their paternity test. Within two hours, they had the results. Jett was Rodrigo’s son.
“I knew it,” Rodrigo said quietly when he got the results.
Lola looked at him irritably. “Then why did you insist on a test?”
“There’s knowing, and there’s knowing.”
“That makes no sense. You could have just trusted me.”
“I needed proof.” He didn’t explain further. When it came to asking for help or showing weakness, Rodrigo was even worse than Lola.
After the clinic, the next stop that morning turned out to be the prestigious white-shoe Manhattan law firm of Crosby, Flores and Jackson, where, amid the hushed elegance of a private office, Lola was presented with a fifty-page legal contract of a prenuptial agreement.
Sitting at the gleaming mahogany desk, she read through it slowly, to the obvious surprise of the lawyers, marking up any clause she didn’t like with a red pen.
Lola had made below average grades in school, but she’d always been good at debate. It was why, when she was twelve, her mother had handed Lola the phone if she needed to convince the electric company to turn the lights back on, or deal with a debt collector. It was also how, after Lola’s failed attempt at a “quick and easy” movie star career, she’d eventually become executive assistant to a powerful tycoon. Lola knew how to absorb and how to deflect. She knew when to pay attention and how.
In short, she knew how to argue.
Even opaque legal language couldn’t confuse her. It was like following a shell game. You just never took your eyes off the ball.
Finally, she set down the papers.
“I have some changes,” she said coolly.
“Do you?” Rodrigo’s voice was amused.
“Yes. Starting with this clause in paragraph Four C...”
In the end, Lola got what she wanted. She negotiated away one financial item after another—the amount of money set aside for alimony, child support, housing and staff levels in case of a divorce—in order to keep the one thing she actually cared about, which was primary custody of Jett. That was the one thing she was never, ever willing to lose.
She marveled that Rodrigo seemed focused on something else entirely: making sure Lola would be punished if she were ever unfaithful during their marriage.
She was amazed he’d be worried about that. As she’d told him, she’d never kissed another man in her whole life. But as she’d heard from a gossipy production assistant, he’d had three fiancées cheat on him. So maybe she could understand, after all.
Whatever the reason, Lola gladly used it to her advantage. The prenuptial agreement was altered. In case of divorce, no matter which of them was at fault, Lola would get custody of Jett. But if she ever cheated on Rodrigo, even after thirty years of marriage, she wouldn’t get a penny. No alimony. No marital property. Nothing but the three suitcases she’d arrived with.
But since she obviously wouldn’t cheat, she’d won. She smiled as they left the law office.
“You never thought of becoming a lawyer?” Rodrigo murmured, his dark eyes gleaming as they pushed the baby’s stroller out of the wood-paneled private office.
“Lawyer?” Lola snorted. “Me?”
“You think like one.”
She shook her head. “I’m not even sure if I passed my GED test.”
They left the law office and got back into the car. As Rodrigo drove her and the baby south toward his SoHo loft, he suddenly asked, “Why did you drop out of high school?”
She looked at him guardedly. “What do you mean?”
“You’re smart, Lola. A fighter.” He shook his head wryly. “Something I’ve sometimes learned the hard way. Why didn’t you go to college? Why did you drop out of high school and go to LA and do—” he hesitated “—what you did?”
Her cheeks suddenly burned. “I had my reasons.”
She couldn’t explain why, at eighteen, she’d been so desperate to earn money, so stupid and naive, that she’d done things she wasn’t proud of. Things that had caused Rodrigo to call her ugly names, six years later. She hadn’t done everything Marnie had accused her of—not even close—but what she’d done was bad enough. And she’d still failed to save her sisters.
But she wasn’t going to explain and let Rodrigo think she was a weakling and a failure, in addition to being a—well, he’d never actually called her a whore. But that was how he’d made her feel.
Wrapping her arms around herself, she looked stonily out the window. Silence fell in the luxury sedan as he drove south through Manhattan, the only sound the yawns of their baby in his car seat behind them.
“You’ve always been quick,” he said, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. “If you’d stayed in school—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You could have gone far. You could be a big-time lawyer or CEO of a major corporation by now. Why didn’t anyone convince you to even try?”
She didn’t look at him. A lump lifted to her throat.
She had been good in school once. When she was seven, she’d loved to puzzle over math and read. But after her father’s death, her mother had been too busy and exhausted to help with school. Later, she’d remarried. After Lola’s two half-siblings were born—and especially after her new stepfather was injured on the job—school had become a luxury. It just wasn’t important anymore, not like making sure there was food in the fridge, and caring for her sisters when her stepfather was passed out drunk, and their mother working the overnight shift.
When Lola was fifteen, her mother had died. Bonnie had been feeling bad for months, but put off seeing the doctor, insisting she didn’t have money or time. By the time she’d finally gotten her diagnosis, the cancer was terminal. She’d lived only a few months after that. Her stepfather, trying to cope with the grief and his family’s sudden lack of income, ended up going to prison for dealing drugs. There had been nothing left to hold their family together.
Staring hard out the window of the luxury sedan, Lola wiped her eyes fiercely. She hadn’t even told Hallie and Tess that. Just as she’d never told them anything about her baby’s father, not even Rodrigo Cabrera’s name.
It was the only way Lola knew how to deal with that kind of radioactive pain. To pretend it didn’t exist.
“I didn’t care, all right?” she said numbly, staring hard out the window. “I never cared about college.”
“What do you care about, then?”
Lola thought of her family. Everyone she’d lost. Everyone she’d loved but been unable to save.
Setting her jaw, she whispered, “Protecting what’s mine.”
