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“I had my four-year-old daughter draw names out of a cereal bowl last night, so this is as random as it gets,” Martin was saying, pulling a small notebook out of his bag. “Aaron Billings? You’re with Kaitlin Shirr. Michael Pelinski, you’re with Taylor McCaid …”
The list goes on, and Carrie looks at me, holding up crossed fingers.
Oh, please, God, let me be with Carrie. I can tolerate that. Mostly.
“Stephanie Kendrick …”
Oh, please, oh, please …
“… you’re with Ethan Price.”
My mind goes temporarily blank. Film students are a pretty tight-knit group, and I thought I knew everyone in the class.
Everyone except …
Oh, God.
Pretty Boy must have put the pieces together too, because I feel another sharp poke between my shoulder blades.
“You hear that, Goth? Partners!”
I close my eyes. This can’t be happening.
Instead of the carefree, find-myself summer I envisioned, I’ll be spending the next three months with my own life-sized Ken doll.
And that isn’t even the worst of it.
Read on for an excerpt from Ruthie Knox’s Roman Holiday 1: Chained
CHAPTER ONE
The arrival of the shiny black SUV in the parking lot startled the fawn into flight.
Ashley watched it bound out of the empty swimming pool, between the two-story rental units, and onto the beach. She tried not to hate the man who had driven it away.
Her chafed wrists were not his fault. He hadn’t pushed her down onto this pile of mulch, nor had he chained her to the palm tree. He hadn’t insisted she launch her protest clad only in a damp bikini and a T-shirt.
No, all of that was Ashley’s doing. She had to place the blame for this harebrained caper squarely on her own aching shoulders.
Even though Roman Díaz was about to destroy the only place in the world that mattered to her, she wouldn’t hate him. Hate was poisonous.
But man, she’d really been enjoying the little Key deer. It had been such an excellent distraction from all the depressing thoughts about her grandmother.
Past the spot
where it had disappeared, a slice of sunrise washed the sky in orange, and the dark silhouette of an angular palm tree framed a view straight off a Florida landscape postcard.
Whereas the SUV was like the other kind of postcard—the tacky kind that had a smiling woman shoving her enormous, barely clad hooters toward the viewer over a neon-script tagline like “A Big Hello from Florida.”
It didn’t bode well.
The soft glow of early morning did little to conceal the fact that the eight-unit rental complex spread out around the pool had seen better days. Peachy Keen and Salmon Sunset had faded to a pinkish beige and beigeish pink, respectively, while Turquoise Treasure was a sort of anemic white-blue. The interiors were worse, the carpet grotty and the blond-wood-and-seashell theme of the decor begging for an update.
But for Ashley, Sunnyvale Vacation Rentals retained a timeless beauty—the white railings on the upper and lower porches matching the trim around the windows and along the rooflines; the broad, fringed leaves of the sheltering palms; the ocean beyond, just a short walk to the dock.
The sky, the sun, the light, the breeze off the water. All of it bound up together, indivisibly part of this place she loved more than any other.
The driver’s door opened, and black dress shoes appeared beneath gray slacks. The black top of his head crested the door, then disappeared as he ducked down to reach into the car—probably retrieving his hooded cape and sickle, just to complete the look.
