Page 77 of Prelude To You

It took everything in me not to curl into Roman’s arms and stay there for as long as I could.

But I was also getting really curious. “Why would hotel security listen to you?” I asked.

He offered me a poised look. “Well they did, didn’t they?”

“Me getting into trouble and you coming to my rescue. I’m beginning to see a pattern here,” I joked.

But Roman wasn’t laughing. It was as if reality had just hit him, and he had to sift through the mayhem in his own mind to get a clear picture.

He touched my cheek, his fingers brittle with tension. “Do you know that if I hadn’t seen you in traffic, we would have missed each other? They wouldn’t have allowed you inside the hotel.”

“That sounds like it might have turned out better for both of us, don’t you think?”

The flash of anguish in his eyes ripped through me. We stood there for the longest time, our gazes locked, my mind a tangle of incoherent thoughts. I knew I had to leave, like yesterday.

There was this way Roman looked at me, as if I was this precious rarity he’d discovered and couldn’t let go. For some reason this irritated me. Why was this all going so wrong if he felt something too?

“Roman, you’re going to have to clear something up for me,” I said, my voice ragged. “It seems you like me. Please explain to me why there’s a ban on whatever it is we have here. And since it’s not a wife or a girlfriend, just explain it to me like I’m a five-year-old.”

He strolled a few yards away, clearly contemplating my question. When he came back, his expression was annoyingly neutral. “It’s complicated, and we don’t know each other well enough to have to deal with it.”

I nodded derisively. “Okay then. That explains everything. Not.”

Once again we found ourselves at an impasse. He wasn’t going to clear any of it up, and I was reaching the frayed strings at the end of my rope. “Should I continue with the letter?” I asked calmly, heart pulsing in my throat.

His voice was strained. “Please do.”

I needed a moment to find my breath. I dared not look at Roman, but I continued.“Daphne darling, I can’t wait to come home, to put my face in your neck and taste your skin. Every day I think of your goat stew and wonderful bread to mop up the sauce. I miss taking a picnic basket to the vineyards and making love in the sun. My darling, all we can hope for now is that the war ends before this maddening world is completely destroyed… Forever yours, your loving husband, Pierre.”

I bit back my sadness, carefully folded the letter and placed it back in the envelope. Roman gently pulled the gloves from my hands, as if taking a small private pleasure in doing so.

I nodded to Jerry. He rushed over, and I handed him the bundle of letters and the gloves. “Is there any information about the couple in this letter exchange?” I asked.

Jerry smiled at me eagerly, as if he’d been waiting all night long for someone to ask him a question. “Nothing that I know of, why?”

“Just curious,” I replied. “They deserved a happy ending.”

“You know I could find out if they have any information in the back,” he offered. “I doubt it, but if you want to wait here, I can check.”

“It won’t be necessary, thank you,” Roman interrupted. He took the Montblanc from his jacket and scribbled away on the bidding sheet. When I saw the number he jotted down, my mouth opened and closed.

Once done, Roman put the Montblanc back inside his jacket. He looked at me and smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Now you can find out for yourself,” he said.

He drew me in, cupped the nape of my neck and kissed me on the forehead. “Excuse me, I just want to go and say hello to someone. And then we’ll be done here, and I’ll arrange a ride for you to get home safely. Okay?”

I couldn’t find my voice, but I nodded faintly. And as I watched him walk away, every breath I took made the ache in my chest worse.

Jerry peeked at Roman’s bid and whistled softly. “I’d say that’s a man in love.”

He beamed at the blossoming love affair he thought he was witnessing. “How long have you two been together, if you don’t mind me asking?”

There was no easy way to let Jerry down. I simply had to rip the bandage off.

“Oh, I don’t know, Jerry, all in all? If we’re including the thirty minutes from last night, we’ve been together for perhaps two hours and thirty minutes. But I will say this, quite a lot has happened in those two hours and thirty minutes.”

Jerry’s face turned pink and he got busy putting the letters back in their glass case. “Wow, it’s funny, when I saw you two I thought you looked like a great match. Anyway, yay for you, this is a great find. And it’s for a really good cause.”

He escaped with a quick hand-wave.

---