Her Little White Lie (2 page)

“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.”

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.