Chained (Roman Holiday 1)

Noah tried to school his face to blankness, but he didn’t have nearly as much practice as Roman did. The strain showed at the corners of his eyes and the margins of his mouth. “I thought we were starting today.”

“We were. Now we’re not.”

Seconds passed. Roman waited, watching Noah mentally tick through a list of scheduling and payroll concerns.

“Look, Rome, this whole schedule is tight, and that Category Three storm that hits Haiti today is supposed to be headed for us next. By tomorrow night or Wednesday morning, they’re saying, and I don’t think—”

“She won’t last.”

“You’re sure.”

Roman was always sure.

Almost always. When he wasn’t, he faked it, which worked just as well. The important thing was not to hesitate.

“I’m sure,” he said.

But there was something about that woman. The way she’d tossed her hair back, defiant. The way she’d tried to tease him, as though he were a man to be teased.

She didn’t respect his power, and he didn’t respect her ideals. Which left him … less sure than he might have preferred.

What leverage could he bring to bear on a woman like Ashley Bowman?

“I won’t risk some piece of random debris flying over and whacking her in the head,” he said. “Keep her alive, don’t feed her, and don’t talk to her. She’ll give in by nightfall. Tomorrow morning at the outside.”

“You think?” Noah asked.

Roman put his hand on Noah’s shoulder. “I guarantee it.”

That worked. The touching thing always worked on Noah.

“All right. I’ll put Mark on the girl, and we can meet here in the morning if she hasn’t taken off yet.”

“Not Mark. You.”

“I have to do this personally?”

Roman pretended to consider. “Well, maybe not. As long as you can promise me that I won’t come back here in the morning to find out that your guy got bored and took off, or he couldn’t keep it in his pants, so, Sorry, Roman, but she’s filed an assault claim with the police, and—”

Noah raised his hands. “Got it. I’m on it.”

“And you won’t touch her.”

Noah looked befuddled. “Why would I touch her?”

“Exactly.”

Sometimes it surprised h

im, how little conception Noah seemed to have of evil. As if it were incomprehensible to him, the product of a mind so different from his own, he couldn’t bridge the mental gulf between him and it.

Roman always understood evil. He’d come from evil, born of it, marked by it, and he’d spent most of his life feeling cast out, nose pressed up against glass, looking in from the outside. It had been a long road, teaching himself to step away from the glass. To be comfortable on the outside, to embrace it, to own it.

What Roman didn’t understand was what it was like to be Noah—completely at ease with humanity, full of tender impulses and good intentions.

Why would you touch her? Because she’s pretty, and she can’t move, and you’re stronger than her. You would touch her because you can.

He’d learned not to have conversations like that with Noah. It was pointless.