Page 24 of The Italian's Pregnant Enemy (A Diamond in the Rough)

“I... I don’t know, Dario. Maybe this is the really stupid problem with having the safety net. I could never work a day in my life and I wouldn’t be fighting for survival, so why am I doing it? For a feeling, I guess. For a sense that what I do matters, that my being alive matters. That I’m important and smart and... I do want people to see it. That I care. That I’m trying. And they don’t. My father doesn’t or he wouldn’t have sent you this week. It would be me and Carter. Snowed in.”

“Right.”

“Having sex.”

“So you say.”

The silence between them lapsed. “I’m not in love with Carter. I never thought it was love or anything. But he made me feel pretty. He made me feel...”

“He made you feel good about yourself. Perhaps in part because he is not as successful as you are.”

She winced. “Perhaps. That makes me sound very shallow.”

“Many people cannot handle having a partner who is more successful than they are. Though, particularly, men cannot.”

“Well, points for Carter, then. Because I don’t think that he cared. Or maybe like everybody else he simply doesn’t think I’m all that successful.”

“Why have you not used your connection with your father to get more accounts?”

“I’m trying to succeed on my own.”

“But that’s foolishness. Nobody succeeds in business on their own. If you have connections and you don’t exploit them, then what is the point? You have the advantages, and you should use them. Your real problem, Lyssia, is that you’re not trying to succeed for the sake of it. You’re trying to prove something. And you are doing so at the expense of yourself.”

She had never thought of it that way. She thought of it as trying to be independent. “But you didn’t have any connections.”

“That isn’t true. I started working in a kitchen with no connections, but everywhere that I worked, every customer that I came into contact with, every room that I walked into I was building connections. When you are climbing a rope up from the gutter, you realize that you need handholds. And I made handholds everywhere that I went. That is perhaps my greatest strength.”

“It’s different, though. When it’s your father, versus...”

“It isn’t. You were working with what you have, the same that I was working with what I had. I have been very hard on you,” he said. “I fear that perhaps I have undermined you at certain points when I did not intend to.”

Their eyes met. She found it hard just then to breathe. Her eyes suddenly stung, the pressure in her chest unbearable. She cleared her throat.

“You’re not my father,” she said. “So, it’s not really up to you to fix all that.”

He chuckled. “I know that I’m not your father.”

The air between them seemed to crackle. She decided that it was just the sausages in the pan. Because she didn’t want to acknowledge that crackle. Didn’t want to find herself at the mercy of it. Because it was far too much.

Or perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps it was what she needed.

No. You know you can’t. Can you imagine how scathing he would be?

She wasn’t sure she could withstand that level of rejection. Flinging herself at the beautiful and condescending Dario only to find herself laid low.

No. That would be an indignity too far.

“I think the food is ready,” he said, his tone mild, and she wondered if he felt the same thing that she did. She wondered if that moment had just been in her head.

He speared the sausages with a fork and put them onto a plate. Then he took out a bottle of wine and poured them each a glass. They were sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, and it was like a picnic. It might have been romantic if he were anyone else.

She felt her face growing hot as she let that thought pass through her. As she tried to let it go.

“Thank you,” she said softly. Because she never really was all that nice to him. “I’m...quite certain that I would’ve panicked and run into a snowdrift without you here.”

“I don’t think you would have. You’re not a stupid woman. You consistently think the worst of yourself.”

She frowned. “No, I don’t.”

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