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She stood, her knees shaking. “No, I just …”
“You might not be newsworthy, Ms. Harper, but I am.”
“Hey!” The assessment burned, especially on the heels of the descriptor of her as “average.” Of course, she had to admit, looking at their pictures side by side, that average was a pretty kind descriptor.
“Did I offend you?”
“A little.”
“I guarantee it is not half so offensive as coming into work to discover you’re engaged to someone you have barely had four conversations with.”
“Actually, I’m sort of in the same boat you are. I didn’t expect for this to be in the paper. I didn’t … I didn’t expect for anyone to ever find out.”
“Be that as it may, they have. And now I have. It would be best if you were to see yourself out. I do not wish to call security.” He turned and started to walk out of the room and she felt her heart slide the rest of the way down.
“Mr. Romani,” she said, “please, hear me out.” She was nearly pleading. No, who was she kidding? She was pleading. And she wasn’t ashamed. She would get down on her knees and beg if she had to, but she wasn’t going to let him ruin this.
“I tried. You had nothing of interest to say.”
“Because I don’t know where to start.”
“The beginning works for me.”
She took a deep breath. “Rebecca Addler frowns on single mothers. Not every social worker does, but this one … this one doesn’t like them. I mean, not that she doesn’t like them personally, but in general. And she asked me why Ana would be better off with me as opposed to a real, traditional family with a mother and a father and I just sort of told her that there would be a father because I was getting married and then your name slipped out because … well, because I work for you, so I see it a lot and it was the first name I thought of.”
He blinked twice, then shifted, his head tilted to the side. “That was not the beginning.”
Paige took another deep breath, trying to slow down her brain and find a better starting point. “I’m trying to adopt.”
He frowned. “I didn’t know.”
“Well, I have my daughter in the day care here.”
“I don’t go to the day care,” he said, his tone flat.
“Ana’s just a baby. She’s been with me almost from the moment she was born. I …” Thinking of Shyla still made her throat tighten, made her ache everywhere. Her beautiful, vivacious best friend. The only person who’d really enjoyed her eccentricity rather than simply bearing it. “Her mother is gone. And I’m taking care of her. Nothing was made official before Shyla … anyway she’s a ward now.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning the state has the final say over her placement. It’s been fine for me to foster her, I’m approved for that. But … but not necessarily for adopting. I’ve been trying and I had a meeting with the worker handling the case two days ago. It was looking like they weren’t going to approve the adoption. And yes, I lied. About us. And about … the engagement, but please believe it had nothing to do with you.”
A slight lie. It had a lot to do with the fact that he was much better looking than any man had a right to be. And she had to go in to work in the same building as he did, and chance walking by him in the halls. Being exposed to all that male beauty was a hazard.
So, yes, there were times she thought of him away from work. In fairness, he was the best-looking man she’d ever encountered in her entire life, and she was in a dating dry spell of epic proportions, which meant, pleasant time with images of Dante was about all she had going on in her love life.
And she saw the man all the time, and that made things worse.
As a result of the exposure, when pressed for the name of her fiancé by Rebecca Addler, the only man she’d been able to picture had been Dante. And so his name had sort of spilled out.
Another gaffe in a long line of them for her. When it came to “oops,” she was well above average.
So there, newspaper reporter.
One of his dark eyebrows shot upward. “I’m flattered.”
She put her hand on her forehead. “There is no way for me to win trying to explain this,” she said. “It’s just awkward. But … but … I don’t really know what to do now. It wasn’t supposed to be in the paper, and now it is, and if it turns out we aren’t engaged they’ll know that I lied and then …”
“And then you’ll be a single mother who is also a liar. Two strikes, I would think.” His tone was so disengaged, so unfeeling.
She swallowed. “Well, exactly.”
He was right. Two strikes. If not a plain old strikeout. It wasn’t an acceptable risk. Not where Ana was concerned. Ana, the brightest spot in her life. Her helpless little girl, the baby she loved more than her own life. There was nothing and no one else she would even consider stooping to this level of subterfuge for, nothing else that could possibly compel her to do what she was starting to think she had to do: propose to her boss.
The man who practically stole the air from her lungs when he walked into a room. The man who was so far out of her league, even thinking of a dinner date with him was laughable.
But this was bigger than that. Bigger than a little crush or her insecurity. Her fear of outright rejection.
“I … I think I need your help.”
There was no change in his expression. Dante Romani was impossible to read, but then, that wasn’t really new. He was the dark prince of the Colson empire, the adopted son of Don and Mary Colson. The media speculated that they’d adopted him because he’d shown profound brilliance at an early age. No one imagined it had been his personality that had won over the older couple.
She’d always thought those stories were sad and unfair. Now she wondered. Wondered if he was as heartless as he was portrayed to be. She really hoped he wasn’t, because she was going to need him to care at least a little bit in order to pull this off.
“I’m not in the position to give this kind of help,” he said, his tone dry.
“Why?” she asked, pushing herself into a standing position. “Why not? I … I don’t need you forever, I just need …”
“You need me to marry you. I think that’s a step too far into crazy town, don’t you?”
“For my daughter,” she said, the words raw, loud and echoing in the room. And now that she’d said them, out loud, she didn’t regret them. She would do anything for Ana. Even this. Even if it meant getting thrown out of the office building.
Because for the first time in her memory, something mattered. It mattered more than self-protection or fending off disappointment. It was worth the possibility of adding to her list of failures.
“She’s not your daughter,” he said.
She gritted her teeth, trying to keep a handle on the adrenaline that was pounding through her, making her shake. “Blood isn’t everything. I would think you would understand that.” Probably not the best idea to be taking shots at him, but it was true. He should understand.
He regarded her for a moment, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “I will not fire you. For now. But I will require further explanation. An explanation that makes sense. What do you have on your agenda for the day?”
“I’m working on Christmas,” she said, indicating the array of decorations spread out in the room. “For Colson’s and for Trinka.” She was working on a series of elegant displays for the parent store, and for their offshoot, teen clothing store, something mod and edgy.
“You’ll be in the office?”
She nodded. “Just fiddling today.”
“Good. Don’t leave until we’ve spoken again.” He turned and walked out of her office and she sank to her knees, her hands shaking, her entire body wound so tight she wanted to curl in on herself.
She was so stupid. Nothing new. She’d spoken without thinking. As per usual. Only this time it had landed her in serious trouble, with the man who signed her checks.
Everything was in his hands now. Her future. Her family. Her money.
“Time to learn to think before you talk,” she said into the empty office. Unfortunately, it was too late for that. Way, way too late.
Dante finished with the last item of work on his agenda and turned to his file cabinet, placing the last document on his desk into its appropriate spot. Then he put his elbows on the desk and leaned forward, staring at the newspaper on the shining surface.
He’d studied the news story again when he’d come back into his office. A scathing piece on how the impostor of the Colson family moved people around like pawns on a chessboard. It was stacked with details about the man, Carl Johnson, he’d fired last week for skipping out on an important meeting to go to a child’s sporting event.
The press had covered it a week ago, too, since Carl had gone screaming to the papers over discrimination of some kind. In Dante’s mind, it wasn’t discrimination to expect an employee to attend mandatory meetings, no matter whether it was the last game of a five-year-old’s T-ball season or not.
Still, it had been another of those juicy bits the media had latched on to to further stack the case against him and his possession of human decency. It generally didn’t matter to him.
But one thing in that article stood out to him: Can she reform him?
Could Paige Harper reform him? The idea amused him. He had the bare minimum of contact with her. She did her job, and she did it well, so he never had a reason to involve himself. But he had noticed her. Impossible not to. She was a blur of shimmer when she moved around the office. Boundless energy and a sense of the accidental radiated from her.
He would be lying if he said he wasn’t intrigued by her. She was a window into so many things he would never seek out: chaos, color, motion. So many things he would never be. Combined with the fact that she had a figure most men would be hard-pressed to ignore, and yes, he was intrigued by her.
But no matter how intrigued, she simply wasn’t the sort of woman he would normally approach. Until this.
“Can this thoroughly average woman reform the soulless CEO?”
He had no desire to take part in a reformation, but the idea of an image overhaul in the media? That had possibilities.
He could have demanded a retraction the moment he’d walked in that morning. Or he could let it run. Let them build off the image they’d created for him when he’d been thrust into the spotlight. A fourteen-year-old boy, adopted, finally, and suspected of being capable of all manner of violence and sociopathic behaviors.
His story had been written in the public eye before he’d had a chance to live it. And so he had never challenged it. Had never cared.
But suddenly he had been handed a tool that might help change things.
He turned around and faced the windows, looked out at the harbor. He could still see the look on her face. Not just the expression, but the depth of fear and desperation in her eyes. The press had a few things right about him, and one of them was that feelings, emotions, mattered little to him. And still … still he couldn’t forget. And he thought of the baby, too.
He had no use for children. No desire for them. But he could remember being one all too well. Could remember being passed around the foster care system for eight years of his life. Could remember what it was like to be at the mercy of either the State, or, before that, adults who brought harm, not love.
Could he consign Ana to that same fate? Or to a family who might not feel that same desperate longing that Paige seemed to feel for her?
And why should he care at all? That was the million-dollar question. Caring wasn’t counted among his usual afflictions.
The door to his office opened and Paige breezed in. Maybe breezed was the wrong term. A breeze denoted something gentle, soothing even. Paige was more a gale-force wind.
She had a big, gold bag hanging off her shoulder, one that matched her glittering, golden pumps that likely added four inches to her height. She also had a bolt of fabric held tightly beneath the other arm, and a large sketchbook beneath that. She looked like she might drop all of it at any moment.
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.”
