Marrying the Master Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 completelyjust
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