Free Roman Holiday: The Adventure Continues by Ruthie Knox Page B

offered him her own, he clasped it in his warm, firm grip and shook it.
    “It’s a deal,” Roman said.
    Then he smiled, dipped his head, and kissed her once, hard, squarely on the mouth.
    Only then did he take Carmen’s call.

CHAPTER THREE
    Standing on the front porch of the Sunnyvale office building, Carmen balanced her clipboard over one forearm and used her free hand to press the phone harder against her ear. The heavy thrumming of a diesel engine made it almost impossible to hear Roman.
    “…  put on hold until I get back,” he was saying. “I’ve been thinking, and—”
    “We’re done with
on hold
,” she broke in. “We’re done with thinking, too. The thinking part already happened. We called it the planning phase. Now we’re at the
doing
part.”
    “Who’s the
we
here, Carmen?”
    She lost him for a minute as high-pitched backup beeping pierced through the equipment noise.
    “…  time I checked, this was
my
project,” Roman said.
    Carmen stalked away from the noise to the far end of the porch, where she stood with her back to the parking lot. There was way too much déjà vu going on here. The porch, the clipboard, yesterday’s white suit buttoned over her stained blouse.
    Yesterday’s panties, washed out in Noah’s sink, dried over his shower rail.
    The overbright mid-morning sun made her skin feel too tight. Her rumpled skirt heated her thighs. Between her legs, she pulsed with the aftermath of those stolen hours with Noah.
    She was cheap elastic, snagged and unraveling.
    “You brought us into this project,” she said to Roman. “Now it’s ours.”
    “That answers my question.
Us
means you and Heberto.
Ours
means your father’s.”
    She heard a smile in his voice, which made her want to bare her teeth. Nothing about this conversation amused her. “I was referring to the partnership between your business interests and my father’s.”
    “Partnership? Partnership is what Heberto—”
    More beeping drowned him out.
    “—went well. We don’t have a partnership, we have a handshake agreement to develop this resort together
if and only if
I do everything the way your father thinks I should.”
    “And that’s suddenly a problem?” Carmen set down her clipboard so she could cup bothhands over her ears to hear better. “A month ago, it was the best thing that had ever happened to you. We went out for sushi to celebrate, or have you forgotten?”
    “…  forgotten … even been gone two weeks.”
    The noise had to stop. She searched the lot for someone to receive her silencing glare, but only a few of the workers were in view, and none were paying her any attention.
    “So what’s changed?” she asked. “Are you playing for a partnership? You think you can railroad Heberto into making you his partner when you can’t even manage to get eight measly buildings knocked down on schedule?”
    With a volcanic rumble, another piece of equipment started up, and all she caught of Roman’s reply were the words
fucking unfair
.
    From the far end of the property, behind one of the buildings, came an enormous crash, followed by a silence into which Roman roared, “For Christ’s sake, you’re knocking down
now
?”
    “Settle,” she said sharply. “That wasn’t what it sounded like.”
    She hoped.
    She spotted Noah crossing the parking lot. “Hang on a minute.”
    Plunking down her phone on the railing, Carmen waved both arms at him. When he didn’t look her way, she put two fingers in her mouth and whistled like a street whore.
    His head snapped around. He smiled, his delight an arrow that pierced clean through her lungs and left her breathless.
    You just saw me an hour ago
, she thought.
You can’t go through the world smiling that way. Someone will hurt you
.
    She beckoned him close enough to hear her shout, “Do you have the keys?”
    “What keys?” he called.
    “To the office!”
    He jogged across the lot, leaping from paving stone to paving stone in his eagerness.