by Maisey Yates
“Uh … there’s a box of wine in the fridge.”
Dante didn’t bother to keep the disapproval from showing on his face. “A box?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Sorry if that doesn’t meet with your standards. Maybe you can choose me some wine and a ring?”
“I’m not opposed to it. However, when you move into my home, there will be a wine selection waiting for you. And none of it will be boxed.”
“Well, la-dee-da,” she said, standing. “I’m going to put Ana in her crib. Do you think you can stand here for a minute and keep the internal judgment to a minimum?”
“I’ll do my best,” he said drily.
He watched her walk out of the room, his eyes drawn to the sway of her hips and the rounded curve of her butt. He was only human, and she was beautiful. Not his type in the least, and yet, it wasn’t the first time he’d noticed her.
He liked women who were cool. Contained. In both looks and manner. And Paige was none of those things, which made her both a fascination and impossible to ignore.
Paige returned a moment later, hands free, a wet spot on her shirt near her shoulder. “You have something on your shirt,” he said.
She looked down. “Oh. Yeah. She’s really drooly right now. No teeth to hold it back.”
He let out a long breath and sat down on the couch. “I think I will take some wine.”
The idea of having this woman and her explosion of belongings and a baby who was, by Paige’s description, drooly, in his home was enough to send a kick of anxiety through him.
Paige shrugged and headed to the kitchen, reaching up into a high cabinet and taking down two mismatched pieces of stemware. A green champagne flute and a clear wine goblet. Then she opened up the fridge and bent down, dispensing wine from the plastic tap that was jammed into the cardboard box, into the cups.
She kicked her shoes off and pushed them to the side as she walked to the couch, wineglasses in her hands. “I haven’t had anyone over in a long time. You know, other than the social worker.” She handed him the clear glass and moved to a chair that was positioned next to the couch. She sat down on her knees, her feet tucked up under her.
“In how long?”
Paige looked down into her wine. “Since Shyla died.”
“That must have been difficult.” It was hard for him to find the words you were supposed to say when people were grieving. Hard to know what they wanted to hear. He had experience dealing with death, and yet, he couldn’t remember what people had said to him. If they had said anything.
Paige took a sip of her wine and nodded. “Yes. She was my best friend. She and I moved to San Diego from Oregon together shortly after we graduated.”
“Why here?”
She shrugged. “It’s sunny? I don’t know. A chance to start over, I guess. Be new people. She met her boyfriend really soon after we got here, and she ended up moving in with him. Then she got pregnant and he freaked out. And I had her move in with me. It was crowded but great. And then … and then Ana was born and it was so fun to have her here. So amazing.” Paige looked down into her glass, tears sparkling on her lashes like shattered crystal. “We were making it work. The three of us.”
“How old are you, Paige?” he asked. She looked young. Beneath all the makeup, he was sure she looked like a girl who could still be in school. Her skin was smooth and pale, her blue eyes round, fringed with long, dark lashes. Her lips were full and pink, turned down at the corners, giving the illusion of a slight pout.
“Twenty-two.”
“You’re only twenty-two?” Ten years younger than he was. And yet she was willing to take on raising a child by herself. “Then why do you want to raise a child right now? You have so many years ahead of you. And don’t you want to get married?”
She shrugged. “Not really. And anyway, I guess … no this isn’t the ideal time for me to have a baby. And if you had asked me a few months ago if I was ready to have a baby, I would have told you no. But that would be a hypothetical baby. And Ana isn’t hypothetical. She’s here. And she doesn’t have anyone. Her birth mother is dead, my friend, my best friend is dead. The line on the birth certificate that should have a father’s name on it is blank. She needs me.”
“She needs anyone who will care for her. It doesn’t have to be you.” She flinched when he said the words.
“It does,” she said, her voice thin.
“Why?”
“I don’t know for sure if anyone else will love her like I do. And I … I knew Shyla. I knew her better than anyone, and she knew me. I’ll be able to tell her about her mother.” Paige’s throat convulsed. “And Shyla asked me to. She asked me to take care of her.”
That answer hit him hard in the chest and the memories he’d been pushing away from the moment they’d picked Ana up at the nursery crowded in, too fast and forceful for him to hold back anymore. He’d been much older than Ana when he’d lost his mother, so he remembered a lot on his own. Memories that he often wished he didn’t have. Of soft lullabies, gentle hands … and blood. In the end … so much blood.
He blinked and shook off the memory, reclaiming control, lifting the glass of wine to his lips and grimacing when the chilled, acrid liquid hit his tongue. There was no buzz on earth worth that. He set it back down on the table.
“I understand that.”
“It’s not just for her. It’s for me, too. I love her. Like … like she really is my baby. I saw her come into the world. I cared for her from the start, did the midnight feedings and visits to the doctor. I can’t … I can’t just let her go. Let her go to someone else. Someone who might not love her like I do. How could anyone love her like I do? I love her so much that sometimes it overwhelms me.”
Paige spoke with conviction, so much it vibrated from her petite frame. Dante couldn’t imagine emotion like that. It was so far beyond where he was now.
In truth, he couldn’t imagine a good emotion that strong. Fear, grief, the type that had the power to reduce a man to a quivering, raw mass of anguish … that he knew. But nothing like it since. Nothing that even came close. He was numb to feeling.
But he could sense hers, could feel them radiating off her. She didn’t hide them, didn’t sublimate them to try to deal with them. He doubted she could. She was too honest.
Well, except for that one little lie. The one he was currently enmeshed in.
“You cannot keep the pink in your hair,” he said. He needed to tone her down, to make her less distracting.
“What?” she sifted her fingers through her dark hair, the movement unconsciously sexy.
“I would hardly become engaged to a woman with pink hair.”
“Um … but you did. You totally just did.”
“I didn’t know about the pink stripe until recently. When I found out I nearly broke it off with you, so you promised to go to the hairdresser.”
“You can’t even see it if I have my hair down.”
“I saw it when we were in bed.” Again, the images of her skin against his sheets hit him hard.
Her cheeks colored a deep rose. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d made a woman blush, discounting Paige, and he certainly couldn’t remember ever finding it so fascinating.
“Uh … and that was your predominant thought? My pink hair? We did something wrong, in that case.” She looked away from him and took another long drink of her vile wine.
“Just color over it,” he said.
“I have an appointment in a few weeks. It’ll keep.”
“You seem to forget that I’m doing you a favor.”
“I didn’t think that was your predominant motivation. And anyway, I’m doing you a favor, too.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know what the reaction will be. I’m curious to find out.”
“So, this is just a social experiment to you?”
“It’s interesting, yes. Ultimately though, it’s with a mind to improving business.”
“And deceiving people doesn’t bother you?”
/>
“Does it bother you?”
She frowned. “Usually. But not now. Not for … not for Ana. I would do anything for her.”
“So I gathered.”
“I’m far more bothered by the fact that we’re actually … that we’ll be getting married.” She looked down, giving him a view of long, dark lashes spread over pale skin, and lids that were lined in emerald green, a sprinkling of golden glitter adding sparkle.
“If you can think of another way …”
She raised her focus, her expression open, honest. “I can’t. Nothing this certain.”
“Then don’t trouble yourself over it.”
She frowned. “I won’t. So, now what do we do?”
“I’ll text your ring size to Trevor and send him to procure something suitable. You will have it on your desk by lunch. Then … then we have a charity event to go to.”
“I don’t have anyone to watch Ana.”
“I’ll pay Genevieve to do it. She’s good with Ana, isn’t she?”
“Well, yes, but … I’ll have been away from her all day.”
“Leave early,” he said. “I’ll come here and pick you up before the event.”
“Why do you keep having answers to all of my problems?” she asked, her tone petulant.
“I would think that would be a good thing, especially since you have so many problems at the moment.”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “Granted.”
He stood, taking his glass of nearly untouched wine off the coffee table. “Good night, then. I’ll be by to pick you and Ana up at seven-thirty tomorrow morning.”
“Wait … pick me up?”
“You’re my woman now, Paige, and that comes with a certain set of expectations.”
She blinked. “I didn’t … I didn’t agree to this.”
“You brought me into this. That means you aren’t making all the rules anymore.” He turned and walked into the kitchen, pausing at the sink and dumping the contents of his glass down the drain. “That wine is unforgivable. I will teach you to like good wine.”
“And you’ll teach me to like good jewelry, and the sort of hair you deem ‘good.’ Tell me, Dante, what else will you teach me to like?” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts—rather generous breasts—and a rush of heat assailed him. Intense. Impossible to ignore.
The desire to lean in and trace her lips with his fingertip, with his tongue, was nearly too strong for him to overcome. But he would. He would keep control, as he always did.
He took one last, lingering look, at her pink lips. “That’s a very dangerous question, Paige,” he said. “Very dangerous.”
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 lustin
g 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.
