Surprise: Outback Proposal: Surprise: Outback Proposal. Sarah Mayberry

except sensible, incisive business discussion.

      After two hours of intense strategizing, Lucy retreated to the bathroom again.

      She was confused. She’d been so sure…. The butterflies in her stomach, the pounding of her heart, the steamy intent in his eyes—was it really possible that she was so out of practice with all things male-female that she’d misread his signals? Could she have simply imagined that moment of connection? Was that really possible?

      She checked her reflection in the bathroom mirror and groaned as she realized she’d spilled sauce on herself, her baby bump having obligingly caught it. She stared at the red splodge, bright against the dark of her turtleneck, like a beacon drawing attention to her belly.

      “You’re an idiot,” she told her reflection.

      The tension she’d been carrying with her all afternoon dissipated as she sponged her top clean, shaking her head all the while.

      Call it hormones, call it nerves, call it whatever—she’d clearly misinterpreted Dom’s behavior. Of course she had. She was pregnant. Hardly an object of desire. She had to have been temporarily deranged to even entertain the idea in the first place.

      Feeling calm and centered for the first time all afternoon, she returned to their meeting.

      Thank God she hadn’t delivered her little speech.

       CHAPTER SIX

      DOM COULDN’T STOP thinking about Lucy. While he cleaned up after their lunch, he thought about how she didn’t take herself too seriously, how she liked to laugh. How smart she was in a school-of-hard-knocks kind of way.

      During his run afterward, he thought about how gutsy and brave she was.

      He liked her. He liked her a lot. The admiration and curiosity and attraction he’d felt for her previously had been based on what little he knew of her via their brief daily encounters at his father’s stall. Now, however, he’d seen Lucy at home, watched her interact with her sister, had numerous meetings with her, and he was beginning to understand just how special she was.

      As he paused at a traffic light, he registered that he’d spent the past hour thinking about Lucy Basso. And not in a business kind of way.

      Sweat ran down his back and the smile faded from his lips as he remembered the moment by the stove. He’d almost kissed her. She’d been standing so close and he’d been staring into her face and the need to taste her lips, to touch her to see if she was as smooth and warm and soft as he imagined had almost overwhelmed him.

      He was a bastard. The light changed and he took off across the intersection.

      The moment he’d decided to offer her a partnership, he’d known it meant the end of his chances with her. Lucy did not need her new business partner lusting after her. She needed help, support, money. Anything beyond that was simply not on the agenda. And he was a selfish prick for even letting himself go there. He lengthened his stride, angry with himself. He needed to get a grip on his attraction to her.

      Ten minutes later, he slowed his pace, switched off his iPod and opened the gate to his parents’ house. His mother looked up from the kitchen table when he entered via the back door.

      “Dominic! At last you come. I was beginning to forget what my boy looks like,” she said, pushing herself to her feet with an effort.

      Like his father, his mother had turned into a round little barrel as she aged, her love of pasta and rich meats catching up with her. Her long gray hair was pinned on the back of her head, and she wore a voluminous apron over her dress. Her hands were dusted with flour, and she held them out from her sides as he kissed her.

      “You all sweaty,” his mother said, eyeing him with concern. “You should get out of those damp clothes. Have a shower. Put on something of your father’s.”

      “I’m fine. I just dropped in for a quick hello,” he said.

      His mother’s lips immediately thinned.

      “I never see you anymore. First you go away for six months, then you come home and still you are stranger.”

      Guilt stabbed him. He had been avoiding home—or, more accurately, he’d been avoiding his father. At the market, work acted as a buffer between them, but at home there was no place to hide the fact that he and his father were barely on speaking terms.

      “I’ve been busy. Work and some other things.”

      His mother sat back at the table and resumed rolling out the mixture for her biscotti.

      “Your father is in the front room. You should go say hello to him,” she said.

      He hesitated a fraction of a second before nodding.

      “Sure.”

      He could feel her watching him as he walked up the hallway.

      His father was in his favorite chair, the seat reclined as far as it could go, the Italian-language newspaper, Il Globo, spread across his belly. Dom watched him sleep for a moment, noting how old his father looked without his larger-than-life personality to distract from the new wrinkles in his face and the sag of his jaw. Age spots had appeared on his hands in the past few years and the gray in his hair was turning white. He was fifty-nine and still he woke every day at 5:00 a.m. to tend the stall at the market, despite the fact that they could easily afford to hire staff to cover the early shift.

      Stubborn bastard.

      “Pa,” he said quietly.

      Tony started, the newspaper rustling. He frowned, jerking the chair into the upright position.

      “Was reading newspaper,” he said.

      Dom gestured back toward the kitchen.

      “I dropped in to see Mama for a bit,” he said.

      Tony nodded. “Good, good. She worries when she not see you.”

      Conversation dried up between them. Dom felt the silence acutely. He and his father had had their moments over the years, but he’d never felt as distant as he had recently.

      He cleared his throat. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. Lucy Basso was looking for an investor in Market Fresh, so I’ve bought in. We’re partners.”

      “What is this? Partners? How can you be partners with another business when you have Bianco Brothers?”

      “It’s not a full-time gig. At the moment, at least. When things pick up, I might have to rethink. But in the meantime nothing has to change.”

      His father’s face reddened. “You work for me! You always work for me.”

      “I’m not resigning, Pa. I’m just exploring other opportunities.”

      His father glared at him for a long moment.

      “This is because of computers.”

      “I want to make my own business successes,” Dom said, sidestepping the issue.

      “After everything I give you, everything I do for you. You tell me this, no discussion, nothing.”

      Dom refused to feel guilty. He had a life to live, too.

      “I’m not a kid, I don’t need to ask your permission.” He felt like he’d been saying that a lot lately. “I just thought you’d like to know what was going on.”

      He headed for the kitchen. His mother looked up from spooning biscotti mixture onto a tray when he entered.

      “Listen, I have to go. But maybe I could come around for dinner during the week?”

      His mother frowned, then her gaze slid over his shoulder.

      “Bianco Brothers is for you. For all my children. And you throw back in my face,” Tony said from the doorway.

      Dom