Hitched (2 page)

“Isn’t it gorgeous?” Ashley crooned.

Roman saw nothing that would inspire her use of the word. The camper could only be called ramshackle. For some ungodly reason, the windows that wrapped around one blunt end had been covered from the inside with tinfoil—badly. Whoever had done the job had used black electrical tape that had loosened since its application, and the foil on the largest window hung suspended by one solitary square of tape.

A pressed-metal identification plate beneath the window declared this beast to be an Airstream Sovereign “land yacht,” but to Roman it looked like an albatross. A white whale.

A sleeping contagion, resting quietly on four balding tires.

He kicked one. Too soft—it needed air. The trailer hitch was rusty, and a large wooden wedge lay on top of it, its presence a mystery that Roman couldn’t solve.

The screen door didn’t sit flush. It looked like a gust of wind might tear it off at any moment. He counted seven dents in the body before Ashley pressed her breasts against his arm and distracted him from his inventory.

She hung on him like a lover. The urge to shake her off nearly overwhelmed him.

He didn’t want her hands on him. She was so … disorderly. She’d showered and put on clothes, but she wore flip-flops with her raincoat, and she’d used the last few minutes of the reprieve he’d granted her to put a fresh coat of blue polish on her toenails.

Who wore sandals in a downpour? What purpose did toenail polish serve? She ought to be checking the hurricane readiness of the property or emptying the contents of the fire safe—if they even had a fire safe, which he had to admit seemed unlikely. With Hurricane Minnie on the way, it was a time to be gathering up essential records as a hedge against potential disaster. It was a time for lesser people to
panic
, and though he didn’t want Ashley to, per se, he didn’t want her painting her toenails, either.

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.”

“Ah. Big risk-taker, huh? I guess that’s why you want to develop this property. God knows there’s not much money in it. I mean, Grandma and I got by okay, but we ate a lot of those Cup Noodles when I was a kid, and I think maybe that’s not your thing. Where are you from anyway?”

“Miami.”

“No you’re not.”

“I live in Miami.”

“Yeah, but where are you
from
?”

“Can we not do this?”

She would be unbearable if she knew where he was from. If she knew the whole story.

“You promised to have honest conversations with me.”

“I didn’t promise to do it while we were hooking up the truck in the rain.”

“You have an accent,” she said.

“No I don’t.”

“You said
ruf
yesterday. You’re, like, Canadian.”

Roman bent over the trailer hitch. Water dripped from his forehead. “How do I jack this up?”

“Do you even speak Spanish?”

“Of course I speak Spanish.”
Badly.

“Hasta el mes pasado, vivaba en Boliva. Hablo español bastante bien. ¿De donde eres, Honduras?”

“My parents were from Cuba.” He pronounced it like a Cuban—
Coova
—in the hope that she would accept that bit of evidence and shut up.

“Really? And they named you Roman?”

“Roman was my father’s name.”

“Weird.”

“Thanks.”

It barely stung. When you were named Libertad Roman Ojito Díaz—when you were a small, dark-skinned kid among a sea of Caucasian middle-schoolers in Nowhere, Wisconsin—you got used to comments about your name. Ashley’s “weird” was nothing compared to roll call on the first day of school. An annual visit to hell.

“But you’re not really Cuban.”

“I’m not, huh?”

“No, I mean you’re Cuban, but you didn’t grow up with Cubans.”

“Because I say
roof
wrong?”

“Because you had to think hard to translate when I spoke Spanish to you.”

She’d caught that.

She caught everything.

If he spent too much time with this woman, she would take him to pieces and scatter him all over, like the monkeys did to the Scarecrow in
The Wizard of Oz.

Roman always used to hide behind his sister, Samantha, when the monkeys came on. Now he had no one to hide behind. He’d found, though, that it was possible to hide inside yourself. It took patience, and practice.

He was very good at it.

“I grew up in Wisconsin.”

“Not Canada?”

“Not Canada.”

“Damn. Canada would have been a lot cooler.”

He let out a long breath. “Now will you please tell me how to jack up the trailer?”

“I’ll do you one better, Cheesehead. I’ll show you.” She bent over, staggered, and put her hand out to balance against the hitch, knocking the block of wood to the ground. “Oopsie. Little light-headed.”

She remained bent over for so long, breathing and unmoving, that he had no choice but to help her up and support her by the elbow as he guided her to sit on the wet metal steps beneath the Airstream’s entry door. She recovered for half a minute, then began issuing vague instructions for hooking up the trailer hitch that he could barely understand, much less carry out.

By the time he had it ready to go, Roman was freezing, Ashley couldn’t stop shuddering, and Carmen and Heberto were in the air, well on their way to New York.

CHAPTER THREE

“So where am I dropping you?”

Ashley picked her purse up off the immaculate passenger-side floor mat and began rummaging around for a piece of gum. Anything to stall.

It was a miracle he hadn’t asked sooner, really. Most people would have. But Roman was efficient, and U.S. 1 was the only way out of the Keys, a bridge-studded north-south corridor that linked the islands together. Because of the evacuation, all the lanes were northbound.

He’d had no reason to ask. He’d simply merged into the stream of traffic and kept his questions to himself. Until now.

So why was he asking?

He can smell your fear.

Maybe he could. She’d been growing more rank with every passing mile, mentally calculating their speed against the number of miles they had to go and trying to anticipate how far north they would need to get before the traffic thinned out and they started making better time.

On a good day, it took her nine or ten hours to drive to Mitzi’s from Sunnyvale. At their current speed, it would take them until the End of All Things.

Ashley had evacuated before. She knew the drill—once they got to Miami, people would start forking off in different directions, and everything would speed up. Still, that could take hours. They might not make Georgia tonight. What if they had to find a hotel room together? What if there were no hotel rooms? She could bunk down in the Airstream, of course, but she doubted Roman would go for that.

No worries, Roman, there are twin beds. You sleep on that one, and I’ll sleep over here. Thirty-six inches away.

She could only imagine what sort of dreams she’d have in that situation.

But even sex dreams would be better than the fear-visions plaguing her. Roman finding out where they were going and pulling over to the side of the road. Unhitching the trailer and leaving her there in the rain, alone.

He wouldn’t do it, she was ninety-nine percent sure. He’d gone along with the trailer thing, and it seemed safe to assume he’d follow through on the rest of his promises.

And even if he
did
do it, she had her address book, her phone, and the green canvas duffel bag that had accompanied her all over the world. If he left her behind, she could find someone to pick her up within an hour or two.

Ashley had a lot of friends. Tons. All over the world, she had friends.

No matter what happened, she would be fine.

So why did the very idea of Roman driving away from her, leaving her alone in the rain, force her heart up into her throat? And why, when she imagined it, did she keep seeing Roman’s stern face as he drove away, rather than her own sad, abandoned roadside figure?

Ridiculous, to care that he might be
disappointed
in her.

She was tired, that was all. This was a lingering effect of her time on the palm tree, not guilt at the way she was testing him or some bizarre, inappropriate attachment to a man she didn’t like. A man who was right now ruining her life.

Albeit by the unusual means of catching her when she fainted, making her tea, hooking up her trailer, and driving her and her worldly belongings to safety.

“Ashley.” His voice again, as calm and unperturbed as ever despite the fact that she’d spaced out and forced him to repeat the question. “Where are we going?”

“Oh, it’s a ways north yet.”

Roman drove. If he felt any impatience about the traffic—any tension about the hurricane on its way, discomfort in his wet jeans and damp shirt, irritation with her refusal to supply a destination—he didn’t show it.

He had borrowed a towel from the office bathroom, though, and laid it carefully over the leather-upholstered driver’s seat. Three more towels sat in the middle of the backseat, at the ready in the case of some Ashley-spawned disaster.

He loved his awful car.

“How far is ‘a ways’?” he asked.