But that was the way the world worked. Coming from having none, to having more than he could ever spend, had taught him that in a very effective way.
“Possibly,” she said, sucking her bright pink bottom lip into her mouth and worrying it with her teeth.
His phone rang and he punched the speaker button. “Dante Romani.”
His assistant’s nervous voice filled the room. “Mr. Romani,” he said, “the press have been calling all afternoon looking for a statement…about your engagement.”
Dante shot Paige his deadliest glare. She didn’t shrink. She hardly seemed to notice. She was looking past him, out the window, at the harbor, twirling a lock of hair around her finger, her knees shaking back and forth. She was the most…haphazard creature he’d ever seen.
“What about it?” Dante asked, still unsure how he was going to play it.
As far as the press was concerned, he was marrying Paige and he was adopting a child with her. To go back on that a day later would kill the last vestiges of speculation that he might possess honor or human decency. That wasn’t exactly a goal of his. Yes, by the standards of some, he lacked charm. Really, he just wasn’t inclined to kiss ass, and he never had been. But it didn’t mean he was angling for a complete character assassination by the media, either.
If things got too bad, and they were headed that way, it might affect business. And that was completely unacceptable to him. Don and Mary Colson had adopted an heir to their fortune, to their department store empire, for a reason. It was not so he could let it fail.
And then there was Ana. Dante didn’t like children. Didn’t want them. But the memories from his own childhood, memories of foster care, of going from home to home, sometimes good, sometimes not, were strong.
Perhaps Ana would be adopted right away. But would they care for her? Would they love her? Paige did; that much even he could recognize.
This concern, for another human being, was unusual for him. It was foreign. But he couldn’t deny that it was there. Very real, very strong. The need to spare an innocent child from some of the potential horrors of life. Horrors he knew far too well.
“They want details,” Trevor said.
Dante’s eyes locked with Paige’s. “Of course they do.” So do I. “But they’ll have to wait. I have no statement at this time.” He punched the off button on the phone’s intercom. “But I will need one,” he said to Paige. A plan was forming in his mind, a way to take this potential PR disaster and turn it into something that would benefit him. But first, he wanted to hear an explanation. “What do you propose we do?”
Paige stopped jiggling her leg. “Get married?” Her expression was so hopeless, so utterly lost looking. “Or…at least let the engagement go on for a while?” The desperation, coming from her in waves, was palpable.
No one had ever cared for him with so much passion, not in the years since he’d lost his birth mother. He didn’t regret it. It was far too late in life for that.
But it isn’t too late for Ana.
He looked back down at the newspaper. It wouldn’t only be for Ana anyway. It was a strange thought…the idea of being able to manipulate the image he’d always had in the press.
He’d grown from sullen teenage boy to feared man all in the eye of the public. For years he’d been painted as an unloving, ungrateful adopted child who had no place in the Colson family. As he’d grown up, his image had changed to that of a hard boss, a heartless lover who drew women in with sexual promises, sensual corruption and money before discarding them. It colored the way people saw him. The way they talked to him. The way they did business with him.
What would it be like to have it change? It wouldn’t last, of course. He wouldn’t stay with her. Wouldn’t pursue anything remotely resembling a real marriage. An engagement though, at least for a while, had interesting possibilities.
But to be seen as the angel rather than the devil…it was an interesting thought. It might make certain transactions easier. Smoother.
Dante was past the point where negative character assessments bothered him. Unless they affected a business. And in the past, he knew people had shied away from dealings with him thanks to his reputation.