How do I get a highlight effect on only the text, NOT spaces between the lines?

Hi, I have been changing the colour of the text background to use as a highlight effect in Pages.

I really hate how it colours the space in between lines too as it means highlights on different lines merge when they overlap (pic attached as an example).

Is there a way to adjust my line spacing settings so that this doesn't happen, and literally just the background behind the text itself is highlighted?

Thank you so much!