Ignited (Roman Holiday 5)

“Do I have any say in the decision?”

Her shoulders straightened, and her chin came up.

He’d seen her do that before. She’d been chained to a palm tree at the time.

Whatever this was about, Ashley had already made up her mind.

“Where’s he going to sleep?”

“I told him he could have the spare bed in the Airstream.”

“Did you?”

Her arms went around her stomach.

He’d seen her do that, too. In the trailer. Her pose for doubt and discomfort.

Those kisses on the steps, beside the campfire—she regretted them now. He’d taken advantage of her sympathy, but the more she’d considered his life, the shape of it, the less sympathy she must have had. He’d never been anything but hard on her. He was her enemy still, and one step back must have been all it took for her to see how inadvisable last night had been.

He was the son of a killer, as inept at human connection as his father. A bad bet.

She knew he had nothing to offer.

Roman thought all this automatically, the fear sweeping in and then just as quickly sweeping back out.

Something was going on, but it wasn’t that. There were women who’d change their mind about him, and then there was Ashley, who never changed her mind about anyone, even when she should.

“He can’t sleep on the ground,” she said quietly.

“No. I don’t suppose he can.”

Her blue toenail polish had chipped. Her toes were wet with dew from the grass, and they looked a little blue themselves. He resisted the urge to cup her face in his hand and bring his mouth to her ear and whisper, What’s going on?

He wanted to seduce the truth out of her, each kiss softening its tiny barbs until she let go of it with a happy sigh.

He wanted to kiss her until she took him back, gave him again what he’d had with her last night by the fire. That easy heat. Her smoky laugh and the slide of her tongue against his.

The peace. The hope.

But he shut it down. This trip—this morning—this awkwardness. None of it was about him. Not in any way that was simple.

What he had to do next was calculate a way to win Ashley’s assent to the demolition before Carmen’s deadline. Not because he wanted to, but because if he didn’t, he would lose the development. He would lose Heberto, and he wasn’t prepared for that.

He wasn’t prepared to reconfigure his entire future for Ashley Bowman, and short of that, he had no business wanting anything when it came to her. No business staking claims.

“Load him up,” he said. “I’ll wait in the car.”

Finding her bag beside another that had to be Stanley’s, he loaded them both into the back of the Escalade. He climbed behind the wheel and turned over the engine, satisfied when it roared to life.

He looked on from the outside as Ashley hugged Michael goodbye and led Stanley toward the car. He tolerated the forced cheer in the jokes she made as she buckled herself into the backseat.

He tossed her the pack of gum.

They were on the road by eight. Ashley turned her focus out the window, and Roman watched in the rearview mirror as all the false happiness drained from her face.

He told himself it was better this way—better not to insinuate himself between Ashley and her problems. Better not to try to force some kind of impossible relationship that would never survive the trip. Better, in fact, not to hope.

But then he wondered … better for whom? Because Ashley didn’t look better. She looked as unhappy as he felt.