Smoke and Sin (The Perfect Gentlemen 4)

He nodded, thrilled with her honesty. In the past she would have flipped him the bird and told him to fuck himself. That nasty well of resentment inside him cooled from a boil to a simmer.

“Yeah, Zack admitted as much later on.” Roman couldn’t help but laugh. “He was never any good at physics. If he’d paid attention in class, he would have known that scooter wasn’t going to hold the two of them while they fucked.”

Gus’s lips turned up in a brilliant grin. “He also should have turned it off. I hear he still has scars on his ass from the scooter taking off and him falling buck naked into the dirt.”

“Oh, don’t forget the poison ivy he got, too.” He turned to her, their knees brushing. It felt good to sit and talk with her, just be with her, nothing but laughter between them for this sweet moment. “Why did you do it? Why did you take the fall for her?”

“Well, it was fun to watch Dax make that terrible face he always does when he thinks he’s about to throw up. He goes green. I live for that.” When he raised a brow, she caught his stare and sighed. “Fine. I did it because I didn’t care what other people thought of me. Because I learned at a young age that the people who love me won’t stop, despite the silly antics I get into. They’ll still embrace me even if I don’t conform to what society thinks a good girl should be. And the people who don’t love me don’t matter, Roman. Ally was raised to believe that her father was the be-all, end-all authority figure and there were strict rules she had to abide by in order to keep his affection. By taking the blame, I spared her that lesson…though not forever. She married a man her father didn’t approve of and he cut her off. I believe his crime was being Jewish, and Daddy wouldn’t stand for that. So much for his ‘love.’ I don’t think Ally has seen her father in years.”

“But she’s seen you.” He could guess. Gus collected strays. She was that person who everyone communicated through because she cared enough to reach out. She kept all her friends together.

“Of course.”

Friendship meant something to Augustine. She was loyal and kind. And she was fierce. If she thought a friend was in trouble, she would send in armies to save them. Or Secret Service agents. She’d done that with her brother and Holland. When he’d found out how carefully she’d plotted to watch over Holland, he’d been blown away by the lengths the woman had gone to.

She was also no damsel in distress. Augustine Spencer waited for no one to save her when she could so competently save herself.

It used to make him feel small. When he was younger, he’d so desperately wanted to be the one who saved the girl. Now that he was older, he could see how nice it would be to have a woman who didn’t need to cling, who saw a potential disaster and simply handled it.

God, he wanted to talk to her about what was happening with Zack and the other Perfect Gentlemen. She’d probably be an asset. But he and the other guys had all agreed to keep the circle closed.

“But you can’t be friends with me?” he asked. “You still talk to people you haven’t seen in years, but we can’t be friendly?”

“You don’t honestly like me, Roman. You can cast any light you like on our year together, but I know the truth. People who are merely having fun don’t sleep together for an entire year,” she pointed out. “They don’t make up any excuse to see other. They don’t sneak in and out of each other’s beds so often they lose track and can’t remember whose house they’re at. If I’d been anyone else in the world, you would have called me your girlfriend. You would have introduced me around and openly dated me.”

Was she right? It had only been after she’d left him that Roman wished he had made more of their relationship than writing it off as a year-long hurricane of lust, sex, and anger. No one brought out the fight in him quite like Gus. At the time, that had seemed like such a destructive force.

“Do you know much about my parents?”

“Only what Dax and Mad told me. I know they fought a lot. Lots of couples fight. I also know they’re still married.”

They’d mellowed some over the years. Now his father was retired and they seemed to lead a more peaceful life. “They would fight like cats and dogs, so viciously I was actually afraid they might kill each other.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Was it an abusive relationship?”

“Only when there was alcohol involved…but that was often. My mom would slap my dad then he would slap her back. And then after more screaming that would rattle the house, they would end up having unavoidably loud sex. In the morning, they’d act as if nothing had happened. They’re better now. Mom doesn’t drink at all and Dad limits himself to a beer or two, but when I’m with them all I can remember is how hard it was to sleep at night not knowing if they would both be alive when I woke up. I wondered a lot about how that cycle started. Did it begin when my father reached out in the middle of a fight and somehow threw my mom off balance? Maybe the next time he did it on purpose. I worry that I learned something terrible from him I never meant to.”

“Roman, that was forever ago. It was an accident. Believe me, if I’d thought for a second what happened on those stairs wasn’t a mishap, you would have felt my wrath.” Some unnamed emotion crossed her face and he could have sworn he saw a sheen of tears blanket her eyes before she blinked them away. She reached out, patting his arm. “So you’re saying you dumped me because we fought a lot?”

How long had he waited to have this conversation? “I didn’t dump you at all. I mean, I didn’t intend to.”

She huffed, an indignant sound. “Please. You were going on a double date with Zack the next night.”

He’d forgotten about that. How? That was the night he’d met Joy. Yet he couldn’t summon up a single memory of how the introduction—or the evening—had gone. He couldn’t remember her friend’s name or what restaurant they’d gone to. All he could remember about that night was how miserable he was knowing he wouldn’t see Augustine again. “I never intended that date to lead to anything meaningful. I was helping out Zack.”

“By your own admission, you were auditioning wives, Roman.”

“Well, I didn’t do a particularly good job, did I? Here I am, all these years later with absolutely no one at my side.”

She stood up abruptly, her movements stiff. “Yeah, well, you found your perfect woman and you let her marry your best friend.”

He felt his stomach knot. She knew about that? “I cared about Joy. I won’t lie, but it’s bee

n pointed out to me lately that I had underlying reasons for the attraction.”

“She was the opposite of me, I suppose.”

He stood, unable to hold back another minute. He hated the distance she was putting between them. The distance he’d put between them long ago. “Damn it, Augustine. Yes. She wasn’t like you and I was trying my hardest to forget you. I was trying so hard not to remember how it felt to touch you, to have your body against mine, because nothing in my entire life has ever been as exciting as fucking you. Not winning the election. Not running the Oval. Nothing has ever made me feel as alive as you.”

Her eyes had gone cold. “And no one has ever broken me the way you did, Roman.”

No one had ever made her feel small the way he had. No one had ever made her feel used. He was the only one who could bring Augustine down, and he hated that. But didn’t she understand he could do the opposite, too? They were older now. He was better able to handle the kind of relationship they’d have together.

He reached for her. He couldn’t let her walk out on him. Not again. It killed him every single time she left a room because he always felt as if he’d squandered another opportunity to bring her back into his arms again. In persuading Zack to hire her, he’d managed to draw her into his life once more, but she maintained strict distance between. Now he couldn’t let her leave without saying the one thing he should have said all those years ago.

He moved into her space, letting their bodies brush. “Don’t walk away.”

“There’s no reason to stay,” she replied. But her words sounded a little breathless. She wasn’t struggling against him and she wasn’t stepping back. Her cheeks had flushed, her eyes had darkened, the color turning deep.

“There is.” They’d left so much unsaid, undone. It had taken him years, but he’d finally figured out that what he’d had with Gus was good. This might be all he was capable of having with a woman. Moments of pleasure. If he worked it right, they could have a private and a professional relationship, keep the entanglements and the fights to a minimum. “I’m so sorry for the way things ended. I’m sorry for making you feel less than extraordinary because you are, Augustine. You are an amazing woman and I’ve missed you. I’ve missed this. Tell me you don’t feel the same and I’ll let you go.”