Page 9 of Roman and Jules
Had he really meant that? She briefly considered his motives. Showing her a good time could be his way of taking his revenge on the cousin that he hated. Oddly, she was okay with that. And if she held him a little tighter than she would a stranger, well… it was a good way to escape her pain and frustration, her doubts and not feeling attractive enough… and he made her feel very attractive. She wasn’t sure if that was part of his revenge, too.
He knew exactly where he was going. Roman drove her to The Balcony, and she stared up at the flashing lights on the roof, holding her purse close to her. The restaurant was aptly named and was tiered with balconies inside and out. Each terrace sported elegant tables that were almost always full. Miraculously, Roman found parking close to the restaurant and he swung around to help her off.
She stared at him before taking his hand. He was a bad boy—a beautiful one—but definitely bad from his scraped-up hands from his fight all the way down to his bike. He knew all the right moves, the right clubs, and the right way to treat a woman. Jules was a little out of her element, but finding his deep-set eyes on hers, she saw a tenderness in them and, strangely, she had never felt safer.
Jules took his hand and he guided her off the bike, treating her as carefully as fine china. He got off next and his muscular arm settled firmly around her as he brought her inside. She wasn’t going anywhere, which was a good thing because he was really good at distracting her heart from crumbling into a million pieces.
They found a table near the circular dance floor inside, decorated with face cards all along the border and a set of dice as the centerpiece. Roman started ordering the greasiest food she’d been avoiding for years, but this was a “getting-dumped” party, so she was game for anything. She put her foot down at the margaritas.
“Just a lemonade for me.” Jules would need to keep her head on straight around his reckless charm.
He shrugged up at the server. “I’ll have what she’s having.”
The man seemed confused. “You mean the drinks or the food?”
“The drinks… and maybe I’ll have this too.” He reached across the table and touched her necklace. He was going to steal her necklace now? Jules laughed. “What’s this mean?” he asked.
She looked down to see that he was staring at the writing on it. “My name,” she said cheekily.
He chuckled, but his hand didn’t leave the little gold bar or stop touching the soft skin of her neck. She suspected he’d known what it said all along. The server decided that he wasn’t needed anymore and left while Roman inspected the necklace. She took the opportunity to do the same with his hands, peering past the scrapes of his knuckles to those rings. It was kind of an edgy style, though it probably hadn’t felt good against Ty’s face. He dropped his hand and she laughed at him. “You like the necklace? Maybe you should get one. It would go great with all those rings.”
He gave her a devilish grin. “Sure, I’ll take yours.”
She teased him back. “Even with my name on it?”
“I like your name. I’ll take it.”
“Usually, it’s the other way around,” she pointed out.
“I’ll let you have my name later.”
That set her to laughing. He was the perfect person to make her forget Ty for the night—well, if he hadn’t been his cousin. The thought made her stomach hurt when reality intruded in its unwelcome way. She wondered if Roman was getting over a similar heartbreak, and she spread her fingers over the table. “How long were you dating Rosalyn?”
“Mmm, no,” he said. “You’re not allowed to bring her up.”
“There are rules?” Jules burst out into a laugh. “When did we start making rules?”
He leaned back in his seat then shrugged. “Okay, fine. I wasn’t dating her that long, though I am a sucker for a girl with an accent—” he laughed, “—Miss Carolina.”
Jules ducked her head. Her Southern drawl was a constant topic of discussion around here. As much as she’d tried, she couldn’t tone it down, though Roman seemed charmed by it. So had Ty.
The server interrupted them with their food and set their drinks in front of them along with a huge platter of fries and a pan of pizza.
Roman’s eyes never left hers, and as soon as the man left, he picked up the conversation exactly where they’d left off. “Now it’s your turn to get personal.” Jules’s heart fluttered at his probing expression. Maybe she shouldn’t have started this. “What can you possibly see in my cousin?”
She hesitated, but he’d answered her question so it was only fair. “He’s really nice,” she said. Roman snorted at that. “He is,” she defended her choice. “He’s not always emotionally available, but when he’s there with me, he’s there and things are really good. I just…” She sat back, trying to answer his question for herself. She hadn’t really had time to digest everything that had happened before Roman had come along. “I just don’t get what Rosalyn has that I don’t. I’m interesting—why doesn’t he think I’m interesting? I’ve performed at the Rose and the Dagger. I have band practice every other night. I work hard, and I write a lot of my own music.”
Roman rested his head on his hand. “Believe me, it wasn’tyou. Anyway, it wasn’t like he wanted to give you up exactly. Not yet.”
Ty wasn’t going to, was he? He’d been practically pushed into it by everything around them. Jules’s pulse raced at the thought that maybe she had another chance with him, until she really thought about what his cousin was saying. “But he was going to let me go eventually?” she asked.
Roman went silent on the matter, and she could guess what he was thinking. The little water sprite was pathetic. He cleared his throat. “Okay, I’m not doing this right. We can’t talk about him.” He scooted across the bench in the booth so that his arm rested against hers. He gathered up the dice from the middle of the table and folded her fingers over them. “Let’s make a bet.”
Uh oh. She could just see where a game like this was headed. “No, no, I don’t gamble.” She pushed the dice at him with a nervous smile.
“Wait.” He made a move for the dice, but caught her fingers instead. “You live in Vegas and you don’t gamble?”
“You’ve got to have lots of money to lose for that.”
