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“Yes,” he said, clenching his teeth tight, “it is.”
* * *
You can’t have more champagne. You’ll make a total ass of yourself.
She’d already rolled her ankle twice while walking around the lavishly decorated ballroom and had stumbled obviously, teetering sharply to the right thanks to her three-inch heels.
She wasn’t exactly making the best appearance as Dante’s brand-new fiancée.
But this had all happened so fast she hadn’t had time to adjust. And that was one of the many reasons that alcohol felt slightly necessary.
The other was that moment in the car, just before they’d arrived, when Dante’s dark eyes had been focused on her mouth. When heat and desire had spread through her, flushing her skin, making her heart race. When she’d looked like a total fool, drooling over a man who didn’t have the slightest interest in her.
Yeah, there was that.
“Enjoying yourself, cara mia?” Dante appeared, holding two glasses of champagne. He offered her one, and she took it, in spite of herself.
“I’m not really sure,” she said.
“You aren’t sure?”
“No. I mean, I don’t know anyone here but you so I’m basically just standing next to you smiling and no one is really talking to me and…my cheeks hurt.”
“Your cheeks?”
“From the smiling.”
“Ah.” He frowned. “I must confess most of my dates aren’t here for conversation so I imagine the assumption has now been made about you.”
“What are they here for?” she asked. The obvious, she imagined. The pleasure of having Dante later.
“For the publicity,” he said, uprooting her previous assumption. “There will be several pictures of you, standing next to me and smiling, published in various places online and in print by tomorrow morning.”
“So, women date you to get their picture in the paper?”
“I’m not really vain, but I don’t think that’s the only reason.”
Paige’s heart slammed hard against her breastbone as she thought of all the other reasons women might date Dante. Oh, yeah, she could see that for sure. “Well, I mean…I’m sure your sparkling wit and effusive personality also net you a few dinner engagements.”
He laughed, a more genuine, rich laugh than she’d heard from him before. “I doubt it, somehow, but thank you for the confidence in me.”
“Or course,” she said. “It’s the least I can do considering what you’re doing for me.”
“I’m getting something in return.”
“You say that like you have to convince yourself you aren’t being altruistic,” she said, regretting the two glasses of champagne she’d already had, and the candor that came with them, the moment she said it.
“Because I never am.”
“So can never be?”
“Mr. Romani, and your lovely fiancée!” They were interrupted by an older woman with a broad smile.
Dante inclined his head. “Nice to see you again, Catherine, and please, call me Dante.”
“Dante, of course.” Catherine began regaling Dante with stories of her country club, gossip, both personal and business related. She noticed that Dante managed to appear vaguely interested, his expression politely pleasant.
And yet she could see something behind his eyes. Calculation. She could almost see him filtering out the unimportant, retaining bits about failing businesses and mistresses who might cause trouble in someone’s professional life.
Then he smiled, a smile that some might call warm, and bid the older woman goodbye.
“Who was that?” she asked.
“A friend of my…parents,” he said, the word coming out in a few, halting syllables.
“Oh.”
“I’ll confess, I don’t like these things, either,” he said. “But, you do hear interesting information. It’s worth it. So that about sums up my altruism, really. It’s for charity, which is nice. But I get something out of it, too. Nothing is purely altruistic.”
She thought of Ana, of how much joy Ana brought to her life. How much love and purpose. “I suppose not.”
“Does the purity of motivation really matter anyway? As long as no one is hurt. As long as people are cared for?”
