Mistresses: After Hours With The Boss: Her Little White Lie / Their Most Forbidden Fling / An Inescapable Temptation

“I’ll text your ring size to Trevor and send him to procure something suitable. You will have it on your desk by lunch. Then … then we have a charity event to go to.”

“I don’t have anyone to watch Ana.”

“I’ll pay Genevieve to do it. She’s good with Ana, isn’t she?”

“Well, yes, but … I’ll have been away from her all day.”

“Leave early,” he said. “I’ll come here and pick you up before the event.”

“Why do you keep having answers to all of my problems?” she asked, her tone petulant.

“I would think that would be a good thing, especially since you have so many problems at the moment.”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “Granted.”

He stood, taking his glass of nearly untouched wine off the coffee table. “Good night, then. I’ll be by to pick you and Ana up at seven-thirty tomorrow morning.”

“Wait … pick me up?”

“You’re my woman now, Paige, and that comes with a certain set of expectations.”

She blinked. “I didn’t … I didn’t agree to this.”

“You brought me into this. That means you aren’t making all the rules anymore.” He turned and walked into the kitchen, pausing at the sink and dumping the contents of his glass down the drain. “That wine is unforgivable. I will teach you to like good wine.”

“And you’ll teach me to like good jewelry, and the sort of hair you deem ‘good.’ Tell me, Dante, what else will you teach me to like?” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts—rather generous breasts—and a rush of heat assailed him. Intense. Impossible to ignore.

The desire to lean in and trace her lips with his fingertip, with his tongue, was nearly too strong for him to overcome. But he would. He would keep control, as he always did.

He took one last, lingering look, at her pink lips. “That’s a very dangerous question, Paige,” he said. “Very dangerous.”

CHAPTER FOUR (#ucee2d68b-dd06-5d8e-abc6-862a58eb0486)

THAT’S a very dangerous question.

Yes, it had been a dangerous question. Only Paige hadn’t realized just how dangerous until it had come out of her mouth. And she was certain that Dante didn’t realize how much truth was behind it. How much teaching she would need.

Oh, dear.

Just thinking about it again made her feel hot, all over. And that was exactly why she wasn’t going to think about her futile, one-sided attraction anymore

She looked at the clock and shifted in her chair. Genevieve was already here, and Ana had been happily passed off to her. It hadn’t taken the little girl more than a moment to recognize her daily caregiver and the two were happily playing on the rug in the living room.

Paige sighed and realized that she was jiggling her leg. She stopped herself. Her little nervous habit wasn’t a good look with the long, silky gown she was wearing.

Yes, she was wearing a dress, to go on a date. Which was something she hadn’t done in … almost ever. She wasn’t the girl that men went after. She was the screwup, the funny one. The one with a pink stripe in her hair, although Dante was putting the kibosh on that.

She didn’t get dressed up in slinky gowns to go to fancy charity dinners with billionaires. She also didn’t get engaged to billionaires. Oh, yeah, she didn’t really marry them, either, though that was now in her future. All because her stupid, impulsive brain had spit out the most ridiculous lie at the worst time.

Desperation wasn’t her best state. She more or less had a handle on the blurting these days. When she’d been a kid, all the way up into high school, it had been really bad. She was always saying stupid things and embarrassing herself, which was one reason she’d opted for class clown rather than trying to be sexy or cool or anything like that. Letting it go, instead of wishing she could be something she wasn’t, had been much easier.

Or rather, as the case had been, she’d had one incredibly defining, humiliating moment that never let her forget that there were certain guys, who liked certain kinds of girls. And she was not one of them.

There was a heavy knock at her door and she scrambled up out of the chair, grabbing her handbag and wrap. She scurried into the living room and bent down, dropping a kiss onto Ana’s soft, fuzzy head.

“I won’t be too late,” she said to Genevieve.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you were,” Genevieve said.

Paige’s cheeks got hot and she was sure they were a lovely shade of red. “I … we won’t be late.” She had to get a handle on the blushing, too. There was no reason to blush. Dante Romani was hardly going to ravish her in the back of his car.

She straightened and draped her bright purple wrap over her bare shoulders, giving herself a little look in the small mirror that hung in her living room on her way to the door of her apartment.

The door opened just as she reached it.

“Were you going to leave me freezing on the front step?”

“It’s San Diego. It’s not freezing. And you’re in the temperature-controlled hallway.”

“It’s the principle,” he said.

“I had to say goodbye to Ana. Do you want to see her?”

A strange look crossed his face. Confusion, fear, then boredom. “No.”

“Oh, sorry. Most people like babies, you know,” she said, stepping out into the hall, closing the door behind her.

“I have no interest in having any of my own. I’m not certain why it would be important for me to like babies.”

“They’re cute.”

“Yes, so are puppies but I don’t want one.”

“A baby isn’t a puppy,” she said.

He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me for the reason previously stated.”

She rolled her eyes and pushed the button on the elevator. “Right. Well. I hope Ana and I don’t disturb you too much when we live in your home, as you don’t want a wife or a child.”

“It’s a large house,” he said, his words carrying a stiff undertone, as if he didn’t believe it would be large enough.

The doors to the elevator slid open and they both stepped inside. She’d never noticed how small elevators really were before she’d taken to riding in them with Dante Romani. He made everything feel smaller. Tighter. Because he filled the space he was in so absolutely.

It wasn’t just because he was well over six feet tall and broad, either. It was his charisma, the dark energy that radiated from him. He was so unobtainable, so uninterested in what was happening around him. It made you want to go and grab his attention. Made you want to be in his sphere. To make him seem interested. To make him smile.

To make him laugh.

At least she did, but she was good at that. Making people laugh and smile. Defusing tension with antics and jokes. And she had, apparently, not learned her lesson about unobtainable men.