“I just made a baking video and posted it to my YouTube channel.”

Her grandmother sighed. Then she sat down—always a bad omen.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Tessa said.

“Okay, if you’re so smart, what is it?”

“You’re sorry my mother won’t take the baking deal. Or let me bake what I want.”

“Not exactly,” she said. “I was about to say that you don’t have to make every decision for the family. We’ll be okay if you leave.”

Tessa bit down on her lip. How on earth could she, though? Also, she didn’t want her grandmother to have to choose sides. “You really should be sleeping in and sitting by a pool somewhere, drinking pastel-colored cocktails instead of working three days a week.”

“You’re young,” she said, undeterred. “You can’t keep deferring the start of your own life because the family business is in trouble.”

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she started cleaning up the mess she’d made during the cake project. But she must have been silent too long.

“Knock, knock,” her grandmother teased. “Where are you?”

Tessa shook her head. She needed to change the topic—fast. “Just thinking about my love life. Or rather…my lack of one.”

Gram raised a fine brow, encouraging her to continue. They had the kind of relationship where Tessa could be honest about things like that with her and not be humiliated. Or at least, not too much.

Tessa shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just afraid to take a chance again.”

Her grandmother tapped the battered wood surface that they kneaded dough on each morning. “Don’t worry. You have the Montgomery curse,” she said matter-of-factly.

Tessa dumped her measuring spoons and mixing bowls into the sink, then turned to face her. “The what?”

“The Montgomery curse. We’re hopeless romantics, all of us.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“Well, if you don’t settle, it’s a good thing.” She tipped her head toward the Castorinis’ place. “But it’s also what started the feud with our neighbors to begin with. In 1937, to be exact.”

“I know, I know.” Tessa rolled her eyes. “One of our ancestors fell in love with a Castorini, and he left her at the altar, in front of the whole town. Shamed our family.”

Gram nodded. “A wolf can be a wolf, or he can be a sheep. That particular Castorini, Guido, was a charming, handsome man who had everyone fooled.”

“Did the poor woman ever get over it?”

“She joined a convent and started rescuing stray cats.”

Tessa groaned. She’d never become a nun, but she might as well rescue a couple more cats and settle in, because no decent man was ever going to find her in this town.