Page 7 of Roman and Jules
“Keep out of this before I break your face!” Ty growled at him. He made an impatient sound and tugged at Jules’s arm. “Let’s talk. I can clear this up.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about her?” Jules could barely get out the whisper. Her knees felt weak.
Ty licked his lips and straightened. “It was nothing. I wasn’t sure about us yet. I was just trying to work out how I felt about you.”
“Nothing?” Rosalyn echoed behind them. “I’mnothing? We’ve been dating for months.”
“Months?” Now Jules was repeating her. She could only grasp onto the words, not what they meant. “You were dating her when you were dating me?”
“Hey, look at me. Look at me. I never told you that we were dating exclusively.”
“But…” The word felt ripped out of her, and then Jules thought over the past year. No, no, Ty had said all sorts of things, but nothing about being exclusive; she’d just assumed that he felt the same way that she felt about him. The hurt washed over her. “I thought you loved me?”
He let out a breath and looked everywhere but at her. “I was trying to decide, okay? I’m still not sure about us, but I’m not giving up. I was never going to…” Once again he didn’t finish his sentence.
This time Roman did it for him. “What? You were never going to let Jules and Rosalyn meet?”
“Stay out of this.” Ty whipped around to face him. “This is between us!”
“Oh no, this has everything to do with me.” Roman wasn’t backing down, and Jules realized the guy had been spoiling for a fight all night, even while he’d been sitting next to her at the pool. “You can’t leave me alone, can you?” Roman glanced over at Jules, breathing heavily. “Don’t trust this guy toeverbe faithful, Jules, not while I’m dating anyone. You’ve got a thing for my women, don’t you, Ty?”
“Oh, that’s rich.” Ty shook with fury. “Don’t lecture me. It’s not like I’m married to anyone. I can do what I want.”
Jules’s face flushed and her hand loosened on his.
Before she could catch her breath, Roman punched Ty in the face. Her cheating boyfriend fell backwards into the pool and landed with a hard splash. Rosalyn danced around the edge in her high heels, shouting to see if he was all right. Roman turned to Jules, rubbing his hand. “You can thank me later.”
Jules was too stunned to reply. Somewhere behind her, Rosalyn helped Ty out of the pool. Roman gathered his coat from the lounge chair and flipped it over his broad shoulder. “Stay far away from that guy.” He walked back into the party as if that ended it.
Ty had other ideas. His fancy European shoes squeaked as he rushed over the cement.
“No, Ty, no!” Jules raised her hand like that would stop him. It didn’t. Ty rushed through the balcony door and tackled Roman in the banquet hall.
The cousins hurtled into the refreshment table and the punchbowl went airborne, the contents spilling over Great-Aunt Priscilla. Her ensuing shrieks didn’t stop their fists from flying.
“Priscilla!” Jules ran to the older women, doubting that the men even saw what they’d done. She tugged Priscilla back from the fight, desperately trying to clean her off while her great-nephews tore the place down around them.
Chapter 4
Ty knocked his elbow into Roman’s neck, and Roman choked before catching his cousin with the edge of his knuckles. Roman hadn’t expected to get into a fistfight in the middle of the party. He definitely wasn’t fighting for Rosalyn’s honor… or for his own. But when he’d seen the look of pain that had crossed Jules’s face at the pool, he hadn’t been able keep it back anymore. Roman had always been a sucker for a damsel in distress. Now he was throwing Ty against a table covered in wine glasses. They shattered as they spilled onto the marbled floor.
“Stop it! Stop it!” he heard his Aunt Collette try to shout them down. If anything their punches grew harder. Ty wasn’t letting up and Roman wasn’t going to either. She was easy to ignore. Great-Aunt Priscilla was a little harder. Through his cousin’s punches, Roman saw Jules wiping red punch from his elderly aunt’s face, and he twisted around to make sure she was all right.
Ty took advantage of the distraction and shoved from the table to ram his shoulder into Roman’s stomach. It threw Roman off his feet and tossed him to the middle of the floor. Partygoers split around them, and Roman rolled across the marble until he came to a stop at the still feet of his father, whose eyebrows were raised—Roman wasn’t sure if it was from shock or to keep back his mirth. Probably both.
Ty’s hands dug into his collar, ripping him back, and Roman scrambled to his knees and went at his cousin with his fists, feeling all his anger behind it—the loss of Bella, the shock of seeing Ty after another of his girlfriends, and how Ty had used the sweet Jules. There was only one way to take down a narcissist—beat him down to size.
“Enough!” Aunt Priscilla shouted above him. “No more of this madness!” She overturned a pitcher of ice water over their heads. Roman fell back from the sputtering Ty, wiping his eyes with his stinging hands. His gaze shifted from his blubbering cousin to the rest of the room. Food dripped from the tables and off the glaring guests.
Aunt Collette came at Roman, her white dress splattered with hors d’oeuvres. She shook her finger at him. “Youdid this!”
“Now, now, Collette.” His father came to Roman’s defense. “Your son was just as much a part of this. You wanna yell at the both of them, fine, but you saw it with your own eyes—Ty came out of nowhere with a sucker punch at my boy.” He smirked. “Your son can’t pack a swing by the way.”
Roman wasn’t so sure about that.
“You think this is funny?” his aunt hissed through her teeth at his father.
“Yeah, actually, I do! Your son got what was coming to him.”
