VITTORIO'S MISTRESS (The Vittorio Series) (6 page)

She was embarrassingly weak when it came to Dante, and she finally understood what had driven her to write that note all those years ago.
 
If she’d gone to him, stood anywhere near him, she never would have had the strength to let him go.

Even now, when she knew how much was riding on dissuading him from pursuing a relationship with her, Paige was completely helpless to do anything but melt in his arms.
 
Worse than that, she found herself trying to devise a way to keep him from seeing the awful panties she was wearing when he took her to bed.
 

Maybe she could insist he turn all the lights off or excuse herself and go to the bathroom and remove them.
 
He might even think it was sexy that she’d worn thigh high hose beneath her dress and nothing else.
 
Paige was so intent on working around the cotton panty issue that she didn’t even notice Dante had stopped the assault on her neck until he spoke.

“Would you like to take a walk in the gardens?”

Paige opened her eyes.
 
Was he kidding?
 
Here she was, clinging to him like a human vine while every female hormone in her was clamoring for more kisses, more caresses, more of everything, and he wanted to take a
walk
?
 
Did he realize how close she was to surrendering herself to him?
 
Peering deep into those dark eyes of his, she saw the same raw desire she knew Dante saw reflected in hers.
 
So why was he drawing away from her?
 

She could see the strain on his face and when she let her hands slip from around his neck, Paige also felt how rigid the muscles in his neck and shoulders had become.
 
There was no question as to how much he wanted her right now, but he was
deliberately holding himself back.
 
To heighten the sexual tension between them?
 
To punish her for even suggesting she’d chose another man over him?
 

It was pure torture to be this close to Dante and not be able to pull his mouth back down onto hers, but if he wanted to continue this game of cat and mouse then so be it.
 
In all honesty, she understood his reasons for doing it.
 
After all, where was the fun in it if his prey didn’t at least try to elude him?

Paige looked up at him from beneath her lashes as her hands drifted slowly down his chest.
 
She ran her tongue over her lips and experienced a moment of triumph when Dante’s eyes darkened and air hissed through his teeth.
 
His big body trembled and she could feel his heart hammering against her palms, but just as his resolve started to crumble she let her arms fall to her sides and broke the physical contact between them.
 
Two could play at this game, Paige thought as she offered him a sexy smile that forced a groan of sheer agony from deep in his throat.

“
Strega
,” he muttered when she twisted away from him with a light-hearted laugh.
 
“You are a witch for beguiling me with a smile that promises the very thing you tell me I cannot have.”

“And
you
are wicked man for tempting me after I told you I didn’t want to rekindle an old flame.”

Dante’s brows furrowed.
 
“An old flame, is that what I am?”

Paige couldn’t help but laugh.
 
“It’s not an insult, Dante.
 
It just means we were romantically involved once but now we’re not.”

“But we will be,” he said with certainty.

Paige’s smile faded.
 
“Maybe if things were different, but they’re not.
 
I’m sorry, Dante.”

“What things?”

“Just…things,” she shrugged.

Dante’s voice dipped an octave as
he
advance on her.
 
“I will change your mind,
carissima
.”

“You won’t,” she said with much more confidence that she felt.

“I will,” he persisted.
 
“You see, I know your weaknesses.”

Paige held her ground, albeit on shaky legs.
 
“I don’t…have any…” a soft moan vibrated in the back of her throat when Dante threaded his fingers through the hair on either side of her face and silenced her with a very long and thorough kiss.

“You were saying?”
 
Dante murmured against her lips.

Paige’s eyelids fluttered open.
 
It would be so easy to give in to
her own
desires and let him seduce her back into his bed, because the truth was she wanted him to make love to her more than she wanted her next breath.
 
Oh yes, he knew her weaknesses all right, and nearly all of them had to do with Dante.
 

But there was one he didn’t know about; a dark haired little girl with her father’s eyes who trusted Paige to keep the happy smile on her beautiful face.
 
If only she could be sure Dante would welcome the idea of being a father and that he wouldn’t try to take Daniella from her.

“Dante, I…I think you should take me home now.”

“Of course,
cara mia
, if that is what you want.”

His immediate and almost cavalier acquiescence made her wary, and it must have shown on her face because he drew her back in his arms and just held her for several minutes.
 
How many nights over the past four years had she lay awake aching for the feel of his strong arms and praying for a second chance to build a life with him?
 
And now that there was a very real possibility of it happening, she was running like a scared rabbit.

Dante absently stroked her hair, savoring these precious few moments with her.
 
It was difficult to harden his heart against Paige and remember the reason he was being so relentless in his pursuit of her when he still found her kisses as intoxicating as they’d always been.
 
He couldn’t even be in the same room with her without wanted to caress her soft skin or get close enough to inhale her sweet scent.
 

That’s why he’d so readily agreed to take her home; he was afraid if she stayed much longer he wouldn’t be able control himself and they’d end up in bed together.
 
It was thoughtless of him not to consider she’d find that a little suspicious after he’d taken advantage of every opportunity to kiss her the entire evening.
 
He’d just have to put her mind to rest and then everything would be back on track again.

“I wish you could spend the night with me,” he said softly, “but it is probably best that I take you home.
 
In spite of what I said earlier, when I make love to you I want both your
mind
and your body to say yes.”

She didn’t tell Dante this was the last time she’d see him, he wouldn’t have listened to her anyway.
 
But she couldn’t risk being alone with him again because she didn’t trust herself not to succumb to his considerable charms.
 
Paige was under no illusions; the only reason she hadn’t slept with him tonight was because
he
had been strong enough to stop it from happening.
 
And since he’d told her in no uncertain terms that he was going to be her lover, she had no choice but to cut off all contact.
 
Her heart
ached
just thinking about it.

Her mood was solemn on the drive back to her house and she didn’t say much.
 
When Dante asked if there was anything wrong she forced a smile and claimed to be tired.
 
She tried to keep him from walking her to the door once they arrived at her house but he would have none of it.
 
She was glad he didn’t ask to come in because she would have had to flat refuse.
 
Besides the fact that
Chantel
was there, the moment Dante walked into her house he’d know a child lived there.
 

Paige kept a pretty tidy house but there was still evidence of Daniella everywhere.
 
The coat hook just inside the foyer had a number of miniature sweaters hanging on it, and there was a small toy box with cartoon characters painted on it in one corner of the living room.
 
Even the kitchen, which was kept obsessively spotless, had pictures that Daniella had drawn for her stuck to the refrigerator by colorful magnets.
 
Luckily, she’d thought to move the tricycle off the front porch and into the backyard before Dante had arrived.

“Thank you for dinner,” she told him when they reached the door.
 
“I had a nice time.”

Dante arched a brow.
 
“
Nice?
”

“Okay, it was more than nice,” she laughed because he looked genuinely appalled by her choice of words.
 
“I had a
wonderful
time at dinner.
 
The food was
magnificent
and the conversation was utterly
stimulating.
 
There, have I sufficiently stoked your ego?”

Dante slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her up tight against his body.
 
“You have left something out, have you not?”

“Maybe just one little thing,” she said on a sigh as he lowered his head and feasted on her mouth.

Her body instantly became a madhouse of jumbled sensations; a million butterflies took flight inside her stomach, her brain was lost in a dense fog, and her body temperature skyrocketed.
 
Her heartbeat was erratic, her breath ragged and shallow, and when he hitched her even closer so she could feel just how aroused he was, the muscles in her abdomen clenched so tight she nearly climaxed right there.
 
By the time he drew away from her, Paige felt as if she’d just gotten off one of those spinning rides at the carnival.

“That will have to hold you until we see each other again,” Dante said.

“Dante…” she looked up at him with eyes that were misted with tears.
 
Oh God, this was killing her.
 
“I can’t,” she managed to squeeze out.

He frowned at the glistening tears.
 
“Do not
cry,
mio tesoro.
 
We will be together again soon, I promise you.
 
I have
work
to do in the morning but we could have lunch together…”

“No,” Paige shook her head.
 
“I can’t see you again, Dante.”

“Ah, it is those
things
you spoke of earlier but refused to elaborate on.”
 
Dante cupped her chin and tilted her head back so she was forced to look at him.
 
“I lost you once, Paige.
 
I will not lose you again.
 
Understand this,
cara
;
Io vogtio te
, I want you, and I will not rest until I have you.
 
We
will
become lovers again, it is inevitable.”

Paige trembled beneath the fierce intensity of his gaze.
 
She’d never seen him look so determined and it shook her to the core because she knew he meant every word just as she knew she was powerless to stop him from trying.
 
And God help her, but when Dante took her in his arms and unleashed the passion he’d been holding back all evening, she clung to him like the love sick idiot she was and always would be where Dante was concerned.
 

When he released her with the promise to see her soon, all Paige could do was stand there and watch him walk away.

“Oh God,” Paige groaned, “I just made things ten times worse…no a hundred times worse than they were before.”

Chantel
set the quart of rocky road ice cream in the middle of the table and handed Paige a spoon before taking the seat opposite her.
 
“Tell me you didn’t sleep with him,” she said as she dipped her own spoon in the ice cream.

“I didn’t.”
 
Paige shoveled a huge spoonful of the chocolate and marshmallow cure for depression into her mouth.
 
“But I would have if Dante had put even the slightest pressure on me.”

“So nothing happened?”

“I wouldn’t say that exactly,” she grimaced, “but our clothes remained intact if that’s what you mean.
 
I was pathetically spineless…well, that spineless thing could have been because of the way he was kissing me.
 
The point is, I was weak and would have caved in a New York minute if he’d kept on kissing me.”

Paige and
Chantel
worked their way through the quart of ice cream while she confessed her many sins that evening.
 
She should never have gone out with him or at the very least, demanded that they dine some place other than his house.
 
But kissing Dante was the biggest mistake of all because she’d led him to believe she was just playing hard to get.
 
She couldn’t blame him for it really, not when she’d been swaying from hot to cold all evening.
 
Dante was right; while her mouth was telling him no, her body was most assuredly telling him yes.

“I was completely shameless,” she said with a heavy sigh.
 

“Don’t be too hard on yourself.
 
Dante Vittorio is pretty potent when he’s not doing anything but standing there looking gorgeous.
 
I can’t imagine how any woman could resist him when he really put on the charm.”

“That’s where the completely shameless part comes in,” Paige eyed the empty quart container with a frown.
 
“He wasn’t really doing anything except telling me what his brother’s have been up to and asking about the daycare center.
 
It was when I made up the story about having a boyfriend that I was thinking about sleeping with that things got a little heated.”

“No kidding,”
Chantel
said dryly.
 
“Good grief, Paige, you might as well have waived a red cape in front of him.”

“I was trying to deter him, not issue a challenge.”

“Obviously the wrong
tactic to take with a man like
Dante.
 
The way I see it, you’ve only left yourself with two options.
 
You can try to evade him, which you and I both know will never work, or you can throw in the towel and sleep with him.
 
You know how men are; the fun is in the chase.”

Paige’s eyes widened in disbelief.
 
“So you’re saying I
should
sleep with him?”

 
“Trust me,”
Chantel
said with an impish grin, “once he gets you into his bed and proves he’s the master of seduction, he’ll get bored and move on to someone who isn’t as pathetically easy as you are.”

“You really suck as a best
friend,
you do know that, right?”

“I’m just trying to lighten your mood a bit.
 
Listen, you said Dante told you he wanted to be your lover.
 
Not your boyfriend, not your husband, which means he’s not looking for a long term relationship.”

The frown Paige had been sporting became decidedly more pronounced.
 
“You honestly think he just wants a fling?”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” she let out an unhappy sigh.
 
“Dante and I had been in a sexual relationship for two months when I found out I was pregnant and he often referred to me as his lover.
 
I’m just so…confused.”

“Because you want to be with him but don’t want to take the chance of losing sole custody of Daniella?”

“Yes.
 
That sounds horribly selfish, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose in some respects it does.”
 
Chantel’s
smile was sympathetic.
 
“I understand you want to protect Daniella, but look who you’re trying to protect her from!
 
And I realize I don’t know Dante very well but I do know
you
, and I don’t think you could love him like you do if he wasn’t a good man.”

“He
is
a good man,” Paige agreed.

“Then surely you must know he wouldn’t do anything that would make his own daughter unhappy.
 
Be honest, Paige, why are you so afraid to tell him?”

Paige drew in a weary breath.
 
“I guess what scares me most is that he’ll hate me for not telling him about Daniella.
 
If I walk away now, I’d do it knowing he still wants me, that he still feels something for me.
 
I don’t think I could take it if I thought he despised me.”

“What if he finds out about her later?
 
Then he really will despise you because you had the opportunity to tell him but didn’t do it.”

“I know,” she said miserably.

Chantel
got up from the table and tossed the empty ice cream container in the trash.
 
“It’s late.
 
Why don’t you go to bed and get a good night’s sleep.
 
Maybe things will be a little clearer to you in the morning.”

But her decision as to what she was going to do wasn’t any more obvious to her when she woke than it had been the night before.
 
Chantel
had crashed in the guest bedroom but was up and gone before Paige even made it through her first cup of coffee so they didn’t have time to discuss it much.
 
The only parting thought
Chantel
left her with was not to sit on the fence too long.
 
In other words, she needed to make a decision to go one way or the other.

“Mom always told me if you sit on the fence too long someone’s bound to come along and knock you off and make the decision for you.”

Paige polished off her coffee and went to wake Daniella, mulling over what
Chantel
said.
 
Was that what she was hoping for, that Dante would find out on his own so she wouldn’t have to face him with the news he had a three year old daughter?
 
No, if that was true she wouldn’t have gone to such great lengths to find a safe haven to hide away in while the baby inside her continued to grow.
 
She’d been afraid Dante would try to find her and discover she was pregnant so she’d spent the months before
Daniella’s
birth and the following six months afterwards at the lake cabin owned by
Chantel’s
parents.

It was quiet and peaceful there and Paige supposed she’d been as content as possible considering the circumstances.
 
Summer and
Fall
had been pleasant but the Winter had been cold and harsh and she’d decided to move before it came around again.
 
Daniella was born on the eighteenth of May and by the middle of November she’d found the house they lived in now.
 
That’s when she’d first conceived of the idea for the daycare center.

Paige had been dragging her heels about going back to work as a teacher because it meant spending so much time away from her precious baby girl.
 
The inheritance she’d received from a trust her grandparents had left her was slowly dwindling, and even though she could have lived off of it for several years she didn’t want it all to go towards living expenses.
 
She needed to invest in something that would earn money so she could stay home with Daniella and not have to worry about sucking her savings dry.
 

The daycare center seemed like the perfect solution.
 
For one thing she’d be able to go back to teaching, which she sorely missed.
 
True, she’d be working with a much younger group of children than she was used to, but she could structure her own curriculum and not have to follow the rigid educational guidelines set up by others.
 
Plus, she’d have a steady income and be able to keep Daniella with her until it was time to send her off to kindergarten.
 
If she’d had any idea the building she’d purchased was so close to Dante’s office she never would have taken out the loan to buy it.

Paige stood over
Daniella’s
bed for a moment just watching her sleep.
 
She had one little arm thrown up over her head while the other was draped across her tummy.
 
Dark lashes lay against the same bronzed skin tone her father had as well as bearing an identical birthmark on her neck just a few inches below her right ear.
 

Most of the time, her raven curls covered it up but it was so faint that even when Paige pulled her hair into a ponytail it was barely noticeable.
 
It was less than a quarter of an inch long and was nothing more than a slight darkening of the skin that looked like an oversized freckle.
 
Not big enough to draw anyone’s attention, yet Paige noticed it every time she looked at Daniella because it was a poignant reminder of Dante and the love she once shared with him.

With a wistful sigh, she leaned down and brushed a soft kiss to her daughter’s forehead.
 
“Good morning, precious,” she whispered when
Daniella’s
eyelids fluttered open.

A huge smile instantly formed on
Daniella’s
face.
 
“Is it
wiffle
day, Mama?”

Paige giggled.
 
“Waffles, darling, not
wiffles
.
 
And yes, it’s waffle day.”

Daniella kicked her covers off, anxious to begin their Sunday morning ritual of making waffles with cut up strawberries for breakfast.
 
It was comforting to fall into a normal routine with her daughter because she was able to push thoughts of Dante from her mind for awhile.
 
After breakfast, she gave Daniella a bath and dressed her in a pretty pink jumper so they could get the grocery shopping done for the following week.
 
Daniella chatted happily about anything and everything that came to mind during the short drive to the store and continued pretty much non-stop the entire time they were shopping.

“You’re certainly a chatterbox today,” Paige laughed after Daniella informed her of all the reasons she should buy the cocoa flavored cereal instead of the toasted wheat flakes.

“But Mama, Coco Clown says…”

“I know what he says, but Coco isn’t the one who gets to watch you bounce off the walls after you eat all that sugar.”

Daniella pursed her little lips, and Paige could almost see the wheels turning in that sharp mind of hers as she tried to figure out a way to get what she wanted.
 
At times, it was agonizing to have to say no because her daughter had perfected a wide eyed whipped puppy expression.
 
It tugged at Paige's heart and made it almost impossible to
deny her anything in spite of the knowledge that it was precisely the reason Daniella did it.
 

Paige moved on to the next aisle where the baking goods were.
 
Hoping to distract Daniella and get her mind on something else, she asked her what kind of cake they should make for Nana’s birthday.
 
She inched the cart along the row of cake mixes so Daniella could study the picture on each box and after several minutes of careful consideration she selected a white confetti cake with chocolate frosting.

Daniella looked thoughtful for a moment before giving Paige a sly glance.
 
“Mama…I
wanna
go home and call Nana.”

“Why do you need to call Nana?”
 
Paige asked, though she knew very well that her crafty little daughter intended to wheedle a box of Cocoa
Crunchies
out of her grandmother.

“I
hafta
tell her
somethin
’ impotent,” Daniella said with wide-eyed innocence.