Forbidden Kiss by Shannon Leigh

risk.
    Turning sharply, he met Jule’s wide eyes, steeling himself for her disappointment. He could handle that. Rom felt it every day.
    Jule sucked her bottom lip between white teeth and breathed deep. She wasn’t giving up—yet. She squared her shoulders and dug in her heels.
    “All I want to know is where you bought the painting. A name, Rom. That’s all I need. It will be confidential. I just need a lead. I’m at a dead end, literally.”
    She’d explained the provenance of the first painting, but the owner and the seller died within months of each other. As had the woman who’d given Rom his painting. She’d died during the French Revolution. A victim of the guillotine.
    Rom took Jule’s clenched hands between his, squeezing them reassuringly. “Truly, Jule. I want to help you, but in this I cannot. It’s for your own good.”
    She forced his hands away, frustration bringing color to her cheeks. “I don’t understand. For my own good?” When he didn’t answer, she continued. “Is there anything I can say to convince you otherwise?” She looked down at the ground, but her head came back up quickly as she realized how easily her offer could be misinterpreted.
    “Nothing.” Rom forced a finality in the word, ending the discussion the only way he knew how. She headed for the door.
    Jule turned her head as though to speak, but didn’t look at him. “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry I bothered you yet again. I thought you might be excited by the discovery,” her voice faltered.
    “Jule, please. I hate for you to leave like this.” Translation: he felt like a complete bastard for putting the tiny white tension lines around her mouth. “Share a drink with me?”
    “No. I need to get back. It’s late and I’m sure you have things—” She waved her hand, at a loss for words.
    She walked away, leaving a lingering trail of perfume.
    Rom shut the door after he watched her cab drive away. He was caught in a loop and the same scenarios kept replaying. How many times would he put that woman in a cab, only to see her go away with her heart in her eyes?
    He leaned against the door and let Lawrence’s words trickle in. The old man’s voice had been whispering inside his head all night, but Rom had kept the memories under lock and key. With Jule gone, he unlocked the door on his memory and let Lawrence in.
    ...
    “It wasn’t supposed to end that way,” Lawrence said emphatically, pulling weeds from his herbal garden sheltered at the rear of the monastery by high stonewalls.
    “Then tell me. How was it supposed to end?” Romeo ground out between clenched teeth, straining with the effort not to grab Lawrence by the collar and shake him until his eyes rolled up into his tonsured head.
    It had been one month since Romeo woke up in a monk’s cell far away from Juliet’s tomb. One month since Lawrence had forced a potion down his throat and jerked him from heaven with Juliet. Thirty days of excruciating torment in which Romeo tried every way imaginable to kill himself. Each time, his body healed, but his mind teetered at the edge of insanity.
    How could he go on? And for what reason?
    Lawrence threw a mess of leggy green stalks into a pile and wiped his hands, squinting up at Romeo under the early morning sun. “How should it have ended? As it does for any normal couple. With the both of you dying in old age, mourned by children and grandchildren alike. Beloved by family, friends, and township. I saw it so.”
    Lawrence was crazy. Romeo had no doubt. But he also possessed the ability to make human men immortal.
    He just couldn’t raise the dead. His experiments in alchemy and magic hadn’t progressed that far.
    “So how the hell does this end?” Romeo demanded, kicking the pile of greenery.
    “Somewhere out there,” Lawrence whispered, his chin raised and his eye drawn to a distant point only he could see, “sometime in the days and years to come, you will meet Juliet again and find your