Page 10 of The Italian's Pregnant Enemy (A Diamond in the Rough)

He stared at her, his face perfectly blank.

She stared back and frowned. “Are...you?”

She thought him humorless, and as a result could never really tell when he was simply being dry.

He did wonder how much of that she turned back on him.

“I’ve been planning my wedding since I was a small boy.”

“You...have?”

He declined to answer.

“My point is,” she said. “Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean it’sless than.”

“Ah. A good thing you told me since you did not, in fact, make your point. My point,cara, is that just because you have an internet connection it does not make you an expert.”

“I think I can claim to be the expert on the situationship that I’m in.”

He frowned. “What is that word?”

“It’s like a relationship but not as binding.” She lifted her spoon out of her bowl and swirled it in the air. “A situation that is relationship adjacent.”

“I should have invested in space travel so I could leave this planet.”

“So pressed,” she said, putting her spoon back down into her soup.

“If I seempressedto you it is merely because I’m trying to explain to a spoiled rich girl why she should value herself a bit more, when from my perspective you should value yourself innately, given the advantages you have.”

She frowned. “You think by being with Carter I’m not valuing myself?”

“It seems like it to me.”

“And also, why should I innately value myself exactly? Because my dad loves some random dude more than he loves me, so much so that he’s sold off my inheritance to said man?”

He was the random man, he realized. And this was the first he’d heard of her feeling...angry about him taking over Anderson. Also, she was being well provided for. So he knew she was being over the top by saying this; he just wasn’t certain how much of it was true and how much was part of her brand of drama. “I was unaware your father was leaving you penniless.”

She scoffed. “He isn’t. But he’s turning the company over to you and he never once asked me if I wanted...”

“Are you an accomplished businessperson in the hospitality industry?”

“Well...no.”

“Did you work your way up from nothing through every level of hotel work?”

“I...no.”

“Have you ever had an hourly wage job in your entire, privileged life?”

“No. But.”

“I am more qualified than you are. If you had ever been interested in taking over your father’s empire, then you would have worked for it, wouldn’t you?”

“I was eighteen when he made the decision to give it to you. I barely had a chance. And anyway, it isn’t about whether or not I should be in charge, or if you’re more...qualified. It’s just... If I were his son would he have done this?”

It was a fair question, he supposed. But as his relationship with his own father was so much more toxic than she could ever imagine, he’d never once turned over this sort of philosophical ridiculousness.

“I was on a ship bound for America when I wasthirteen.”

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