Page 21 of The Italian's Pregnant Enemy (A Diamond in the Rough)

Someone who could actually guide this situation, because Lord knew she couldn’t. Galling to have to admit even internally, but she wouldn’t have thought to go down into the basement in the first place. She hadn’t known there was a basement. She hadn’t read up on the house she was staying in. Because she just expected...

She was so worried about herself right now, and about how Dario’s skills were benefiting her but...he’d gotten them by suffering and that was a stark, painful realization.

“Grab some of the lanterns,” he said, gesturing to a shelf that had an array of camping equipment.

She picked up a few lanterns, and also some extra blankets. Fleece and reindeer hide. Because staying cozy was very high on her list.

She followed him up the stairs carrying all of the various supplies.

“It would be best if we chose a room to make warm. I would say likely best my bedroom.”

“What?” Her heart slammed against her chest.

“The living room is too open. The ceiling is high. The bedroom has a fireplace, but it is much more closed off.”

“What are we... Supposed to do in there?”

As soon as she said that she regretted it. Because she felt her face and body get very hot. And she knew that she had just implanted that very same image that had been living in her head the last couple of days right into his.

He looked at her, and there was something simmering in his eyes that nearly made her heart stop. “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

She was imagining that. She had to be. He was Dario Rivelli. He didn’t like her. And more than that, he thought of her as a child.

The truth was, she had always seen Dario as a man. He had been a man as far as she was concerned from the first moment she had met him. It was just that his being a man didn’t seem appealing to her. Until... Maybe until recently.

Liar.

All right. So there had always been tension inside of her when dealing with him. Always. And if maybe she was extra sulky when she brought him his coffee because looking at him felt uncomfortable, and made her feel awkward and like she didn’t know what to do with her hands when no one and nothing else did, then... Well.

She would never have called it attraction, though.

Not until now.

She had always thought of it is resentment.

But suddenly, looking at that starkly handsome face, with all the snow piled up outside and the promise of being holed up in his bedroom in front of the fireplace, she felt like she couldn’t deny anymore what it was.

It wasn’t an aberration that she had imagined being in the bathtub with him.

It was her true heart.

How could that be? She liked Carter. She had just talked to him on the phone and she was thrilled to hear his voice. She had imagined sitting in naked companionship with him and it had been nice. When she thought of being naked with Dario it was anything but nice. It made her feel like someone had forced a fistful of butterflies down her throat and into her stomach. It made her feel like she was being victimized by hormones.

She felt hot and cold all at once. She felt like she might be dying.

Was that how it was supposed to be?

“Lyssia,” he said, the warning note in his voice doing something strange to her.

“What?”

“You know exactly what.”

“I don’t,” she said. “I just want to know where to put the lanterns.”

“My room,” he said.

And that was how she found herself marching up the stairs with him. The bedroom he was staying in was large, with a huge, imposing four-poster bed in the corner.

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