Forbidden Kiss by Shannon Leigh

funeral dress and pooling around her to drip down the side of the dais where she lay.
    Rom fought the past and the memories that threatened to drag him further into the cesspool of pain lying beneath the surface of his heart.
    God, he’d forgotten how beautiful she was. Coming out of the past, Rom moved forward with the crowd, edging closer to the statue. People vied for a position near her right side to cup her breast. Decades of similar actions had polished the perfect breast to a golden shine.
    “For good luck,” someone shouted as a camera flashed and the next tourist snuggled next to Juliet.
    Her hair wrapped around her head in the familiar crown he remembered, exposing a long graceful neck he had cherished with his hands and lips. Long lithe arms, seductive in their perfection, framed her nubile body. The left arm rose with a closed fist to lie heavily over her heart.
    He felt an answering weight on his own heart.
    Standing a few feet from the statue, Rom discovered the likeness didn’t do the real Juliet justice. The artist had captured the body, but not the details of the face he remembered. Small differences like the curve of her upper lip and the prominence of her cheekbones. Details he’d memorized and recalled thousands of times in his mind’s eye.
    He turned away toward the house and the balcony, unsettled by so many people traipsing through his nightmare.
    Ah, Christ. The damn balcony.
    Women took turns standing in Juliet’s place looking out over the crowd below, making flirting gestures before disappearing inside only to return again. Random shouts echoed through the crowd as people quoted Shakespeare to the women above.
    What would the gathered tourists do if they knew the real Romeo stood among them?
    …
    Jule paced the confines of her bedroom. She wanted to crank the volume on the music and drown out the millions of questions bumping around inside her head.
    But she couldn’t. Natala sat silently in the corner reading chair, rubbing her temples.
    Jule’s thoughts strayed to Montgomery again. She had to find out what he was doing. Why had he disappeared after she’d told him about the series and what waited for him in Verona?
    The events of the night played repeatedly in Jule’s head.
    The things Pio had said were crazy and haunting, but what seemed even crazier was that it evoked buried memories inside Jule. Memories she knew hadn’t happened in her lifetime. Memories of her and Pio. Together.
    ...
    “Do not deny to him that you love me,” he said, closing in until personal space was only a wish. The friar watched from several feet away, unwilling to arouse the man’s curiosity by forcing them apart.
    They were, after all, to be husband and wife in less than a week.
    She turned away, unable to meet his stare. Tears pricked the back of her eyes as they had for days. She didn’t want to cry in front of him. Not him.
    “Poor soul, thy face is much abused with tears.”
    He saw it anyway, suspicion fresh on his tongue. She tried to make light of the situation, dispelling any further inclination to ask her questions about the real reason for her tears. He couldn’t know. Only the friar knew.
    “The tears have got small victory by that, for it was bad enough before their spite.”
    He turned her around and raised a hand to her cheek, caressing down and under her chin, his thumb pushing her chin up so her eyes could meet his.
    “Thy face is mine, and thou has slandered it.” His tone conveyed his unhappiness more than his words.
    “ My lord, we must be alone,” the friar said, indicating her need for confession and the reason for her visit to the monastery.
    “God forbid that I should disturb devotion,” he said mockingly.
    Lingering over her hand, he pulled it to his lips and kissed it in such a familiar manner, that had her father been here, he would have reproached the insult.
    “On Thursday eye, I will rouse ye. Till then, adieu.”
    With a withering look toward the friar, he quit the