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and son discussed something intently.

    “Okay, sorry about that,” Dom said a few minutes later as he rejoined her.

    He was frowning and the smile had gone from his eyes.

    “If there’s a problem, I can wait for one of the other servers to be free,” she said.

    Dom shook his head. “No problem. Just stubborn pigheadedness.”

    “Right.”

    He sighed, and his frown eased a little.

    “You see that clipboard he’s holding? That’s the complete record of our stock on hand for the week,” he said.

    Lucy’s gaze took in the many feet of frontage the Bianco Brothers occupied, all of it filled to overflowing with fresh produce.

    “You’re kidding me.”

    She carried a tiny fraction of the inventory the Biancos did, and she kept it all neatly organized via a simple computer program. She couldn’t even imagine how Mr. Bianco kept track of his stock with paper and pen.

    “It gets worse. He’s the only one who can read his own handwriting. So whenever Vinnie or I or one of the others needs to check on something, we have to find him and get him to interpret for us.”

    “Wow,” Lucy said.

    “Yeah,” Dom said, a world of frustration in his voice.

    “Driving you crazy?” she guessed.

    “Just a little. There’s so much stuff we could be doing. Even having an up-to-date list of what’s available on a Web site would be a huge bonus. We get fifty phone calls a day from customers asking what we’ve got on hand. But Pa thinks that because his way has worked for thirty years, there’s no reason to change.”

    He ran a hand through his hair, his gaze distant as he looked down the aisle. Then his eyes snapped back into focus and he gave her a rueful smile.

    “Sorry. This isn’t getting your order filled, is it?” he said, pulling her list from his pocket again.

    “It’s okay. I can barely have a conversation with my mother these days. I can’t even imagine working with her,” Lucy confessed.

    Dom’s gaze instantly flicked to her stomach. She felt heat rise into her face. Yesterday when she’d seen him, she’d deliberately been vague when he’d asked about her husband. But she could tell by the awkward silence that had fallen that he knew the truth. There were precious few secrets in the close-knit Italian community they’d grown up in, and she should have known he’d soon find out she was single. Why she’d even bothered to cover yesterday she had no idea. At the time, it had seemed…messy to try to explain about Marcus and the fact that she was all alone.

    At least be honest with yourself if you can’t be honest with anyone else, Lucia Basso.

    The truth was that she’d been embarrassed. She stopped short of labeling the emotion she’d experienced shame. She wasn’t ashamed of her baby. She refused to be. But there was no getting around the fact that she was a good Catholic girl who was having a baby on her own because her boyfriend had abandoned her for another woman.

    She opened her mouth to try to explain her omission, then swallowed her words without speaking them. Dom wouldn’t care. Her being pregnant or not or married or not meant nothing in his world. They had a business relationship, nothing more.

    But still she felt uncomfortable. And the feeling seemed to be mutual. Dom shoved a hand into the back pocket of his jeans and shifted his feet.

    “She’ll come around. Once she sees that little baby, she’ll be putty in your hands,” he said.

    It was too complicated a situation to explain over a trestle table of zucchinis. Lucy smiled and waved a hand.

    “It’s fine. We’re fine. It’s all good,” she said.

    Dom hesitated a beat before nodding. “Okay, let’s get you those herbs.”

    They were both careful to keep things surface-level for the rest of the transaction, and Lucy left the stall feeling oddly depressed. Which was as stupid as blushing over Mr. Bianco’s compliment. There was nothing in her relationship with Dominic Bianco that she had any reason to