Ignited (7 page)

This was how she had to be. Men didn’t respond to her otherwise. They didn’t listen. They didn’t learn. They just took things, unless you made them stop.

Unless you hit them with a seven-hundred-dollar driver. Then they called you a bitch, but they stopped.

But she felt strange, still. That weird sensation hadn’t gone away—as though she were splitting in two. As though she was actually
hurting,
and she didn’t want to hurt.

Roman said, “Carmen, it’s not—I don’t—Listen, the thing is …”

What had happened to him? He’d been so sensible a week ago. She’d had such hope for him. The woman had turned him into someone who raised his voice and sputtered. Someone Carmen was tired of talking to.

“The thing
is,
Roman, that we’ve invested in your project. Even if you do own this property, Zumbado Development is going to be building the hotel, and Heberto wants these units down. He wants them down
yesterday
.”

“That’s not the best way to handle this.” Roman had raised his voice now, speaking loudly enough for Noah to hear. His wrinkled forehead got more wrinkled. “It’s a delicate
situation, and if you bring him into it—”

“Twenty-four hours,” Carmen said. “You green light this demo within twenty-four hours, or we’ll take care of your new girlfriend our way, and I’ll knock the fucking buildings into the swimming pool myself.”

She reached up to her ear and hit the button on her new headset to cut off the call, wishing, as she often did, for her old phone that had flipped shut. There had been something so satisfying about the finality of that noise.

Noah was watching her, arms crossed, face creased as though he were one of those ancient old men who played dominoes all day at Máximo Gómez Park in Little Havana.

She checked his left hand, but it was as bare of a wedding ring as it had been the last time she saw him.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“No.”

No. Nothing was okay. There was this … disruption. Upheaval. An earthquake beneath her perfectly ordered life.

She felt
awful.

“Roman isn’t prepared to go ahead with the demolition today.”

“Oh. Shit. That’s really going to mess up the schedule.”

“He also broke up with me.”

Noah didn’t look all that surprised. He must have figured it out from the context.

She wondered if he’d guessed what she was going to do next.

“Do you find me attractive, Noah?”

“Sure.”

“Sure? You don’t sound sure.”

“With respect, I’d have to be a dead man not to.”

“Do you have any moral objection to casual sex?”

She’d hoped for a gasp or an open mouth, a fish-catching-flies expression, but Noah didn’t react at all except for between his eyebrows, where twin frown lines sank deep. Impressively deep. Two or three centimeters. If she still had the ruler she’d used to familiarize herself with metric measurements in middle school, she could confirm.

“Not on principle,” he said carefully.

“Do you object, on principle or in practice, to the idea of taking me to the nearest motel and fucking me?”

What followed was the longest ten-second silence of her life. In the parking lot, a diesel engine roared to life, and Noah’s delicious, soft brown eyes flicked to the door, then back to her face.

Down to her breasts. And below.

It was a good view. She made sure of that.

Carmen waited for something to happen. The anticipation should have been delicious, but it didn’t feel right. Her eyes fixed on Noah’s impractical giant belt buckle. “Sisters Rodeo,” it said. “70th Annual.”

She tried to imagine this man on a horse and failed utterly.

“Noah?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“The offer’s on the table. Take it or leave it.”

“You’re not kidding,” he said.

When she just raised an eyebrow, he reached for her.

She wasn’t sure what he’d intended. A quick grope—that would be the obvious thing. But those lines were still deep between his eyebrows, and he looked … concerned. As though he could see right through her to the earthquake, to the
hurt,
and Carmen didn’t want that.

She pushed his hand away. Her heart went into overdrive, and she almost called it off. The words formed on her lips.
Forget it. Just forget I said anything.

Only she found, when she looked down, that she hadn’t actually let go of his hand. And he used that weakness, turned it on her somehow. He pivoted his own hand at the wrist, clasped her palm, released it before she’d even registered what he was doing, and then he was sliding his fingers over the sleeve of her suit jacket, up toward her elbow. He was reeling her into his body, inch by inch, so she had to tilt her chin up. Way up.

Then it was hard to feel like she had all the power in this situation. Because of the crick in her neck. And the wound in her pride.

Because she couldn’t stop thinking,
Kiss me. God, please, kiss me.

“Not here,” she told him sternly. “Follow me.”

He looked at her face, an unauthorized X-ray of every decision she’d made before she left
the house this morning. The white suit because it made her look untouchable. Her hair down because she had beautiful hair, hair that made men pay attention to the way she looked instead of the way she got what she wanted.

Bare legs and tall red shoes because she loved the way they clicked against the sidewalk when she walked, and she loved that she’d taught herself to walk in them with a Cuban girl’s sway in her step.

He touched the freckle at the corner of her eye with his fingertip. Unnaturally calm.

“I have to talk to my crew,” he said.

“I’ll wait near the highway on-ramp. Fifteen minutes. If you take any longer, I’ll go home and take care of this myself.”

That did the trick, finally. He closed his eyes for just a second, and she was able to slip out from under him and walk onto the porch, across the pavers to the parking lot. Not too fast or too slow. Not clutching her clipboard or limping. Just the right speed.

She got into her Mercedes, started the engine, and backed out of the lot.

But when she got beyond the place where someone might see, Carmen pulled over and dropped her head onto the wheel, because she was shaking and cold, and she didn’t know how to get warm.

Roman put the receiver back on the hook and let his hand fall.

From this vantage by the open front door of the office, he could take in the entire expanse of the campground. A kid skipping toward the bathhouse. The Escalade with the Airstream hitched to it, the campsite empty now of his tent and the ephemera they’d strewn around yesterday.

Ashley, Stanley, and Michael were huddled together in a conference by the picnic table. He’d thought at first they were saying their goodbyes, but this didn’t look like a fond farewell. Michael was leaning in, saying something to Ashley. Stanley stood with his arms crossed, silent. Ashley was seated below them at the table, nodding her head, listening.

All of them there, and in his mind’s eye: Carmen in Florida. Noah at Sunnyvale, the crew ready, and the only thing stopping them from knocking it all down was Roman’s word
transmitted over the line.

Even without his word, it would be so easy for Carmen to knock it down. A quick job, over and done with and then too late to take it back. Roman didn’t think she would do that. But maybe he didn’t know her as well as he’d thought.

She’d threatened him.

She’d threatened to use Ashley’s father as a lever, and Roman knew just enough about Ashley to understand what a dangerous idea that was.

He knew just enough to be all caught up in her, but not enough to make him feel safe. He’d lain awake in the half-collapsed tent, green nylon six inches from his nose, and made a list in the quietest hours of the night of all the things that could go wrong if he took her to bed.

Anything.

Everything.

He’d decided he shouldn’t pursue this attraction to her any further.

He’d known he would do it anyway.

Now he went inside the store and bought some snacks for the road. Chips. Candy. Gum, because she seemed to like gum. Since Michael was occupied, Roman left twenty dollars on the counter beneath a can of soda.

After finding a place in the Cadillac for his purchases, he walked into the uncomfortable tension at the picnic table. “Everything okay?” he asked Ashley.

“Yeah.”

“You ready to go?”

“Yeah. But, uh, we’re going to have another passenger.”

“What do you mean?”

But he understood even before he finished articulating the question, because when he lifted his eyes, Stanley was there with his arms crossed, his gaze steely and determined. Michael looking apologetic but resigned.

“Stanley’s coming with us,” Ashley said.

“Why?”

She looked at her toes. “He won’t say.”

Michael started spewing out information then, something about Stanley’s right hip and North Korea, he didn’t drive anymore, Michael would take him but the campground needed
tending, somebody had to, and Ashley was headed up north anyway, so they’d got to talking—

Busy sorting through all the implications of this announcement, Roman tuned him out.

Stanley’s demand. Ashley’s assent. The way she didn’t seem to want to meet his eyes today. Those were the key elements.

“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.

It occurred to him for the first time that maybe—just maybe—he wasn’t the same man he’d been yesterday morning. Maybe when he’d told Ashley his story, the telling had opened something up in him. Cut a knot loose. Freed him from his false belief that there was only one way, and he’d already found it.