Page 20 of The Italian's Pregnant Enemy (A Diamond in the Rough)

“I also said that the generator would work. Why are you taking everything I say as a clairvoyant prediction?”

She huffed, and looked down at her phone screen one last time. She had a text from Carter.

“Carter told my dad that the power went off.”

“Excellent. I imagine he will be working to get us out of here. Text Carter and tell him you’re turning your phone off to conserve battery and I’m doing the same. Tell him all is well.”

She did, but put knife and gun emojis afterward, along with a skull. Then she turned the phone off.

“Do you feel better for having added drama?” Dario asked.

“Yes. Much better. A little bit of drama often makes things bearable.”

“How so?”

“I just... Don’t you ever feel like that? Like if you totally freak out you’ve sort of shown yourself the worst of it and then you can just breathe and deal with it?”

“I can’t say that I do.” But he almost looked like he wished he did, and that did something to her.

“I... I’ve never been in a situation like this before.”

“You’ll be just fine.” He began to walk out of the kitchen.

“Where are you going?”

“Down to the basement. There’s firewood down there, matches, lighters. And lanterns. I’m going to get everything that we might need to manage this.”

“Oh... I don’t want to go in a basement.”

“Then feel free to stay up here.”

He walked away, and she moved quickly after him.

“I don’t want to be stuck up here without you either.”

“You cannot be pleased.”

“No,” she said. “When snowed in with a man who drives me insane, with absolutely no electricity, I cannot be pleased.”

“Perhaps go throw yourself in a snowdrift, then.”

She hissed and spit the whole way down to the basement.

“For a creature who has never lived on the streets you are quite feral,” he said.

“That’s very infantilizing,” she said, sniffing. “I am not feral, neither am I a creature.”

“Then don’t act like one.”

There were stacks of wood in the corner, and he moved to them, taking hold of the logs with ease.

She felt like she was meeting him for the first time and it was a bit disconcerting. She knew that Dario had grown up on the streets. But it was quite another thing to see him being so calmly capable in what could be argued was a survival situation. She saw him often as a roadblock to fling herself against. A representative of all the ways in which she didn’t live up to her father’s expectations. Because if she did, why would he need Dario? And in this moment, she saw him as a man. Capable. Calm in a crisis.

Exactly the sort of man she should be glad she was stuck with, and that made her feel even more annoyed, because the truth was, right now it would be better to be stuck with Dario than Carter, and she didn’t even need to know what Carter’s hunting and gathering skills were to know that.

Dario had legitimately spent time in survival situations. It wasn’t like Boy Scout camp or watching videos on YouTube.

And if pressed, that was what she needed.

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