front of her, forcing her to confront the stupidity of her choices over the past four months, but she could take it.
“Tell me something, Roman.”
“Anything.”
She laughed, even as her heart wept, knowing he couldn’t answer the question she was about to pose, even though she was still compelled to ask. “Is anything I know about you true?”
“What do you know?”
She cursed. He never could answer a straight question. She’d start simple.
“Your name?”
His mouth tightened.
“Are you a television consultant?”
Again, nothing.
“Is that woman your lover?”
“No.”
“Never? She’s never been your lover?”
He glanced aside.
“An ex. Nice.”
“I didn’t expect to ever see her again. She only kissed me because she knew you were watching.”
Rachel staggered a step backward, her knees folding until she sat on the bed. “You knew I followed you?”
He shook his head. “No, I didn’t know. She knew.”
“How?”
“Apparently, she’s been following me for the past week.”
“Hopeful of a romantic reunion?”
“She and I slept together, Rachel. Nothing more.”
She leaned back on her hands. “That’s your modus operandi, so I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“She’s involved in my business.”
“Which isn’t television consultation.”
“No.”
She sat up straighter. “Holy shit. I think you just answered a question.”
“That’s all I can say, Rachel. I’m not really a television consultant. Everything I’ve told you about myself from the first moment we met has been a lie, first as a way to get to know you, then as a way to protect you.”
“From what?”
He stared at her and she could see the conflict in his eyes. Truth? Lie? So many choices for a clearly complicated man.
“From people like the shooter in the car. People who don’t care about collateral damage. That’s only one reason why I should have stopped seeing you months ago.”
“Why didn’t you?” she challenged.
He stepped forward and his voice, for the briefest moment, sounded strangled from the tightness in his throat. “How could I?”
She glanced aside. “It was just sex.”
“Now who’s the liar?”
For a moment, she sat there, chastised, knowing that if she could stop pretending for just a second, she’d realize she’d come to care about the man. But how could that caring mean anything when the man she’d thought she was getting to know was nothing more than an illusion? A cover?
“Look, Roman, or whatever your name is, the sex was great and the affair was fun, all full of spontaneity and mystery and all the things that are biting us in the ass right now. Fact is, you’re probably on your way out of town- you and that gun of yours-so why are we wasting our breaths talking about nothing?”
Silence reigned. God, she wanted him to reply with “It’s not nothing. We connected, Rachel. We were something to each other. You matter to me.” But his mouth remained closed. She supposed she should have celebrated when he turned and started to exit the room, but instead, a sob caught in her throat.
Luckily, Mario and Iris swept in before Roman could change direction.
“What the hell is he doing here?” Mario asked.
Iris muttered in Spanish, something Rachel was pretty damned sure was a curse. Not the cussword type, either. The “may your penis turn purple and fall off” type.
“He was just leaving,” she replied.
Roman cast a glance over his shoulder. The regret and self-recrimination in his steel-blue eyes nearly caused her insides to buckle, but she pressed her hand against her belly and silently ordered herself to remain still.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she narrowed her eyes and speared him with a glare that told him any excuse, beyond the honest-to-God truth, would be too little, too late.
With a polite “excuse me,” he moved out of the apartment and consequently, out of her life.
Forever. For good.
Iris rushed past Mario and caught Rachel by the arms before she could sink onto the bed and dissolve. Into tears. Into a puddle. Into a pathetic mess.
“
Rachel forced strength into her legs, willed herself to remain standing. “I know that, Iris. I swear, I know that with every fiber of my being. But why, then, why do I feel like I’m about to fall apart?”
CHAPTER SIX
“JUST HOLD ON THERE, SON.”
Roman turned, not entirely surprised to see Mario Capelli stalking after him in the hallway outside Rachel’s apartment. The wizened cabdriver shut the door behind him firmly, then marched down the hall. Roman waited. He supposed he shouldn’t deny the man his opportunity to ream him out.
“Mario,” he said by way of greeting.
The old man arched an eyebrow. “That’s it?”
“I can’t explain to you any more than I could explain to Rachel.”
“She has a lot of questions.”
“None that I can answer.”
He’d wanted to answer them. He’d fully intended to come here and offer complete disclosure. But on the way over, using all his skills as a covert agent to make sure that the enemies who had fired on him this morning didn’t get a second chance to fill him full of holes, he’d realized that the truth would be too selfish and dangerous. What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. Right?
Mario shifted his hands into the pockets of his baggy khakis. “Maybe she doesn’t know the right questions to ask, her heart being broken and all.”
“We were never serious that way,” Roman insisted, knowing the statement was only true from her perspective, not his.
“Maybe not in words, but when you jump into a woman’s bed, you jump into her heart, too, whether she likes it or not.”
Roman blew out a frustrated breath. “That’s a fairly old-fashioned viewpoint.”
Mario shrugged. “I’m a fairly old-fashioned guy. But unlike Rachel, I do know what questions to ask. You a crook?”
Roman chuckled. He was a lot of dastardly and despicable things, but a thief wasn’t one of them. “No, sir.”
“Drug dealer?”
He shook his head.
“Assassin? Gunrunner? Bank robber?”
“None of the above.”
