Read Her Little White Lie for Free Online Page A

if you had asked me a few months ago if I was ready to have a baby, I would have told you no. But that would be a hypothetical baby. And Ana isn’t hypothetical. She’s here. And she doesn’t have anyone. Her birth mother is dead, my friend, my best friend is dead. The line on the birth certificate that should have a father’s name on it is blank. She needs me.”
    “She needs anyone who will care for her. It doesn’t have to be you.” She flinched when he said the words.
    “It does,” she said, her voice thin.
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know for sure if anyone else will love her like I do. And I … I knew Shyla. I knew her better than anyone, and she knew me. I’ll be able to tell her about her mother.” Paige’s throat convulsed. “And Shyla asked me to. She asked me to take care of her.”
    That answer hit him hard in the chest and the memories he’d been pushing away from the moment they’d picked Ana up at the nursery crowded in, too fast and forceful for himto hold back anymore. He’d been much older than Ana when he’d lost his mother, so he remembered a lot on his own. Memories that he often wished he didn’t have. Of soft lullabies, gentle hands … and blood. In the end … so much blood.
    He blinked and shook off the memory, reclaiming control, lifting the glass of wine to his lips and grimacing when the chilled, acrid liquid hit his tongue. There was no buzz on earth worth that. He set it back down on the table.
    “I understand that.”
    “It’s not just for her. It’s for me, too. I love her. Like … like she really is my baby. I saw her come into the world. I cared for her from the start, did the midnight feedings and visits to the doctor. I can’t … I can’t just let her go. Let her go to someone else. Someone who might not love her like I do. How could anyone love her like I do? I love her so much that sometimes it overwhelms me.”
    Paige spoke with conviction, so much it vibrated from her petite frame. Dante couldn’t imagine emotion like that. It was so far beyond where he was now.
    In truth, he couldn’t imagine a good emotion that strong. Fear, grief, the type that had the power to reduce a man to a quivering, raw mass of anguish … that he knew. But nothing like it since. Nothing that even came close. He was numb to feeling.
    But he could sense hers, could feel them radiating off her. She didn’t hide them, didn’t sublimate them to try to deal with them. He doubted she could. She was too honest.
    Well, except for that one little lie. The one he was currently enmeshed in.
    “You cannot keep the pink in your hair,” he said. He needed to tone her down, to make her less distracting.
    “What?” she sifted her fingers through her dark hair, the movement unconsciously sexy.
    “I would hardly become engaged to a woman with pink hair.”
    “Um … but you did. You totally just did.”
    “I didn’t know about the pink stripe until recently. When I found out I nearly broke it off with you, so you promised to go to the hairdresser.”
    “You can’t even see it if I have my hair down.”
    “I saw it when we were in bed.” Again, the images of her skin against his sheets hit him hard.
    Her cheeks colored a deep rose. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d made a woman blush, discounting Paige, and he certainly couldn’t remember ever finding it so fascinating.
    “Uh … and that was your predominant thought? My pink hair? We did something wrong, in that case.” She looked away from him and took another long drink of her vile wine.
    “Just color over it,” he said.
    “I have an appointment in a few weeks. It’ll keep.”
    “You seem to forget that I’m doing you a favor.”
    “I didn’t think that was your predominant motivation. And anyway, I’m doing you a favor, too.”
    He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know what the reaction will be. I’m curious to find out.”
    “So, this is just a social experiment to you?”
    “It’s interesting, yes.