Blindsided (Roman Holiday 3)

“You sanctimonious, conniving little—” He punched himself in the thigh. Hard. “You suck, you know that?”

The question hit her hard, because it had come from some deeper part of him that had never spoken to her before. This wasn’t groomed, perfect Miami Roman. It was some older Roman. The real Roman, maybe.

He hated her, too.

But oh, he didn’t like it that she’d seen that. Nostrils flared, Roman sucked in a breath and did that screwing-down thing with his mouth. His shoulders dropped. The lines of his suit fell into better order.

He stepped close enough that she could see the whites of his eyes and feel the tension coming off his body. The barely restrained energy. “You can’t stop it,” he said quietly. “This kind of thing—it’s not your game. It’s another whole league from your game. I’ll destroy you, Ashley. Don’t think I won’t.”

But she was already destroyed, and she’d been here before. When she was nine and her parents split up and put her in the middle of their endless, bitter custody dispute, and she’d tried to save her family but failed miserably—she’d been here.

When her mother won full custody and then proceeded to spend seventy hours a week in the lab, proving how little she cared for Ashley—when she got liver cancer and kept working with dangerous solvents anyway, when she died when Ashley was thirteen—she had been here.

When her father took her in and fought with her, ignored her, turned her over to the grandmother she’d never known—destroyed again—she’d been here.

She’d been here.

God. What was she doing?

Ashley took a deep breath and exhaled, looking down at her sandals. She took another one and released the fear and the hatred she’d clung to as an adolescent. She imagined her own negative feelings as a dark shadow in her breath, twisting through the hazy humidity and dissipating. Dissolving.

There was only one way out of this place, and it wasn’t Roman’s way or Mitzi’s way. Freezing up had never worked. Neither had fighting, hating. The only thing that had ever worked for Ashley was love. Loving her grandmother. Loving the people she met—the family she’d created at Sunnyvale, the friends and lovers she’d found in her travels.

She lifted her head and looked at Roman. Really looked at him. Wide nose, soft mouth, strong chin, broad cheekbones, two-day stubble, caterpillar eyebrows.

Roman Díaz. Her enemy. She liked him.

She liked his face, his basic decency, and—as much as it would annoy him if she ever said it out loud—his spirit.

She didn’t want him for an enemy. Whatever Mitzi said, all Ashley wanted was a chance to show him. To keep him with her for long enough to change his mind.

And yes, she had to manipulate him to make that happen. She had to threaten him, at least a little, because if she didn’t do that there was

no way he would stay with her.

But whatever he thought of her, whatever he said to her, she wasn’t going to hate him back.

I’ll destroy you, Ashley.

She lifted her hand and smoothed her thumb over one bristly eyebrow. She stroked his cheek. Ignored his flinch. “You’re welcome to give it a try,” she said. “But I think you’re going to find it’s harder than it sounds.”

CHAPTER SIX

Sunnyvale was a mess.

Carmen lifted one steel-toed work boot and stepped gingerly over a fallen gutter. Her hard hat slipped down her forehead, and she pushed it up with her phone, which had the effect of turning down the volume on Roman’s non-explanation.

It had no useful effect on the hat.

She needed a new one. Was it too much to ask for a hard hat that would sit properly on her tiny woman-head?

No. It wasn’t her head that was the problem. The world was the problem. As ever.

Still, if she had to inspect properties in conditions like this—post-hurricane, messy, possibly dangerous—she had to have the right equipment. And there was no getting out of the occasional inspection. She worked for her father, she dated Roman. She was awash in men with properties to be inspected.

Stopping, she squeezed her phone to her shoulder with her ear and made a note on her clipboard. New hard hat.

Roman was going on about … as best she could tell, nothing. He sounded strange, too. Flustered. Not like Roman at all.