His Million-Dollar Marriage Proposal. Jennifer Hayward

rosy pink dusted her cheeks. “I don’t do that.”

      “Yes, you do.” Now, he decided, was the time to get to the bottom of the enigmatic Chiara Ferrante.

      “Have a drink with me before dinner.”

      She frowned. “I’m sure you have far too much work to do.”

      “It’s an eight-hour flight. There’s plenty of time. You just said it yourself,” he pointed out. “We need to work on making this relationship believable if we’re going to pull this off. Part of that is getting to know each other better.”

      Summoning the attendant, he requested a predinner drink, stood and held out a hand to her.

      * * *

      Chiara took the hand Lazzero offered and rolled to her feet. She could hardly say no. He would only accuse her of being prickly again. And she thought that maybe he was right, maybe if they got to know each other better she wouldn’t feel so apprehensive about what she was walking into. About her ability to carry this charade off.

      She curled up beside him on the sofa in the lounge area, shoes off, legs tucked beneath her. Tried to relax as she took a sip of her drink, but it was almost impossible to do so with Lazzero looking so ridiculously attractive in dark pants and a white shirt rolled up at the sleeves, dark stubble shadowing his jaw. It was just as disconcerting as she’d imagined it would be. As if the testosterone level had been dialed up to maximum in the tiny airplane cabin with nowhere to go.

      God. She took another sip of her drink. Grasped on to the first subject that came to mind. “What sport did you play in university?”

      “Basketball.” He sat back against the sofa and crossed one long leg over the other. “It was my obsession.”

      “Santo too?”

      His mouth curved. “Santo is too pretty to rough it up. He’d be running straight to his plastic surgeon if he ever got an elbow to the face. Santo played baseball.”

      She considered him curiously. “How good were you? You must have been talented to put yourself through school on a full scholarship.”

      He shrugged. “I was good. But an injury in my senior year put me on the sidelines. I didn’t have enough time to get back to the level I needed to be before the championships and draft.” He pursed his lips. “It wasn’t meant to be.”

      She absorbed his matter-of-fact demeanor. She didn’t think it could have been so simple. Giving up her design classes had been like leaving a piece of herself behind when money had been prioritized for the bakery. Lazzero had had his fingers on every little boy’s dream of becoming a professional athlete, only to have it slip right through them.

      “That must have been difficult,” she observed, “to have your dream stolen from you.”

      A cryptic look moved across his face. “Some dreams are too expensive to keep.”

      “Supersonic was a dream you and your brothers had,” she pointed out.

      “Which was built on a solid business case backed up by a gap in the market we identified. Opportunity,” he qualified, “makes sense to me. Blind idealism does not.”

      “Too much ambition can also be destructive,” she said. “I see plenty of examples of that in New York.”

      “In the man who broke your heart?” Lazzero inserted smoothly.

      Her pulse skipped a beat. “Who says he exists?”

      “I do,” he drawled. “Your speech at the café...the fact that you’ve never given any man who comes in there a fighting chance. You have ‘smashed to smithereens’ written all over you.”

      She sank her teeth into her lip, finding that an all-too-accurate description of what Antonio had done to her. “There was someone,” she acknowledged quietly, “and yes, he broke my heart. But in hindsight, it was for the best. It made me see his true colors.”

      “Which were?”

      “That he was not to be trusted. That men like him are not to be trusted.”

      He eyed her. “That is a massive generalization. So he hurt you...so he burned you badly. He is only one man, Chiara. What are you going to do? Spend the rest of your life avoiding a certain kind of man because he might hurt you?”

      Her mouth set at a stubborn angle. “I’m not willing to take the risk.”

      “Did you love him?”

      “I thought I did.” She gave him a pointed look. “I could ask you the same thing. Where does your fear of commitment come from? Because clearly, you have one.”

      A lift of his broad shoulder. “I simply don’t care to.”

      “Why not?”

      “Because relationships are complicated dramas I have no interest in participating in.” He took a sip of his drink. Rested his glass on his lean, corded thigh. “What about family?” he asked, tipping his glass at her. “I know nothing about yours other than the fact that your father, Carlo, runs Ferrante’s. What about your mother? Brothers? Sisters?”

      A shadow whispered across her heart. “My mother died of breast cancer when I was fifteen. I’m an only child.”

      His gaze darkened. “I’m sorry. You were close to her?”

      “Yes,” she said quietly. “She ran the bakery with my father. She was amazing—wonderful, wise. A pseudo parent to half the kids in the neighborhood. My father always said most of the clientele came in just to talk to her.”

      “You miss her,” he said.

      Heat stung the back of her eyes. “Every day.” It was a deep, dark hollow in her soul that would never be filled.

      Lazzero curled his fingers around hers. Strong and protective, they imparted a warmth that seemed to radiate right through her. “My father died when I was nineteen,” he murmured. “I know how it feels.”

      Oh. She bit her lip. “How?”

      “He was an alcoholic. He drank himself to death.”

      She absorbed his matter-of-fact countenance. “And your mother? Is she still alive?”