The Broken One (Corisi Billionaires, #1)(36)

“Are you okay?” He leaned toward me in concern.

I shook my foot beneath the table and pressed my lips together as I pondered if I’d broken it. “Yeah, I just smacked my foot.”

He gave me that look of his, the one that said he was intrigued and confused at the same time. “Do you want me to look at it?”

“No,” I said quickly and slid it back into my shoe. No way was I telling him what I’d just done. I didn’t want to amuse him; I wanted that hungry fire back in his eyes. “I’m fine. Forget it.”

Thankfully our sandwiches arrived.

I dug right into mine. After not eating much the last couple of days, the meal was heavenly. Only when I realized he was watching me did I rethink how quickly I had scarfed down my lunch. Habit. Mostly I ate at my desk—time was money.

He hadn’t touched his, and I was done. One corner of his mouth curled in a hint of a smile. “Would you like mine as well?”

“Don’t be an ass,” I tossed back, even though I was still hungry. I wasn’t big on exercise, but I also wasn’t big on sweets or carbs. Having Ava kept me active. I guessed the women he normally took out ordered salads and then picked at them.

It’s called pre-eating, buddy. Plenty of women I knew did it when they first met a man, but I’d never bought into why. Were women not supposed to be human? Not eat? Not fart? Hide that they also had bodily functions until . . . when? On which glorious anniversary was it acceptable for a woman to finally admit she wanted a whole damn sandwich?

“Tell me about Ava,” he said, his question taking me by surprise and pulling me down off my mental soapbox.

“She’s my world,” I said honestly and without hesitation. “Her mother never made it out of the hospital after having her. While she definitely wasn’t in my plan, I can’t imagine my life without her now.”

“So she’s adopted.”

“Yes.”

“Does she know?”

“Yes. Brenda and I were housemates in college and good friends. I feel that it’s important for Ava to know she was loved.” I glanced away, getting lost for a moment in the memories. “I was there when Ava was born. Brenda was scared—of motherhood and all that came with it—but she was happy about it too. She died so suddenly. The doctors said the cause was complications from an infection. But to me that was their way of saying they didn’t understand it any more than I did.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Oh, look, there goes the last bit of sparkle from his eyes. What the hell am I doing? He lost a wife and child, and I have to work death into the first real conversation we have.

“And her biological father?” he asked.

“Not interested in the responsibility.”

Sebastian’s expression darkened. “I don’t get how anyone could see a child that way.”

I shrugged. “Me either. I heard he got married soon afterward, though, so he probably didn’t want to explain Ava. In the end it worked out for the best, I guess. She’s fully, legally mine. My name is the only one on her birth certificate.”

Sebastian gave me another long look, then took a bite of his sandwich. It gave me a moment to simply watch him. Nothing about his mannerisms implied that he felt out of place, but he didn’t look like a man who normally ate at restaurants where you could pay with a credit card at your table on a device you could also play games on.

I glanced around and caught several men and women watching him. Did they know who he was? “How was your weekend?” I asked, because I was more comfortable when he was talking than when I was.

The smile returned to his eyes. “Good. My whole family—my three brothers and my parents—flew down to scope out a school my youngest brother, Gian, has been accepted to. What you said about Ava is something my family understands. Technically, Gian is my cousin, but his mother wasn’t stable and asked my mother to take him in. The way he came to us has left him with . . . concerns that we might one day not be there for him as well. This past weekend we wanted to show him that that day will never come.”

“That sounds like an amazing family.”

“No family is perfect, but I wouldn’t trade mine.”

“What is your mother like?” I wanted to know everything.

“She’s a traditional Italian mother with wooden-spoon ninja skills when necessary.”

I laughed.

“We fear her wrath, but in a good way. My father follows the ‘happy wife, happy life’ philosophy. We moved to the US when Gian was still very young, because she thought we would have better opportunities. My family had one store back in Italy, or ‘the old country,’ as my father calls it. We’ve come a long way.”

“Romano Superstores.”

He smiled. “You’ve heard of us.”

“There’s a local buzz about you coming to the area—I heard it’s up for public vote.”

He leaned closer. “What do you think of us coming in?”

I wished I were the type of person who could lie. “I don’t know enough about the details yet to have an opinion one way or another.”

“That’s a safe answer.” One eyebrow arched. “I can see someone like you voting against the proposal. I bet you don’t like change.”