by Maisey Yates
She plunked her things down in the chair in front of his desk, bending at the waist, her skirt tightening over the curve of her butt, and pushed her hand back through her dark brown hair, revealing a streak of bright pink nearly hidden beneath the top layers.
She was a very bright woman in general, one of the things that made her impossible to ignore. Bright makeup, lime-green on her lids, magenta on her lips, and matching fingernails. She made for an enticing picture, one he found himself struggling to look away from.
“You said to come in and see you before I left?”
“Yes,” he said, breaking his focus from her for the first time since she’d come in, looking at the items she’d chucked haphazardly into the chair. He had a very strong urge to straighten them. Hang them on a hook. Anything but simply let them lie there.
“Are you going to fire me?”
“I don’t think so,” he said, tightening his jaw. “Tell me more about your situation.”
A little wrinkle appeared between her brows, her full lips turning down. “In a nutshell, Shyla was my best friend. We moved here together. She got a boyfriend, got pregnant. He left. And everything was fine for a while, because we were working it out together. But she got really sick after giving birth to Ana. She lost a lot of blood during delivery and she had a hard time recovering. She ended up … there was a clot and it traveled to her lungs.” She paused and took a breath, her petite shoulders rising and falling with the motion. “She died and that left … Ana and I.”
He pushed aside the strange surge of emotion that hit him in the chest. The thought of a motherless child. A mother the child had lost to death. He tightened his jaw. “Your friend’s parents?”
“Shyla’s mother has never been around. Her father is still alive as far as I know, but he wouldn’t be able to care for a child. He wouldn’t want to, either.”
“And you can’t adopt unless you’re married.”
She let out a long breath and started pacing. “It’s not that simple. I mean, she didn’t say that absolutely. There’s no … law, or anything. I mean, obviously. But from the moment Rebecca Addler, the caseworker, came to my apartment it was clear that she wasn’t thrilled with it.”
“What’s wrong with your apartment?”
“It’s small. I mean, it’s nice—it’s in a good area, but it’s small.”
“Housing is expensive in San Diego.”
“Yes. Exactly. Expensive. So I have a small apartment, and right now Ana shares a room with me. And I admit that a fifth-floor apartment isn’t ideal for raising a child, but plenty of people do it.”
“Then why can’t you do it?” he asked, frustration starting to grow in his chest, making it feel tight. Making him feel short-tempered.
“I don’t know why. But it was really obvious by the way she said … by how she was saying that Ana would be better off with a mother and a father, and didn’t I want her to have that? Well, that made it pretty obvious that she really doesn’t want me to get custody. And … I panicked.”
“And somehow my name came into this? And into the paper?”
Her cheeks turned a deep shade of pink. “I don’t know how that happened. The paper. I can’t imagine Rebecca … If you could have met her, you would know she didn’t do it. Maybe whoever handled the paperwork because I know she made a note.”
“A note?”
Paige winced. “Yeah. A note.”
“Saying?”
“Your name. That we’d just gotten engaged. She said it was possible it would make a difference.”
“You don’t think it has more to do with the fact that I’m a billionaire than it has to do with the fact that you’re getting married.”
He was under no illusion about his charm, or lack of it. And neither was the world in general. The thing that attracted women to him was money. The thing that made him acceptable in the eyes of the social worker would be the same thing. Monetarily, he would be able to provide for a child. Several children, and that did matter. A sorry way to decide parentage in his opinion.
But that was the way the world worked. Coming from having none, to having more than he could ever spend, had taught him that in a very effective way.
“Possibly,” she said, sucking her bright pink bottom lip into her mouth and worrying it with her teeth.
His phone rang and he punched the speaker button. “Dante Romani.”
His assistant’s nervous voice filled the room. “Mr. Romani,” he said, “the press have been calling all afternoon looking for a statement … about your engagement.”
Dante shot Paige his deadliest glare. She didn’t shrink. She hardly seemed to notice. She was looking past him, out the window, at the harbor, twirling a lock of hair around her finger, her knees shaking back and forth. She was the most … haphazard creature he’d ever seen.
“What about it?” Dante asked, still unsure how he was going to play it.
As far as the press was concerned, he was marrying Paige and he was adopting a child with her. To go back on that a day later would kill the last vestiges of speculation that he might possess honor or human decency. That wasn’t exactly a goal of his. Yes, by the standards of some, he lacked charm. Really, he just wasn’t inclined to kiss ass, and he never had been. But it didn’t mean he was angling for a complete character assassination by the media, either.
If things got too bad, and they were headed that way, it might affect business. And that was completely unacceptable to him. Don and Mary Colson had adopted an heir to their fortune, to their department store empire, for a reason. It was not so he could let it fail.
And then there was Ana. Dante didn’t like children. Didn’t want them. But the memories from his own childhood, memories of foster care, of going from home to home, sometimes good, sometimes not, were strong.
Perhaps Ana would be adopted right away. But would they care for her? Would they love her? Paige did; that much even he could recognize.
This concern, for another human being, was unusual for him. It was foreign. But he couldn’t deny that it was there. Very real, very strong. The need to spare an innocent child from some of the potential horrors of life. Horrors he knew far too well.
“They want details,” Trevor said.
Dante’s eyes locked with Paige’s. “Of course they do.” So do I. “But they’ll have to wait. I have no statement at this time.” He punched the off button on the phone’s intercom. “But I will need one,” he said to Paige. A plan was forming in his mind, a way to take this potential PR disaster and turn it into something that would benefit him. But first, he wanted to hear an explanation. “What do you propose we do?”
Paige stopped jiggling her leg. “Get married?” Her expression was so hopeless, so utterly lost looking. “Or … at least let the engagement go on for a while?” The desperation, coming from her in waves, was palpable.
No one had ever cared for him with so much passion, not in the years since he’d lost his birth mother. He didn’t regret it. It was far too late in life for that.
But it isn’t too late for Ana.
He looked back down at the newspaper. It wouldn’t only be for Ana anyway. It was a strange thought … the idea of being able to manipulate the image he’d always had in the press.
He’d grown from sullen teenage boy to feared man all in the eye of the public. For years he’d been painted as an unloving, ungrateful adopted child who had no place in the Colson family. As he’d grown up, his image had changed to that of a hard boss, a heartless lover who drew women in with sexual promises, sensual corruption and money before discarding them. It colored the way people saw him. The way they talked to him. The way they did business with him.
What would it be like to have it change? It wouldn’t last, of course. He wouldn’t stay with her. Wouldn’t pursue anything remotely resembling a real marriage. An engagement though, at least for a while, had interesting possibilities.
But to be seen as the angel rather than the devil … it was an interesting tho
ught. It might make certain transactions easier. Smoother.
Dante was past the point where negative character assessments bothered him. Unless they affected a business. And in the past, he knew people had shied away from dealings with him thanks to his reputation.
A womanizer. Heartless. Cutthroat. Dangerous. It had all been said and then some, most of it spun from speculation and created stories. Would it change things if he were considered settled? A family man? Even if it wasn’t permanent, it could quite possibly shift how people saw him.
An interesting thought indeed.
Can she reform him? The real question was, could he use her to reform his image?
For a moment, a brief moment, he allowed himself to think of the many ways he could use her. Fantasies that had been on the edge of his consciousness every time she breezed through the office. Fantasies he had not allowed.
He gave them a moment’s time, and then shut the door on them. It was not her body he needed.
“All right, Ms. Harper, for the purposes of keeping the facade, I accept your proposal.”
Her blue eyes widened. “You … what?”
“I have decided that I will marry you.”
CHAPTER TWO
PAIGE was pretty sure the floor shook underneath her feet. But Dante didn’t look at all perturbed, and everything appeared to be stable, so maybe the shaking was all internal.
“You … what?”
“I accept. At least on a surface level. At least until the furor in the media dies down.”
“I … Okay,” she said, watching her boss as he stood from his position behind his desk. His movements were methodical, planned and purposeful.
He was always like that. Smooth and unruffled. She had wondered, more than once, what it took to get him to loosen up. What it took to shake that perfect, well-ordered control.
She’d wondered, only a couple of times, if a lover ever managed to do it for him. Loosen his tie, run her fingers through his hair.
Now she knew she had the power to do it. Not in the way a lover would, but by inadvertently leaking a fake engagement to the press.
“Excellent,” he said, his tone clipped. Decisive. “I see no reason why this can’t work.”
“I … Why?”
“Is this not what you want? What you need?”
Her head was spinning. This morning everything in her world had been on the verge of collapse, and now—now it seemed like she might actually be able to keep it all standing. “Well … yes. But let’s be honest. You aren’t exactly known for your accommodating and helpful nature, sorry, so it seems … out of character.”
He bent and picked up the paper from his desk, his dark eyes skimming it. “Can you imagine what the media would say if I backed out? They’re already salivating for the chance to rip me to pieces if I would just give it to them. This article is practically a setup for the following piece where they will gleefully report that I have dropped my subordinate fiancée, who I was likely playing power games with, for my own debauched satisfaction, and ruined her chances of adopting her much-loved child. It would have an even darker angle to it, considering I myself am adopted. I can see that headline now.”
“Well, yes, I can see how that would be … not good. But I’m surprised they just … believed that we were engaged anyway.” Average woman. That was what they’d called her in the paper. And Dante Romani would never be linked with a woman who was average.
In so many ways it was like a bad joke. A cruel high school flashback.
“Been reading stories about me?” he asked, his lips curving into a half smile.
“Well, I mean, I see them,” she said, stuttering. He didn’t need to know that sometimes she looked at pictures of him for a little longer than necessary. It wasn’t like anyone could blame her. She was a woman; he was a stunningly attractive man. But she knew she had no shot with him, ever. And no desire to take one. “But also, we haven’t really been seen together in public, so it seems odd that they would just assume, based on a random tip, that we’re engaged.”
He shrugged. “It sounds like something I would do. Keep a real relationship under wraps. In theory. I haven’t had one, so I wouldn’t know.”
“Right. Yes. I know that.”
“You do read the stories, then.”
Her cheeks heated and she cleared her throat. “That and I have keen powers of observation and … Oh, no!”
“What?”
Paige looked at the clock on Dante’s wall, positioned just above his head. “I have to go pick Ana up. Everyone is probably waiting on me.”
“I’ll come with you,” he said.
“What?” She needed to get away from him for a minute. Or have flustered-angry Dante back. Now that he had a plan he had taken firm control over everything and it was making her feel dazed.
“Well, I am your fiancé now, am I not?”
Paige’s head was swimming, her fingers feeling slightly numb. “I don’t know … are you?”
He nodded once. “Yes. For all intents and purposes.”
“Oookay then.”
“You seem uncertain, Paige,” he said, taking his coat off the peg that was mounted to the wall and opening the door.
Paige scrambled to collect her things from the chair. “I … I’m not, not really. I just don’t know how you went from spitting nails in my office to … agreeing.”
“I’m a man of action. I don’t have time to be indecisive.”
She walked past him and out into the lobby area of his floor. His assistant, Trevor, was positioned behind his desk, his eyes locked on to the both of them.
“Have a nice evening, Mr. Romani,” he said.
“You too, Trevor. You should go home,” Dante said.
“In a bit. So …”
“Oh, yeah,” Paige said. “We’re engaged.”
“You are?” he asked, his expression skeptical.
Paige nodded and looked at Dante who looked … uncharacteristically amused. “Yes,” she said.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“I … didn’t know,” Trevor said.
“I’m a private man,” Dante said. “When it suits me.”
“Apparently,” Trevor said, looking back at his computer screen.
“See you tomorrow,” Dante said. Trevor made a vague nod in acknowledgment.
Paige followed Dante to the elevator and stepped inside when the doors opened. “So … Trevor doesn’t seem thrilled,” she said. Really, she was surprised at the dynamic between Dante and his assistant. Dante was something of a fearsome figure in her mind, and the fact that Trevor hadn’t been fired on the spot for his obvious annoyance with the situation wasn’t exactly what she’d expected.
“Trevor is mad because he didn’t know,” Dante said. “Because he likes to know everything, and make sure it’s jotted down in my schedule at least six months in advance.”
“And you don’t mind that he was … upset?”
Dante frowned. “Why? Did you expect me to throw him from the thirtieth-floor window?”
“It was a possibility I hadn’t ruled out.”
“I’m not a tyrant.”
“No?” He gave her a hard stare. “Well, you fired Carl Johnson. For the baseball game,” she said.
“And it makes me a tyrant because I expect my employees to show up during work hours and earn the generous salaries I pay them?” he asked.
“Well … it was for his child’s T-ball game …”
“That meant nothing to anyone else in the meeting. It might have personally meant something to Carl, but not to anyone else. And if everyone was allowed to miss work anytime something seemed like it might take precedence for them personally, we would not be able to get anything done.”
“Well, what about when you have something in your personal life that requires attention.”
“I have neatly handled what might have been a dilemma by having no personal life,” he said, his tone hard.
“Oh. Well …”
�
�You expect me to be unreasonable because of what is written about me,” he said, “in spite of what you see in the office on a daily basis. Which only serves to prove the power of the media. And the fact that it’s time I manipulated it to my advantage.”
Her face burned. “I … suppose.” It was true. Dante was a hard man but, other than this morning, she’d never heard him raise his voice. As bosses went, he’d never been a bad one. But she’d always gotten an illicit thrill when he was around. A sense of something dark. And it was very likely the media was to blame.
“And you do read the stories they write about me,” he said, as if he was able to read her mind.
She pursed her lips. “Fine. I’ve read some of what’s been written about you.”
“Being a tyrant implies a lack of control, in my opinion, Paige. And it shows an attempt to claim it in a very base way. I have control over this company, of my business, in all situations, and I don’t have to raise my voice to get it.”
She cleared her throat and stared straight ahead at the closed elevator door. At their warped reflections in the gleaming metal. She came just past his shoulder, and that was in her killer heels. She looked … tiny. A bit awkward. And he looked … well, like Dante always looked. Dark and delicious, supremely masculine, completely not awkward and just a little frightening.
“You raised your voice when you were in my office,” she said, still looking at reflection Dante, and not actual Dante. Actual Dante was almost too handsome to look at directly, especially when standing so close to him.
He laughed, a short, one-note sound. “It was deserved in the situation, don’t you think?”
“Was it?”
“How would you have felt if the situations were reversed?”
“I don’t know. Look, are you serious about this?” she asked, turning to face him just as the doors to their floor slid open.
“I don’t joke very often, if at all,” he said.
