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respect you,
you can quit.”
    Lola
looked up, shocked.
    “Look,
I love Volare, but I love you more,” Stella said, digging into the ice cream.
“And you can’t keep hanging around a guy who makes you this crazy, not right
now, not after what happened with Ben. You have to eventually move on. So you
save the club, and then…”
    “I
move on.”
    It
actually wasn’t the worst idea in the world. It made Lola unbelievably sad, but
it gave her some relief, too.
    “Hey,
I’m sorry I didn’t come over last night when you left that message,” Stella
said, blushing. “Bashir had something…planned.”
    Lola
looked at her friend and smiled. The change in Stella since Bashir had come
into her life had been remarkable; she’d gone from having zero self-confidence
in the wake of a brutal divorce to being so happy that she seemed in love with
the entire world. Lola had wondered more than once what it felt like to have a
man love you as much as Bashir loved Stella.
    “When
do you have to decide?” Stella asked. “Crazy fake marriage or…?”
    Lola
looked at her watch and cursed. There was no more time to feel scared or
overwhelmed or anything else. “I’m supposed to meet Roman and Ford in like an
hour.”
    “Seriously?”
    “Seriously.”
Lola shot off the couch and began digging through her recently delivered dry
cleaning for something acceptable. She didn’t want to show up to this meeting
looking as disheveled as she felt. She wanted the upper hand in at least one
way. Roman Casta had the upper hand in everything else. “What the hell am I
going to wear?”
    Stella’s
grin was positively evil. “Oh, I know what. That white Dior suit, the one with
the boobs.”
    “White?”
    “ Definitely white. And
definitely with boobs. There’s no reason to make it easy on him.”
    Stella
was a whiz with hair and make up, at least on other people, and in no time at
all Lola looked like a million bucks. She got her favorite red purse—a
splash of Roman’s favorite color, and the only red item she owned that somehow
didn’t clash with her hair—grabbed some oversized dark glasses, and rode
the elevator down, Stella in tow, finally feeling like she might be back in
control.
    Which
was why she was taken completely by surprise when she opened the lobby door to
find a scrum of reporters, all of them screaming her name.
    “Lola!
Lola! Is it true you secretly married Roman Casta?”
    “Are
you the mistress of Club Volare?”
    “Who
are the other members?”
    A
dozen flashes went off in Lola’s face at once, and she nearly toppled over. How
could this happen? How could the press already know? How had they gotten her
name?
    Stella
showed up at her side and helped her fight her way through the crowd to a cab
that was stopped at the light. As they piled into the backseat and Lola
shielded them from camera flashes with her bag, she had only one furious
thought: Roman did this. Again.

chapter 3
     
    Where
the hell was she?
    Roman
paced the length of Ford Colson’s spacious office, only a few blocks from Club
Volare and Roman’s own apartment. The club’s longtime lawyer, and Roman’s good
friend, had wisely stayed silent, until now.
    “She’s
just running late,” Ford finally said.
    “Obviously
she is late,” Roman said.
    “I
meant that I’m sure she’s coming.”
    Roman
glared. “The alternative had not occurred to me.”
    Now,
of course, the possibility loomed large. Only a few days ago he would have
laughed at the suggestion that Lola Theroux would ever seriously consider
leaving Club Volare. Ever since he’d brought her into the club she had been a
natural fit, and eventually an essential fixture. She managed the place with
singular grace, and was central to his plans to open up a second location,
though she didn’t know it yet.
    And
yesterday she had seriously raised the possibility of quitting.
    It
was wrong. He had taken steps to make it right.
    But
that required that she in fact arrive.
    Roman
was almost