Surprise: Outback Proposal: Surprise: Outback Proposal

Lucy shook her head. “No. You’ve already taken me into your home. You won’t let me pay more than a token rent. I can’t keep taking your charity forever, Rosie. What kind of a mother am I going to be if I can’t stand on my own two feet?”

“Exactly. And the fastest way for you to get there is to get that Internet site happening and grow your business. I know it hurts your pride, but taking a loan from your family is the best thing for you and the baby. And that’s the truth.” Rosie sat back in her chair, her case made.

Lucy stared at her, her mind whirling.

It was so tempting. Rosie and Andrew had the money. Lucy could stick to her original game plan. She’d already spoken to a Web site design company in anticipation of today’s bank appointment. She could go full steam ahead with her schedule and be online within a month.

“Say yes. Be smart. For the baby,” Rosie said.

“It’s so much money,” Lucy said. “And you guys have got plans for it.”

“They’ll wait.”

“What about Andrew? It’s his money, too.”

“He loves you almost as much as I do, and he’ll understand.”

Lucy closed her eyes. So many big decisions lately. If only she had a crystal ball. She opened her eyes again.

“Yes. Okay. I can’t believe I’m saying that, but thank you. Thank you so much. Where would I be without you?”

“Good girl!”

“I won’t let you down,” Lucy said. “I promise I’ll pay back every cent.”

“I know you will. I know where you live, remember?”

They were both blinking rapidly. Lucy shook her head.

“I feel like I just got off a roller-coaster. Talk about up and down.”

“Welcome to parenthood, I guess,” Rosie said. “From what I hear, this is just the beginning.”

They both smiled, and Lucy reached across to grab her sister’s hand, overwhelmed with gratitude and relief.

“Hey there. Long time no see,” a familiar male voice said.

Lucy looked up to see Dominic Bianco standing next to the table. She felt her sister’s fingers convulse around hers in reaction and had to fight the urge to giggle. Truly, Rosie’s crush on The Bianco was a hoot.

“Dom. You’re not just finishing work for the day, are you?” Lucy asked, noting he was still wearing his Bianco Brothers shirt.

“Something like that. Hey, Rosetta, how are things?”

Rosie was smiling at Dom with slightly glazed eyes. “G-good. Things are good. I’m married now, you know,” she said.

Dom’s eyebrows rose a bit at her sister’s odd segue.

“Congratulations. When was the wedding?” he asked politely.

“Eight years ago,” Lucy said.

“Right,” Dom said. He looked confused, as well he might.

“Lucy tells me you’ve come back from six months in Italy,” Rosie said.

Now it was Lucy’s turn to be embarrassed. She didn’t want Dom to think she spent her spare time talking about him.

“Yeah. Had a few months in Rome, Florence and Venice, checked out the countryside.”

“Andrew and I were going to go for our honeymoon, but we wound up in Thailand instead,” Rosie said. “I guess you got a bit of sun while you were there, huh? You’re really tanned.”

Rosie’s eyes were on Dom’s forearms as she spoke, and she looked as though she was about to lunge across the table and sink her teeth into him. Lucy drew back her knee in case she had to kick her sister.

“It was summer over there. What can I say?” he said.

He turned his attention to Lucy. “Your client happy with the herbs for his wedding dinner?”

“As happy as he can let himself be. He’s French. He makes it a point to never smile too much.”

Dom laughed, and Lucy felt a surge of satisfaction that she’d amused him.

“We’ve got a few French chefs as clients. They like to keep us on our toes, that’s for sure.”

“Pretty amazing, Lucy winding up as one of your customers after all these years,” Rosie said. “It’s a small world.”

“Even smaller when you’re Italian,” Dom said. “Lucy is one of our favorite clients. My father and I fight over who gets to serve her.”

Even though she knew he was only joking, Lucy shifted in her chair.

“That’s rubbish. You almost always serve me,” she said, aware of her sister’s speculative glance bouncing back and forth between them.

“That’s because I cheat,” Dom said with an unrepentant grin.

The waiter arrived with their hot chocolates and cake, and Dom checked his watch.

“I’ll leave you to it—looks as though you’ve got your work cut out for you,” he said, indicating the generous slices of cake.

“See you tomorrow,” Lucy said.

Dom smiled and gave a small, casual wave before moving to the other side of the café, out of sight behind the central counter.

“Oh. My. God. Pass me the chocolate. I need emergency therapy,” Rosie said, slumping in her chair and fanning herself. “He’s better-looking than ever. What a hunk. I mean, wow.”

“Oh, look, there’s Andrew,” Lucy fibbed.

Rosie immediately sat up straight. Then she realized her sister was yanking her chain.

“Good one. Very funny.”

“Just a timely reminder.”

“Hey, I love Andrew with everything I’ve got, don’t you worry. I’m not going anywhere, with anyone. But I can still admire The Bianco. It’s a sentimental thing.”

“It’s sad. And, can I say, just a little embarrassing. You almost got drool on your good shirt.”

“Pshaw,” Rosie said, flicking her fingers in the air. “I was in total control the whole time.”

Lucy rolled her eyes and spoke to the ceiling. “Delusional. The woman’s delusional.”

“Anyway, he never even noticed me. He was too busy looking at you like he wanted to lick you all over.”

Lucy stared at her sister.

“He was not!”

“Uh-huh. He was, and he was flirting with you, too.”

“Get out of here. I look like I’ve got a beach ball stuck up my top. He was not flirting with me.”

“Lucy is one of our most favorite clients ever. My father and I wrestle to the death over who gets to serve her. What do you call that?”

“Being polite. Or being funny. Maybe both. But not flirting.”

Rosie gave her a get-real look. “Seriously? You seriously didn’t think he was flirting with you?”

“Of course not. Duh,” Lucy said, pointing to her belly.

“Man. We are going to have to do something about your dating skills, because if you’re not picking up signals that strong, you are never going to find another man,” Rosie said.

Lucy knew her sister was only joking, but her words still caught her on the raw.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Rosie asked as Lucy reached for her hot chocolate and concentrated on stirring it.

“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.”

“Bad at flirting and bad at lying. What am I going to do with you?”

Lucy stopped stirring her drink and met her sister’s eyes.

“I don’t want another man. I want Marcus. I want the father of my baby,” she said in a small voice.

Her sister stared at her, her face full of sympathy.

“Go on, say it. Tell me I’m pathetic for wanting someone who doesn’t want me,” Lucy said.

“I don’t think that’s pathetic. Marcus is the pathetic one. I just feel sad that I can’t give you what you want.”

Lucy sighed heavily and picked up a fork.

“I guess all this chocolate is still very necessary, after all,” she said.

“Chocolate is always necessary, whether it be for celebration or commiseration,” Rosie said.

Her sister waited until Lucy was swallowing a chunk of sinfully rich frosting before speaking again.

“And he was flirting with you. The Bianco was fully, blatantly, balls-out flirting with you.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“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.