Smoke and Sin (The Perfect Gentlemen 4)

“I expected you to fight me more,” Roman said as he locked the door to the room they would share tonight.

Gus set down the small bag of items they’d purchased before the shops closed. They’d spent the early evening in the village. Since she’d planned to head back to London, she hadn’t come prepared to spend the night.

She certainly hadn’t intended the rest of the evening to be so pleasant. They’d had tea and talked to a few locals. They continued on to some of the stores, poking about and asking members of the community subtle questions while they shopped for a few necessities.

“About spending the night with you?” Gus asked, pulling out the toothbrush she’d bought.

“Staying in the same room. And yes, spending the night with me.”

She could guess what he was really saying. “No, we’ve done that plenty of times. What you really meant was having dinner and shopping in public while holding your hand.”

He’d done the latter incessantly. He’d told her it was best if everyone in the village saw them as a couple—less suspicious—but he’d done it even when no one was around. Roman’s mixed signals were making her crazy.

“All right…I guess so. Yeah. It was nice. Spending time together without talking business felt surprisingly good.”

It had felt good. They’d talked about their past—not the heartbreaking parts, but some of the good times. He’d reminded her that before their falling out, they’d had a lot in common, shared a similar sense of humor. They also shared a lot of memories—the teenage antics of the Perfect Gentlemen. Gus had managed to get her brother’s friends out of a scrape or two, as well.

“You may not see it, but I always thought of you as the original girl in the gang.” A smile played at Roman’s lips as he crossed to the small desk and laid his briefcase on it. “You know we were all kinds of intimidated by your big attitude in the beginning. Well, everyone but Connor.”

“Connor spent summers with me. He viewed me as a big sister, nothing else. The rest of you were horny boys, and I was just the queen of all of your teenage fantasies.”

“I will not deny that.” He opened the tiny closet and hung up the slacks and blouse they’d found for her. Not her usual designer stuff, but it would do. She should be able to sneak into tomorrow’s afternoon meetings without raising brows. “But I like to think we were also friends.”

“I was your bail-out girl,” she corrected, trying to keep the conversation light. “You know I charged Dax interest, right? Ten percent. It was a good business model.”

Roman eased out of his suit coat. “You did not.”

“Oh, I did.” The memories played through her mind. “I also charged him mileage. It wasn’t an easy trip from my university to wherever the hell you guys got caught. And then I usually had to bribe someone to keep your stupidity out of the press.” She gave a little gasp. “Holy shit, Roman. I was already working publicity for Zack, even back then.”

He chuckled, the sound warm and inviting. “You were, and you were absolutely the person we called when we were in trouble. I think we all missed you during our years apart.”

She placed the toothbrush and other sundries in the small and thankfully private bathroom. The B&B was a charming old English manor house. It looked like Roman had rented out the Lord’s suite since it was much larger than she’d expected.

But once she was done arranging her temporary things, Gus had nothing left to do but stare at the clock and try not to think about why they’d missed her. Because she’d been foolish enough to give her heart to one of them. He’d merely thought of her as a fuck buddy.

Gus sighed. “It’s been nice watching the guys finally get their shit together. I never thought Bond would find a woman who could handle him.”

The air of sadness that had briefly loomed over Roman evaporated, and he smiled again. “Oh, Everly can. When we first met her I couldn’t believe Mad had hired her as his security chief. I thought it had to be one of his jokes. Or hookups. Of course, at the time, we didn’t know she was his half sister.”

“I would love to have seen Mad handle his sister falling for his best friend.”

“You know what you really should have seen? Everly basically handed your brother his ass when she decided she wasn’t taking Gabe’s shit anymore. Unfortunately, she nearly walked into a sea of reporters, so Dax had to force her back inside. She did not accept their manhandling well. Connor had to take her down.”

Oh, she wished she’d been there to see her big Navy captain baby brother get a verbal smacking down by Everly. “I like her. I like Lara, too, and Holland is everything I could have wanted for my brother. He just handled their relationship like a dumbass when he first met her.”

“He did. But even when your brother was at his stupidest, you watched over her. You knew how much he cared about her and you sent someone to protect her,” Roman mused as he fiddled with the big fireplace. He found a switch and it poofed into life.

That embodied Roman’s whole existence. No taking hours to start a roaring fire. He merely found the right switch and it stoked to life for him. It was why she sometimes forgot that he was merely a man, with all their insecurities and troubles. “I knew something was going on, that Holland had put herself in a bad position. I merely sent in backup.”

“You’re a remarkable woman, Augustine Spencer. I don’t know if I really understood that until recently.” He found the crystal decanter of Scotch the hosts had left for them and poured two drinks.

Gus sank to the comfy couch, the fire already warming her. “You’re larger than life yourself, Roman.” Now was the time. She didn’t want to fight with him, but he’d bent a lot this evening. She should probably return the favor. Since they were warm and getting along…and she only had two more hours before she was supposed to meet Deep Throat. If she didn’t tell Roman about the meeting now, it would be too late. “You handle everything that gets thrown at you with reason and intelligence.”

Gus hesitated. If she told him about the meeting now, how fast could he get a helo up here? Zack didn’t have Marine One at his fingertips in the UK, but Gabe had some pretty serious connections in the aeronautics field. And he knew lots of billionaires.

Roman stood over her, two glasses in his hand. He’d chucked his tie and opened the first two buttons of his dress shirt, giving her an intriguing glimpse of what she knew to be a spectacular chest. He looked yummy and sexy. And very suspicious. “Reasonable? That is not a word you usually use to refer to me.”

“An oversight on my part.” She took the glass from his hand and wished she wasn’t about to ruin the companionable state they’d found. The old Gus would have blurted it out, ripped the bandage off, and told him what she was doing. Her younger self had been a bit of a reckless bitch. Now she wanted some peace with this man. “What do you think about the lady who said she remembered Constance and a woman hanging out at the pub?”

He stared for a moment, the

n sank down on the couch beside her. “Is that what she said? So hard to tell…”

He really did struggle with English country dialects. “Yes. She said she remembered seeing Constance in town a few times because she was always dressed up.”

“Posh,” Roman recalled. “She said Constance was a posh snob.”

“Nob,” she corrected. Seeing powerful, always-in-control Roman out of his Beltway element was almost cute. She wished they could go to Paris so she could watch him depend on her to order food and navigate the city because he didn’t speak a lick of French, which she’d mastered long ago. “It’s slang for a wealthy person. And for a tiny penis. But I think we can safely say the elderly lady we were talking to was using the word in the former sense, not the latter.”

“Probably,” he allowed. “She said she’d seen Constance with a man and a woman at different times.”

“The man was probably Franklin. But the woman…” Gus shook her head, replaying the conversation they’d had with the local workers behind the counter at one of the shops. “She said Constance was with a younger woman, right? But she didn’t remember much except that she’d been a blonde whom Constance appeared to know well. Did Joy take any trips here to visit Zack’s mom?”

Roman’s jaw tightened momentarily, the way it always did when she brought up Joy. “I’m sure she did. You know she and Constance were close. And I think she viewed dealing with Constance as one of her roles as Zack’s wife. When we get back to DC, I can probably find Joy’s calendars. She kept them. I think Zack boxed them up after she died and had them moved into storage, along with all her other things, since he couldn’t bring himself to give them away. And I don’t think he wants to deal with them now.”

“Well, some of her things should be preserved for his presidential library. When we get back, I’ll recruit Holland and Sara to help me go through her things.”

Roman shook his head. “How do you do it? How do you compartmentalize like that? You offering to do that makes you one hell of a saint.”