CHAPTER FOUR

THAT’S a very dangerous question.

Yes, it had been a dangerous question. Only Paige hadn’t realized just how dangerous until it had come out of her mouth. And she was certain that Dante didn’t realize how much truth was behind it. How much teaching she would need.

Oh, dear.

Just thinking about it again made her feel hot, all over. And that was exactly why she wasn’t going to think about her futile, one-sided attraction anymore

She looked at the clock and shifted in her chair. Genevieve was already here, and Ana had been happily passed off to her. It hadn’t taken the little girl more than a moment to recognize her daily caregiver and the two were happily playing on the rug in the living room.

Paige sighed and realized that she was jiggling her leg. She stopped herself. Her little nervous habit wasn’t a good look with the long, silky gown she was wearing.

Yes, she was wearing a dress, to go on a date. Which was something she hadn’t done in…almost ever. She wasn’t the girl that men went after. She was the screwup, the funny one. The one with a pink stripe in her hair, although Dante was putting the kibosh on that.

She didn’t get dressed up in slinky gowns to go to fancy charity dinners with billionaires. She also didn’t get engaged to billionaires. Oh, yeah, she didn’t really marry them, either, though that was now in her future. All because her stupid, impulsive brain had spit out the most ridiculous lie at the worst time.

Desperation wasn’t her best state. She more or less had a handle on the blurting these days. When she’d been a kid, all the way up into high school, it had been really bad. She was always saying stupid things and embarrassing herself, which was one reason she’d opted for class clown rather than trying to be sexy or cool or anything like that. Letting it go, instead of wishing she could be something she wasn’t, had been much easier.

Or rather, as the case had been, she’d had one incredibly defining, humiliating moment that never let her forget that there were certain guys, who liked certain kinds of girls. And she was not one of them.

There was a heavy knock at her door and she scrambled up out of the chair, grabbing her handbag and wrap. She scurried into the living room and bent down, dropping a kiss onto Ana’s soft, fuzzy head.

“I won’t be too late,” she said to Genevieve.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you were,” Genevieve said.

Paige’s cheeks got hot and she was sure they were a lovely shade of red. “I…we won’t be late.” She had to get a handle on the blushing, too. There was no reason to blush. Dante Romani was hardly going to ravish her in the back of his car.

She straightened and draped her bright purple wrap over her bare shoulders, giving herself a little look in the small mirror that hung in her living room on her way to the door of her apartment.

The door opened just as she reached it.

“Were you going to leave me freezing on the front step?”

“It’s San Diego. It’s not freezing. And you’re in the temperature-controlled hallway.”

“It’s the principle,” he said.

“I had to say goodbye to Ana. Do you want to see her?”

A strange look crossed his face. Confusion, fear, then boredom. “No.”

“Oh, sorry. Most people like babies, you know,” she said, stepping out into the hall, closing the door behind her.

“I have no interest in having any of my own. I’m not certain why it would be important for me to like babies.”

“They’re cute.”

“Yes, so are puppies but I don’t want one.”

“A baby isn’t a puppy,” she said.

He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me for the reason previously stated.”

She rolled her eyes and pushed the button on the elevator. “Right. Well. I hope Ana and I don’t disturb you too much when we live in your home, as you don’t want a wife or a child.”

“It’s a large house,” he said, his words carrying a stiff undertone, as if he didn’t believe it would be large enough.

The doors to the elevator slid open and they both stepped inside. She’d never noticed how small elevators really were before she’d taken to riding in them with Dante Romani. He made everything feel smaller. Tighter. Because he filled the space he was in so absolutely.

It wasn’t just because he was well over six feet tall and broad, either. It was his charisma, the dark energy that radiated from him. He was so unobtainable, so uninterested in what was happening around him. It made you want to go and grab his attention. Made you want to be in his sphere. To make him seem interested. To make him smile.

To make him laugh.

At least she did, but she was good at that. Making people laugh and smile. Defusing tension with antics and jokes. And she had, apparently, not learned her lesson about unobtainable men.

She nearly opened her mouth to make one when her eyes locked with his and the breath leached from her body.

His dark eyes roamed over her curves, taking in every inch of her. And she was reminded again of their exchange last night.

What else will you teach me to like?

Oh, no, no, no. She wasn’t going there. She never had before, no reason to start now.

Besides, Dante could have any woman he wanted, on the terms he chose. He had no reason to start lusting after her pink-striped self.

She’d grown up in a small town, and every guy she knew had known her from the time they were in kindergarten together. They knew that she talked too much, and that she very often laughed too loud. That she had trouble paying attention in class. That she’d cut a boy’s tongue with her braces during her first kiss. They knew that she’d been the focus of what had essentially been the senior prank. They knew that she’d barely passed high school, that her parents hadn’t seen the point of paying for her to go to college when she just wouldn’t apply herself. They’d watched her get a job at a coffee shop instead of going away to school like everyone else.

They had all watched her grow from an awkward kid, to an awkward teen, to an awkward adult. It was like living in a fishbowl. And being the slow fish with the crippled fin. Nothing like her straight-A achieving sister and her football-star brother.

She was just…Paige. And it had always seemed like a pitifully small accomplishment, just being her. For most of her life, she’d accepted it. She’d just put on the image they’d applied to her and owned it. So much easier than trying to be anything else.

But there was a point, as she was pouring a cup of coffee for her fiftieth customer of the day, who asked her about her brother or sister, and not about her, that she couldn’t do it anymore.

A week later she’d moved. Just so she could be new to a place. So she had a hope of finding who she was apart from the painful averageness that marked her life.

It hadn’t been an instant transformation, no sudden rise to the top of the social heap. But she’d made a small group of friends. She’d found her job at Colson’s. That provided her with the first real sense of pride she’d ever had in a job.

They’d seen her raw talent and they’d hired her based on that, not based on classroom performance. Colson’s, and by extension, Dante, was her first experience with being believed in.

Strange.

She cast him a sideways glance. He was tall and…rigid in his tux. Each line of his suit jacket conforming to his physique with precision. Dante was never ruffled. She envied that a little bit. Or a lot of a bit, truth be told. She was captivated by it, really, his control. His perfection. His beauty. It was a dark, masculine beauty, nothing soft or traditionally pretty about him. It made her want to look at him, and keep looking.

The elevator doors slid open and they walked out of her apartment building and to the street. There was a black car parked against the curb, waiting for them, she assumed.

Dante opened the back door for her and she slid inside. She’d never ridden in a car with a driver before. Not even a taxi. She always drove her own seen-better-days car.

“It will be nice not being the one fighting traffic for a change,” she said when Dante got in on the other side and settled into the seat beside her.

“Mmm,” he said, taking his phone out of his pocket and devoting his attention to checking his email.

And just like that, the hot guy wasn’t looking at her anymore. Typical.

She let her gaze wander to her left hand, to her still-bare ring finger. “Oh…didn’t you…you were going to give me a ring before tonight, weren’t you?”

He set his phone down. “Yes,” he said. “I don’t know why you’re intent on spoiling the surprise.”

“Uh…because it’s not a surprise.”

“Perhaps I had something planned.”

She didn’t think he was serious. But with Dante it was hard to tell. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like, to have a man like him do the get-down-on-one-knee thing and ask her to be his wife. To look at her with intensity in those dark eyes and…

“So, ring?” She held out her hand and tried to shut out the little fantasy that was playing in the back of her mind.

Forget a dream proposal. She should aim for a kiss that wasn’t a disaster first.

Her reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and produced a velvet box. “Be my wife, et cetera,” he said, opening the box, revealing a pear-shaped emerald surrounded by diamonds.

“It’s…wow.” Hard not to be completely floored when a gorgeous man was giving you a beautiful ring. “How did you know I liked green?”

“Your eye shadow,” he said.

She looked up, as if she could see it. “Oh.”

“And I thought the color and style would suit you. Sedate doesn’t seem to be your thing.”

“Uh…no. Not so much.”

“Put it on,” he said.

“What? Oh, yeah.” She looked down at the ring and a clawing sense of dread made her chest tighten. Was she really going to do this? To put on his ring and go all the way with this?

Yes. Yes, she was. She’d never believed in anything more in her whole life. She’d never been the goal-oriented one in her family. She’d never been the top achiever. She’d never wanted anything so much it made her ache.

That wasn’t the case now. Now there was Ana. And she made Paige want to be the best mother. Made her want to do everything she could to give her baby the best life possible. To encourage her, to love her as she was.

She took a deep breath and lifted the ring from its silken nest, sliding it onto her finger. “There. We’re engaged now,” she said.

He nodded slowly and leaned back in the seat. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. If he was thinking.

“What?” she asked.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I was just wondering what you were thinking. I mean…this is weird.” She wondered if he was thinking of a beautiful blonde, or stunning, dark-haired beauty he would rather have given a ring to. The thought made her chest feel odd. Tight. “We don’t really know each other and…were you planning on getting married ever?”

“No,” he said, definitively. Decisively.

“Oh. Not even if you meet the right person?”

“There is no right person for me. Or at least not one who’s right for more than a couple of days. And nights.”

Dante watched Paige’s face, the confusion, the little bit of judgment. What he’d just said wasn’t true in the strictest sense. The part about marriage was true, but the way he’d spoken of his relationships made it sound like he and the women he slept with met and spent a few days locked in a passionate embrace.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

He’d had arrangements with a few different women over the course of his adult life. Women who were just as busy and driven as he was. Women who were just as averse to relationships.

The women he usually took to the charity events, the models, the actresses…he didn’t sleep with them. They were the bit of flash, the ones who looked good in pictures and who wanted to be in them.

But they were too young, many of then. Too starry-eyed and not nearly cynical enough. The women he took to bed, all they wanted was a couple of hours and a couple of orgasms. They wanted what he wanted. They didn’t want forever and fireworks; they wanted a basic need to be met. And that’s what happened. Basic, simple pursuit of release.

Still, there was no way to explain that without making it sound even worse.

And when had he ever cared what anyone thought? Never. He’d come into the public eye amid speculation and criticism. The Italian orphan that had somehow weaseled his way into the Colson family. That had been named as the heir of a billion-dollar fortune. There had been endless speculation about him, about how it had happened. As if he, even at fourteen, had known some sort of dark secret about the older couple who had taken him into their home. Something that would have enticed them to take on such a sullen, angry child.

He had never once tried to correct the rumors.

But something about the look in Paige’s eyes made him want to clarify, to change her assumptions. Or at least make an excuse.

“What about you,” he asked, happy to redirect the focus of the conversation to her. “Do you want to get married? Beyond this, I mean.”

“Well, I wasn’t really at the point where I was thinking about it.”

“All women think about it.”

“That’s a gross generalization and there’s no way you can know that. Or rather, you can know that you’re wrong because I wasn’t. Not in a serious way.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve been too busy discovering who I am. Apart from the small town I grew up in, I mean. I’ve been down here for about three years and I’ve been kind of…finding myself. Which sounds maybe a little bit geeky but it’s true. Back at home there were all these preconceived ideas about me. Who I was, what I was capable of. And when the town is as small as mine, those ideas don’t just come from your parents, they come from…everyone. I moved here and decided to really figure out who I would be if there was no one around expecting anything different.”

“A noble quest,” he said. And interesting, considering that he was doing the same thing, in a way. On a surface level, at least. He had no interest in finding himself, whatever that meant. But the idea of changing perceptions, that one grabbed him.

“Not really,” she said. “Just a desire to be seen as something other than a terminal dork.”

“I can’t imagine you being thought of as a…as that.”

“Well, I was. Scrub off the makeup, add a ponytail…I revert right back. Actually, I don’t think I’m evolved all that far beyond dork status—it’s just that I have a better handle on confusing people by presenting a more polished appearance.”

“Polished but flashy.”

“Distract them with something shiny, right?”

In some ways he understood that philosophy, too. Bring a beautiful, bubbly date and people might not notice how much he hated being at public events. Might not notice how little he smiled.

“Right,” he said, his eyes on her ring. He took her hand in his, ran his thumb over her smooth skin, to the gem that glittered on her finger. “This should do it,” he said, looking up, meeting her gaze.

Her eyes were round, her lips parted slightly and he knew that he could lean in and kiss her and she would kiss him back. The desire to do it, the need, tightened his gut. They would have to do it in public eventually. It would be perfectly reasonable to give it a try now. To press his lips to that soft, pink mouth. To dip his tongue inside and find out if she tasted as explosive as she looked.

He turned away from her sharply, putting his focus back on his phone. He wouldn’t kiss her. Not now. Not because he wanted to. Not because the desire, pumping hot and hard through his veins told him to. No, when there was a need for it, he would do it. Not before then.

He was in absolute control of his body, and his desires. Always. It would be no different with Paige. They were playing a game that bordered on dangerous, and that meant he had to be sure that he kept things tightly in line.

Paige cleared her throat. “Right. It certainly is…distracting.”

“Yes,” he said, clenching his teeth tight, “it is.”

* * *

You can’t have more champagne. You’ll make a total ass of yourself.

She’d already rolled her ankle twice while walking around the lavishly decorated ballroom and had stumbled obviously, teetering sharply to the right thanks to her three-inch heels.

She wasn’t exactly making the best appearance as Dante’s brand-new fiancée.

But this had all happened so fast she hadn’t had time to adjust. And that was one of the many reasons that alcohol felt slightly necessary.

The other was that moment in the car, just before they’d arrived, when Dante’s dark eyes had been focused on her mouth. When heat and desire had spread through her, flushing her skin, making her heart race. When she’d looked like a total fool, drooling over a man who didn’t have the slightest interest in her.

Yeah, there was that.

“Enjoying yourself, cara mia?” Dante appeared, holding two glasses of champagne. He offered her one, and she took it, in spite of herself.

“I’m not really sure,” she said.

“You aren’t sure?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know anyone here but you so I’m basically just standing next to you smiling and no one is really talking to me and…my cheeks hurt.”

“Your cheeks?”

“From the smiling.”

“Ah.” He frowned. “I must confess most of my dates aren’t here for conversation so I imagine the assumption has now been made about you.”

“What are they here for?” she asked. The obvious, she imagined. The pleasure of having Dante later.

“For the publicity,” he said, uprooting her previous assumption. “There will be several pictures of you, standing next to me and smiling, published in various places online and in print by tomorrow morning.”

“So, women date you to get their picture in the paper?”

“I’m not really vain, but I don’t think that’s the only reason.”

Paige’s heart slammed hard against her breastbone as she thought of all the other reasons women might date Dante. Oh, yeah, she could see that for sure. “Well, I mean…I’m sure your sparkling wit and effusive personality also net you a few dinner engagements.”

He laughed, a more genuine, rich laugh than she’d heard from him before. “I doubt it, somehow, but thank you for the confidence in me.”

“Or course,” she said. “It’s the least I can do considering what you’re doing for me.”

“I’m getting something in return.”

“You say that like you have to convince yourself you aren’t being altruistic,” she said, regretting the two glasses of champagne she’d already had, and the candor that came with them, the moment she said it.

“Because I never am.”

“So can never be?”

“Mr. Romani, and your lovely fiancée!” They were interrupted by an older woman with a broad smile.

Dante inclined his head. “Nice to see you again, Catherine, and please, call me Dante.”

“Dante, of course.” Catherine began regaling Dante with stories of her country club, gossip, both personal and business related. She noticed that Dante managed to appear vaguely interested, his expression politely pleasant.

And yet she could see something behind his eyes. Calculation. She could almost see him filtering out the unimportant, retaining bits about failing businesses and mistresses who might cause trouble in someone’s professional life.

Then he smiled, a smile that some might call warm, and bid the older woman goodbye.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“A friend of my…parents,” he said, the word coming out in a few, halting syllables.

“Oh.”

“I’ll confess, I don’t like these things, either,” he said. “But, you do hear interesting information. It’s worth it. So that about sums up my altruism, really. It’s for charity, which is nice. But I get something out of it, too. Nothing is purely altruistic.”

She thought of Ana, of how much joy Ana brought to her life. How much love and purpose. “I suppose not.”

“Does the purity of motivation really matter anyway? As long as no one is hurt. As long as people are cared for?”

“I always imagined it did.”

“Nobody gets points for good intentions.”

“I suppose not.” The champagne spoke for her again. “Does anyone hold bad intentions against you if you don’t act on them?”

“Speaking of yourself, or of me?”

She shrugged. “Just curious if it works both ways.”

“In my experience, intentions, and sometimes actions, don’t really matter at all. What matters is what people think.”

“Now that is true,” she said, sighing heavily, thinking back to how people had perceived her in her home town. Of how the social worker perceived her and her situation.

He lifted his glass. “To reinvention,” he said.

She lifted her glass in response but opted out of taking a sip. She needed to get her feet back on solid ground, needed to get her words back under control. And she really needed to get her thoughts in regards to Dante back under control.

“Perhaps when we’re through with this you and I will both be totally different people,” she said. “Or at least, in your case, people will think so.”

A smile curved his lips. Not a friendly smile. One that was dangerous. And, though it really shouldn’t have been, sexy. “Perhaps.”