A Natural Father (6 page)

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 handfuls 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 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!”