LITMIR.BIZ

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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 thought. 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

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