Page 60 of The Italian's Pregnant Enemy (A Diamond in the Rough)

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to,” she said keenly. “I want this to be important. Special.”

“This is quite impressive, Lyssia. You should consider hiring more people.”

“I have a good team. They all work remotely. I have people that liaise with manufacturers. I share some of the design work with a group of people.”

“You haven’t communicated much with them since I’ve been around you.”

“Well, when I went to the chalet I was honestly thinking the whole business was winding down. I was ready to let it go. I felt like a failure.”

“What changed your mind?”

“It really was talking to you. Well, and discovering I was pregnant. I was on the pill for my... For my periods, though, and it was a low dose. I have never tested it before, obviously. It turns out for me that wasn’t sufficient. But you can bet I had a fight with my doctor about it. I spent three weeks going over and over what I was going to do. I was afraid to see you. I also missed you. I’m not used to going that long without seeing you. And we don’t even usually talk or anything, but after the chalet I just...”

“I missed you,” he said. “Even though you are a pain in the ass.”

She felt flushed with pleasure over him saying that. It was perhaps the nicest thing Dario had ever said. “I really didn’t expect that you would want to get married. Which is foolish, isn’t it? You are very traditional down in your soul.”

He seemed to withdraw from her then, even though he didn’t move one bit. She could feel it. “I don’t act out of a place of tradition. But security. What I am doing is for the good of our child. Here’s what must be done. I will never let a child of mine suffer as I did, and that is not for the sake of tradition. And it could never be for feelings. Love is a foolish pursuit, Lyssia. It fails when we need it most. I believe in legally binding agreements. I do not believe in feelings. That is what has driven me here. Will continue to drive me. It is not tradition. It is practicality.”

She felt wounded by that. And she was reminded again of what he had said to her. But he did not do any of this for her.

And that was the most important thing for her to hold on to. Except it made her sad. Because she was trying to embrace feeling more. Actually wanting more. Wanting everything. It was difficult to do that when he was reminding her at every turn just what reason she had to protect herself.

And she had already been hurt. That was a problem. She had been devastated by life. And it was so complicated with her father, because she didn’t want to be whiny about that relationship, not when he meant well.

And he did.

He loved her, that was the thing. He wasn’t a cold, unfeeling man. If he knew the ways in which he had made her insecure he would feel terrible about it. She knew that.

But she’d been hurt all the same.

And so she always tried to protect herself. To manage her expectations. To remind herself that everything would be fine today and could still go wrong tomorrow. What person who had experienced the more random side of life’s cruelties at such a young age wouldn’t do the same thing? But she really cared about him. And he made her feel things. Want things.

“I thought that I had love, but it didn’t protect me. It didn’t keep me safe. What was the purpose of it? Itliedto me. My father lied to me. He failed me.”

“But you won’t fail our child,” she said. “I know you won’t. It isn’t in you, Dario. It just isn’t.”

He shook his head. Once. Just once.

“I can’t trust myself.”

She wanted to deny it, instantly. “I have a very hard time believing that. You are a good man. And you’re full of passion.”

“I...”

And she realized that this was as far as he could go right now. And she needed to let it go. It wasn’t like she could fall down to her knees and tell him that she loved him.

The idea made her feel disquieted. Because she was afraid that she was closer to that than she would like to be. “Your father bought this place for you, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” she said. Feeling very sharply aware that it was yet another thing that didn’t really belong to her.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “Do not doubt yourself.”

“I don’t understand you,” she said. “Because you made it very clear that nothing that you have done in the past couple of months was really all about me or for me. You tell me that you can’t give me love. And then you don’t want me to doubt myself.”

“Because it’s me,” he said, deeply certain. “It isn’t you. What you consider success to be. I trust nothing. I can’t. Do you know...” He looked away from her, out the window. She was struck by his profile. He was such a beautiful man. Beautiful, troubled. Wounded. “My father told me that we were going to meet some friends. But he lied. He did not know them. I think he did not know what they intended for me. I was to help. And nothing more. A servant. But I didn’t know that at first. I believed my father. I trusted him. I never saw him again. He left me there. I should be grateful that all they made me do was scrub the floors. Do the farm chores. Because the alternative was selling my body. And they knew many people who did that. I saw so clearly that day what love means. Nothing. He said he loved me. As easily as if he was stepping out to have a cigarette. He never came back. He didn’t know what they intended for me. And he left me. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. That would have been a profound betrayal. For any adult to grab a child by the hand in the street and subject them to such a thing would be a profound betrayal. But mine came at the hands of my own father. I will never understand.”

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