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

She nearly opened her mouth to make one when her eyes locked with his and the breath leached from her body.

His dark eyes roamed over her curves, taking in every inch of her. And she was reminded again of their exchange last night.

What else will you teach me to like?

Oh, no, no, no. She wasn’t going there. She never had before, no reason to start now.

Besides, Dante could have any woman he wanted, on the terms he chose. He had no reason to start lusting after her pink-striped self.

She’d grown up in a small town, and every guy she knew had known her from the time they were in kindergarten together. They knew that she talked too much, and that she very often laughed too loud. That she had trouble paying attention in class. That she’d cut a boy’s tongue with her braces during her first kiss. They knew that she’d been the focus of what had essentially been the senior prank. They knew that she’d barely passed high school, that her parents hadn’t seen the point of paying for her to go to college when she just wouldn’t apply herself. They’d watched her get a job at a coffee shop instead of going away to school like everyone else.

They had all watched her grow from an awkward kid, to an awkward teen, to an awkward adult. It was like living in a fishbowl. And being the slow fish with the crippled fin. Nothing like her straight-A achieving sister and her football-star brother.

She was just … Paige. And it had always seemed like a pitifully small accomplishment, just being her. For most of her life, she’d accepted it. She’d just put on the image they’d applied to her and owned it. So much easier than trying to be anything else.

But there was a point, as she was pouring a cup of coffee for her fiftieth customer of the day, who asked her about her brother or sister, and not about her, that she couldn’t do it anymore.

A week later she’d moved. Just so she could be new to a place. So she had a hope of finding who she was apart from the painful averageness that marked her life.

It hadn’t been an instant transformation, no sudden rise to the top of the social heap. But she’d made a small group of friends. She’d found her job at Colson’s. That provided her with the first real sense of pride she’d ever had in a job.

They’d seen her raw talent and they’d hired her based on that, not based on classroom performance. Colson’s, and by extension, Dante, was her first experience with being believed in.

Strange.

She cast him a sideways glance. He was tall and … rigid in his tux. Each line of his suit jacket conforming to his physique with precision. Dante was never ruffled. She envied that a little bit. Or a lot of a bit, truth be told. She was captivated by it, really, his control. His perfection. His beauty. It was a dark, masculine beauty, nothing soft or traditionally pretty about him. It made her want to look at him, and keep looking.

The elevator doors slid open and they walked out of her apartment building and to the street. There was a black car parked against the curb, waiting for them, she assumed.

Dante opened the back door for her and she slid inside. She’d never ridden in a car with a driver before. Not even a taxi. She always drove her own seen-better-days car.

“It will be nice not being the one fighting traffic for a change,” she said when Dante got in on the other side and settled into the seat beside her.

“Mmm,” he said, taking his phone out of his pocket and devoting his attention to checking his email.

And just like that, the hot guy wasn’t looking at her anymore. Typical.

She let her gaze wander to her left hand, to her still-bare ring finger. “Oh … didn’t you … you were going to give me a ring before tonight, weren’t you?”

He set his phone down. “Yes,” he said. “I don’t know why you’re intent on spoiling the surprise.”

“Uh … because it’s not a surprise.”

“Perhaps I had something planned.”

She didn’t think he was serious. But with Dante it was hard to tell. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like, to have a man like him do the get-down-on-one-knee thing and ask her to be his wife. To look at her with intensity in those dark eyes and …

“So, ring?” She held out her hand and tried to shut out the little fantasy that was playing in the back of her mind.

Forget a dream proposal. She should aim for a kiss that wasn’t a disaster first.

Her reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and produced a velvet box. “Be my wife, et cetera,” he said, opening the box, revealing a pear-shaped emerald surrounded by diamonds.

“It’s … wow.” Hard not to be completely floored when a gorgeous man was giving you a beautiful ring. “How did you know I liked green?”

“Your eye shadow,” he said.

She looked up, as if she could see it. “Oh.”

“And I thought the color and style would suit you. Sedate doesn’t seem to be your thing.”

“Uh … no. Not so much.”

“Put it on,” he said.

“What? Oh, yeah.” She looked down at the ring and a clawing sense of dread made her chest tighten. Was she really going to do this? To put on his ring and go all the way with this?

Yes. Yes, she was. She’d never believed in anything more in her whole life. She’d never been the goal-oriented one in her family. She’d never been the top achiever. She’d never wanted anything so much it made her ache.

That wasn’t the case now. Now there was Ana. And she made Paige want to be the best mother. Made her want to do everything she could to give her baby the best life possible. To encourage her, to love her as she was.

She took a deep breath and lifted the ring from its silken nest, sliding it onto her finger. “There. We’re engaged now,” she said.

He nodded slowly and leaned back in the seat. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. If he was thinking.

“What?” she asked.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I was just wondering what you were thinking. I mean … this is weird.” She wondered if he was thinking of a beautiful blonde, or stunning, dark-haired beauty he would rather have given a ring to. The thought made her chest feel odd. Tight. “We don’t really know each other and … were you planning on getting married ever?”

“No,” he said, definitively. Decisively.

“Oh. Not even if you meet the right person?”

“There is no right person for me. Or at least not one who’s right for more than a couple of days. And nights.”

Dante watched Paige’s face, the confusion, the little bit of judgment. What he’d just said wasn’t true in the strictest sense. The part about marriage was true, but the way he’d spoken of his relationships made it sound like he and the women he slept with met and spent a few days locked in a passionate embrace.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

He’d had arrangements with a few different women over the course of his adult life. Women who were just as busy and driven as he was. Women who were just as averse to relationships.

The women he usually took to the charity events, the models, the actresses … he didn’t sleep with them. They were the bit of flash, the ones who looked good in pictures and who wanted to be in them.

But they were too young, many of then. Too starry-eyed and not nearly cynical enough. The women he took to bed, all they wanted was a couple of hours and a couple of orgasms. They wanted what he wanted. They didn’t want forever and fireworks; they wanted a basic need to be met. And that’s what happened. Basic, simple pursuit of release.

Still, there was no way to explain that without making it sound even worse.