“Yes?”
“It’s time to queue up.”
Paige nodded and walked out of the quiet little entryway into the foyer of the church. Two wooden double doors loomed in front of her. She could hear people talking quietly, and she could hear music.
“Dante, Genevieve and Ana are already in place. You just wait until I signal you.”
Paige nodded, unable to come up with any words.
Then, way too quickly, the wedding planner gave her the signal and the doors swung open. Paige took a deep breath and started to walk slowly down the aisle, her heart pounding in her head.
She didn’t really like having everyone’s eyes on her, because there was a very high likelihood of her tripping or otherwise making a fool out of herself, and she really didn’t relish a thousand people bearing witness to her clumsiness.
One foot in front of the other.
She concentrated on that. On making it down smoothly. And she didn’t once look up at Dante. She found Ana first, clinging to Genevieve, her frilly white dress bunching out around her, a headband with an oversize flower decorating her short hair.
Only at the end, when she had nowhere else to look, when it was time for her to take Dante’s hand, did she look at him.
And it was like the whole sanctuary, the whole city, the whole world, cracked apart around her and fell away. He was beautiful, but he was always beautiful. The tuxedo highlighted the hard lines of his trim physique, the candlelight casting shadows in the hollows of his face, making his cheekbones sharper, his jaw more square.
But that wasn’t it.
He took both of her hands and the pastor began the ceremony. She managed to say the vows, managed to repeat them when it was her turn, to keep from stumbling over her words.
But when the command was given to kiss the bride and Dante’s lips touched hers, she realized what it was. And it filled her with a sense of bone-deep terror, and a kind of pure, intense elation that she’d never experienced before in her life.
Dante wasn’t just her boss. He wasn’t just a man who was helping her. He wasn’t just her temporary husband. He wasn’t even just her lover.
Dante was the man she loved. The only man she’d ever loved. The man who was worth the risk. The man who had made her fear of being unwanted seem like nothing. Because she was willing to fight for him. Willing to risk herself, her heart, for him.
Because she loved him.
And she knew that the admission would send him running back up the aisle alone.
So, she said nothing, and she kept on kissing him.
“And now I pronounce them, not only husband and wife, but a family,” the pastor said.
Genevieve handed Ana to Paige and Paige took her, held her daughter close against her chest, her heart thundering, as Dante took her free hand.
“I am proud to present the Romani family.”
Dante was grinning, the kind of grin designed to make the headlines. The kind of grin designed to impress child services. The kind that Paige knew was a fake. Because she could see the emptiness in his eyes.
She was finding it a little hard to fake it, considering the revelation that had just slapped her in the face.
She wasn’t sure when it had happened, the love thing. When a crush had changed into something real, something deeper. Sometime in between when he’d stood in front of her desk like an avenging angel demanding an explanation, and when he’d cradled Ana against his chest and sang to her with the most profound tenderness she’d ever seen from him.
They walked down the aisle, to thundering applause, and she wondered, for the first time, who the people in attendance were. Friends of Dante’s family. And friends of their friends, she imagined.
Paige forced a smile, and tried to keep a hold of Dante’s hand. He leaned in, the motion likely seeming like an affection nuzzle to their audience. “Smile,” he said.
“I am,” she whispered back.
The double doors opened for them and they entered the empty foyer.
“You aren’t,” he said, once the doors closed behind them.
“Well, I’m not as good of an actor as you,” she said.
He looked stricken by that statement and she couldn’t understand why. It’s what he was doing, she could tell.
“Well, you had best become better at it. We are headed to the reception now, and you are going to meet my parents.”