She approached the table, facing Leo now, with her back to his father, discreetly pulling something out of her apron pocket and handing it off to him. His cell phone. He’d been so focused on the croissant that he’d left it on the table. For a beat, he met Tessa’s smarty-pants cornflower-blue eyes.

She dropped her voice and said, “I couldn’t help noticing that someone named Svana has called, like, twenty times. Just wanted you to know in case it’s…important.” She said that smugly, her words dripping with disdain. But why would he care about that? She glanced toward the front windows. “I like the new sign.”

“Thanks. I had the old one cleaned up and re-fabbed.” Leo pocketed his phone. As far as Svana…seeing her was fun but he just wasn’t interested in anything serious.

“I don’t like anything too new,” his dad said.

“Oh no,” Tessa countered. “It looks just right. The neon spaghetti and meatballs is very, um, eye-catching. Especially with the new flashing meatball.” She brushed some flour from her cheek. “Well, I gotta go.”

Then she turned and left him staring after her.

The door clicking shut behind her shook him from his thoughts, and his dad was biting into—wait, was that a cannoli? A chocolate-chip one.

“Ooh, cannoli!” Uncle Cosmo had walked back from the kitchen and helped himself to one. “Wow, this is good. Who made these?”

Leo opened his mouth to answer, but his father silenced him with a look. Right. No mentioning the Montgomerys. “Amazon made them,” he said. “They were just delivered. I must have accidentally used my business address instead of my home one.” Now he was resorting to lies. This feud would be the death of all of them.

“What a delicious mistake,” Aunt Loretta said with a laugh. She took a bite and made an mmm sound in her throat.

Leo took out a perfectly formed tube of flaky crust wrapped tightly around fluffy chocolate-chip crème filling and sank his teeth into it.

His chewing instinctively slowed, keeping the flavor on his tongue just a little longer before swallowing.

Even better than her chocolate-filled croissant from yesterday. She needed to be baking this stuff and selling it to people, not giving it away to whoever would take it, because this was… Amazing wasn’t a strong enough word, but his cannoli-drugged brain couldn’t think of anything else to describe it.

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

The next day, Tessa glanced out the bakery window and sucked in a big breath for courage. It was another beautiful, sunshine-filled May morning, the breeze full of the sweet scent of pink crab apple blossoms from the trees that lined Main Street. A perfect day to do just about anything, except what she had to do, which was round up her mother and grandmother and ask them about Leo’s proposition.