CHAPTER ONE

      MONEY MEANT EVERYTHING to Lola Price.

      Money was the difference between happiness and grief. Between joy and tragedy. She’d learned it at five years old, and every day since.

      Growing up in a trailer on the edge of the California desert, in a dusty town where jobs were scarce, she’d seen her mother’s daily struggles to pay the bills after Lola’s father died. Her mother eventually remarried, but it only made things worse.

      By the time she was eighteen, Lola had learned that there was only one way to protect the people you loved. One way to keep them safe and close—and alive.

      You had to be rich.

      So she’d dropped out of high school and moved to Los Angeles. Desperate to save what was left of her family—and without any talent or even a high school diploma—she’d hoped to instantly become a movie star, but her acting career never got off the ground. Without money, she’d lost everything.

      Now she had a four-month-old son. And nearly a million dollars. Lola took a deep breath. No one would ever take her family from her again.

      Sergei Morozov’s booming voice brought her back to the charity ball, where he’d been swaying with her on the dance floor. “Can I kiss you, Lolitchka?”

      “What?” Startled, Lola looked up at him. “Kiss me?”

      “Yes. When?”

      “Um...never?”

      The Russian tycoon winced. Burly and in his mid-fifties, with gray hair on his temples and a strong accent, he was CEO of a large Wall Street firm. He’d also been, until four months ago, her employer. “When you agreed to be my date tonight, I thought...”

      “I’m sorry. I don’t feel that way about you.” Around them, couples danced in the gilded hotel ballroom to the orchestra’s elegant music. The children’s charity ball was the social occasion of November in New York. She was just surprised her two best friends, Hallie and Tess, both newly married to billionaires, weren’t here. They loved fancy events like this.

      But Lola didn’t see them. As she danced with her former boss—keeping an old-fashioned, almost Victorian distance between them—she saw dark-haired men everywhere in sleek, sophisticated tuxedos who reminded her of another previous boss, Rodrigo Cabrera. The Spanish media tycoon who’d coldly given her a million-dollar check, then tossed her out of his beach house, secretly pregnant and brokenhearted.

      Sergei cleared his throat. “If you just need a little more time...”

      “That’s not it.” She looked down at the marble ballroom floor. She never should have agreed to a date, she thought. She’d been swayed by her neighbor, a widow who occasionally babysat her son, who’d told Lola she ‘needed to get out and live.’ That, plus the weddings of Lola’s two best friends in rapid succession, had made her feel her own loneliness. When Sergei Morozov had invited her out, she’d convinced herself it might be a healthy step forward, after a hard, lonely year.

      Now she wished she’d just stayed at home.

      “Some man broke your heart,” he growled. “He abandoned you and your son.”

      Lola looked up in astonishment. She’d never spoken about Rodrigo to anyone, not even her best friends. “I never said he abandoned me—”

      “You had pregnancy alone. Had birth alone. No man.” His big hands tightened against her back. “Forget the idea of a date. Maybe I just marry you, eh?”

      She sucked in her breath. “Marry?”

      The burly man looked down at her. “I have wanted you for a long time, Lola,” he said softly. “If marriage is your price, I am willing to pay.”

      Lola stared up at him in shock.

       Marry him?

      Her stomach looped like a roller-coaster.

      Sergei Morozov wasn’t a bad man. She’d worked as his secretary throughout her pregnancy. He was rich, arrogant, but not cruel. When she was eighteen, she would have jumped at the chance to marry a man like that.

      Too bad for him that Lola was now twenty-five, with a pocketful of money and a scarred, bitter heart.

      “I’m flattered, truly,” she said awkwardly, “but—”

      “Marry me, zvezda moya. I will cover you with jewels. I will—”

      “I’d like to cut in.”

      Lola’s heart dropped as she heard another man’s voice, low and dangerous behind her. A voice she knew, though she hadn’t heard it in over a year. A voice she’d never forget.

      Slowly, she turned.

      Rodrigo Cabrera stood beside her on the dance floor, wearing a sleek tuxedo over his muscular, powerful body.

      Dark-haired, dark-eyed, with chiseled cheekbones and a five o’clock shadow along the hard, sharp edge of his jaw, he was even more handsome than she remembered. Power, dark and dangerous and sexy, echoed off him like shock waves.

      “Rodrigo?” she breathed.

      “Lola.” His cruel, sensual lips curved as he looked down at her. “It’s been a long time.”

      Unwilling images went through her of the days and nights of their brief affair. The pleasure. The joy. The laughter. The certainty in Lola that for the first time since she could remember, she was no longer alone...

      Now, pain twisted through her, pain she was careful not to reveal on her face. “What are you doing here?”

      “Cutting in.” He moved between her and Sergei with almost feline grace. He glanced at the Russian tycoon with casual amusement. “If you don’t mind.”

      Sergei scowled. “Of course I mind—”

      “It’s all right, Sergei.” Lola put her hand unsteadily on his arm. “I’ll see you shortly.”

      Sergei set his jaw. “Once the dance is done, I’ll be back.”

      Rodrigo’s eyes flicked to her. “As the lady pleases.”

      After Sergei’s grudging departure, the two of them looked at each other.

      “So you’re living in New York now,” Rodrigo said coldly.

      “Are you here on business?”

      He bared his teeth into a smile. “Is there any other reason?”

      In spite of everything, Lola’s heart was in her throat as she looked up at him. All the other people in the ballroom, all the laughter and music, faded away.

      Slowly, Rodrigo pulled her into his arms. She breathed in his scent, of woodsy musk and soap and something uniquely him. She tried to tell herself she felt nothing, but her knees trembled, and she was glad he was supporting her in the dance.

      He glanced back at Sergei, now glowering at them from the edge of the dance floor. “So he wants to marry you.”