Her Little White Lie by Maisey Yates

skittering through her, making her feel shaky and off-kilter.
    “You aren’t?”
    “No. That makes it sound like I’m some sort of a … a game and I don’t like that. I don’t play games. What you see is what you get.”
    “I’ve noticed. But I didn’t mean that I intended to play a game with you.”
    “You didn’t?”
    He shook his head, his dark eyes intent on hers. “I don’t play.”
    She tried to swallow again. Her throat felt like it was coated in sand. “Right. Neither do I.”
    He chuckled, dark and rich like chocolate. “I got the impression that you did very little besides playing.”
    She looked down at the top of Ana’s fuzzy head. “And where did you get that idea? Between working for Colson’s and taking care of Ana, I don’t have a lot of playtime.”
    He frowned. “I suppose that’s true. But it’s more the way you are. The things you say. You’re … happy.”
    She laughed, the sound bursting from her with no decorum or volume control, as always. “I guess so. I mean, there’s plenty of crap I’m unhappy about. Like losing my best friend and having to contend with the adoption stuff. But I suppose … I mean in general I suppose that’s true.” Shestudied Dante’s face for a moment, the lines that feathered out from the corners of his eyes, the brackets by his mouth. “Are you happy?”
    He shrugged. “I’m not really sure what that means. I’m content.”
    “Content,” she repeated. She smoothed her hands over Ana’s back and a rush of love, or pure joy and pain filled her. “How can that be enough?” It wasn’t for her. Not now. It never would be again.
    “Because emotion, strong emotion, is dangerous,” he said. “You don’t seem to realize that yet, Paige. But that’s the truth of it.” His voice was rough. Savage, almost. And coming from Dante, who was always smooth, and never ruffled, it meant something. It reached down deep inside of her and twisted her stomach.
    “Was it the truth for you?”
    “It’s just true,” he said. “If emotions control you, you have no control over yourself. In my mind, that’s unacceptable. Now come, and I’ll show you to your room.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
    A FTER you put Ana to bed, come down to the dining room for dinner
.
    Paige touched the note Dante had left her earlier. A note. Who wrote a note? She’d have to introduce the man to the mighty power of the text message. Or, better still, making human contact when you lived in the same house as someone.
    She touched one of the letters on the paper. He’d pressed too hard on his pen, made dents, each letter precise and perfect, gone over two or three times she guessed. Dante didn’t do spontaneous very well, that was for sure.
    Well, she supposed their arrangement fell under spontaneous, but then, even when he’d had that headline sprung on him he hadn’t acted with any sense of wild abandon. It had been with frightening calm, and complete confidence in the fact that he’d made the right decision.
    Whereas, she, after blurting out the idiot untruth to Rebecca, had eaten a pint of ice cream and spent the night beating her head against the arm of her couch.
    Decisive wasn’t really her thing. She needed to start getting there, though. She had a baby. A baby that would grow, and who would need a mother who could stand strong in decisions and discipline and … stuff.
    The idea of it made her a little anxious. But for now, it was all about loving her. And that she had down just fine.
    At least her room was nice. And yeah, all her clothes andher toiletries were in Dante’s room, but she’d managed to get her dress for dinner and her makeup essentials over to her room without running into him. Which suited her fine. She’d been feeling a little rumpled and frumpy after what had been a very long day.
    But a shower and a sparkly minidress had done a lot to fix the way she felt. Her newfound sense of flashy style was something she’d acquired on arrival in San Diego, and it