I don't think he had any feelings for Paige initially one way or another, really. In interviews he stated that he was told by editorial to use one of the Gen Xers and since he didn't have a handle on Jono, he was taken off the table in the BKV miniseries.
His first request was to use Monet, with the intention of killing her off in the Dominant Species storyline, but that was nixed (alledgedly, and somewhat ironically, because editorial apparently told him killing a PoC character was not acceptable - ironic since they supposedly actually encouraged him to kill off one of their few Latino characters a few issues later because Skin's powers were similar to Mr Fantastic's) so he picked Paige instead. How/why he decided to put her in a relationship with Warren hasn't been touched on, that I've read.
He did state he grew to like the character when writing her so she was saved from death early on, I believe.