Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
“Your family is hotel-chain-kind-of-wealthy, huh?” Harper sat on the plush king-sized bed layered in silver and gold satin fabric.
“I knew they were well-off, but your uncle sent guards to escort us through the lobby of the hotel and rolled out a red carpet for our arrival.” Her eyes opened wider for emphasis. “A literal red carpet.”
Roman closed the bedroom door, but instead of joining her on the bed, he leaned against the wall next to it.
His granite jaw, covered in a week or so worth of stubble, tightened as he pointed a worried expression her way. And she could practically hear his thoughts.
He was still thinking about the car bomb. The fact that they lost the source. And more than likely, the moment she’d almost been hit by a car. He was shouldering all of that weight as if he were Atlas—a Titan condemned to hold the heavens and the world.
“The red carpet was probably already here. It’s an over-the-top hotel,” he remarked in a voice she almost didn’t recognize.
It was like a dull knife blade that hadn’t been sharpened for years.
And a Teamguy would never let his knives go to shit.
“And it’s not my money. Or my dad’s. It’s my uncle’s. ”
Right. The hotel restaurant last night. Carmen and her cheeky comments came back to her now. She’d said Roman had rejected the Riviera wealth and seemed to pity him for making such a bold decision. A tinge of jealousy struck Harper at the memory that the woman obviously wanted Roman, too.
What are you keeping from me, Roman?
Harper willed the details to appear, but trying to draw up specific memories was like trying to recall a dream hours later. There was nothing but disjointed fragments she desperately needed to piece together.
Ezra trusted Harper enough to try and contact her years later to stop a terrorist attack, and he didn’t deserve to have died. She had to find who was responsible.
“When you learned my old source wanted to meet us in Barcelona, you had reservations about coming here,” she said, doing her best to work free the memory before she lost it.
Her words turned his already hard stare into glacial ice.
“You don’t like them, do you? Your family here in Spain.
” She found enough strength to stand. They had a time-sensitive operation to complete, but he was hiding something from her.
She could feel it in her gut. And I’m forgetting something important, aren’t I?
She angled her head and closed the space between them, doing her best to read him.
Not so easy when she was struggling to get a read on her own thoughts. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“Not a problem, and no, I don’t care for them.” His Adam’s apple rolled with a hard swallow. “My father is not on the best of terms with his brother.”
She set her hands on his chest as it lifted with a deep inhalation. He held that breath as if he were back at BUD/S practicing drown proofing.
“You should get some rest before we sit down with the team. Maybe we shouldn’t have pulled you out of the hospital so soon.” His tone was gentle, a noticeable contrast to the harsh, thundering beats of his heart.
There was something other than anger radiating off him, though. Something that felt a lot like desire.
“I didn’t want to stay there.” Harper almost followed her soft reply with, Or in this hotel.
But this place would have to make do. Carmen had been stubborn, and they would’ve only drawn more attention to themselves if they resisted her so-called kind offer.
It was already ten at night, twenty-four hours since the explosion.
The doctors had been reluctant to discharge them despite Roman’s insistence they leave and Carmen’s wrist flicking to get a move on with the paperwork after she’d arrived.
“No Riviera is staying in a hospital for more than one night, or any hotel that’s not a Riviera Lux,” Carmen had said before speaking in Spanish on her phone. Or maybe it was Catalan. Both languages were common in Barcelona.
“I got enough rest at the hospital,” Harper assured him. “We don’t have time to waste.”
When his hands gently captured hold of her arms, she thought he might shove her away. There was a slightly angry curve to his lips as if he were on the verge of snapping.
This was a look she could read easily. And it was rare. Only when someone or something threatened her or the team did he become this fierce. The look of a warrior in the midst of battle, fueled by adrenaline, honor, and patriotism. Not necessarily in that order.
“What is it?” she asked, somewhat breathless as he held her captive, her hands still splayed on the hard wall of his chest.
He growled out something indecipherable. Low and deep, so raspy it lit a fire in her stomach and traveled south. When he physically removed her hands from his body to walk around her, she closed her eyes and set her palms on the wall to try and get a grip.
“Zack wasn’t thrilled we hijacked his case,” Roman said.
Work talk, of course. Maybe that was a good idea. Trying to dive into Roman’s mind in hopes she’d come out with some type of truth from him was mission impossible.
She was grateful the CIA director had ordered Zack back to the States, but pulling him from Barcelona would create a thousand questions, and Harper doubted he’d get a single answer.
Harper squeezed her eyes shut even tighter and turned her hands into fists on the wall. Remember. Remember. But so much in her head was still a blur. And part of her was beginning to wonder if half the memories there were scenes from a movie instead of glimmers from her real life.
“It’ll be better without Zack here. I wasn’t a fan of having to play his girlfriend.”
“And I wasn’t a fan of his hand on your ass.” There was a definite sharpness to his tone now, the heavy blade of a Tier One operative that time.
Shocked by his statement, she turned abruptly and found Roman leaning against a different wall, this one by the closet, a hand massaging his hip. Did he realize what he’d just said, without so much as a blink of regret or flinch of uneasiness?
He did grimace shortly after, but she was pretty sure that was from the labral tear, which must have hurt. Fortunately, he hadn’t broken any bones. But how was his memory? Was it as fragile as hers?
We didn’t have sex, did we? Those were fantasies. She found herself second-guessing everything now that she was having such a visceral reaction to simply being alone in a bedroom with him, after a car bomb and concussion, no less.
Roman didn’t look like he’d been hit by a car. He looked like he’d just walked off the cover of a GQ magazine. And Harper drank in every inch of him.
From his dark, wavy hair that was a bit disheveled, as if on purpose to give him a rockstar, bad boy look to his charcoal gray Henley, the top button undone revealing a few faint bruises on his throat. And then down to his black jeans that fit just tight enough to emphasize his strong legs.
But it was the sight of his dark chukka boots that had her inhaling a sharp breath as a flood of memories broke through her mental fog.
Those boots . . . lying on the floor next to a hotel bed the first night they made love.
Oh my God. Not fantasies. We had sex.
She turned to the side and banded her forearm across her stomach as she ran through a reel of “Roman and Harper’s Greatest Sex Acts” in her head. 4k. Surround sound. Bright, bold, and totally erotic.
Oh, the things that man could do with his tongue. And those hips rotating and moving when they’d made love added a whole new wow factor to sex.
“I kissed you in the hospital today.” How could I have already forgotten that?
And yet, when I woke up this morning, I obviously remembered we’d been sleeping together.
Only to forget there was an us right after.
“Did you cover for us, tell the guys I was out of it? Or did I say something so they wouldn’t suspect we’re . . . you know?”
Out of her peripheral view, she caught Roman moving toward her.
Was he going to tell her she was mistaken?
Shatter her memories and destroy them bit by bit?
Tell her it was merely her imagination, her fantasies, and that she was confused?
That there was no Roman and Harper, and there never would be?
“Harper.” His hand on her hip guided her his way, and when she searched his face, worried what she might find, she nearly cried when, rather than rejection, she saw love shining in his eyes.
The silence between them stretched, but still, neither spoke.
He held her gaze so long that she saw the battle play out in his eyes, torn as to whether or not he could take her into his arms because of their concussions.
Maybe that was what they both needed right now?
The prince woke Snow White in the fairy tale with a kiss.
Could Roman wake her brain from its sleeplike state with one?
“I know it’s crazy, but we’re alone, and if you don’t kiss me right now, I feel like I—”
His mouth crashed over hers. Demanding and rough. A growl escaped his lips between his feverish kisses as he cupped her face. Taking everything she had to give.
She felt him stumble, his broad frame nearly collapsing into her, but he steadied himself.
He needed a wall for support, and he was “too Roman” to admit it, so she walked them backward, doing her best not to break their connection.
There. His back was now against the wall by the bathroom.
He pulled away for a moment to catch her eyes, seemingly startled by what they were doing.
The heated look in his hooded gaze had her moaning for more.
This reminded her of their first kiss in her apartment over a year ago.
They’d been holding back then, and it’d been explosive when they finally gave in to each other.
He slanted his head to retake her mouth, his hands sliding from her cheeks to wander along the sides of her arms.