Marrying the Master (12 page)

“Gee,
thanks.”

“Do
you guys have a plan?”

“We’re
going to dinner tonight to discuss ‘terms.’”

Stella’s
eyes went wide. “Like…a contract?”

“I
mean, probably not, you know.
So formal.
But yes.
Those kinds of terms, what else?”

“Actually,
I was asking about, like, wedding plans, but what you’re doing sounds
far
more interesting.”

Lola
cringed. Of course she’d been thinking about negotiating the terms of her
submission to Roman freaking Casta instead of…well, anything and everything
else. “What do you mean, wedding plans?”

Stella
gave her a practiced side-eye that said ‘I know you’re evading the real issue,
but I’m gonna let you do it because you’re my friend.’

“Well,
your picture was on the gossip sites, and that politician weirdo isn’t letting
up. This is, like, a public thing. And didn’t you say you guys had to do public
relations on the whole situation?”

“Yeah.
You remember what it was like with the reporters outside my apartment.”

“Weeeellll,”
Stella said with relish, “
what’s better
public
relations than a big ol’ Volare wedding?”

Lola
almost choked on her diet soda. “Are you kidding? Do you know how long it takes
to plan a wedding? Ford suggested this,
but,
I mean.
It’s not realistic, is it?”

Stella
scoffed. “Um, I know
exactly
how long
it takes to plan a wedding, it’s like all I’ve been doing. But, I bet I can get
my wedding planner to do this on the quick. She’ll love the publicity, too.
Plus,
a Volare wedding
? Please—everyone will
love this.”

Stella
was such a picture of innocence that Lola knew her friend was up to something.
She know Stella the romantic wouldn’t give up on the idea of Lola and Roman
living happily ever after, no matter how much Lola tried to convince her that
Roman was not interested in real love, and so Stella was probably planning
something. Lola was about to object when her phone buzzed with a text message.
She grabbed at it, half expecting it to be Roman.

BEN:
Lola I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for coming to Volare and…I’m sorry for everything.
I wanted to try to explain why I fucked up so badly—you deserve that. If
you never want to hear from me again, just say the word. I love you.

Lola
didn’t know whether to cry or to scream.

“So
is that Roman?” Stella said, smiling over her straw.

Lola
blinked, shook her head. “No, it’s nothing.” She looked up, and it was obvious
Stella didn’t believe her, but this just was not something Lola could talk
about while still holding it together. She was just stretched too
thin—the combination of Roman and Ben was
still
more than she could handle. She wasn’t ready to think about
all the ways Ben’s betrayal had hurt her, not when she had this new danger in
her love life.

Roman.

Lola
forced a smile and said, “So tell me about this wedding scheme.”

~ * ~ * ~

Roman
did his best not to grin as Harold Jeels inspected his brand new marriage
certificate. The redder Jeels’ face became, the more Roman struggled not to
smile.

Eventually
he stopped struggling.

“Everything
satisfactory?” Ford asked. Jeels grunted.

They
were meeting in Ford’s midtown office this time, Roman preferring that Jeels
not get anywhere near Volare or Lola if it could be helped. There was something
about the man’s obsession with Volare that made Roman very wary—Jeels
obviously considered his crusade to be a personal one, and that meant he was
crazy. Crazy people were dangerous, and this crazy person had Lola in his
sights.

Still,
it was fun to see Jeels lose his temper.

“This
is outrageous,” he sputtered.

“No,
it’s legal,” Ford pointed out.

“This
is an obvious attempt to circumvent regulatory issues. It’s dated
today
. It’s a fraud. You only married
that woman—”

“Mr.
Jeels,” Roman said, standing up to tower over the angry politician, “Watch how
you speak of my wife.”

The
silence was frosty. Roman didn’t often make conscious use of his physical
stature to intimidate other men; he felt it was beneath him. This time, he made
an exception. Let Jeels feel as small as he was.

“You
have lost, Mr. Jeels,” Roman continued, buttoning his suit coat. “Whatever
fixation you have with the society I have founded, and with my wife, is your
own business. But I promise you that if you try to hurt either Volare or Lola
again, I will make you suffer.”

“Are
you threatening me?”

Roman
stared at him. In different circumstances, Roman might have tried to help a
desperately unhappy little man such as this. Jeels was one of those men who
projected his dissatisfactions and fears onto the world around him and then
spent their lives fighting shadows and leaving innocent casualties in their
wake. In different circumstances, Roman would have pitied him. But he had gone
after Volare. He’d gone after Lola.

“Get
out,” Roman said.

Jeels
cowed, his face twisted up in fury. Without another word he waddled out of
Ford’s office.

“You
know,” Ford said, “it is, technically, my office that you just threw someone
out of.”

Roman
rolled his neck, surprised to discover that he was quite tense, and turned back
to his old friend.

“Yes,
but we won, so it is unimportant, no?” he said, moving to make himself a drink.

“Actually,
no. Very important.”

“How?”

“Roman,
this isn’t over.” Ford got up and joined Roman at the little-used wet bar.
“Fuck it, it’s a special afternoon. Here, try this, it’s single malt.”

“Why
do you say it isn’t over? Lola and I are married—we won. Over.”

Ford
sighed, swirling his whisky. “So you know my firm does some lobbying work in
Albany?”

“Yes,
one of the many reasons we hired you.”

“That,
and I donated the St. Andrew’s Cross,” Ford said smiling. “My Albany contacts
say Jeels was getting support from another state senator who’s got a serious
primary challenger. If they want to make Volare into a political issue, they
don’t need ridiculous laws to do it. They can go after health certificates,
zoning, whatever the fuck they want.”

Roman
frowned. “You think this is what will happen?”

“I
know.”

“So
what do we do?”

“Politics
is about public perception,” Ford said. He had that hard look in his eye that
told Roman he was ready to fight. Roman liked that look. “You win public
support, and you don’t become a punching bag during a political campaign.”

“Public
support for a sex club?” Roman laughed.

“It’s
not as crazy as it sounds. You do all that charity work, you’re married now,
and…”

“And?”

“And
people love weddings. I’ve already gotten press requests. Here, check this one
out.”

Ford
handed him a slip of paper—
Denise
Nelson, Tattle.
The biggest gossip site to rival
Sizzle
.
Roman thought he
recognized the name. Nelson would be a pretty brunette who always looked like
she was hunting something or someone.

“You
can even use the opportunity to talk up the second Volare location,” Ford
continued. “Speaking of which, have you talked to Lola about that yet?”

Roman
frowned. No. It wasn’t something he particularly wanted to bring up. His plan
to move to L.A. to set up a second Volare location, while leaving Lola in
charge of the New York club, seemed less and less workable by the day. It
simply didn’t sit right with him, and yet he hadn’t come up with an alternative—even
though construction on the L.A. club was already nearly completed.

So.
A publicity wedding, a political minefield, and cross-country moves.

“No,”
Roman said, finishing his drink. “Lola and I have more important things to
discuss at the moment.”

Like the terms of her submission.

Lola
perched nervously on a stool at El Sol Vermell and ran her finger up and down
the stem of her wine glass. This was Roman’s place. He’d picked it, sent her
the address, time, everything. It was hidden in a side street on the Lower East
Side, the part that had been long gentrified and was full of money, right next
to the parts that, well, weren’t. It had lanterns hanging out front and a low-key,
fashionable sort of crowd—a crowd that didn’t include Roman, yet.

She
had spent the day hanging out with Stella, afraid to return to her own
apartment because of reporters, which pissed her off, and afraid to go back to
Roman’s place because, well, Roman. If she saw him in the privacy of his
apartment, she was a goner, no questions asked. She hadn’t been able to resist
him in a freaking broom closet at city hall. Her only, minuscule hope of having
a substantive discussion was meeting him in a public place.

And
in the end, that might only make it worse.

She
shivered, already enjoying the thought. That was not a good sign.

They
were supposed to meet to discuss, as Roman had put it, the terms of her
submission. Lola was no stranger to D/s, nor to relationship contracts, but she
was a stranger to Roman in those contexts, and she found, to her chagrin, that
it made her feel like an inexperienced virgin all over again.

“This
is stupid,” she muttered into her wine.

 
They needed to discuss a lot more than
the terms of her submission. He was kidding himself if he thought that was all
that was on the menu. Their relationship had evolved—hell, it hadn’t
evolved,
it
had wandered into some radioactive goo and
sprouted wings. And Lola needed to know what that meant.

Or
at least, she thought she did. Maybe. The deeper she got into that glass of
wine, and the more she thought about Ben’s text, the more she wondered if what
she needed was more emotionally baffling men in her life. More men that didn’t
appear to respect her until after they’d screwed
up,
who thought it was ok to keep secrets.

How
is it possible that both the men in her life didn’t seem to respect her at all?
Did she somehow make that easy for them?

And
oh, God, how was she supposed to
submit
to Roman when she couldn’t be sure about that? Never mind that she’d had
no
problem with that the other night.
Or
earlier today.
She obviously wasn’t in full control of herself around
him, and there was no way she could do this under those circumstances. She
didn’t understand why she was able to submit to him if she couldn’t trust his
feelings, or her own. She just couldn’t handle it if yet another man treated
her like…

“Lola,
where are you going?”

She
had left a twenty and jumped down off her uncomfortable stool, totally ready to
leave and go do some serious drinking / thinking at Stella’s place,
and…there…was…Roman.

Like
an immovable, muscular wall of hot.

“Oh
shit, I think I’m tipsy,” Lola said, steadying
herself
with a hand on his chest.

His broad, hard chest.

Roman
frowned. God, even his frown was sexy.

“We
will have to sober you up first,” he said. “I have reserved a private room.”

“I
only had one glass of wine,” she complained. “It…might have been a big glass.”

“And
what have you eaten?”

“Shut
up,” she said. She’d had that salad.

His
arm stiffened around her waist, and drew her close. She stopped breathing
momentarily, and that heated feeling swept over her. “No, Lola, you do not tell
me to shut up,” he said. “And you do not abuse your body. That,” he said,
leaning down to whisper in her ear, “is
my
right.”

Lola
thought she would lose it all over again, right there. She closed her eyes and
tried to remember all the very rational reasons she’d come up with to avoid
this situation, but now she was drawing a blank. Her mind just kept coming back
to how good he felt next to her. Stupid mind. Stupid body.

He
didn’t wait for an answer, but took her hand and led her right past the hostess
stand, where he waved blithely, and kept going. The restaurant was an eclectic
blend of Catalan and Japanese—hence the wine, the tapas, the seafood, and
the private rooms, or tatami rooms. The rice paper walls were decorated with
ink painted scenes from Don Quixote, though Lola was pretty sure that wasn’t
Catalonian, and there were generous wine carafes, chopsticks, and communal
plates on every table. Roman led her to the last room at the end of the hall,
far from the noise of the main restaurant area—a veneer of privacy,
belied by the rice paper walls.