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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.
