Page 6 of The Italian's Pregnant Enemy (A Diamond in the Rough)

She kicked her shoes off and sighed. The floor was warmed from radiant heat beneath and it felt like luxury. The bathroom was lovely, with a big, deep white tub and slate-gray floating counter.

This would have been a great place to take a bath with Carter.

She sighed wistfully, the romantic scene in her mind feeling cruel now that it wasn’t happening. She could so easily imagine sitting with him in the tub, covered in bubbles, sipping champagne.

They would talk about the day they’d had and it would be so...sweet.

She frowned.

And for some reason her brain glitched right then and the picture in her mind tore in two. Behind that image, of herself and Carter with all his golden handsomeness...was Dario.

But in that picture there was no champagne. There were no smiles. No bubbles.

She was across from Dario, naked in the water, his broad chest muscular and covered with dark hair. The look on his face was...angry. Intense. His dark eyes never left her as he moved in to—

“No!” she shouted and leaped back from the empty tub.

What the ever-loving hell was wrong with her?

She needed to get out of this house.

She needed to get away from Dario Rivelli.

The man was her nemesis. And nothing more.

CHAPTER TWO

LYSSIAANDERSONWASthe most beautiful pain in his ass.

Dario sat in front of the fireplace in the expansive living area of the chalet and pondered his present situation. He shouldn’t have agreed to do this. But Nathan Anderson was the closest thing he had to a father—that he acknowledged—in this world, and when the man asked him to do things, he found himself doing them.

No one else on earth could compel Dario to interrupt his schedule to do them a favor.

He thought of Lyssia. Blonde, wide-eyed and hapless, staring at a pile of lingerie at the bottom of the stairs.

A reluctant growl rose in his throat.

The problem with Lyssia was that he could see her. More clearly than she saw herself at times, he had a feeling. She thought he enraged her because she hated him. And perhaps she did. But that wasn’t the real reason she puffed up like an angry kitten every time he got too close to her.

Ten years her senior, and vastly more experienced, Dario did not have a life that lent itself to the sorts of blind spots Lyssia still possessed.

She had clearly imagined she would be having a dirty weekend with her father’s pet of a PA. He was the most pathetic puppy of a boy Dario had ever met. Lyssia was obviously besotted with him.

She could control him. That was why.

That was not what Lyssia needed, though. And sadly for her, not what she wanted. Not really. She thought she did, and she might even have some fun with him, but he would never be enough to satisfy her.

He wondered how long it would take her to realize.

That while he truly did find her to be an annoying brat, and he had a feeling she thought he was the most arrogant bastard on the planet, the thing that pulsed between them whenever they clashed was not merely hatred, but desire.

He could remember the moment she’d become a problem.

He’d known Lyssia since she was a child. But he’d only had a vague concept of her. She’d been the little creature running around Nathan’s home on his rare visits there, but he’d only ever seen her in passing. After her mother’s death, Lyssia had begun to spend more time in the office. A sullen teen with questionable fashion sense, she’d often been found lying upside down on a couch in the lobby of her father’s multibillion-dollar company, like an insolent throw pillow, or sitting in her father’s office chair while he was in a meeting.

At eighteen, she’d started an internship there, and he’d been forced to interact with her. At that point, Dario no longer worked at Anderson’s. In fact, his company had acquired it under the umbrella of his other interests, as part of Nathan’s retirement plan. They had a ten-year contract that would slowly begin to turn the operation over to Rivelli Holdings, integrating financial systems and other areas of the company over time while trying to retain as much staff as possible.

Nathan was very conscientious about such things, and Dario appreciated it because he wasn’t certain if he would have been.

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