you’re so distracted by my incompetence, you don’t know what hit you when Mitzi tells me how to deliver the knockout punch.
“What kind of chance?”
“To explain. In the car. A fair hearing.”
“What constitutes a fair hearing?”
“When I talk, you listen. When I ask you a question, you answer it. Same goes for me. And nobody lies.”
“If I do all this—give you my word that I will evacuate you to your friend’s house—”
“With my belongings,” she interrupted.
The eyebrow lifted.
She tried to look innocent. “I need some clothes to change into. And a few incidentals.”
“—that I will evacuate you to your friend’s house with your belongings, and that I won’t give the demolition order until we’ve had a chance to regroup—”
“Or allow anyone else to demolish it.”
“I don’t allow anyone to demolish my properties but me.”
“What about Noah?”
“He works for me. I supervise.”
“You’re a bit of a control freak, aren’t you?”
His nostrils flared, just for a microsecond.
Ha! Victory. She was getting on his nerves.
“If I commit to all of that, you’ll unlock yourself and come away from here. And you’ll agree not to speak with the press about any of what’s happened.”
“I won’t call any journalists during our regrouping period,” she said. “After that, all bets are off.”
A stiff nod. “I accept. You have my word.”
“Cool.”
He crossed his arms. The rain had turned his shirt black except for a dry red strip beneath his armpits. It stuck to his shoulders and stomach, displaying the outline of each pectoral muscle and the hard, round shapes of his deltoids.
More than excellently proportioned. He was some sort of Latino Canadian god.
But with that blank expression, he didn’t look quite real. They were Ken-doll muscles. Injection-molded PVC.
Not her type. Not even a little bit.
“Turn around,” she said.
“Why?”
“I have to fish the key out of my butt crack, and I don’t want you to watch.”
She looked for a fissure in his Ken-doll perfection, but he gave her nothing. He stood up and turned around.
She felt triumphant. They were leaving, but on her terms. He’d given his word, so he had to take her to Mitzi now, and Ashley would have two days to bait him and sweet-talk him and argue with him on the way there—whatever it took to figure out where he was weakest so she could give Mitzi the ammunition necessary to crack this man wide open.
He couldn’t be hollow inside. There was a beating heart in there somewhere. Blood and hidden organs. Mitzi would know which one to step on, and then Ashley would do it. She’d do whatever it took to get Sunnyvale back.
But if she didn’t get it back …
She couldn’t finish the thought. When she tried to flip the key around, she dropped it. Her fingers had become alarmingly fat and incompetent since she’d last had to do this in the middle of the night. She couldn’t feel her pinky at all, in fact, or the back of her right thigh.
She hoped her mind wasn’t as incompetent as her body. Once her head cleared, she might just realize that her advantage had been illusory, and Roman had already beaten her.
Ah, well. She’d cross that bridge when she came to it. First she had to get unlocked.
“I need help,” she said. “I dropped the key.”
“Dropped it where?”
“On the ground.”
He turned and lowered himself to one knee to retrieve the key from behind her.
His shoulder brushed her arm, and she craned her head toward him, even though she couldn’t see anything. Just cold, wet, dark red fabric plastered over a mass of muscle. The side of his neck. The curved shape of his ear and the whorled growth pattern of his hair near the crown of his head, like wood grain.
It would curl, she thought. Right there at the crown, and in the space between his ear and hairline, it would curl if he let it grow even a tiny bit longer.
It wanted to curl.
But he didn’t want it to.
“What would you have done if I dropped it down my pants?” she wondered aloud. “Called in reinforcements, I bet. Or found a way to document how very little you enjoyed the inadvertent groping.”
“I would have gone indoors for a hanger.”
“You would not stick a wire hanger down my bikini.”
“Try me.”
Suddenly, the pressure at her wrists eased, and her shoulders dropped forward. It hurt so horrifically much, tears sprung to her eyes. “God,” she said. She fell to all fours, turning her face away so he wouldn’t see how much pain it caused her just to move.
Worse than the last time she’d gone to the bathroom. Black hands clapped in from the sides of her vision, and she lowered her forehead to the ground very quickly, because it was going that way whether she approved of its decision or not.
She stayed there, breathing, until her legs began to cramp. Then she straightened them and lay flat on her belly on the ground and hated Roman Díaz.
Hated him, hated him, hated him.
“Ashley,” he said.
“Shut up.”
“Ashley. It’s time to go.”
She turned her head so she could see him. He held out his hand.
I despise you.
But she took it, and it was big and wet and radiating heat, like holding a warm cat against your stomach on a cold night. Which she’d actually never done, but people did it in books. In the Little House books, they’d even gone to bed with a hot pan. She’d always wanted to be like Nellie Oleson on the reruns. Those golden curls with the meat name. Bacon curls. No. Sausage? Or—
Roman pulled her to her feet, and she had to close her eyes again and press her lips tight to keep the painful fireworks inside, where he couldn’t see them.
They exploded and exploded and exploded against her eyelids.
Jesus, what had she done to herself?
“Okay?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He let go, and everything skewed sideways and slid off, and then he had a hand beneath her arm, a bruising grip that made her want to bite his smug beautiful face off. If she could even open her eyes, she would totally do it.
She did the next best thing.
“Roman?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“That Escalade has a trailer hitch, right?”
It did. She’d seen it.
But he hesitated a long time before he said, “Yes.”
No lying. Clever of her to have thought to bind him that way.
“Because I have this trailer.”
“No trailer.”
She opened her eyes. Water dripped off his nose into her eye socket, and she blinked. She couldn’t feel her knees at all.
“It’s an Airstream,” she said solemnly. “A real beauty. you’re going to love it.”
“I don’t … trail things.”
She’d finally managed to appall him. It was such a delightful thing to see his wide nostrils and the corners of his mouth dragged down as though someone had caught them with invisible fishhooks. She wanted to do a little dance.
Maybe later, when her legs recovered.
“You said you’d take me with my belongings. You promised.”
“I thought you meant a duffel bag. Possibly a suitcase.”
“I meant an Airstream trailer.”
“That’s devious.”
She smiled. “I know.”
And because she wanted to rattle him some more, she made a monumental effort and flung her arms around his neck. It hurt her shoulders so badly, she thought she might die, but she rose up on her toes anyway, ignoring the inevitable leg cramp, and kissed him smack on the lips, hard.
Nice juicy lips. But even nicer, the intensification of everything horrible in his expression. His eyes had gone to slits, and his nostrils were all Minotaur-like. And he was spotty all of a sudden, his lovely brown skin covered in dark, fuzzy-edged blotches that …
Actually, no. That was her vision.
“Buddy,” she said sweetly, as the clapping hands returned, “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
And then she fainted, and he caught her.
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.
http://www.ruthieknox.com
Be sure to continue your Roman Holiday with Episode 2: Hitched
* * *
“You really shouldn’t get sexually involved with your boss,” Ashley said. “It’s such a bad idea. This one time, I was working at a swim-with-dolphins place, and—”
“She’s not my boss,” Roman shot back.
“But you are sleeping with her.”
No response from him.
“Or maybe you just want to be? If so, I’d lay off the kitten thing. you’ll never get her to give it up that way.”
“Don’t be crude.”
“What, you’re not trying to get her to give it up? You are straight, aren’t you?”
“None of this is open for discussion. It’s private. My private business.”
It was. And her heart was pounding, her head full of imaginary versions of Roman’s Carmen. Long, thick black hair. Lush curves packed into a designer suit.
Killer high heels.
She didn’t like these visions—this physical reaction—but if Roman’s locked-down mouth was any indication, he didn’t like it even more.
“Maybe it’s not open for discussion, strictly speaking, but here we are, stuck together for however many hours, and you’ve already kissed me. We should probably—”
“I didn’t kiss you. You kissed me. If I’d had any warning, I would have stopped you.”
“Okay, well, all I was trying to say is that we should get this stuff all out in the open. Like, I should probably tell you that I’m not currently involved with anybody. There was a guy with the nonprofit in Bolivia, Chad, but he came back to the States a few weeks before I did, and anyway he wasn’t all that in the sack. Not bad on oral, but—”
“Ashley,” he interrupted. “I’m not interested in your sexual exploits.”
