Dante wrenched his belt off and threw it on the ground, stalking into his bathroom and turning the shower on cold. He dropped his pants and underwear and stepped beneath the spray. He let the icy water roll over him, making him shiver, his body shaking from the inside out. It wasn’t about cooling the heat in his body. He was paying penance for losing his control.
It would not happen again.
* * *
Paige leaned against her bedroom door, her heart sill pounding heavily, her lips still burning. Just a kiss? No big deal? She was getting good at lying.
She’d never been kissed like that, by a man like him, in her life.
And of course, the first words out of his mouth had been that it was a mistake. Of course it had been. How could it be anything else? A man like him would not want to kiss a woman like her. Not really.
Sometimes she felt like she was changing. Finding out who she was apart from the labels she’d been given at home, back in high school. Tonight, she felt like she’d reverted. Back to the painfully awkward girl she’d been.
The one she still was beneath the makeup and sequins.
She changed into her pajamas as quickly as possible and tried to ignore just how conscious she was of the fabric sliding against her skin. Of how sensitive she felt. He’d lit her skin on fire, made her feel like she was burning from the inside out.
The memory of the kiss, of how it had made her feel, took the edge off her humiliation. He’d made her want to do something stupid, like run her fingers over that finely muscled chest. To feel him, firm flesh, heat and a hint of chest hair, beneath her palms.
He’d made her want more than that. Her entire body heated at the thought of exactly what he’d made her want.
And he thought it was a mistake. Had he even wanted her? Even a little? Or had he just been horny and wanting sex? And she was in his house instead of one of the women he’d selected.
He wouldn’t have stopped with one of them. Wouldn’t have called it a mistake.
She opened her door and padded down the hall, cracking open the door to Ana’s room. She pushed Dante, and the arousal, the need, the hurt he’d inflicted on her, out of her body. A sense of calm washed over her as soon as she entered her daughter’s room. She didn’t need blood relation, or a government document to feel like Ana was hers. She was, in every sense of the word, no question.
She walked over to the crib and leaned up against the rail, not minding that the wood was digging into her ribs. She bent down and ran her hand over Ana’s fuzzy head, down her stomach. Ana sighed and wiggled beneath Paige’s hand, making a little smacking sound with her mouth.
So much perfection. So much love. So much responsibility. Paige had never succeeded at anything in her life. And she had to succeed at this.
No matter how hot the kisses, Dante Romani was just a means to an end. She couldn’t let him distract her.
And that meant no more kissing. Unless they had to. For the press or for social services.
Suddenly she felt very tired. Like a weight had come to rest on her shoulders. It was harder than she’d imagined it would be. And she couldn’t pretend that she didn’t care. Couldn’t pretend that there wasn’t pressure pushing in from all sides. Couldn’t pretend that losing would mean nothing.
Not when it would mean everything.
“I’ll do my very best, sweetie,” she whispered, an ache in her throat, a tear rolling down her face. She just hoped that for once, her best would be good enough.
CHAPTER EIGHT
PAIGE managed to avoid Dante for the next few days. As best as she could avoid someone when she lived with him and drove to work in the same car with him every morning.
She was definitely much more careful when trying to sneak into his room for clothes. Not because she was afraid of him, but because she was afraid of herself.
She’d liked the kiss too much and she was in serious danger of longing after the man. She didn’t do the longing thing. It ended in disappointment. And sometimes humiliation. Whether it was test scores or boys, that had been her experience. Longing just made the impossible hurt more.
There was no time for longing. She had to focus on Ana, not her suddenly perky hormones.
She growled into her empty office and bent down, rummaging through the box of glass, glitter-covered ornaments and gathered a few of them in her arms, taking them over to the work space she had cleared for herself in the back of the room.