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“Well, I didn’t know. I didn’t … We really need to discuss this more.”
“I agree, which is why we’re having dinner together later.”
“Oh.”
“Here, so you don’t need to worry about a babysitter. Now come with me.” He started up the stairs and down the hall. He could hear Paige’s footsteps behind him, slow and methodical. He turned and saw that she was practically getting whiplash. “What is it?”
“Your art!” she said.
“What about it?”
“It’s so beautiful. And it really stands out in the white space. You have fabulous taste.”
“Fabulous? Rarely am I accused of being fabulous.”
“Well, in this instance, you are. I’m going to have to take the time to study it all later.”
“So, you like art?”
She smiled and her entire face brightened, her blue eyes glittering. “Love it. I’m not just into dressing windows. I paint, too. Well, I started with painting. And some sculpture. It was about the only thing that held my attention in school. Unfortunately, one cannot graduate with art credits alone.”
“I would guess not.” The enthusiasm she felt for the subject, for the paintings—paintings he hardly looked at anymore—was fascinating. She was so different than most of the people he knew. She was open. She wore her passion all over her, for anyone to read. Not just her passion, her anger, her happiness. Everything was just laid bare with her.
And she evoked something in him. Emotions, things he hadn’t felt in longer than he could remember. As a result, he’d made a mistake in his office earlier, and he didn’t make mistakes.
But she’d been standing there, all challenge and fire, angry as hell. And she’d made him angry. More than that, she’d tempted him. He hadn’t been able to stop himself from walking forward, from wrapping his arm around her and drawing her body against his.
She challenged him. No one challenged him. But she did. And she picked at his control, pushing and pushing until he’d been unable to do anything but push back.
He didn’t like it. Emotion was destructive. Painful. But he wouldn’t give in to it. What he hadn’t lost the day his mother died had been drained from him over the course of eight years in foster care.
Now, he doubted there was even enough in him to cause problems, even if he wanted it to. No, what had come over him in his office was lust. Pure and simple. Normally, that wasn’t a problem for him, but he was only a man, so it wasn’t too surprising.
Paige had the added benefit of being forbidden fruit, another thing that had never appealed to him before, but he could certainly understand why it might.
“Ana’s room is here,” he said, redirecting his thoughts, indicating a door on the left. As he pushed it open, a strange flash of anxiety ran through him. It was unfamiliar. Completely different than it had been that morning when he’d left for work. It gave him a strange sense of being back in his childhood. Opening the door to a new bedroom for the first time, seeing what was there.
Whether it would be spare, or crowded. Clean or dirty. Nothing that belonged to him.
The space that had been organized for Ana was immaculate.
Plain white walls and a double bed had been replaced with an ornate, dark wood crib with pink bedding and a mobile hanging over it. There was a rocking chair, a matching dresser and a closet filled with pink clothes.
“Oh.” Behind him Paige made a little noise. Then she brushed past him and into the room. “Ana, look. It’s your very own room.”
His chest seized up tight, his breath locking in his lungs. The light in Paige’s eyes as she presented Ana with a space that belonged to her was … he had never seen anything like it. All of Paige’s unruly enthusiasm was, in this moment, focused on her daughter.
How anyone could doubt that she would be a good mother was beyond him. It was hard for him to remember his birth mother, hard because thinking about her always dredged up other memories that he wanted to keep firmly locked behind a closed door in his mind.
Mary Colson, his adoptive mother, had been a firm and constant presence. Both she and Don had invested in him, into his education, into guiding him, putting him on a path that would lead to success. He was grateful to them, and their distant, tough sort of parenting had been ideal for him.
But for a moment, he wondered if anyone had ever looked at him the way Paige was looking at Ana.
It didn’t matter. He closed the door on the yawning, empty well inside of him. He wasn’t a child. He didn’t need obvious displays of emotion. Far from it, he avoided them if at all possible. And being around Paige didn’t seem to allow for that. She was constant bubbling energy, and emotion. And glitter.
“Thank you,” she said, her blue eyes bright.
“Don’t thank me,” he said, trying to find some way to loosen the knot in his chest. “You’re here under false pretenses, due to a situation of your own making. And it’s hardly permanent, so don’t get too attached.”
She blinked, a flash of genuine pain visible on her face. So open. So real. Did the woman have no sense? Had she no defenses at all? “Okay, I … I mean I know that, but this is beautiful and I just got really excited and I didn’t mean anything by it.” All of her words ran together, coming faster as she rambled, the tension she was feeling palpable. She projected her feelings. So strongly he felt like he was being hit with a wall.
“Relax, Paige,” he said. “Take a breath.”
She snapped her mouth closed, her eyes still pooling with confused emotion.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the word foreign on his tongue.
Almost instantly, the tension left her, her face brightening. “It’s awkward. For everyone. I know. I’m not picking out china patterns or anything, I’m just … making the best of things. Making the best of living in a mansion by the sea, which, I admit, is not so hard.”
“You may not be so optimistic when you hear what I have to say next,” he said.
“You’re putting me on a hide-a-bed. No, my window has an ocean view, but the beach is a nude beach. Or maybe …”
“You’re going to have to at least appear to be sharing a room with me.”
“Say what?”
“Come now, Paige, are you so naive? If we’ve moved in together, we’ll obviously be sharing a room. A bed.”
Paige bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know about that. What about good, traditional values?”
“Does anyone have them these days?”
“My social worker, it seems. Since she was so concerned about Ana having a mom and dad.”
“Which means she needs to be confident that that is indeed what Ana is getting. And my staff needs to believe it, as well. The last thing I need is for someone to slip up and make a comment that winds up in the paper. I’m not being dragged into a public farce. A private farce, it seems, is unavoidable, but I will not be humiliated in a public forum.”
“That’s not my intent,” she said. “But hey, as long as I don’t actually have to sleep with you, I’m okay with having to dig through your closet to find my clothes.”
He wasn’t. He’d never lived with a woman before, had never had feminine things mingling in with his suits. His space was highly prized and this element of their arrangement didn’t sit well with him.
But while she was comfortable with her things being put anywhere, there was clearly one area that made her uncomfortable. And he had the uncontrollable urge to push at her, just a little.
“You’re the first woman I’ve ever encountered who was so opposed to sleeping with me she had to remark on it every couple of days.”
He was rewarded by the flood of color that bled into her cheeks. “That’s not … I’m just clarifying …”
“One might think,” he said, taking a step closer to her, “that you protest too much.”
She pulled Ana in tighter to her chest, a tiny, living shield. “Hey now, that is not true. I protest just enough for a woman who isn’t interested in having a … a fling with a playboy.”
“Playboy,” he said. “Such a strange label, and not one I’ve ever felt applied to me.”
“You change lovers often enough.”
“The dates I go to events with are not my lovers. I am very discreet with my lovers. And selective.”
She cleared her throat. “Well, then, I doubt I have anything to worry about. If you’re as selective as you say, I mean.”
Paige felt like melting beneath Dante’s intense, dark gaze. She didn’t know what had possessed her to bait him like that. To tempt him to say something derogatory about her appeal. She was aware of how far short she fell when it came to sexual allure.
The problem was, it wasn’t looks, not specifically. It wasn’t the way she dressed. She’d actually managed to score dates since moving to San Diego; it was just that … when they got that serious look, like they might miss her, she sort of freaked out. The idea of failing again, with someone new, was too painful. The thought of wanting someone who wouldn’t really end up wanting her … she hadn’t been willing to take the risk.
Which was why she really hadn’t bothered with dates for a long time. Getting herself sorted out was her top priority after all. Finding her way. And anyway, she didn’t need a hundred guys. She only needed the one right guy. And she was certain that one right guy would look nothing like Dante Romani.
Which was fine. Looks weren’t everything after all. The guy didn’t have to have a square jaw, and golden skin. Or a broad chest with incredible muscles that could not be hidden by the dress shirts he wore. He didn’t have to look like the essence of temptation wrapped in a custom suit. No. There were much more important things than that.
Like … way more.
She was sure of it.
“Is that what you think?” he asked.
Something in his eyes changed, the look becoming hungry, wild almost, as far from cool, calm, stuffed shirt Dante Romani as she could possibly imagine.
“I … obviously,” she said, her throat suddenly dry.
“What is obvious about it?” he asked.
“I’m … I’m …”
“Attractive,” he said.
She blinked. “Even with the pink stripe?”
“It’s growing on me.”
“Maybe I will get it colored over next time. In that case.”
“You just like to be difficult.”
She shrugged. “I’m a contrary beast, on occasion, I admit it.” She was doing it again, deflecting with humor, so he couldn’t see how much it had meant for him to call her attractive.
“I like a challenge.”
“I’m not a challenge,” she said, nerves skittering through her, making her feel shaky and off-kilter.
“You aren’t?”
“No. That makes it sound like I’m some sort of a … a game and I don’t like that. I don’t play games. What you see is what you get.”
“I’ve noticed. But I didn’t mean that I intended to play a game with you.”
“You didn’t?”
He shook his head, his dark eyes intent on hers. “I don’t play.”
She tried to swallow again. Her throat felt like it was coated in sand. “Right. Neither do I.”
He chuckled, dark and rich like chocolate. “I got the impression that you did very little besides playing.”
She looked down at the top of Ana’s fuzzy head. “And where did you get that idea? Between working for Colson’s and taking care of Ana, I don’t have a lot of playtime.”
He frowned. “I suppose that’s true. But it’s more the way you are. The things you say. You’re … happy.”
She laughed, the sound bursting from her with no decorum or volume control, as always. “I guess so. I mean, there’s plenty of crap I’m unhappy about. Like losing my best friend and having to contend with the adoption stuff. But I suppose … I mean in general I suppose that’s true.” She studied Dante’s face for a moment, the lines that feathered out from the corners of his eyes, the brackets by his mouth. “Are you happy?”
He shrugged. “I’m not really sure what that means. I’m content.”
“Content,” she repeated. She smoothed her hands over Ana’s back and a rush of love, or pure joy and pain filled her. “How can that be enough?” It wasn’t for her. Not now. It never would be again.
“Because emotion, strong emotion, is dangerous,” he said. “You don’t seem to realize that yet, Paige. But that’s the truth of it.” His voice was rough. Savage, almost. And coming from Dante, who was always smooth, and never ruffled, it meant something. It reached down deep inside of her and twisted her stomach.
“Was it the truth for you?”
“It’s just true,” he said. “If emotions control you, you have no control over yourself. In my mind, that’s unacceptable. Now come, and I’ll show you to your room.”
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ucee2d68b-dd06-5d8e-abc6-862a58eb0486)
AFTER you put Ana to bed, come down to the dining room for dinner.
Paige touched the note Dante had left her earlier. A note. Who wrote a note? She’d have to introduce the man to the mighty power of the text message. Or, better still, making human contact when you lived in the same house as someone.
She touched one of the letters on the paper. He’d pressed too hard on his pen, made dents, each letter precise and perfect, gone over two or three times she guessed. Dante didn’t do spontaneous very well, that was for sure.
Well, she supposed their arrangement fell under spontaneous, but then, even when he’d had that headline sprung on him he hadn’t acted with any sense of wild abandon. It had been with frightening calm, and complete confidence in the fact that he’d made the right decision.
Whereas, she, after blurting out the idiot untruth to Rebecca, had eaten a pint of ice cream and spent the night beating her head against the arm of her couch.
Decisive wasn’t really her thing. She needed to start getting there, though. She had a baby. A baby that would grow, and who would need a mother who could stand strong in decisions and discipline and … stuff.
The idea of it made her a little anxious. But for now, it was all about loving her. And that she had down just fine.
At least her room was nice. And yeah, all her clothes and her toiletries were in Dante’s room, but she’d managed to get her dress for dinner and her makeup essentials over to her room without running into him. Which suited her fine. She’d been feeling a little rumpled and frumpy after what had been a very long day.
But a shower and a sparkly minidress had done a lot to fix the way she felt. Her newfound sense of flashy style was something she’d acquired on arrival in San Diego, and it had done wonders for the way she felt about herself. About the outside of herself, anyway.
She leaned into the mirror and swiped her lipstick over her bottom lip, painting it with a streak of fuchsia, then spreading it evenly. She smiled. She felt better when she was bright. Like showing the world her mood, so that she had to bring herself up to match it.
