Page 51 of The Italian's Pregnant Enemy (A Diamond in the Rough)

She wasn’t even sure she wanted to. There was something almost comforting in the feeling of being outside of her body. Almost comforting in not feeling like herself. Not feeling like it was real.

“We should get to your father’s as soon as possible. We don’t want him to see it on the news.”

“It’ll probably just be on social media,” she said. “And he won’t see that.”

He chuckled. “True.”

She didn’t know how he could laugh. She didn’t know how he could be relaxed in any way. She felt like she was at the end of herself.

And she found herself being whisked out of the restaurant and back to his town car.

Being chauffeured out of the city and headed toward her father’s house upstate.

It was an hour’s drive, and she didn’t quite know what to say as they burned through the miles on the highway.

“We will marry as soon as possible.”

“We need to be able to actually put a wedding together,” she said.

“The wedding doesn’t matter,” he said.

“How can you say that? After going to such great lengths to organize that spectacle of an engagement, how can you think that the wedding won’t matter?”

“A small intimate ceremony with family and friends,” he said as though he was reading the headline.

“Maybe that isn’t what I want. Maybe I want to have an actual wedding. Did you ever think about that?”

“No,” he said. “Have you?”

“No. I actually haven’t thought that much about my wedding.”

She leaned back against the seat.

Her father would give her away. Her mother was dead.

It actually made her want to cry.

“I want a dress, and I need it to be exactly right, and I want decorations and...”

“If you want a gorgeous dress then you are going to have to marry me sooner rather than later, because fit is going to become an issue.”

She made an exasperated sound.

“I liked you better when you were pretending to be my date,” she said.

She could see the intensity in his dark eyes as he looked at her in the dim light of the vehicle. “I wasn’t pretending. I am actually interested in you. I do want to see your studio.”

“Speaking of my studio, and my apartment, I assume that you expect me to move in with you.”

“Yes. Though my penthouse in Manhattan is not far from yours, if you wish to maintain a studio in your space, and have an option for a place to sleep, that is fine with me.”

He was being so reasonable. That was maybe the most annoying thing. That she wanted to rage at him, because he was making her feel raw and he was making her feel sensitive, but he was being perfectly... Correct. About so many things. The fact that he had held the business deal over her head was almost a courtesy. Because the truth was, she never would’ve been able to face her father telling him that she was pregnant with Dario’s baby, and wasn’t marrying him.

She hadn’t really been able to think about that. She’d had to scale Mount Dario first.

But Dario knew.

Dario knew that she would never have been able to stand that. He knew that it would make her feel far too much like a disappointment. Like she was letting everyone down. Him and her father. He knew that, and he had known it was actually the only ammunition that he needed. So yes. Yet again, he was being far more reasonable than she would like. She would like some goads to kick against. It made her feel alive. She liked it when Dario was that way, because she felt like a piece of iron sharpening another piece of iron. Or at the very least, she didn’t feel vulnerable. And right now, she felt a bit vulnerable. And he got to be charitable. Giving her the kind of arrangement that would make her feel safe and protected. Giving her something for her business so that she could look more accomplished than she was.

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