Page 4 of The Italian's Pregnant Enemy (A Diamond in the Rough)

No dead animals here. It was only her pride that was in danger of dying. That was all.

She slowly—very slowly so as not to seem eager or rushed—bent at the knees and began to shovel her things back into her bag.

He watched her do that, sipping his coffee as if he had all the time in the world. As if he wasn’t a very busy, very important billionaire man who had no business being at this chalet when it was a job her father had sent his daughter and his assistant to do. So. Beneath. Him.

But there he was. As if he didn’t have a full calendar, demands for interviews every second of the day, and didn’t appear in online articles with titles like “Billionaires You’d Actually Like to F—”

“Now, you would like help?” he asked, as soon as she got the zipper down.

“Yes,” she said, feeling breathless from exertion and absolutely nothing else. “If you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. I live to serve you, Lyssia.”

She nearly wretched.

He picked up the bag, hefted it over his shoulder, while still holding his coffee in his other hand, and carried it easily up the stairs. Lyssia sniffed and began to trudge up behind him.

She didn’t want to sound too interested or eager when she asked her next question. “When are you leaving, Dario?”

Oops.

“I have only just arrived,” he said, as he stopped just in front of her bedroom door.

She stopped. “What?”

“I am here for the inspection of the resort.”

“What?”

“Your father asked that I come and oversee.”

“But Carter and I were supposed to—”

“Your father wanted someone with more seniority to come and inspect, and I offered to do it.”

So. She wasn’t actually good enough as an inspector for the resort. Of course not. Dario would need to consult and Dario didn’t even work for her father anymore. But he was looming about, poised on the brink of an “acquisition” that was really just inheritance, and so his opinion mattered most of all.

All that and Dario was now staying in the same house as her and Carter? Like a big, brooding chaperone?

She could see it now. The real problem wouldn’t even be Dario supervising them, it would be the feral monster Dario brought out of her every time they had to share space. She would spend the whole week fighting with him, picking at him, while he sipped his espresso and looked unbothered until he wasn’t, until she won her victory. And she’d forget to even kiss Carter, let along bang him.

No. No. She wouldn’t let that happen. Dario didn’t have to be a barrier. They had their own...whole thing. Whatever it was. It had nothing to do with what she and Carter had.

“Carter is coming, right?” They could find another room.

Dario lifted a dark brow. “No. He stayed behind. Is that an issue for you,cara?”

It felt like a black hole had opened up under her feet. But it refused to swallow her. What was the point of a black hole if it wouldn’t even swallow you whole when you were faced with the most horrifying scenario possible?

“Stop calling mecara,” she snapped. “You don’t even like me.”

“It’s said with irony, are you unaware of irony?”

“A feminist and a comedian, Dario. How did the world get so lucky?”

Here they were. Right in the pocket. Lyssia and Dario and their epic need to go back and forth until one of them broke. It made her forget everything. And everyone. And often the point of what the initial conversation was. Like the whole world fell away and it was just the two of them.

Dario lifted one dark brow and something came alive within her. “Some have said I am a creation of all that the world required. I spontaneously appeared when it was in its darkest hour. And lo.”

---