Chapter 45
Roman
Roman frowned into his Old Fashioned. It felt as if he’d slipped on an obsolete and uncomfortable persona along with his tux and black tie.
The setting was stunning. The deep blue, red and gold of the Monarch Club’s interior exuded class and luxury; he couldn’t fault it. Even so, he’d give anything to be back in Pine Springs this evening. Either heading to the Rusty Barrel to meet up with his friends or—and he wanted this possibly more than he wanted to take his next breath—relaxing at home, with Elenie in his arms, in his bed. His mouth on hers. His cock deep inside her. Roman suppressed a growl and pushed away from the bar, shifting to reposition himself in his formal pants before anyone noticed.
He cursed himself for not being straight with Elenie. There was no reason at all for keeping this arrangement with Zena from her. Just the simple desire not to taint their limited time together with the manipulations of his ex-fiancée, and the less selfish wish to protect Elenie from any extra stress. She was dealing with enough.
“How are you getting on with those drinks, honey?”
He turned slowly and handed Zena her cocktail. His face was stuck i.
“fuck this shit”
lines, which he didn’t know how to wipe away. He’d never mastered the art of appearing invested or interested at functions like this. Roman wondered why everything was easier when Elenie was near him. She made him laugh and relax. Around her, he could be exactly who he felt like inside.
Instead, he was standing somewhere he didn’t want to be, with a date he didn’t respect, talking to people who didn’t interest him, drinking a cocktail he didn’t like. And he was hating every minute of it.
“I don’t think you’ve met Penelope St. John, Mark Levison, and Ryan Pullman from St. John Associates, have you? Our firm assisted them with a buyout. It completed last month.”
Zena rested a proprietorial hand on his upper arm.
“This is my partner and Pine Springs’ Chief of Police, Roman Martinez.”
Roman nodded, twisted his mouth into a smile, and shook hands around the small group.
“Police chief and lawyer? Not a couple to be messed with, then.”
Levison’s grin was friendly, his handshake warm.
“It’s why we don’t have any friends and don’t get asked out much,”
Roman replied, his face deliberately straight.
Zena gave him the stink eye. She wore an aqua blue satin evening dress held up with spaghetti straps. Her long hair was twisted and pulled neatly into a pleat at the back of her neck. She looked elegant, delicate, and unattainable, all at the same time. Which was fine with him because he felt no desire whatsoever to put his hands on her.
He’d forgotten how boring this sort of event was. Introducing yourself over and over again, playing the game o.
“Who has the most impressive job title?”
He had no patience for it.
Roman reached into his pocket for his phone, checking for any messages from home. There was nothing new. Just the earlier text he’d had from Milo on his way to the Monarch Club.
Milo:
Cait’s in labor and I’m heading to the hospital. Sorry to leave you without a ride. Give Zena a middle finger from me and wish us luck!
He was excited for them; he really was. There was even a pang of jealousy mixed in there somewhere. But, more than anything, he wanted to be in the car with Milo, heading for Pine Springs and back to Elenie. His need to be with her was far greater than his willpower to get through this evening.
Home. He wanted to go home. And his home wasn’t in Detroit anymore.
Zena’s fingers pulled at his sleeve.
“Honey, you’re being rude. Penelope asked you a question.”
Roman slipped his phone into the inside pocket of his jacket and turned to the lady in question. Trying to fix a charming smile on his face, he wondered why the hell she had drawn her eyebrows in so very dark and so very triangular.
“I’m sorry. What did I miss?”
“Well, that was my question really.”
Penelope gave him a flirty look.
“Swapping the city for a small town—there must be a lot to miss. I know I would.”
Zena laughed.
“That’s an understatement. Pine Springs is homely but a little backward. A lovely place to decompress for a while as long as you don’t mind drive-in movies being the cutting edge of sophistication.”
He clamped down on a rolling surge of irritation.
“Fortunately, I have simple tastes. And it saves me having to get my tux dry-cleaned very often.”
Zena made their excuses and dragged him away.
“Like you actually have a dry cleaner in the Ass End of Nowhereville,”
she hissed under her breath.
“For God’s sake, Roman. Do you have to make it so clear you don’t want to be here? We had a deal.”
He extracted himself from her grip.
“And I’m keeping my side of it. You can’t complain about my attitude when you’ve blackmailed me into lying for you.”
“Zena.”
They both turned at the same time.
“Philippa. Ben.”
Zena air-kissed an eerily similar-looking blonde. Roman held back a smile. He’d forgotten how closely Zena and Philippa Barrett resembled each other. It seemed Ben had a type, and his type was Professional Barbie.
“Roman, you remember Philippa and Ben Barrett? I believe you met briefly at the Commerce Leadership Awards a couple of years ago.”
“I do indeed.”
He shook hands with the couple. His eyes ran over them both, assessing them as they assessed him.
“Lovely to see you here together.”
There was a definite undercurrent to Philippa’s words.
“We’ve been a little like ships passing in the night since Roman’s secondment. I’m fortunate he’s managed to make it tonight.”
Zena kept her voice light, unruffled, a soft smile on her lips. Her shoulders were straight, her chin up.
Roman felt a moment of deep disgust at the ease with which she could stand in front of a woman she was betraying in the worst way possible. None of his thoughts showed on his face.
“It’s been a busy few months,”
he said simply.
A waiter paused on the edge of their group with a selection of canapés. Ben took a couple, everyone else declined. Roman craved pizza, eaten on the couch with friends; he could almost smell it.
Zena slid her arm around his waist, lifting her other hand to rest on his chest.
“I’m hoping we’ll manage more weekends together now Roman’s more settled in his new role.”
He saw Barrett’s eyes drift to the drape of blue satin that lay across Zena’s chest. The form-hugging fit of her dress was aimed to entice and it seemed to be doing its job. Damn, this was painful. He despised emotional game-playing; this was turning his stomach.
Uncomfortably hot, Roman unbuttoned his jacket and shrugged it off his shoulders. Zena was forced to step away.
“So, you were part of the Detroit PD Homicide Unit?”
Ben Barrett wore his tuxedo in the casual manner someone else might wear jeans, his shoes polished to perfection. There was more than a hint of fake tan. Roman fought an instant mistrust of any man who paid that much attention to his own grooming and tipped his chin in reply.
“I’m surprised you’ve stepped away. Did it wear you down?”
The question was meant to needle.
“It’s a tough job.”
Roman gave a bland answer.
“I guess the hardboiled detective with an iron grip on his emotions is more of a fictional concept than I realized.”
Ben wasn’t going to drop it.
Roman took a long swig of his drink.
“Thankfully, these days there’s a variety of stress-coping strategies available. But back-to-back murder investigations take a toll over time.”
He waited for the tension to hit him, braced and expecting the worst. It was a pleasant surprise when the flashbacks, the memories, stayed at bay.
“Especially the cases you never solve, I’d imagine.”
Zena must have told him. The guy was being a dick. And even his wife seemed to notice.
“It must be incredibly challenging to stare man’s inhumanity to man right in the face.”
Philippa gave him a searching look.
“I have huge admiration for the people who deal with that day after day.”
Ben cut in again.
“When nine out of ten women murdered in the US are killed by men they know, it must make it a lot easier to narrow down your suspects.”
He raised a casually careless eyebrow.
“Handy in some ways that misogyny is such a key factor in homicide.”
“You are mistaken.”
Roman’s eyes were as cold as Alaska, his voice lethal.
“The key factor in homicide is death. Death, in many gratuitous forms and for a staggering number of reasons. None pleasant, none simple, and not a single one of them handy.”
Ignoring Zena’s glare and Barrett’s tightened lips, he let his gaze wander around the room and swore there’d be no rerun of this purgatory.