Patchwork Family in the Outback. Soraya Lane

“Hang out with Alex for a few more minutes and it’ll be ready.”

      The little girl grinned, gave her dad a cheeky wave and disappeared again.

      “You might think this is nothing fancy,” said Harrison, pointing at the sauce Poppy was stirring, “but to them it’s fun to be somewhere different for dinner. They’re usually just stuck with me on the ranch.”

      She swallowed a lump. It was now or never, and she couldn’t help herself.

      “So there’s no Mrs. Black?” she asked, knowing full well what the answer was going to be.

      “No,” Harrison replied, his eyes dark and stormy, his expression like stone. “There’s no Mrs. Black, unless you’re talking about my mom.”

      If only her question was that innocent, but they both knew it wasn’t. What Poppy didn’t know was why she’d asked at all.

      Maybe she just wanted to hear it from him, so she could actually believe that he didn’t have a wife...that he really was what the mom today had described him as—the town’s sexiest bachelor.

      Sauce. What Poppy needed to do was focus on the carbonara sauce.

      “Anything I can do?” His soft, deep drawl made her skin go hot, then suddenly cold, as if an icy breeze had blown through on a warm summer’s day.

      “I’d love for you to put those plates on the table,” she said, nodding toward where she had them stacked. “And to be honest, I wouldn’t mind celebrating my first day at school with a glass of wine.”

      Plus she wouldn’t mind settling her nerves a little with the bottle of sauvignon blanc she had in the fridge.

      “Glasses?” he asked, carrying the plates to the table.

      Poppy groaned. “Still to be unpacked, I think.” One of the few things she hadn’t actually transferred from box to cupboard. But if she wasn’t mistaken... “Hang on, try the box at the bottom of the pantry,” she instructed. “I can’t leave this sauce.”