Page 67 of The Italian's Pregnant Enemy (A Diamond in the Rough)

“But you have not always felt loved, I don’t think.”

Bittersweetness lanced her chest. “No,” she said. “I have always felt loved. Sometimes I didn’t feel like you were proud of me. Sometimes I didn’t feel like you understood me. But I always knew that you loved me, Dad. I never doubted that. I did think maybe you loved Dario a little bit more.”

“I do love Dario,” he said. “He is the son I never had. The son I never could’ve had. I never wanted anyone other than your mother. Not to live with. Not to have children with. He felt like a blessing because without him, there never would’ve been another child. You see? And now you’re giving me a grandchild, with him. It is a gift. But it’s not what I needed to be proud of you. And I don’t need you to be like him.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“It was never that I didn’t love you as much,” he said. “I loved you so much it felt like breaking apart, and the only thing that ever felt like that was loving and losing your mother. I...never avoided you because you weren’t enough.”

“Oh, Dad.” She wrapped her arms around him. It didn’t erase his mistakes. But she loved him. He loved her. It was enough.

Part of her felt healed in that moment. She was enough. She always had been.

It was just that sometimes her father didn’t show his feelings. And she didn’t show hers. It was all part of being afraid of the ways the world would hurt you, she supposed.

Her father led her into the church, and toward the sanctuary.

They waited. Waited for their cue. And then the wedding coordinator signaled them, and the doors opened. And when she saw Dario standing there at the head of the aisle, suddenly she knew. She knew exactly what she needed to give him.

Love.

And right then she had the confidence in that. And the fact that her love mattered. And that it would mean something.

And it was also the moment when she knew, deep in her soul, that today she was marrying Dario because she loved him.

And that was the only reason.

Love.

When he saw Lyssia, the breath exited his body.

She was ethereal. An angel, on the arm of her father. Her dress was made of floating, diaphanous white fabric that rode around her like a cloud with each step she took. Her breasts were round and lush, highlighted by the low neckline.

Her face glowed, the joy there a sight so beautiful he nearly had to look away. Because he hardly deserved it.

Hardly deserved that bright, beautiful brilliance that she shone his way.

And when her father released his hold on her and passed her to Dario, he felt a brilliant weight of responsibility come down upon his shoulders.

She looked up at him with absolute trust in her eyes, took his hands, and they began their exchange of vows.

He spoke each one with heavy truth. Because whatever he had said in the beginning, he now intended to honor these vows. Forever. Forsaking all others, for as long as they lived.

He could not explain the intensity of this, he only knew it consumed him. Changed him. Became the essence of who he was.

In that moment, he became Lyssia’s husband, as she became Dario’s wife.

It seemed absurd that only a few months ago, it had taken a blizzard, and the lack of some boy in his twenties for the two of them to become what they were.

For they seemed to stretch beyond the fabric of time. Had there ever been a moment when Lyssia was not his? He could not recall it. Not truly.

The faces of the people in the crowd blurred before him. And he could see nothing but her.

They were married. He had spoken vows. There was, he came to realize, a reception planned for after the wedding, but the entire thing tried his patience. He didn’t want a party. He wanted to be alone with her.

She danced with her friends, and with her father. He danced with her, but everything in him was demanding that he make her his in the most elemental way.

At first there was a cake. And he was thankful for the years he had spent learning charm, because he had to call upon all of those years now so that he could get through it with his humor intact.

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