VITTORIO'S MISTRESS

by Kimberley Reeves

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

  Chapter 4

  “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.

  Paige had to smother her laughter. Oh, there was no doubt in her mind that Daniella had inherited that Vittorio charm and would use it on her Nana later. Both of Paige’s parents adored Daniella but there was a special bond between her mother and daughter which is why she allowed Daniella to spend one weekend a month at their house. Of course the child was spoiled rotten when she went on her Nana weekend, as Daniella called it, but there was more to it than that.

  It warmed Paige’s heart to know how much they loved Daniella in spite of the fact they’d been disappointed in their own daughter for getting pregnant and not telling Dante. They’d tried to understand her reasons for doing it, but ultimately they believed she should have told him and given Dante the opportunity to marry her. But she’d adamantly refused because she loved him too much to force him into marriage and fatherhood when he so obviously didn’t want either at that point in his life.

  When they finally got the shopping done and returned home nearly two hours later, Paige was more than a little disconcerted to find one of Dante’s business cards stuck in the screen door. I will call you later, he’d written on the back side, and for all the firm promises she’d made to herself not to have contact with him again, Paige couldn’t help the slew of butterflies that flitted around in the pit of her stomach at the thought of hearing his voice.

  ****

  While Daniella contented herself with playing in the living room with her baby dolls, Paige unloaded the groceries from the car and put everything away then made sandwiches for lunch. She found herself listening for the phone, at the same time trying to figure out what she’d say to him once he did call. She considered not answering it all but was afraid it might prompt a personal visit. Paige was still in quite a quandary an hour later when the call finally came, but at least she didn’t have to worry about him hearing Daniella talking because she’d put her down for a nap twenty minutes before.

  “I miss you, cara mia,” his deep voice sent a thrill racing through her. “Will you have dinner with me again tonight?”

  “I can’t. I have dinner with my parents every Sunday night,” she told the fib she’d concocted earlier. “Besides, I already told you I can’t see you again and I meant it.”

  “Tomorrow then,” he ignored her last statement. “If you are not comfortable dinning at my house, I will take you someplace else. Where would you like to go?”

  “Dante, you’re not listening to me.”

  “You are right,” he laughed softly, “I am not listening. Do you want Italian again or maybe a nice French restaurant?”

  Paige could feel her resolve melting as she envisioned sitting across from him over a romantic dinner. “No,” she said feebly, then more firmly, “No, I can’t have dinner with you tomorrow or any other night. I…I don’t want to see you again, Dante, so please don’t call or come over anymore.”

  “If you will not allow me to take you to dinner then I shall just have to make sure my schedule is free so I can join you in the park.”

  That sent a shock wave of panic surging through her. “You’ll just be wasting your time if you do because I won’t talk to you or agree to go on any walks.”

  “You are being very stubborn, carissima,” he said smoothly, “but it will do no good. You are only delaying the inevitable and we both know it.”

  The inevitable. Paige sank down onto the sofa. “Why are you doing this, Dante? You could have your choice of women…”

  “I do not want any other woman, I want you.”

  “Doesn’t it matter what I want?”

  “It matters very much, cara.”

  “Then you’ll stop calling and promise not to show up at the park?”

  Dante laughed. “I will make no such promise. You see, I do not believe you want me to go away or that you have no feelings for me.”

  “I do have feelings for you,” she admitted, then told him the mother of all lies. “But those feelings are purely sexual and I would hate myself if I gave into them. I couldn’t sleep with a man I didn’t love without losing all self respect.”

  There was a short pause before Dante replied. “Does that mean that you were in love with me before?”

  “You know I was,” she said in strangled whisper.

  “But not anymore?”

  Paige forced the words out; he’d left her no choice. “How could I love you when we barely know each other now? When I saw you again, it brought back memories of how good it used to be when we made love and I guess I wanted to believe we could recapture that somehow.”

  “We can recapture it, tesoro. Let me prove it to you.”

  “No, Dante,” she said despondently, “you would only be proving what I already know. I’m sexually attracted to you but that’s all it is, and I…I have no desire to complicate my life by having a meaningless affair with you.”

  “Meaningless,” he repeated stiffly.

  “What else could it be when there’s no love between us? I have to go now,” Paige said abruptly because she was dangerously close to crying. “Take care of yourself, Dante.”

  Dante ground his teeth together in frustration when Paige hung up on him. If she was telling the truth and really didn’t feel anything towards him but sexual attraction then it was going to take a lot more than a few stolen moments in the park to get her to fall in love with him
. He needed to be alone with her, and not just for an hour or two but for a whole day…or a whole weekend.

  There was just one little problem; she seemed pretty determined to shut him out of her life. Then again, maybe it was better this way. It would prove to be much more of a challenge if she didn’t make it easy for him, and how much sweeter would his revenge be when she fell in love with him then?

  ****

  Paige was a bundle of nerves on Monday when she accompanied her assistant and the small group of children to the park. She couldn’t seem to keep her eyes from searching for Dante or from feeling the bitter disappointment when he never appeared. Even as they were making the trek back to the daycare center and she knew it was too late for him to show up, Paige found herself making furtive glances over her shoulder.