she wasn’t just talking about the size of his cock. He was obviously driven and smart and clever, and he’d done well for himself.
Even though she knew better, she still asked, “Why are you in this brand of investments? Why not stockbroking or something that—” Allie cut herself off before she could finish that thought aloud. Why not something that doesn’t involve taking from other people?
From the look he gave her, he knew exactly where her mind had gone. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I’m not the enemy—not yours and not any of the others whose businesses I help pair up with investors. Most of them thank me in the end.”
She had no doubt about that. Roman was hardly a snake oil salesman, but the force of his personality was often in danger of eclipsing all else—like common sense and reason. If he focused the entirety of it on a person, eventually he’d have them convinced that the sky was green and up was down. Even now, she was trying to find a way for it to make sense that he was the good guy and not the boogeyman under the bed that she’d assumed for months.
In truth, he was neither the bad guy nor the dream vacation fling—at least not in full. Reality was a lot more complicated.
Allie took a long drink of her wine and poked at the food on her plate. “You understand where I’m coming from with this.”
He didn’t answer for several beats. “You want to talk about business?”
Did she? The longer they were together, the clearer it became that they’d have to talk eventually—probably before they actually left the island...but she didn’t want it to be tonight. She shook her head. “No. I’m sorry I brought it up.”
Another of those searching looks. “We can talk, Allie. We’re both adults, and as much as I enjoy the hell out of fucking you, I want to get to know you better.”
That sounded like... She didn’t know what that sounded like. It didn’t fit in with her preconceptions of their boundaries. It didn’t fit with anything. Allie swallowed against the panic welling inside her. It was just a conversation. She wasn’t agreeing to anything just because she was talking with him. She’d been talking with him this entire trip. It just felt different this time.
Meaningful.
She took a breath, and then another. “Do you have...hobbies?”
Roman smiled gently, as if he knew what the question had cost her. “I work a shit ton, so I don’t have much in the way of time. But I box a couple times a week at my gym—nothing crazy or competitive. Just sparring.”
She could see it. He certainly had the upper body of a boxer, though his legs were just as solid as the rest of him. “Boxing and yoga. That’s quite the combination.” He was experienced with yoga. She’d been doing it for years, and she still had trouble with some of the poses he’d pulled off the other morning.
“They both help with my stress level, albeit in different ways.”
“I bet they do.” She cocked her head to the side. “Doesn’t leave much time for social stuff.” Like recognized like—between running the gym and teaching classes, she had nothing in the way of free time.
“How did you get into the gym business?” He held up his hand before she could speak. “I’m not talking about your business right now—I want to know why you chose that route.”
She started to consider how she wanted to answer that, but exhaustion rolled over her. Allie was so damn tired of having to watch what she said around him. If she trusted Roman enough to give him full control of her body, she should trust him enough to have a conversation without worrying that he’d twist it around to use it against her.
Maybe it was time for a tiny leap of faith.
Allie took a bite and chewed slowly, finally swallowing the food, though she couldn’t have begun to guess what it was she’d eaten. Her entire focus was on Roman and their conversation. He had no way of knowing that the seemingly innocent question would open a whole Pandora’s box of history for her. She finally set her fork aside. “When I was growing up, I didn’t have the healthiest of childhoods. It could have been a lot worse than it was, but the only high points during those years were when my mom would let me tag along to the gym. When she was there, she was...” She had to search for the word. “Free. In control in a way that she never was while married to my dad. When that relationship ended for good, it was a new city, a new gym, a new sense of purpose. It was in that place that I saw her find herself again, make friends, start the long road to what healthy looked like.”
She tried a nonchalant shrug, but every muscle in her body was tense. “I initially started going so we would have something in common, but I really liked it. I never got super into the nutrition aspect of it, but I eat healthy enough.” She motioned at her body. “I like food. I like working out. I like giving women like my mom a safe place. It all came together in Transcend.”
Roman was so still, he might not have breathed the entire time she spoke. “I’m sorry your father was such a piece of shit.”
“Me, too.” Once upon a time, she’d wondered if her being born was the thing that ruined her parents’ relationship, but Allie had seen too much—heard too many stories out of the same playbook—for that guilt to hold any water. Her father would have been the same if it was a different woman, whether there was a child or not, regardless of the external stressors he liked to blame for his flying off the handle.
She looked at Roman and tried to picture him drinking so much he actually hurt a woman—anyone, really—and couldn’t wrap her mind around it. Maybe she was being naive, because he had a ruthless streak a mile wide, but nothing about him rang that warning bell. Why am I even thinking about this?
Because you can’t afford not to.
Except this ends when we go back to New York, so it won’t matter what he’s like when he’s not on vacation because you won’t be around to see it.
The thought had her sagging in her seat. She poked at her food again. Wanting more with Roman was out of the question. The whole condition of their being together was not to talk about the most important thing in their respective lives—her gym and his work. It wasn’t sustainable.
But part of her wanted it to be.
ROMAN SAW THE exact moment Allie started to shut him out. He’d been pushing it with that question and he’d known it, but there was too much he didn’t know about her. He should be prodding her with questions to help spin things to his advantage, but the only reason Roman had asked was because he genuinely wanted to know.
He cleared his throat. “I envy you, in a way.”
“Why’s that?” The distance in her blue eyes retreated, leaving her present and accounted for.
In for a penny, in for a pound. She’d bared part of herself with that little window into her past—he couldn’t do anything less than the same. “I mentioned before that my parents weren’t around much when I was a kid.” He snorted. “I might have understated it. They were gone more often than they were there. There was nothing traumatic about my upbringing, other than a bit of benign neglect, but when I was younger, I would have given my left arm to have designated time with either of them like you had with your mom.”
Allie leaned forward, now fully engaged. “Why didn’t they have more kids, if only to give you someone who wouldn’t leave?”
“My mother didn’t like being pregnant all that much, and she wasn’t a fan of what came after, either.” He made a face. “Hearing that at the tender age of five was eye-opening, to say the least.”
“Oh, Roman.”
“No, none of that.” He casually slashed