Hitched (Roman Holiday 2)

And the office—it looked exactly the way it had the day he dropped by to make an offer on Sunnyvale. He’d given Ashley two weeks to clear out after the funeral, yet it appeared that she’d done nothing to prepare for his arrival. Nothing but harass him.

For the past twelve years, Roman had worked to ensure that he never got angry, or sad, or overwhelmed. That he never felt vulnerable or defeated or depressed, impassioned or inspired or giddy with joy. He’d had enough of extremes in the first two decades of his life. Now he was a machine of reason.

He didn’t enjoy passing time with unreasonable people.

Ashley stroked his wet arm, rattling off a sarcastic Airstream sales pitch in a voice rubbed hoarse by the elements while the rain lashed at them both.

“… 1976 model features allllll the modern conveniences: vista-view windows, tambour doors, luxurious shag carpeting …”

She talked like a used-trailer salesman, but she sounded like she belonged in a black-and-white movie, waving around a cigarette at the end of her elegant ebony holder. She had this low, mellow voice that didn’t go with her Brady Bunch appearance. A voice that trailed smoke everywhere she went.

Her grandmother had been a smoker. Surely Ashley wasn’t. But she had to be smoking something to be able to view this trailer with so much enthusiasm, much less to expect him to tether it to his most cherished possession.

He’d given his word.

The simplest thing would be to break it.

Sometime in the next hour or so, Carmen and Heberto would board a jet in Miami and fly to New York, where they’d weather the storm in their penthouse. That was where Roman belonged—above the city, behind glass and soundproofed walls, tucked away with the woman he wanted to marry and the man who had taken him under his wing. He yearned for the drone of the television Heberto never turned off. For the spot on the living room sofa where he always sat with Carmen, her with her laptop open and her reading glasses on, him studying the Village of Islamorada zoning rules alongside some snapshots he’d taken last week on a drive spent searching out exploitable anomalies.

That was his place, not this.

Not here, with this flip-flop-wearing, fainting, frustrating woman whose blue toenails matched the unnatural color of her eyes, and who kept pushing him in ways he didn’t wish to be pushed.

He’d given her his word.

Since when did he even have a word anyway? Since never. He had no honor. He had a murdering gusano for a father—a worm—and a foster father who’d raised him without affection and then tossed him out shortly after his eighteenth birthday. Two men who were supposed to have loved him and didn’t, only one of them honorable.

Neither of them wanted anything to do with him.

Roman lived his life now as he’d been taught by Heberto—a man who valued the market above the idealism of honor.

Idealism got men killed. Idealism was for fools. Smart men chased opportunities, made money, and built their own bulwarks against death. Heberto had learned all this in Cuba, and he’d passed what he knew along to Roman.

Which meant that Roman had no business swearing anything to anyone.

But now that he had, he found that there must be some honor in him after all, because he couldn’t imagine breaking his word.

He didn’t like Ashley Bowman, but he wasn’t going to leave her here.

He would find another way to accomplish his purpose. Take her to her people, wherever they were, and dump her there, then wait for the storm to pass and resume demolition. If Ashley came back to give him trouble, he’d call the police. That was what he should have done in the first place. Made her someone else’s problem.

Because right now Ashley Bowman was so much his problem, his skin hurt.

“Do you want to see the inside?” she asked. “There’s lots of boxes in there, but if I move them out of the way, you can get a good look at the magnificence.”

“I’ll pass.”

“Are you sure? It’s got shag! And this awesome burnt-orange velour couch thing by the window, and the cutest little kitchen with two burners and an oven and a sink, plus—”

“Let’s get this over with.”

“Fine, be like that.” She let go of his arm and braced herself against the trailer, squinting up at him in concern. “I wonder, though, are you any good with wiring? Because chances are, we’re going to have to do some fiddling in order to get the trailer’s signals and brake lights to work. Now, if you’re not good at it, no worries—I know Grandma has a box of connectors and stuff in the Airstream, somewhere, or at least she used to. I bet if I futz around for a while I can figure out—”

“You’re not futzing with my truck.”

“I kind of have to, though. I mean, if you don’t have the wiring for the lights done right, you’ll get pulled over. They’ll give you a ticket.”

“I can live with that risk.”