Marrying the Master (15 page)

The
silence fell thickly, leaving Roman’s threat hanging in the air between them.
This was a very real boundary. He would not tolerate speculation on the
circumstances surrounding his wife’s death. He did that enough on his own, and
he knew the answers would only cause more pain. Nobody else needed to feel
responsible, and he certainly didn’t want Lola to have to endure this kind of
comparison. He could shoulder that burden himself.

Denise
nodded her apology, raising her hands in mock surrender. She said, “I thought
you hated Sizzle now.”

A peace offering.

“I
do not have the best of luck with journalists, it seems.”

“Maybe
I can break your streak,” Denise said. She smiled at him over her glass of
wine.

Roman
sighed. Yes, she definitely had more than just a professional interest. He
would have to manage this carefully—he didn’t know what the best protocol
was when a flirtatious journalist interviewed one’s new, fake wife who was also
one’s new submissive, but he’d better figure it out before he put this woman in
the same room as Lola.

Lola.
Damn. Again, an image came to mind,
unbidden: Lola naked, looking at him over her shoulder, while he…

“Roman?”

He
shook his head. He couldn’t believe it. He’d gone from grieving thoughts of
Samantha to…

He
was gripped with a sudden certainty: he had to get out this restaurant. He had
to find Lola.

He
said, “Ms. Nelson—”

“Denise.”

Roman
rose. “Denise. We will have to finish this interview another time.”

“What?
When?”

“Soon.
And I will make sure Lola is present as well. You will get a better story that
way, no?”

“I
don’t know what kind of story I’m going to write yet, Roman,” she said.

“I
hope that isn’t a threat.”

“No,
just a fact.”

Roman
laughed again, though his mind was spinning. In spite of himself, he liked this
woman Denise Nelson. The combination of strength and intelligence reminded him
of the two women he could not apparently stop thinking about: Samantha and
Lola.

Samantha
and Lola. Roman gripped the back of his chair so hard his knuckles turned pale.

 
“Very fair, Denise,” he said, taking her
hand. “I promise you will get a better interview.”

He
didn’t wait for a response. He needed fresh air, needed something to ground
him, something to put what he was feeling into context. He was already out onto
the street, striding up the avenue just to keep moving, barely noticing the
other pedestrians who hurried out of his way when his phone rang.

It
was a call he had to take.

“Chance,”
he said.

“Hey
buddy, how goes?” Chance Dalton’s voice was punctuated by static, a sure sign
of a bad connection.

“You
have not been keeping up with New York news,” Roman said dryly.

“Nah,
should I? Listen, I only have a minute, but I wanted to tell you I’m wrapping
up here early. I have some maybe big news for you, but I don’t want to blow it
until I’m sure. Just tell me the L.A. Volare is still on,” Chance said.

Roman
knew that this was where he should tell Chance about Lola.
About
the sham marriage.
There should be nothing difficult about explaining
that situation to Chance.

But
that would be dishonest, because it wasn’t entirely a sham. He was fucking
Lola. He was fucking his best friend’s cousin, the woman he’d been charged with
looking out for. He was apparently obsessed with fucking her.

It
was
still
all he could think about.
If he let his mind wander, there she was. Lola. Even when he should be grieving
his dead wife, even when…

And
that was not something he cared to explain over a difficult satellite
connection while Chance was on a break in some desolate warzone, doing God knew
what to provide security. That was something he needed to say in person. He
could at least give Chance the opportunity to beat the shit out of him.

“The
L.A. location is proceeding ahead,” Roman said.

It
was a lie of omission, the kind that offended Roman the most, since it seemed
cowardly, and yet necessary under the circumstances. Roman couldn’t imagine
leaving Lola in New York under the present circumstances, and yet there was no
one else to run the L.A. club.

“Good!
We’re gonna have to talk about that when I get in.”

“When
you get in?”

“I’m
coming to New York, buddy!” Chance shouted. “I’ll see you in a couple of
weeks!”

Roman
stopped in his tracks, forming an immovable island in the current of New York
city
pedestrians. The connection was gone; Chance had hung
up.

The
hunger came upon him like a brutal, unreasoning tide, and he no longer cared
that it didn’t make sense, or that he should feel guilty about it. Right now,
he had to see Lola.

He
took off running.

Lola
was vaguely aware of a maelstrom of activity around her, with her at the
relatively peaceful eye of the storm, but she wasn’t paying much attention.
Luckily, she didn’t have to; the wedding planner Stella had brought in, a tiny
blonde woman named Dagmar who never smiled, constantly talked into her headset,
and probably could have organized an invasion of Europe in an afternoon if a
client asked her to, was a blur of activity. Dagmar and Stella had herded her
into some fancy wedding dress place, and were in the process of winnowing down
dress choices. They barely needed Lola at all.

Which
was good, because Lola had a lot to think about.

Three more texts from Ben.

Each more apologetic than the last.

Each
one saying exactly the things she wanted to hear.

Each one begging to see her.

Rationally,
she should tell him to go fuck himself. Maybe. On the other hand, Lola had been
making herself crazy for months, wondering why he’d done it, why she’d been so
easy to lie to, why, why, why. And there had been no answers. She had finally
accepted that she would never get any answers.

And
then here came Ben, offering to give her those answers.

Maybe.

And
she couldn’t help but think that maybe if she got those answers, Roman wouldn’t
be able to drive her so crazy. That maybe, if she got that closure, she
wouldn’t be so vulnerable to Roman.

Because she was sure feeling incredibly vulnerable.

“Hey,
bride lady!” Stella said, waving a hand in front of Lola’s face. “You know
we’re picking out your wedding dress over here, right?”

Lola
snapped out of it. She looked down at Ben’s last text—
Please just for coffee, you don’t even have
to speak to me. Just let me apologize—
and thought,
fuck it.

She
typed:
Ok
.
Coffee
. And hit send.

“Sorry,”
Lola said. “I just had something I had to take care of. It’s not a real
wedding, Stella, so, you know. Whatever. Where are we?”

“Dagmar
has narrowed it down to a couple of choices,” Stella said.

Dagmar’s
head snapped up from her tablet. “Also you must choose a theme. I will pick
location, decorations,
etcetera
. You leave it all to
me. I get press, I get magazine pictures.”

Dagmar
waved her hand in the air like a conductor, and went back to her tablet,
muttering something into her headset.

A
terrible thought occurred to Lola, and she groaned. “Um, guys—I know the
point is publicity, but we can’t compromise the identities of our members.
How…how is that going to work, exactly?”

“Is
no problem,” Dagmar said, not even looking up. “Mask. Costume. Venice.
Carnival.”

Stella
giggled. “
Eyes Wide Shut
.”

“Very
hush hush,” Dagmar said, apparently not getting the joke. “Very exclusive.
Magazines love.”

Lola
marveled. The woman didn’t even have time to speak in full sentences. “Stella,
where did you find her?”

“I
know, right? She’s like the special ops of wedding planners. She’s already
picked out something for you to try on. They’ll have it out in a minute.”

“I
don’t even need to be here do I?”

Stella
smiled. “Well, except for the tiny detail of actually trying it on, no. Hey,
listen, you ok?”

Lola
tried to laugh it off. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

“I
just thought, you know, this wedding stuff, with the way you feel about Roman…”

“The
way I
used
to feel,” Lola corrected.
She even hoped it was true. She had trouble figuring out how she felt about
Roman now—her mind usually stopped working completely as soon as she saw
him. It was maybe better to just rush ahead and not stop to think too much,
like the way circus people ran across tightropes. If she stopped to think,
she’d plummet.

Ok, so keep moving, then. Change the
subject.

“I
was just distracted because I keep getting these texts from Ben.”

“Oh,
honey.” Stella gave her a one-armed hug. “Bad?”

“I
don’t know. He wants to talk.”

“Do
you?”

“I
think so. Is that a terrible idea?” Lola asked. She really had no idea if she
was making a mistake.

Stella
shrugged. “I dunno
,
I’m not an expert. I was kind of a
disaster before I got lucky and you hooked me up with Bashir. But it does seem
like some break ups are tougher than others, and this one is, um, pretty bad.
Maybe it’s like tipping over a vending machine—you have to give it a few
shoves and build up some momentum before it really takes.”

“So
you’re saying talk to him and give him one final shove?”

“Metaphorically,”
Stella said. Then she thought about it. “Or not. I’m ok with literally shoving
him, too.”

Lola
laughed and gave her friend a big two-armed hug. “You are basically the best,
you know that?”

“Tell
me that after you go through with this wedding.”

“The
dress,” Dagmar said, looking up from her tablet.

Two
smiling assistants had indeed come back with a dress. Lola was overwhelmed by
yards of sculptured white silk, afraid to even touch something that pretty. She
couldn’t imagine actually
wearing
it.

Oh,
who
was she kidding? Once she put it on, they’d
probably have to knock her out to get it off. She’d try to wear it everywhere
if they let her. She’d wear it to freaking Starbucks.

“Oh
boy,” she said under her breath.

“We
help,” Dagmar commanded. The assistants left them at Dagmar’s insistence,
albeit somewhat reluctantly, and Dagmar and Stella went to work. Which was good,
because Lola had gone into a weird trance state as soon as she’d looked at that
dress.

Which
was crazy. It was just a dress. It wasn’t magic.

Lola
hadn’t ever been one to plan her fantasy wedding without having a groom in
mind, since it just seemed like a way of tempting fate, but now, in this place,
looking at an actual, real life, beautiful wedding dress…

“Lola,
you all right?”

“Yup.
Fine. Great.”

“Let’s
get this thing on and see how it looks.”

She
was zipped, cinched, and pinned. Lola took a deep breath—it felt perfect.
She’d never worn an item of clothing that had felt this perfect before.

She
was totally afraid to look.

“Oh,
Lola,” Stella whispered, her hands covering her mouth.

“What?
Is it wrong? What? Did I rip—
”

“Look,”
Dagmar said gently, and turned Lola toward the bank of mirrors. “It’s perfect.”

Lola
looked.

She
never thought she could look like that. Had never really dared to dream of
herself, looking like that. The dress was sculptured; form-fitting layers off
of one shoulder, an asymmetry that somehow brought out her coloring, her eyes,
her
hair. Each layer accentuated her curves, turning even
her insecurities into assets. The silk almost seemed to glow. She felt like she
was looking at a fairytale. Like an actual magical being had created this dress
just for her. Like she had been born to wear this dress and have a happy
ending.

And
it was all a lie.

It
hadn’t really hit her until that moment. Until she was confronted with the
image of what should be the happiest moment of her life, with something she
hadn’t even been able to admit to herself that she wanted—but the way she
felt in this dress, this stupid, beautiful, perfect dress, didn’t lie. And it
meant that she couldn’t lie to herself anymore, either.