Marrying the Master (31 page)

Lola
was trying very hard to choke back tears. She had promised herself that she
wasn’t going to cry anymore; she’d already used up her crying quota for
possibly the next decade.

The
thought of Roman being in love with her, all this time that she’d been in love
with him, was testing her vow.

She
turned on Ford. She had not forgotten that he must have known about the LA
expansion the whole time. He hadn’t been obligated to inform her, since she
wasn’t a partner, but that didn’t mean it didn’t rankle. “And what’s your role
in all this, Mr. Co-Conspirator?”

Ford
sighed. “This,” he said, pointing at the stack of papers in front of him. “And
this,” he said again, brandishing another of those envelopes.

Lola
took the envelope, but hesitated when she heard
Ford
clear his throat.

“I’m
supposed to explain what this is,” he said. “Please understand, this just pains
me, as a lawyer. The pre-nup I helped craft for you two was just a thing of
beauty, honestly. And this…this undoes it all,” he sighed again. “Lola, sign
where indicated, and you’ll own every single one of Roman’s assets. You don’t
have to stay married to him. You don’t even have to see him again if you don’t
want to. He’s just giving it all to you.”

Lola
tried to swallow, and found her mouth was dry. She went and took a drink of water
from Ford’s bar, then changed her mind and made herself
a
vodka
.

Then
she coughed for thirty seconds straight.

“Ok,
maybe too early for vodka,” she said. “Seriously, though, this is ridiculous.”

Both
men shrugged. They seemed entirely too smug about the whole thing.

“What
if I don’t sign?” she demanded. “What happens then?”

“I
imagine Roman’s taxes get extremely complicated,” Bashir laughed.

Ford
stood, and Lola collapsed in the offered seat. “I just…I mean…what?” she said.

Ford
finally smiled. “It is worth it, though, for the look on your face. Open the
envelope and read the card. Maybe he explains this lunacy in there.”

Shaking,
Lola ripped away the envelope and fumbled with the card. There, in Roman’s
aggressive hand, was another short note.

You already hold my heart in your
hands. The rest is nothing.

I love you.

-Roman

“What
does it say?” Ford asked.

But
Lola was crying too hard to answer.

Three
nerve-wracking days passed. Three days in which Lola looked for surprises
around every corner, in which she had all the time in the world to wonder about
what Roman had planned next, and, worse, about what her reaction would be. She
felt like a total jerk for still having reservations after everything he’d
already done, but the truth was, he hadn’t addressed her single biggest worry:
that he only truly had room in his heart for Samantha.

Honestly,
she still wasn’t sure it mattered if that were the case. It wouldn’t change how
she felt about
him, that
was for sure—she’d
assumed all along that he’d always carry a torch for Samantha. But she did want
to know what she was getting into. She wanted to make sure he wouldn’t wake up
in a month, or a year, or ten years, and hate her for not being Samantha. Or if
that was a risk…she just felt she had to know.

Lola
was a wreck by the time her erstwhile doorman called up on that third day.

“A
Mr. Roman Casta here to see you,” he said.

“Oh
shit, seriously?”

“…Yes?”

“Oh
God. Oh God.” She looked down—sweatpants
again
? Seriously? She was never wearing sweatpants ever again.
Ever. She was going to burn all of her sweatpants. She sighed. “Ok, send him
up.”

She
raced into her bedroom and tore through her closet, finally having to face
facts: the only clean items were her favorite jeans—which were not so
bad, really—and another one of those off-the-shoulder tops that she’d
bought in a brief off-the-shoulder frenzy a few months back. Well, at least
Roman liked them. She threw her clothes on just in time for the knock on the
door; just as well she didn’t have time for the mirror.

Theroux, what are you so nervous
about?
He’s winning you over
,
remember
?

Then
she opened the door, and saw Roman for the first time in nearly a week.

Her
mouth stopped working.

She
leaned on the door for support.

She
felt hot all over again.

He
was dressed down, for the first time that she could remember, in jeans that
were slung low on his hips and a white t-shirt that did nothing to hide the
physique underneath. He held a motorcycle jacket in his hands, and his coal
black hair was attractively mussed, like he’d been running his hands through
it.

And his
eyes
.

Oh
God, his eyes. They simmered. Smoldered. Held her in place.

“If
you keep looking at me like that, I’ll never get a chance to say what you
deserve to hear,” he finally said. Neither of them had moved.

Lola
thought really, really hard about whether she could force herself to stop
looking at him like that.

“Lola,”
he warned, “This is important. Control yourself.”

And
he had the cheek to grab her around the waist, kiss her, and give her ass a
good squeeze.

He
let out a long, slow breath. “I’ve been waiting for that for a long time,” he
said.

“Roman…”
she breathed. She was ready to jump him in the hallway.

“Not
now,” he said, smacking her on the ass again. “I have something to show you
first.”

“If
you want to go anywhere other than inside,” she said, deadly serious, “you need
to stop touching my ass.”

She
should have known better.

“Oh,
Lola,” he said with an evil grin, “You have forgotten which of us is the
dominant?”

In
the blink of an eye he’d pushed her back into the apartment and up against the
wall in her tiny entryway. She moaned, already flying just by being so close to
him, just by being able to smell him, and then he pushed his hand down the
front of her jeans.

He
found her already wet.

And
then he stopped.

“Lola,”
he said, his fingers so, so close, “I want you to think about how many blows
you’ve just earned on the spanking bench. Don’t forget what we are in the
bedroom. Keep that in mind when you think about what I have to say today, yes?”

“Oh
God,” she said. “Roman…”

He
took her face in his free hand and looked her in the eyes just before he kissed
her again. This time it was longer, slower. Languorous.

Loving.

“Lola,
please,” he said. “Please let me show this to you. Then you make your decision,
yes?”

 
“Ok,” she said. “But if you want me
thinking clearly, you really can’t keep touching me.”

Roman
smiled. “I understand that completely,” he said. “Believe me.”

He
led her on what must have looked like to an outside observer a perfectly
pleasant springtime walk to Central Park. To Lola, it was like a suspense
sequence in an action film.

Oh God, what comes next?

Is it now?

Now?

By
the time they’d turned towards Strawberry Fields she had decided that, if
nothing else, she was definitely
not
suited for a career in espionage.

Suddenly,
Roman came to a stop. They were in front of a bench.
Just an
ordinary bench.
Nearby there were some kids playing ultimate
frisbee
, a couple playing hooky from work, lying on a
blanket and ignoring the world around them. The whole place was full of
sun-dappled joy, and then there was this bench, just another oasis of privacy
and calm in the heart of the city.

“What
am I looking at?” she asked gently.

“This
is where Samantha told me she loved me,” Roman said. “It’s where we used to
come on our walks. It is where I proposed. I have a lot of history with this
bench,” he said, smiling wryly.

Lola
tried to figure out how to feel. Her first instinct was that this was all
wrong. She didn’t want to be a footnote to his life with Samantha. She
wasn’t
Samantha. At the very least…

Roman
seemed to notice her discomfort. He bent down and tilted her chin toward him.

“No,
Lola, no,” he said. “That is the point I wanted to make. It is my
history
. My past. Not my future.”

“Roman…”

“I
brought you here to help me say goodbye,” he said. “Listen,
carina
. Samantha was perfect for the man
I was then. I was perfect for her. She died, and it changed me. In some ways
for the better, in some ways…”

Lola
laughed, wiping away a tear. “Ok, yeah, I get that.”

“She
was home to me then. Then she died, and I had no home. You were the first light
I saw.
The only one, in all those years.
I have been
very, very stupid, and very, very stubborn, but you are home to me
now
. Can you understand that I did not
think any one man would be so lucky as to have
two
soul mates?”

Lola
looked up at him sharply and he laughed, drawing her close. “You would never
expect me to use that phrase, ‘soul mates’, no?”

“No,”
she said, mimicking his accent.

“I
feel guilty, it’s true. So many people in the world live difficult lives, that
this…that
you
,” he said, his voice
breaking, “You are like an embarrassment of riches to me.”

They
had been drawing closer to each other the whole time, and now Lola couldn’t
hold back anymore. She put her arms around Roman’s waist, and, just slightly
vengefully, her hands in his back pockets.

“Roman,
I can’t take it anymore,” she said. “Are you going to ask me?”

His
eyebrows went up. “I planned a different event, so you’d have your own place,
your own—”

“I
swear, Roman, if you make me wait any longer, I’m going to lose my mind,” she
said. “Besides, it’s kind of…she’s part of who you are, too, Roman. She
shouldn’t be gone completely.”

Lola
thought she saw those dark eyes shimmer a bit, but then Roman bent down to
brush his lips against her forehead. He murmured something that she couldn’t
hear, and then pressed his forehead to hers.

“Will
you marry me, Lola?” he said. “Truly?”

She
gave up on her ‘no tears’ policy and let them stream freely as she kissed him,
lightly and tenderly and passionately, and hopefully forever.

When
they caught their breath, Lola flashed a mischievous grin.

“I
dunno,” she said. “How much money do you have?”

She
wished she had a photo of Roman’s face. Lola took advantage of his stunned
silence to grab the signatory pages from Ford’s stack of papers out of her back
pocket and stuff them, crumpled and useless, into Roman’s pocket.

“I
don’t want this, you nut,” she said. “I don’t even know what to do with it.
Just freaking
marry
me, ok?”

Even
the blissful college couple on the blanket looked up when they heard Lola’s
shriek, only to see a tall, broad shouldered man carrying a very happy looking
red-haired woman out of the park and over his shoulder.

Roman
couldn’t tell if the wedding was, so far, really this insane, or if he was
merely in some sort of altered state of excitement, waiting for Lola.

A
tiny, intense little blonde woman named Dagmar had ordered him, in severe
tones, to relax. And it was just as well Dagmar had insisted, for security
reasons, that they hold the ceremony at Volare itself—Roman couldn’t
imagine everyone would be quite so ‘relaxed’ anywhere else.

Apparently
Lola had decreed that no one was to be stressed out or unhappy at this wedding,
and all of the guests had eagerly taken her up on that particular offer. Stella
was off somewhere, preparing Lola, Chance was flirting with every single woman
he could find, Ford was enamored with a beautiful blonde Roman recognized from
the theater, and Dagmar was running a series of photoshoots involving
bridesmaids and Volare’s best BDSM equipment like a sexy military campaign.

Ava,
Jackson’s own wife-to-be, and Catie were both happily taking part. Jake and
Jackson were watching them, perhaps even more happily.

It
was almost a carnival sort of atmosphere, and the only thing it was missing,
the only thing that mattered, was Lola.

“Where
is
she?” Roman exclaimed.