Page 7 of The Italian's Pregnant Enemy (A Diamond in the Rough)

He’d come to Manhattan an angry thirteen-year-old who’d lied about his age to get a contract on a cruise ship sailing between Europe and the US. He’d seen it as a way out of Rome, and he’d wanted out badly.

And he’d gotten what he wanted. He’d spent the first years of his life helpless. After the worst had happened, he’d realized he had two choices. To sit down and die, or to use the breath he had in his body to ensure he would never be helpless again.

He hadn’t been. He’d gotten off the ship and disappeared into the city. He’d fashioned a new identity for himself. Gotten papers. Gotten work. In kitchens, in restaurants. Finally, in hotels. He had been tall for his age, handsome and in possession of natural charisma.

Lyssia might disagree, but most other people found him charming.

He’d used that to his advantage. He was an expert at reading people. At mimicking manners and voices. He’d worked to leave most of his accent behind. He had just enough to sound delightfully foreign when it suited him. He’d educated himself by speaking to the people around him. He’d learned to talk, dress, act and comport himself as a member of the upper class he saw come into the hotels he worked in.

He’d gotten a job at the Anderson’s on Fifth Avenue when he was seventeen. By the time he was nineteen, he was the manager. At twenty-one he was managing all of the hotels in North American. At twenty-four he’d been the global strategist for the brand and had grown the company astronomically, earning himself a reputation and a vast fortune.

At twenty-five he’d gone out on his own, with his mentor’s blessing. He’d bought a struggling hotel chain and had turned it around, had made it a business, rehabbing old resorts, before beginning to build new resorts that catered to eco tourists.

He’d been a billionaire before his thirtieth birthday.

It was then that Nathan asked him to consult on making his resorts as close to net zero as possible, and they’d come up with the idea of his eventual takeover.

It was the closest thing to family Dario had ever known.

The closest thing to an inheritance he could have imagined. It wasn’t the value that mattered. It was the trust.

He’d never had anything like that before, and he would never take it for granted.

But that had meant that even though he was not an employee of Anderson, he still had a lot of business to do with Anderson. Which meant he was exposed to Lyssia. Often.

At the time he’d had an office in the Anderson Group building in Manhattan and Lyssia was his assistant when he was in the office.

He’d lost track of the amount of coffees he’d been delivered with her patented pout.

She had the most beautiful mouth. Her top lip was fuller than the bottom lip, pale pink. Her lips curved down at the corners. It was an eternal sulk.

She would bring it in and bend over his desk, smelling like sunshine and something sweet, and very expensive.

He’d been twenty-eight at the time and not interested in teenagers, even if they were technically adults in the eyes of the law.

Until one day she’d brought a coffee, and she’d tripped.

He’d jumped up out of his chair and grabbed her forearm, preventing her from crashing headfirst into the carpet, and the coffee had gone all over the front of his shirt.

She’d paused for a moment, frozen.

Then she’d looked up at him, and the sulky corners of her mouth had turned upward. She’d smiled. And then she had laughed.

Loud and long, like music, as he’d held her, wearing a sodden shirt.

He’d set her back on her feet. It felt as if the room had turned, while they’d stayed standing right in the same place they’d been at before.

But it had forced him to see her from a new angle and he had never been able to unsee it. For five years, he’d been held captive by her beauty.

But Lyssia was the only woman in the world who didn’t find him charming.

Even if she did, she was the daughter of his mentor and he had no desire to negatively impact that relationship by touching his baby girl. God forbid.

Dario wanted neither marriage, nor children.

Lyssia would want both. And a golden retriever. As her husband and her pet.

He stood up from his place by the fire and walked into the kitchen, getting a pot of soup out and putting it on the burner. Then he found a boule of bread and sliced it, taking out a large block of butter as well. A simple dinner, but fine for him.

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