Ravaged (Roman Holiday 4)

That she would let him, if he tried it.

More dangerous than dangerous, this woman.

After a minute, she tore off the sheet and returned. “Here. You can find this stuff, okay?”

He looked it over, but it was her handwriting that caught his attention. Steeply angled, precise, almost masculine. He’d expected round, looping letters and i’s dotted with circles or even tiny little hearts.

“Okay,” he said.

The list gave him an excuse to walk away from her.

He walked as far away from her as he could get.

CHAPTER TWO

Parked on the cul-de-sac outside Prachi and Arvind’s house, the Airstream looked like an enormous metal turd. Ashley stood a few feet beyond Roman’s Escalade, sweltering and feeling like the human equivalent.

Roman still had his seatbelt on. He hadn’t budged from the car. When she realized he wasn’t getting out, she’d had to throw the passenger door open so she could talk to him.

“What do you think?” she asked.

She sounded squeaky, nervous, which was dumb. Inside the house were two members of her Sunnyvale family. Money didn’t matter to family. They would take her in, even if she was a little sleep-creased and bleary. Possibly a bit smelly. A lot intimidated by the privileged gorgeousness of the neighborhood they called home.

Even if she should have phoned ahead to warn them but hadn’t, and even though it was dinnertime, they would welcome her.

And besides, what would she have said if she’d phoned anyway?

I’m coming to visit so you can help me convince a strange man not to destroy Sunnyvale.

Yeah, no. Better to just show up.

She had thought. Until she saw their place.

“What do I think about what?” Roman asked.

She gestured at the two-story vision in butter-yellow siding set beneath sheltering trees and a classic Carolina blue sky. The rest of the street boasted equally lovely, architecturally unique homes. Beyond it, out of sight, a facsimile village butted up against a facsimile farm—just like a village of old, if a village of old had possessed a gourmet restaurant, an inn, gorgeous gardens, hiking paths, chic shops, an independent bookstore, and bucolic cows.

“This place. Nice, huh?”

Roman rasped his hand over his jaw. “I think the development expanded too fast in a shaky market, and now they have too many open units.” He pointed at the slightly faded FOR SALE sign in front of the house. “This place is worth half a million dollars, tops, but I bet they bought it ten years ago for eight hundred thousand. What do these people do for work?”

“Prachi’s an administrator at UNC, and Arvind is an athletic trainer.”

Roman nodded. “They’ve been coming to Sunnyvale in the winter for a long time?”

“Five years, maybe? It’s the first place they’ve ever come back to for more than one winter break. They used to travel to a different warm place every year.”

“That’s because they’re house rich and cash poor,” he said. “How old?”

“I think they’re in their late sixties? Arvind looks younger because he does a ton of yoga.”

“Retired?”

“Not yet.”

“They’ll end up unloading it for three-fifty, I bet. I could sell it for five hundred. Not a bad profit.”

There was something in his expression, not quite a smile but a kind of lightness behind his face. “You’re really pleased with yourself now, huh?” she asked.