Marrying the Master (4 page)

He
knew she was still dealing with the aftermath of heartbreak because of Benjamin
Mara; he knew it had wounded her far more deeply than she generally let on. But
this seemed more.
More even than her anger at him.

“We
would only have to be married on paper?” she finally said.

“No,
I am afraid not. It would have to be…convincing.”

“Convincing.”

“Lola,
please,” he said, reaching out.

He
touched her cheek, and everything stopped. She felt hot under his touch, and
suddenly he wanted to touch her more, so much more, everywhere. He couldn’t
remember the last time he’d touched her. Not even for a hug, a small gesture of
affection between people who’d known each other for so long. No normal contact.
It had become too difficult to keep such contact innocent.

Roman
couldn’t think of anything besides the feel of her skin.

She
was the one to pull away.
She
took a step back, and wrapped her arms around herself. She
looked so small and hurt, and once again Roman wanted nothing more than to fold
her in his arms, but something told him that that would be a terrible idea.

There
was something very wrong. Something he was ignorant of. He did not like being
ignorant.

“Lola,
tell me what is wrong.”

“You’re
asking a lot of me.”

“No,
Volare is. We need you.”

She
laughed bitterly. “I have to think about this, all right? I just need some time
to think.”

Roman
frowned. What on earth was there to think about?

“Unfortunately,
we do not have much time,” he said. “I have a meeting scheduled with Ford
tomorrow. We will have to make a decision then. You will allow me to explain my
reasoning and then make your decision.”

“Fine,”
she said, and reached for the doorknob without looking at him. He let her yank
the door open. “Tomorrow.”

She
left without another word.

Of
all the many thoughts that swirled through Roman’s mind in the wake of that
departure, the only one that stood out was this: her absence left him with a
dull ache.

He
could not imagine Volare without her.

He
would make sure that he didn’t have to.

“Ok,
so what’s the emergency, crazy lady?”

Thank
God for Stella Spencer. Lola’s oldest friend, former Volare employee, and
current fiancée to one Sheikh Bashir al Aziz bin Said stood in Lola’s doorway,
holding a giant tub of ice cream. Lola smiled for the first time in hours.

“You
are
not
going to believe this,” Lola
said, shaking her head, and pulled her friend into her messy one-bedroom
apartment.

“What
I can’t believe is that you’re such a slob now,” Stella said, chuckling. In
college Lola had been neat to the point of disturbance. Her spotless dorm room
had given off a highly strung, very controlled sort of vibe, and Stella had
been one of the few people to see that Lola’s anal retentiveness had more to do
with what was going on in her life than who she was. As Lola’s father’s health worsened
and the rest of Lola’s life deteriorated into a complete mess, her personal
space had become cleaner and cleaner.

Now,
it was the opposite: Lola exerted complete control in the rest of her life, and
her apartment was a little bit of a disaster area. Or at least she
had
exerted complete control, before she’d
discovered that her ex-boyfriend, Ben, had lied to her about sleeping with his
ex-wife, and before Roman had lied to her and given an exclusive interview to
Sizzle
behind her back, outing himself
to the world as the owner of Club Volare.

Just
thinking about Roman’s
lies
made Lola angry all over
again. At least Roman had managed to protect the identities of all the other
Volare members, including
herself
. She refused to
think about Ben at all.

“So
are you going to tell me what the big deal is, or what?” Stella said, rummaging
around Lola’s tiny kitchen for spoons.

Lola
took a deep breath. “I have to marry Roman.”

Stella
turned her head to look at Lola in slow motion. Her mouth was open.

“Go
on,” she said.

“You
know how we started getting all kinds of heat after that stupid article? Well,
some of the heat is from a repressed little jerk
who
happens to be in the state senate, and is also some sort of freak historical
legal scholar. No, I know, don’t even ask. Long story short, either I quit, or
I marry Roman, or we lose a bunch of licenses. Plus fines.”

“Oh
shit,” Stella said.

“Yeah.”

“No,
I mean, just
wow
. Roman?
The
Roman? Master Roman? The guy you’ve
been crazy for since forever?”

Lola
groaned and confiscated the half-gallon of ice cream, prying off the lid.
“Yeah. That Roman.”

Not
one to be deprived of ice cream, Stella dove in and loaded up her spoon with
vanilla fudge swirl. “So wait, is this like, just on paper, or…?”

“Honestly,
I don’t really know. He said it had to be ‘convincing,’ but who knows what that
means? Roman getting married at all is kind of a stretch, so…”

“Right,
Mr. No Strings Attached. What is the deal with that, anyway?”

Lola
winced. Roman was not a man who liked to talk about his past; he was, in his
own way, ever a cypher.
The untouchable Master.
Lola
only knew what she knew because of Roman’s involvement in her life when her dad
died, and because her cousin Chance, Roman’s best friend, had taken pity on her
when her college crush got too serious and told her why Roman would likely
never love a woman ever again.

“His
wife died,” Lola said.

She
didn’t like to say it. Lola wasn’t normally one to betray secrets, but she needed
Stella’s help to get through this. Stella was the only person who knew how she
felt about Roman, how she
really
felt, that it wasn’t completely
just
a college thing, and that she was still very much attracted to the man, and she
needed her friend’s support. She had to tell her the marriage would be
fake
. And she had to tell her why Roman was truly off-limits.

“Are
you serious?” Stella asked, totally floored.

“Yeah.
It was before I met him. It was sudden and totally unexpected, a congenital
heart defect or something that no one ever knew about. He just…I don’t know.
Chance told me he was done in that department.”

“And
he’s always so remote,” Stella said. She was obviously lost in thought. Roman
had taken an interest in Stella’s introduction to BDSM at the hands of her fiancé,
Sheikh Bashir, more to make sure that Stella was happy than anything else.
While Lola had set them up, Roman had been a presence, the man who seemed to
know everything and look out for everyone. Stella had told Lola that Roman was
the only guy she’d seen Bashir get weird around, in relation to his
woman—the only one who could rile the sheikh. That hadn’t surprised Lola
at all.

“Lola,
that’s a really big deal. It explains so much of how aloof he is, even maybe
why you guys never—”

 
“No, don’t even say it,” Lola said,
flopping onto her couch. “I can’t afford to think about what ifs, you know?
This is already making me crazy. First Ben turns out to be sleeping with his
ex-wife—”

“
Asshole
,” Stella said fervently.

“Then
Roman lies to me, too—which, honestly, I know not everyone thinks it’s a
big deal, but he’s never taken me seriously. Never really respected me. That’s
how it’s always felt, anyway, like I’m still some vulnerable kid to him. I’d
thought that after running the club for the past five years, maybe he’d have a
little respect—”

“Roman
respects you.”

Lola
shrugged. “You don’t lie to a partner you respect about letting an undercover
reporter enter the club, and then about doing the
Sizzle
article all on your own, so that she’s totally blindsided
when the club is exposed.”

“Ok,
he
did
screw up.”

Stella
offered the ice cream and Lola dug in just to keep from talking. The truth was,
her issues actually felt bigger than what she’d said to Stella. Lola had been
reeling since she’d discovered Ben’s lies, and she hadn’t realized how much
she’d been relying on Roman until she’d discovered
Roman’s
lies. It was like in the wake of Ben’s betrayal she’d come
to think of Roman as the last upright man, the last man she could trust. And
then it turned out that she couldn’t.

That
didn’t stop her heart from fluttering every time she looked at him.

Stupid
heart. She told herself it was purely a physical reaction. You couldn’t fight
the physical.

“What
are you going to do?” Stella asked.

“I
can’t quit,” Lola said, frowning. She’d realized it about five minutes after
she’d threatened to do it. Truth be told, Lola was a fighter, and what she
wanted to do most was kick this Harold Jeels’s ass. And besides, Lola believed
in protecting her family. And Volare was her family.

“Are
you sure you can go through with this, though?”

Lola
looked at her friend’s face and saw only compassion. Stella was a total
bleeding heart, unable to turn away from anyone in any kind of pain. It was one
of the things Lola admired about her friend, and one of the things she knew the
sheikh had fallen for.

So
it was pointless to try to hide from Stella what she was really feeling. In the
twenty-four hours since Roman had dropped this bomb on her, Lola had relived
everything about the past eight years, since the day she’d met Roman, and she
had come to the conclusion that she’d never completely gotten over him. Sure,
she’d gotten over her initial infatuation, the kind of thing that happens when
you’re young and everything’s going wrong and you latch on to the one steady
person in your life. But God, she wanted him.

Even
when she was young, Lola wasn’t totally stupid. When Lola realized she was
hopelessly infatuated with Roman and that nothing would ever come of it, she’d
pulled away to protect herself. They’d pursued separate lives in the city, and
a few years later neither of them had been prepared to run into each other at a
BDSM club. Lola had been there checking out the scene, and Roman had been there
checking out the competition.

In
short order, Roman had her working for him at Volare.

It
took only a few more months for Lola to realize that her original infatuation
hadn’t ever quite gone away. But she wasn’t the scared, vulnerable young woman
who’d just lost her remaining immediate family any longer, and so now she
thought it was just that she wanted Roman.

Physically.

She
wanted Roman Casta more than she’d ever wanted anything. Even just for one
night.
Even just a taste.
Even while their
relationship matured, even while they became close friends, even while they
worked together every day.

But
the man wouldn’t even look at her. It had been humiliating. Heartbreaking.

And
she’d just had to get used to it.

And
now the prospect of having to relive all of that, daily, while they pretended
to be in love? While they pretended to be man and wife? While they pretended…

“Ugh,”
Lola said, covering her face.

“You’ve
had a really hard time since Ben,” Stella said, and nudged her friend with the
cold ice cream tub.

“You
don’t know the half of it.”

It was
true—Lola had retreated into herself. It had been so humiliating: one of
the few men she’d ever let dominate her turned out to have a thing with his
ex-wife on the side, for
months
. She
hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone about it. She couldn’t face the vulnerability.

“Has
there been anyone since?” Stella asked.

“No,”
Lola said. “Not worth mentioning. I tried, but…”

Stella’s
eyes widened. “Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

Lola
didn’t even tell her the worst part: she hadn’t even been able to orgasm with
anyone since Ben. Mistress of a sex club who couldn’t come with a partner:
ironic, and not in a good way. And she hadn’t even been able to
think
about submitting.

A
terrible thought struck her. “Oh shit, I’ll have to pretend to be his submissive.”

“Well,
yeah.
Master
Roman. He’s not a
switch, is he?”

“No,”
Lola said, laughing despite herself. “Most definitely not.”

“Ok,
so in summary: the guy you’ve been crazy about for almost ten years is now
going to pretend to be your Dom husband, and you have to play along while not losing
your mind, or the club is screwed?”

“That’s
about right, although I dispute the ‘crazy for’ label.”

“Whatever,”
Stella rolled her eyes. “I should have brought you Valium instead of ice
cream.”