Читать книгу Surprise: Outback Proposal - Sarah Mayberry - Страница 11

“DID YOU EVEN consider discussing this with me first?” Andrew asked.

Rosie put down her knife and fork and gave her husband her full attention.

“I should have waited to talk to you, I know—”

“You think?”

Rosie blinked. Andrew didn’t often lose his temper but when he did it was usually well-earned. Like tonight. As soon as she’d given it some thought, she’d known she should have spoken to him before offering the money to Lucy. But she couldn’t undo what had already been done.

“I’m sorry. I got carried away. All I was thinking about was Lucy and how I could help. I hate that she’s in such a difficult position.”

“I hate it, too. But we’ve already given her a home. We can’t afford to give her our savings, too.”

“I hear what you’re saying, but that money’s just sitting in the bank, collecting interest. Why not use it to help Lucy? She’ll pay us interest like the bank. It’s a win-win situation.”

Andrew pushed his chair back from the table and stood.

“What about our plans to renovate the practice? What about getting a junior partner? All that just goes by the wayside, does it?”

“No, of course not. But it’s not like we were actually ready to do any of that. We haven’t even decided on an architect yet.”

“Because you keep putting it off.”

Rosie stood, hating being at a disadvantage. “I haven’t put anything off. Neither of us has pushed for the renovation. We’ve been too busy building the practice.”

Andrew looked at her, his face tense.

“Rosie, every time I suggest we start talking to architects you come up with a reason for why we can’t. First it was the Larson trial, then it was the Bigalows’ divorce. The time after that you strained your Achilles’ at the gym and you didn’t want me doing all the legwork on my own.” He stared at her, his jaw set. “If you’re not ready to have children, tell me and stop stringing me along.”

Rosie took a step backward. She hadn’t been expecting such a direct confrontation, not after the way they’d both been sidestepping the issue for so long. It had become a game of sorts, the way they skirted around the all-consuming subject of when to start a family.

“I’m not not ready,” Rosie said quickly, even though her stomach tensed with anxiety. “I’m not stringing you along. The time simply hasn’t been right before.”

Andrew sighed heavily. His blue eyes were intent as he looked into her face. “So when will the time be right if we give all our savings to Lucy? Five years? Ten years? You’re thirty-one. How old do you plan on being when our kids are in college? You’re the one who insisted we needed to add a junior partner to the firm before we even considered starting a family. And we both agreed we couldn’t do that until we’d renovated the practice to create an extra office.”

Again the tightness in her belly.

“Lucy probably only needs the money for a year or two,” she said. “As soon as she’s paid us back, we’ll renovate and start trying.”

“Rosie. Be serious. It will take longer than two years for Lucy to pay out a loan. She’ll be working part-time, she’ll have expenses for the baby. It could take her years to get on top of things. We’ve dealt with enough bankruptcies to know that most small businesses don’t survive the first few years.”

“Lucy is not going to go bankrupt!”

“I didn’t say she was. But she’s also not going to suddenly become Martha Stewart, either.”

He watched her, waiting for her to acknowledge that he was speaking the truth.

Finally she nodded. “Okay. You’re right. It probably won’t be two years.”

He returned to the dining table and sat. His meal was only half-eaten, but he pushed it away.

“So we need to make a decision. Do we invest in our dream or your sister’s?” he asked quietly.

She sat, too. Suddenly she felt very heavy.

“We could remortgage,” she suggested.

“We’re already leveraged because of buying the office. And once you have a baby and we put a partner on, our income will be reduced. That was the whole point of socking away extra money to pay for the renovations rather than taking on more debt. You know I would have been happy if we were pregnant years ago. But I know financial security is important to you, so we did things your way. Now you’re telling me you want to put things off again while we lend our renovation fund to your sister?”

Rosie picked up her fork and pushed it into the pile of cold peas on her plate.

“Do we put off having a family or not, Rosie?” he asked.

She raised her gaze to him. She knew exactly how much he wanted children. It was one of the first things they’d discussed when they got together all those years ago. He wanted at least three children, wanted to build a family that would make up for the lack in his own shitty childhood. Even though the thought had scared her even back then, she’d invested in his dream, built castles in the air with him. And for the past eight years she’d been burying her head in the sand, pretending this day would never come.

“I shouldn’t have offered the money to Lucy,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

Andrew waited patiently for her to answer properly.

“We’re not putting off starting a family,” she confirmed. “I’ll tell Lucy that we can’t lend her the money after all.”

Andrew’s shoulders relaxed. She saw for the first time that there was a sheen of tears in his eyes. This meant so much to him.

“I’ll come with you. We’ll explain together,” he said.

Rosie shook her head.

“No. It was my mistake. I’ll do it.”

She stood. She hated to think of how disappointed Lucy would be. Her sister had been so excited this afternoon.

If only she hadn’t acted so impetuously. If only she’d stopped to think, waited to talk to Andrew tonight. But she hadn’t, and now she had to go break her sister’s heart to avoid breaking her husband’s. And then, somehow, she had to overcome this terror that struck her every time she thought about becoming a mother.

LUCY DRAGGED HERSELF to the market the next morning. Never had she wanted to stay in bed so badly, not even the morning after Marcus left.

She felt defeated, and it scared her that she couldn’t see a way out. She had no choice but to keep on working for as long as she could and hope that her cousin was prepared to drive for her at minimum wage and that she had a problem-free pregnancy before giving birth to the world’s most perfect baby.

She didn’t blame her sister for reneging on the loan. Rosie’s offer had been generous and impulsive, and Lucy totally understood why she and Andrew had decided they had to retract it once cooler heads had prevailed.

She just wished she had an Option C to fall back on now that Option B had gone up in flames.

“Lucy. Managed to brave the cold, I see,” Dom said as she stopped her trolley in front of the Bianco Brothers stall.

“Yeah,” she said. Today even Dom’s smile and charm couldn’t nudge her out of her funk. All she wanted to do was to go home, curl into a ball and sleep until the world had righted itself. She fished in her bag for her shopping list, growing increasingly frustrated when she couldn’t put her hand on it.

“Sorry. Give me a minute,” she said. She pulled hand-fuls of paper from her bag, angrily riffling through them for the one she needed. She was such a train wreck—couldn’t even get one little thing right today.

She could feel Dom watching her as she went back and forth through the papers. The list had to be in here somewhere. And if it wasn’t, it meant a trip home to collect it from her flat. She felt dangerously close to bursting into tears and she blinked rapidly.

“Here.”

She looked up to find a takeout coffee cup under her nose. She automatically shook her head.

“I can’t drink coffee.”

“It’s hot chocolate. And you look like you need it more than I do.”

As he spoke, the smell of warm chocolate hit her nose and her mouth watered.

“Come on, take it,” he said, waving the cup invitingly.

“Thanks.” She took the cup with a small smile. The first mouthful was hot and full of sugar. Just what she needed.

“Better?” Dom asked.

“Thanks.”

He smiled, the dimple in his cheek popping. She glanced down at her papers and realized her shopping list was right on top of the pile.

“Typical,” she muttered as she handed it over.

Dom scanned it quickly. “No problems here. Why don’t you kick back and I’ll get this sorted?”

He was already moving off. She knew she should object, at least pretend to inspect the produce on offer. But she trusted him. And today—just today—she needed a break. Tomorrow she would take on all comers again.

She rested her elbows on the push bar of her trolley, watching Dom sort through produce for her as she sipped his hot chocolate.

He was a nice man. Sexy, too. Although she still wasn’t sure that she was grateful to her sister for pointing that fact out. She wondered what had gone wrong with his marriage. Then she realized what she was doing and dragged her attention away from his broad shoulders and flat belly.

“Okay. I think that’s everything. I threw in some extra leeks for you. We overordered, and I’m sure you can find a customer to give them to,” Dom said when he’d finished loading her trolley.

Lucy looked at him steadily for a moment before speaking.

“Thank you,” she said. She hoped he understood that she meant for everything—the produce, the hot chocolate, giving her a helping hand when she was bottoming out on self-pity.

He shrugged. “It’s nothing. You look after yourself.”

She opened her mouth to say more, but he was already greeting another customer. She’d taken up far too much of his time. Her stomach warm, she headed to her van and a full day of deliveries.

DOM FOUND THE PAPERWORK sitting among the boxes of broccoli in front of the stall. Four pages, stapled together with a brochure for a Web site design company. They looked important, and he put them aside in case a customer came looking for them. It was only when they were packing up the stall for the day that he noticed the papers again.

The sheets obviously couldn’t have been too vital, since no one had claimed them. He was on the verge of throwing them out when something about the loopy handwriting on the front page jogged his memory. He flicked through, and Lucy Basso’s signature jumped out at him from the last page. He remembered her agitation this morning, the way she’d fumbled in her bag. She had to have lost this when she was looking for her shopping list.

Dom stared at her signature for a long beat. He could wait till tomorrow and hand them back to her.

Or he could take them to her.

He folded the papers in two, sliding them into his back pocket. Lucy Basso was not in the market for romance. He knew that, absolutely. And yet he was still going to take advantage of the opportunity these papers represented.

Later that night, he balanced a takeout pastry box in one hand while knocking on Lucy’s front door with the other.Music filtered out into the night, Coldplay’s “Everything’s Not Lost.” He glanced over his shoulder at the backyard of the house her flat was piggybacked onto. He’d had to decipher his father’s handwriting on the much-thumbed index cards that constituted the Bianco Brothers’ customer database to find her address. He eyed the flattened moving boxes stacked against the house and wondered how long she’d been living here.

Footsteps sounded on the other side of the door, and he blinked as it opened and light suddenly flooded him.

“Dom! Hi,” Lucy said. She sounded utterly thrown, and her hands moved to tighten the sash on her pale-blue dressing gown.

She was ready for bed. He gave himself a mental slap on the head. Of course she was ready for bed—she was pregnant, and like himself she had to be up at the crack of dawn.

“Hi. Sorry to barge in like this. You left some papers at the stall today and I thought they might be important,” he said.

“Oh. Wow. Thanks.”

She smiled uncertainly and pushed a strand of thick dark hair off her face. For the first time he noticed her eyes were puffy and a little red.

She’d been crying.

That quickly his self-consciousness went out the window. The thought of Lucy crying on her own made him want to hurt something.

He lifted the pastry box.

“And I brought dessert, in case you hadn’t had any yet.”

She frowned as though she didn’t quite understand what he was saying.

“Dessert?” she repeated.

“You know, the stuff everyone tells us is bad for us but that we keep eating anyway.”

She laughed. “Right. Sorry. I wasn’t expecting. Come in,” she said.

She stood aside and he stepped past her into the flat. He took in her small combined living and dining room, noting her rustic dining table and her earthy brown couch with beige and grass-green cushions. A number of black-and-white photographs graced the walls—the desert at sunset, an empty beach, an extreme close-up of a glistening spiderweb.

“You really didn’t have to do this,” Lucy said as she moved past him to the kitchenette that filled one corner of the small flat.

“It was no big deal. It’s on my way home,” he said.

Technically, it was kind of true. If he was taking the really, really scenic route.

Lucy placed two plates on the counter.

“Would you like coffee or something else with. I don’t even know what you brought,” she said. She sounded bemused again but he refused to feel bad about ambushing her.

“Tiramisu. Like a good Italian boy,” he said.

“I love tiramisu.”

“It’s in the blood. We’ve been trained from birth to love it.”

He handed over the pastry box and she peeled away the paper.

“Good lord, this thing is monstrous. There’s no way we can eat all of this,” she said.

He made a show of peering into the box.

“Speak for yourself.”

She smiled and gave him a challenging look as she divided the huge portion into two uneven servings, sliding the much larger piece onto a plate and pushing it toward him.

“I dare you.”

“You should know I never back out on a dare,” he warned her.

She handed him a fork, a smile playing about her lips. He followed her to the dining table where she sat at the end and he took the chair to her left. She’d barely sat before she was standing again.

“Coffee! I forgot your coffee. These bloody pregnancy hormones have turned my brain into Swiss cheese,” she said.

He grabbed her arm before she could move back to the kitchen.

“Relax. I don’t need coffee,” he said.

Her arm felt slim but strong beneath his hand. He forced himself to let her go, and she sank into the chair.

For a moment there was nothing but the sound of forks clinking against plates as they each took a mouthful.

“Before I forget,” Dom said.

He leaned forward to pull her papers from his back pocket, then slid them across the table.

Lucy’s face clouded as she looked at them.

“Thanks.”

“Why do I feel like I just handed you an execution order?”

Her gaze flicked to his face, then away again.

“It’s nothing. Less than nothing. I’m sorry you wasted your time on them.”

She pushed the papers away as though she never wanted to see them again.

He took a mouthful of his dessert and studied her. She looked tired. Maybe even a little beaten. The same vibe he’d sensed from her this morning.

“You want to talk about it?” he asked quietly.

She looked surprised. Then she shook her head. “You don’t want to hear all my problems,” she said after a long moment.

“Come on, you have to talk to me. You made me come all this way for papers that mean nothing, you’re eating my tiramisu. What’s in this for me?” he said.

She huffed out a laugh at his outrageous twisting of the truth. “When you put it that way.” She gave him a searching look then shrugged. “Just yawn or fall face-first into your food when you’ve heard enough.”

“Don’t worry. I have plenty of cunning strategies to escape boring conversations. I have three aunts and four uncles.”

Briefly she outlined her plans for Market Fresh—her goal to go online to grow the business, her plans to lease a second delivery van. She sat a little straighter as she talked and color came into her cheeks. She loved what she was doing, what she was building. And he was quietly impressed with her strategy. Apart from the all-too-apparent hiccup curving the front of her dressing gown, she sounded perfectly situated to take the next step.

“Absolutely,” she agreed with him. “Except for one tiny little thing—the bank doesn’t agree with me. They won’t lend me the money I need to get my Web site built. Without the site, I can’t generate more business, and without more business I can’t afford to put on a second van.”

Lucy looked down and seemed surprised that she’d polished off her dessert.

“So, basically, I’m screwed,” she said.

“Lucia Basso. If your mother could hear you now,” he said, mostly because he hated the despairing look that had crept into her eyes.

“It’s okay. She already thinks I’m screwed. It won’t be news to her.”

She met his gaze across the table, and they both burst into laughter. She laughed so hard she had to lean back in her chair and hold her stomach. By the time she’d gained a modicum of control, tears were rolling down her face.

“God, I needed that,” she said. Then her eyes went wide and she straightened in her chair as though someone had goosed her. “Oh!”

Both hands clutched her belly and she stared at Dom.

“What? Is something wrong?” he asked, already half out of his chair.

“The baby just moved!”

“Right.” He felt like an idiot for being on the verge of calling the paramedics.

“It’s the first time,” she explained excitedly. “All the pregnancy books say I should start feeling something about now, and I’ve been waiting and waiting but there’s been nothing—”

Her eyes went wide again and she smiled.

“There he goes again!” she said. “This is incredible! Dom, you have to feel this.”

Before he knew what she was doing she’d pushed aside her dressing gown to reveal the thin T-shirt she was wearing underneath, grabbed his hand and pressed his palm to her belly. He could feel the warmth of her skin through the fabric, the rise and fall of her body as she breathed.

“Can you feel it?” she asked, her voice hushed as though the baby might overhear her and stop performing.

He shook his head, acutely self-conscious. He didn’t know what to do with his fingers, whether to relax them into her body or keep his hand stiff. He could smell her perfume and feel the swell of her breast pressing against his forearm.

“Relax your hand more,” she instructed, frowning in concentration. He let his hand soften and she slid it over her belly, pressing it against herself with both hands.

Still he could feel nothing. She bit her lip.

“Maybe he’s tired,” she said.

Beneath his palm, he felt a faint surge, the smallest of disturbances beneath her skin.

He laughed and she grinned at him.

“Tell me you felt that?”

“I felt it.”

They smiled at each other like idiots, his hand curved against her belly. He knew the exact moment the wonder of the moment wore off and she became self-aware again. He pulled his hand free at the same time that she released her grip on him. They both sat back in their chairs, an awkwardness between them that hadn’t been there a few minutes ago.

“I should go,” he said. “You’ve got an early start tomorrow.”

“Yours is earlier,” she said.

They both stood.

“About the business … something will come up,” he said.

She shrugged. “Or it won’t. I’ll muddle through, I’m sure.”

Her hand found her stomach, holding it protectively. He followed her to the door.

“Thanks for the tiramisu,” she said with a small smile. “And for bringing my Web site stuff back.”

“Like I said, it was on the way home. And I would have eaten all the tiramisu on my own if I’d had the chance. You saved me from myself.”

He patted his stomach and she laughed, as he’d known she would. He hovered on the doorstep, unwilling to leave her just yet.

“What does it feel like?” he asked suddenly. “When the baby moves inside you?”

Her expression grew distant, and she cocked her head to one side. He had to resist the urge to reach out and touch her cheek to see if her skin really was as soft and smooth as it appeared.

“The books say it’s like butterflies fluttering,” she said after a moment. “Some women say it’s like gas.”

“Butterflies or gas. Right.”

She smiled. “The closest thing I can come up with is that it’s like when a goldfish brushes up against your hand. Only on the inside, if that makes sense.”

She was so beautiful, standing there with her uncertain eyes and her smiling mouth and her rounded stomach. He wanted to kiss her. He took a step backward.

“Good night, Lucy Basso,” he said.

“Good night, Dom.”

He told himself he was being smart and fair as he walked down the darkened driveway to the street. She was pregnant. He had no business chasing her.

And yet he felt like he was letting yet another opportunity slip through his fingers.

He flexed his hand as he remembered the flutter of movement he’d felt beneath his palm. A smile curved his mouth as he started his car. She’d been so delighted, so amazed. He was stupidly happy that he’d been there to share the moment with her.

He sobered as he registered where his thoughts were going. This wasn’t his baby. Lucy wasn’t his wife or partner. He wouldn’t be sharing any more moments of discovery with her—or with any other woman, for that matter.

There was a message from his father on his answering machine when he arrived home, asking him to call back. His father sounded sleepy when he answered the phone.

“You are late. Where have you been?”

Dom raised his eyebrows at his father’s nosiness. “Out. What’s up?”

“Out where? Out with girl?”

The joys of working with his family—they felt they owned his life.

“Pa.”

He heard his father sigh.

“I need you to make run to Lilydale tomorrow to collect more zucchini from Giametti’s. We short and I promise dozen boxes to Vue De Monde,” his father explained.

Dom rubbed his eyes and stifled a yawn. What his father was suggesting would mean he had to get up an extra two hours early in order to have the stock on hand for their customers.

“You know, if you’d let me manage the stock on the computer, we wouldn’t have these kinds of problems,” he said lightly.

To his surprise, his father blew up, sending a string of expletives and curses down the phone.

“I sick of hearing about computers. You said you not talk about them again. I expect you to honor this even if you honor nothing else!”

Dom let his breath out between his teeth. He loved his father, but he wasn’t a little boy anymore, and he certainly didn’t have to take crap from him—especially when it was out-of-line, unearned crap.

“Am I part of Bianco Brothers or not?” he asked.

“You are my son. This is stupid question.”

“Answer the question, Pa.”

“You are part of business. You there every day. You can’t work out for yourself?”

“So I’m an employee. Like Steve and Michael and Anna?”

“You are my son.”

Dom didn’t say a word, waiting for his father to stop hedging. The silence stretched tensely for long seconds before his father spoke again.

“What you want from me? You my right-arm man,” his father said, messing up his Anglo phrasing the way he often did. “I not manage without you. There. Happy now?”

“If that’s true, if I’m your second in command, I want a say. I want a vote. And I want a bit of respect while you’re at it,” Dom said.

“Respect! You talk respect when you speak to your own father like he is idiot who doesn’t know anything about anything. You have place in my business, good job. You should be grateful, counting your lucky stars, instead of whining and complaining.”

Dom held the phone away from his ear and swore long and loud. Why did he bother? Hadn’t he banged his head against this brick wall just the other day? His father didn’t want to change. He was old. And the truth was, Bianco Brothers was so successful that his father wouldn’t notice the business they would lose over the coming years as their competitors got leaner and meaner and more efficient. By the time his father was ready to retire—or he dropped dead on the job, which was just as likely—Dom would be left with the task of picking up the pieces and trying to claw back market share.

If he chose to take it.

“Good night, Pa,” he said. Then he ended the call.

“My business,” his father had said. Not “our business.”

Dom leaned against the kitchen counter. He had some decisions to make. If his father wasn’t going to allow him to grow, to have a say. Well, maybe Dom needed to forge his own way.

LUCY FELT RIDICULOUSLY shy as she arrived at the market the following morning. Last night she’d pressed Dom’s hand against her belly, practically strong-arming him into sharing her baby’s first movements.

What had she been thinking? As if he cared what was going on in her belly. He was her wholesale supplier, for Pete’s sake. The guy who used to sit two pews forward of her own family in church when they were kids. He didn’t want to know what her baby felt like when it kicked. Every time she remembered how she’d pressed his hand against herself her toes curled in her shoes.

It wasn’t until after he’d gone that she’d looked in the mirror and seen how puffy and red her eyes were. There was no way he wouldn’t have guessed she’d been crying. She could only imagine what he thought of her: poor, lonely Lucy, desperate for company.

She was relieved when she approached the stall and saw Dom was busy with another customer and his father was free. Mr. Bianco could help her with her order, and she wouldn’t have to talk to Dom today. One small thing going her way for a change.

“Lucy. You look beautiful,” Mr. Bianco greeted her, his chubby arms spread wide.

Dom glanced up from where he was standing nearby. His dark gaze was unreadable as he noted her.

“I’ll look after Lucy, Pa,” he said.

“You are busy,” Mr. Bianco said dismissively.

“I’ll just be a minute,” Dom said, addressing Lucy and not his father.

There was a definite tension between the two men, and Lucy shrugged uncomfortably.

“Sure. Whatever suits you guys,” she said.

Mr. Bianco opened his mouth to protest, but Dom nailed him with a look that had Mr. Bianco muttering under his breath as he moved off to serve someone else.

Lucy fiddled with the strap on her bag, nervous all over again now that she was going to have to face Dom after all. Maybe she should apologize for last night, for thrusting her baby bump at him. Just get the awkwardness out of the way and move on.

“Okay. Sorry about that,” Dom said.

She looked up, words of apology on the tip of her tongue.

“Listen, have you got time for a coffee? Sorry, a hot chocolate? Twenty minutes?” Dom asked.

She opened her mouth but no sound came out. Why did this man keep taking her by surprise?

“Sure,” she finally managed to croak.

Dom called out to his father that he was taking a break. Lucy left her trolley next to the stall and followed him to a café in the group of permanent shops that ran along Victoria Street beside the market. The woman behind the counter greeted him with a smile.

“We’ll have two hot chocolates, Polly,” he called as they sat.

Lucy clasped her hands nervously in front of her as Dom gave her his full attention. She had no idea what he was going to say to her, and she found his intense gaze unnerving. Suddenly all she could think about was how hot and heavy his hand had felt against her body last night.

Talk about inappropriate.

“I’ve been giving some thought to what we talked about last night,” he said. “About your business and your plans for the future.”

Lucy nodded. Right. He was going to offer her some advice, probably suggest she talk to one of the second-tier banks like everyone else had. She schooled herself to be patient. He was being kind, after all. And she’d shown herself to be in need of kindness last night.

“How would you feel about taking on a business partner?” Dom asked.

She blinked. “Excuse me?” she asked stupidly.

He smiled. “Bit out of the blue, huh? I think you’ve got some great ideas for your business, and I think you’ve tapped into a strong niche market. Market Fresh has a lot of potential. There’s no reason why you couldn’t be operating across the city, even expanding into other states.”

He smoothed some papers out on the table between them.

“What I’m proposing is a fifty-fifty business partnership. I’ll put up the capital to expand the business and build the Web site. You’ll bring the existing business and your expertise to the table.” He paused to look at her, his eyebrows raised in question.

She was too busy grappling for a mental foothold to say anything. Dom wanted to buy into her business? Become her partner? Give her the money she needed to make her business a success?

“But you already have a business,” she said, blurting out the first thought that popped into her mind.

“No. My father has a business. I just work for him,” he said. There was a tightness around his mouth that hadn’t been there yesterday. A determination.

“You don’t know anything about my business. You haven’t seen the books. You have no idea what my turnover is,” she said, frowning.

“Of course I’d want my accountant to take a look at things before we signed anything. I guess what I’m asking at this stage is if this sounds like something you might consider?” Dom asked.

Their hot chocolates arrived, and Lucy bought some time by fiddling with her cup and saucer.

Did she want a business partner? Being her own boss had been part of the appeal of starting Market Fresh, but taking on a partner wouldn’t necessarily mean she wouldn’t still have her independence. It would mean compromises though, having to listen to other ideas and incorporate them into her plans.

She eyed Dom assessingly. She hardly knew him really. Didn’t know if he was hot tempered or easygoing, impulsive or rational. All she knew was what she’d observed of him over the year she’d been a customer at Bianco Brothers. He was good with customers. He was smart. He knew his product. He knew the industry.

“I’ve never thought about taking on a partner. Mostly because it’s never come up before.” She studied his face. She didn’t quite know how to ask her next question, so she decided to just go for it.

“Why me? Why Market Fresh?”

He took a sip of his hot chocolate before answering.

“I’m thirty-one and I’ve been working for my father all my adult life. I’ve always thought I’d take over when he retired. But I’m beginning to realize that that might be a long way off. And that maybe I don’t want to be Tony Bianco’s boy anymore. I have ideas, things I want to try, and he’s not open to them.”

“Okay. I get that part. But you could do anything.”

“Sure. I could start my own business. Go through all the pain of establishing myself, learn a new industry. Or I could find someone like you who has done all that hard stuff already.”

He eyed her over the rim of his cup.

“And you need help,” he added. “Which, speaking from a purely selfish point of view, means I’ve got a certain amount of leverage.”

Lucy dipped her head in acknowledgment of his brutal honesty. “Well. I asked,” she said ruefully.

“Yep.”

He sat back in his chair, his hands toying with his cup, spinning it on the saucer. His eyes never left hers as he waited for her to think things over some more.

What did she have to lose, after all? Her business, was the answer. And she was very afraid that she would do just that if she didn’t take him up on his offer. She needed capital to grow. That was the bottom line.

“Okay. I’m interested,” she said.

He smiled slowly. Suddenly she wished that her sister had never made her take a second look at him. Two weeks ago, he was a man, a human being like any other. Today, thanks to Rosie’s teen obsession, Lucy felt a distinct frisson race up her spine as she registered how very, very good-looking he was.

Again, so not appropriate. Especially given her situation and the offer he’d just put on the table.

“Great. Why don’t we meet on Sunday? That will give me time to get a preliminary offer drawn up. Rosetta will probably want to take a look at it, right?”

“Oh yeah. She’ll probably want to pat you down and ransack your house and run an FBI check on you,” Lucy said.

He smiled again. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”

He leaned across the table and held out his hand. She hesitated a second before taking it. His hand was warm and firm.

“To new beginnings,” he said.

She nodded, unable to speak for some reason while he held her with his dark gaze.

“We’d better get you on the road,” he said.

She followed him to the stall, feeling more than a little dazed. After what had happened with her sister’s offer of a loan, she knew it would be stupid to get too excited. So many things could go wrong. Dom could change his mind after he’d looked at the books. His lawyer or accountant might have objections. Anything could go wrong.

And yet a slow excitement was bubbling through her blood. If this came off, her problems were solved. She’d have the capital she needed to grow. She’d have a fighting chance to secure her and her baby’s future.

She closed her eyes for a minute.

Please, please, please let this happen.

She wasn’t quite sure who she talking to, but she hoped like hell they were listening. It was about time she scored a break.