Her Little White Lie (3 page)

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.”

P
AIGE
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.

“Well, that’s true. But in my experience when men say they want to date me, it can turn out to have been a cruel joke, so I’m thinking my boss agreeing to get engaged to me could be something along those same lines.”

“What is this?”

She shook her head. “Nothing, just … high school. You are planning on following through with this, right? Dante, if I get caught—committing fraud, basically—it might not just be Ana that I lose.”

“As previously stated, Paige, I do not joke. I am not joking now.”

“I just don’t understand why you’re helping me.”

“Because it helps me.”

He said it with such certainty, and no shame.

Paige sputtered. “In what regard?”

“People see me … well, as a tyrant. If not that, a corruptor of innocents, and perhaps, the personification of Charon, ready to lead people down the river Styx and into Hades.”

He said it lightly, with some amusement, though his expression stayed smooth. Paige laughed. “Uh, yes, well, I suppose that’s true.”

“Already there is speculation that you might manage to reform me. The idea of giving that impression … I find it intriguing. An interesting social experiment if nothing else, and one with the potential to improve business for me.”

“Of course you would also actually be helping me and Ana,” she pointed out.

He nodded once. “I don’t find that objectionable.”

She could have laughed. He said it so seriously, as if she might really think he would find helping others something vile. And he said it like that perception didn’t bother him.

“Okay. Good.” She continued on down the hall with him, on the way to the day care center that she’d come to be so grateful for.

She opened the door and sighed heavily when she saw
Genevieve, the main caregiver, holding Ana. They were the last two there. “I’m so sorry,” she said, dumping her things on the counter and reaching for Ana.

Genevieve smiled. “No worries. She’s almost asleep again. She did scream a little bit when five rolled around and you weren’t here.”

Paige frowned, a sharp pain hitting her in the chest. Ana was only four months old, but she already knew Paige as her mother. There had been such few moments in Paige’s life when she’d been certain of something, where she hadn’t felt restless and on the verge of failure.

One of those moments was when she’d been hired to design the window displays for Colson’s. The other was when Shyla had placed Ana in Paige’s arms.

Can you take care of her?

She’d only meant for a moment. While she rested and tried to shake some of the chronic fatigue that came with having a newborn. But Shyla had lain down on their sofa for a nap that day and never woken up. And Paige was still taking care of Ana. Because she had to. Because she wanted to. Because she loved Ana more than her own life.

Genevieve transferred Ana and her blanket into Paige’s arms, and Paige pulled her daughter in close, her heart melting, her eyes stinging. She looked back at Dante, and she knew that she’d done the right thing.

Because she would be damned if anyone was taking Ana from her, and she would do whatever she had to do to insure that no one did. Ana was hers forever. And even if marriage to Dante wasn’t strictly necessary, she would take it as insurance every time.

Genevieve bent to retrieve Ana’s diaper bag, then popped back up, her eyes widening when she registered the presence of their boss. “Mr. Romani, what brings you down here?”

Paige thought the girl had a slightly hopeful edge to her voice. As if she was hoping Dante had come to ravish her against the wall. Something Paige could kind of relate to,
since Dante had that effect. Even Paige, who knew better than to fantasize about men who were so far out of her league, struggled with the odd Dante-themed fantasy. It was involuntary, really.

“I’m here to collect Ana,” he said.

Genevieve looked confused. “Oh … I …” He reached over the counter and took the diaper bag from the surprised-looking Genevieve.

“With Paige,” he finished. “It was announced in the news today, but in case you haven’t heard, Paige and I are to be married.”

Genevieve’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, I …”

“Let’s go,
cara
mia
,” he said, sweeping Paige’s things from the counter and gathering them into his arms. Her big, broad-chested Italian boss, clutching her sequined purse to his chest, was enough to make her dissolve into hysteric fits of laughter, but there was something else, another feeling, one that made her stomach tight and her chest warm, stopping the giggles.

She wiggled her fingers in Genevieve’s direction and walked through the door, which Dante was currently holding open for her with his shoulder.

Paige continued down the hall, heading toward the parking garage. Dante was behind her, still holding all of her things. She stopped. “Sorry, I can take that.”

“I’ve got it,” he said.

“But you don’t have to … I mean … you don’t have to walk me out to my car.”

“I think I do,” he said.

“No. You really don’t. There’s no reason.”