Submit and Surrender Read Free

reasons, or comfort reasons, or whatever, but she was clearly going to put the time out in L.A. to good use. Good, meddlesome use.
    “No,” Adra said truthfully.
    “Uh-huh,” Lola said, eyes glittering. “And who was your last relationship?”
    Adra stifled a laugh. The answer to that was definitely not what Lola expected, but Adra could tell she wouldn’t get away with evasive answers forever. Lola wanted to know about Ford. Volare was like a big family, and sometimes, like a family, everyone was up in everyone else’s business. Adra also knew she had pretty much zero right to complain, considering she was usually the one poking her nose in where it didn’t belong, setting people up, making sure people were happy.
    Besides, Lola was kind of adorably bad at it.
    “It was before I joined Volare,” Adra said.
    “Seriously? That long ago?” Lola said. “Would I know him?”
    Now Adra really did laugh. The whole country knew him. It kind of sucked when your actor ex’s career took off right after he’d dumped you for someone else and his picture ended up on every billboard in town, but it went with the business of being a talent agent. Adra had gotten used to it a long time ago, but other people usually freaked out when she told them, which is why she’d stopped divulging that little bit of her past.
    “It’s not important,” Adra said. “We’re not in touch.”
    “That bad?”
    “That bad,” Adra said, her tone clipped. Actually, she couldn’t believe how much it still affected her. She’d learned a hard lesson with Derrick Duvall, and recently she’d spent a lot of time cursing the fact that she’d learned that lesson before she’d ever met Ford. It would have been…
    No. It would have ended just as badly for her and Ford. And that would have been so, so much worse, because Ford was…well, Ford was Ford. There was no one else like him. And Adra already couldn’t take the fact that Ford looked at her like she was a stranger, like he’d seen a side of her that he just didn’t like. She couldn’t blame him, but if she felt that bad now, she couldn’t imagine what would have happened if she’d let it go on any further. She’d have been utterly destroyed when it ended badly, as it inevitably would have.
    She shuddered.
    “Yeah, well, you know that’s not what I’m really asking about,” Lola said.
    “I know,” Adra said. “Believe me, I know. But it’s not my favorite subject at the moment. We’re working together, it’s not a big deal, it’s not—”
    “That’s actually one of the reasons we came down from Sonoma,” Lola said softly. “We have something we need to talk to you two about.”
    That shut Adra up for about a second. Then the words came tumbling out of her.
    “Are you ok? Is the baby ok? Is Roman ok?”
    Lola looked up, for once actually surprised. “What? We’re fine, you crazy lady. My God, who does the worrying when you’re not around?”
    “I outsource.”
    Lola smiled. “Here, help me up.”
    “Where are we going?” Adra asked, pulling Lola out of the deep couch cushion. They managed to uncouch her on the second try.
    “Remind me not to sit there,” Lola said. “Not safe for my dignity.”
    “Please,” Adra said. “You could command armies while wearing a pink bunny suit. You can handle this couch.”
    “Not if it swallows me whole,” Lola laughed and pulled Adra toward the stairs.
    The stairs that led to Ford’s office.
    Adra sighed. Well. They were supposed to work together.
    “Lola, just give me a heads up,” she whispered as they came in sight of the door. “Am I going to hate this, whatever it is? Like, how bad are we talking here? Soul-crushing—like having to work with the guy you maybe almost had a thing with and still haven’t gotten over and his new girlfriend bad? Or just, you know, normal stressful for working with that guy you haven’t totally gotten over?”
    Oh God. Adra hadn’t even thought about Ford getting a new