The suit, which was probably a perfect fit, felt tight and constricting across his shoulders though it hung perfectly. Roman ignored the feeling, glancing down at the only incongruity—his worn and dusty desert boots. But he wasn’t willing to sacrifice comfort for appearances—his feet were a half-size bigger than his twin’s.
When he eventually emerged from the plane onto the tarmac, nobody was looking at his boots. They were looking at him though. Many eyes followed the tall, dynamic figure with the perfect profile and the powerful aura, yet Roman remained oblivious to them all, his mind set only on his goal.
CHAPTER THREE
‘OH, I’M SO SORRY, sir, but that suite is occupied,’ the person behind the desk at the Madrigal told him.
Before Roman could react to the news that suite number one-four-four was not vacant, and in retrospect he could see there was something quite masochistic in requesting to revisit the scene of his humiliation, the assistant manager appeared at his elbow.
‘Actually it is unexpectedly vacant.’
The suited figure produced a key card from his pocket like a magician and handed it to Roman.
A maid was emerging from the door to the suite as he approached. Roman smiled at her and watched her flush. He had already pulled the key card from his pocket when the thought came to him.
‘Excuse me, miss...?’ The girl swung back, her smile eager. ‘I have a friend staying here, a Marisa Rayner...? I don’t suppose you could tell me her room number.’
Her face fell. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but that is not allowed.’
He sighed. ‘I understand; it’s just that it’s her birthday and I wanted to surprise her...’
‘Well, if you don’t tell anyone it was me who told you...?’
‘My lips are sealed,’ he promised.
The screen went black and Marisa sighed and closed the laptop. She pressed her head back into the cushion, her neck feeling stiff with tension. The only question in her mind was did she take a shower before or after she read through her notes for tomorrow before she fell into bed?
She was definitely not going to think about that room somewhere above her head; she was already ashamed of her meltdown. It wasn’t as if a room could hurt you, after all.
But memories could hurt and they did, even now. As did the sense of shame when she thought of those ten days when she had spent every moment she could in that room, in that bed, with Roman. It still felt like the actions of a stranger; she didn’t know that person who had surrendered without a fight to the raw passion he had awoken inside her.
At least she felt a lot calmer now, especially after her reassuring report from Ashley and her chat with Jamie. Of course she was missing him but he didn’t seem to be missing her at all, which was as it should be.
Her head lifted reluctantly in response to the knock on the door.
She huffed a breath and heaved herself tiredly to her feet. Stepping over her discarded shoes, she smoothed down her hair. If it was another fruit basket or chocolates she had no idea where they’d put it. Perhaps she ought to just tell the hotel staff she wasn’t going to complain or give them any less than a five-star review because they had done nothing wrong.
She opened the door with a smile.
The rushing sensation of the floor coming up to meet her was so strong that she was surprised to find she was still standing upright.
Her skin bleached milk-pale as the electric surge reached her hands and feet and remained there in her tingling extremities. Her brain closed down for a split second, but when it kicked back in she stammered out a shocked but firm, ‘No, this isn’t actually happening.’
Roman would have taken more pleasure from her shocked reaction if he hadn’t been experiencing a similar reaction himself.
He had been channelling pure rage and retribution as he’d waited for the hotel-room door to open, but it wasn’t until it did that he realised it wasn’t pure anything. What was superficially anger was actually far more complicated and multi-layered. When the door opened the combined force of his convoluted emotions hit him with such ferocity that it felled him, not literally, although he wouldn’t have been at all surprised to discover he was lying at her feet.
He focused on the anger and not the empty ache inside him, though its existence made him mad as hell too, angry that the woman had made a fool of him, yet the sight of her had not just paralyzed him with lust, it had made him conscious of the emptiness inside him that he normally refused to acknowledge.
‘Roman?’
His identity was not in question. What she ought to be asking instead was, Why the hell are you standing outside my door? A tiny choking sound left Marisa’s lips as her eyes moved in a helpless sweep from his feet to the top of his dark head.
The lean, hungry look was more pronounced than it had been five years ago. He was harder; she looked into his eyes and saw blackness and nothing else. He might look the same but he wasn’t, she realised as an icy chill slid down her spine.
‘I am flattered that you remember me.’ The mocking smile faded from his face and his words were terse and to the point. ‘We need to talk.’
‘Really?’ She managed to inject a note of realistic surprise into her voice. ‘Well, as much as I’d love to catch up,’ she added with a smile of dazzling insincerity, ‘right now is really not a good moment. I have a speaking engagement—’ she gestured past him, hoping that he’d get the message she was not still the silly young woman desperately in love with him, so in love that she had sacrificed every principle she had lived by just to be with him ‘—and I need to speak
