Ivan felt duped. “Is that right?” He’d believed that her deal was practically done already. He’d thought he was only the icing on the cake.

She told him, “Yes. In desperation, I called you to test out my idea that night, and it worked. The Chargers’ week off was coming, and we were running out of preparation time. That’s also why at the party I knew that it was better for me to stand next to you as just the pretty girl and let you take the glory, rather than to step out in front of you and be recognized as the bossy bitch.”

She continued, “And although I can be the bossy bitch behind closed doors, I do not want the crowd to think of me that way. But as long as they believe that me and my girls are loose, I can still keep them interested in my parties. And it may sound sad to you, Ivan, but it is the truth. So please tell me something differently. I want to believe in something else.”

Ivan was stunned. Lucina held more layers than he could cut through. He felt like leaning across the table and giving her a hug. But she had long become too hardened for hugs. How hard had her business life been as a pretty girl? She made him think again of Catherine. How hard had her life been trying to find and keep love? So Ivan felt guilty about everything. Maybe Lucina was right: the world of men was despicable for a woman.

He shook off the chill he felt inside and said, “It’s a cold world out there.” Then he drank some of his wine to warm his own cold heart.

OVER THE COURSE of their evening dinner, Lucina disregarded several of her phone calls, only responding to situations of urgency. Ivan gave her an open door to excuse herself from the table when she needed to. And she explained to him that she looked out for pretty girls because they all reminded her of herself in her younger years of dreaming to become an international model.

“I was only fourteen back then and very hungry to succeed,” she told him. “I traveled around the world and spoke parts of six languages: Portuguese, Italian, English, some Spanish, some French, and some Russian. But for whatever reason, international fame does not happen for everyone. So once I reached a certain point in my modeling career, I just got tired of trying so hard.”

It seemed that every pretty girl at least fantasized about being a model at some point. So Ivan listened to her with open ears, trying to get a fuller understanding of who she was.