Page 45 of The Italian's Pregnant Enemy (A Diamond in the Rough)

“Why haven’t you fallen in love with somebody yet? I mean, why didn’t you have relationships in the past?”

She turned and walked toward her room. “You might as well come in,” she said.

He walked in, and frowned. Her room was an explosion. Like her suitcase had been that first day. All of her things were strewn everywhere. And everything in the room was very pink.

“I never wanted a family,” he said. “Or children. I have been single-minded and singularly focused since I was thirteen years old and decided to run away from the house I was being kept in.” He was trying to decide if he should tell her the rest. Why not?

“There were children in that house. A married couple. The father was horrendously abusive. He beat me. He beat his own children. He beat his wife. It was another place that I saw men abusing the position they were in. A position that should be sacred. What is less honorable than taking people into your care and causing them harm.”

He had never told anyone this. There had never seemed a point. He wasn’t sure if he wanted her to understand him or if he wanted to prove to her that everything she was so concerned about was silly.

He would be a good father.

A damned sight better than his own. It would be impossible not to be. But all of this going on and on about love.

“There’s nothing honorable about that,” she said softly.

“No. I was only ever given bad examples of what it means to be the head of the family. Of what it means to take care of a wife and child. I never wanted it. And I felt that my drive made me unsuitable to it. But now you are pregnant. And it is no longer a discussion. It is reality.”

“Everything can be a discussion now, Dario. We live in a very flexible era.”

She looked so sincere. He almost felt sorry for her. “Yes,cara, but I am not a flexible man.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I mean, I know that. I’ve met you.”

“Yes. I understand that. You know me. I feel that it has made you rather bold in your dealings with me. You do not understand, do you, Lyssia? The manner of man that I am. But you will. When you are mine, you will.”

She would be his. His wife. He would have his wife and his child in his home, that he was certain of, and he would not yield.

He was not a man capable of such a thing.

“Yes. I know. You are a big, scary billionaire.”

She reached down and grabbed a dress off the floor, and he lifted a brow as she shook it out. “Maybe this.”

“How about not.”

He stood and went over to her closet. A vast, walk-in room that was larger than some places he had stayed in his youth. His eye was caught by a long, red dress at the back. “That one.”

“Which one?” She appeared in the doorway.

“Red. Tonight, you will wear red for me.”

“I like pink,” she said, because she always had to challenge him.

“I like red,” he said, taking hold of her chin and holding her gaze steady on his. “You will do what I say. You will give me what I want.”

He could see that she wanted to argue, but he could also see arousal flare in her eyes. The very things that irritated her about him were also the things that drew her to him. He could relate.

It was Lyssia’s very nature that made her undeniable. Her buoyancy. Her quick wit and temper. It was also what made her an irredeemable brat. Sadly for him, he quite liked a brat.

At least, this particular brat.

“Leave,” she said, shooing him out of the closet. A few moments later, she came out, the silken fabric of the dress molding to her body as a second skin. She wasn’t wearing a bra and he could see the natural outline of her breasts, her nipples.

It was decent enough, but his eye was drawn there, and he couldn’t look away.

He also didn’t wish for her to change the way the dress was styled. Because it was far too intoxicating.

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