Ravaged (Roman Holiday 4)

“I’m not sure.”

“Did you get an ultimatum?”

Hands off the bitch, or we’re through. That was the sort of ultimatum she meant.

Not Use sex to manipulate her into letting you demolish Sunnyvale, or my father won’t be happy.

“You could say that.”

Ashley picked at her thumbnail. She lifted it to her lips and bit at it, gently. “I’m sorry I put you in that position,” she said. “I don’t—I’ve never been the other woman before. I don’t want to be now.” She tried out a bright smile and made a show of tucking her hands under her thighs. “So I’ll stop assaulting your virtue, I swear.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

A slight downward turn to her mouth made him regret putting it that way. It wasn’t her fault, what had happened last night. It had been both of them together, unhitching themselves from their common sense.

It wouldn’t happen again.

“We’re going to head out in a few hours, all right?” she asked. “Prachi said she has some old curtains and other things I might be able to use for the Airstream, so I need to go through that stuff first, but then we’d better get out of their hair.”

“Where are we going next?”

He’d given up the idea that he might not be going with her. There was Florida, Sunnyvale, Coral Cay—far away and unaffected—and then there was this trip. This thing he was doing with Ashley.

He didn’t understand what it was, but he accepted now that he was part of it, and he wouldn’t be getting off the ride until it came to a full and complete stop.

“Pennsylvania.”

“Camping?”

Ashley did a butter-churning dance with her arms. “In Virginia tonight, baby. Airstream all the way. And then again when we get to the big PA.”

Her glee was a performance. Another man might have been convinced. It was just that Roman kept looking at her eyes, and they were wrong. Too serious. Too sad.

He tried to figure out what he was supposed to be feeling about that.

Nothing. That had been his goal for so long, he’d developed a knack for it.

But he’d misplaced the knack. When he thought of breakfast, camping, sleeping bags, campfires, Pennsylvania, Ashley’s eyes—when he thought of Carmen essentially saying You can score with other women to your heart’s content—he felt a dozen things he couldn’t name. He didn’t know how to sort them into compartments or decide how to act on them, and that made his hands restless, smoothing back and forth over his pajamas.

His jeans were too dirty to wear today, and he no longer had a clean shirt.

“I’m going to need a new phone. Can we find a store before we get on the road again?”

“Sure. Let’s go shopping for real! We can buy you shorts. Little Ken-doll shorts with a belt that show off your magnificent thighs. And a Tar Heels shirt.”

“I’m not wearing a Tar Heels shirt. I went to Princeton.”

“Goodness, Roman Díaz. You are so out of my ballpark.”

He thought of Ashley then with another man between her thighs.

Ashley in the bathroom, upset, probably crying.

He stood up.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked. “You look like you want to do some pillaging.”

“I’m fine.”