Bree spent all year planning her costume, and the night itself always flew by. She loved working side by side with her grandmother and the other seasonal help. Her mom, too, when she wasn’t galivanting around the globe with Bree’s dad, as she was this particular season. Above and beyond all of that was the other thing that made Halloween her favorite holiday. Every year for as long as she could remember, or at least as long as she’d had a romantic bone in her body, Bree spent the evening in happy anticipation, waiting with what felt like bated breath throughout the night for those moments when Sophia or Bree’s mother would reach for the special trays of treats behind the counter. That was when Bree knew the Bellaluna women were about to work their magic.
At twenty-eight, Bree should have long since been able to dispense a few special treats of her own. Alas, that had yet to happen.
Bree was currently holding the proof that this year, apparently, wasn’t going to be any different. She stared in disgust at the Italian iced cookie in her hand. “How can something that looks so good taste so bad?” She tossed the nibbled cookie in the trash, still grimacing at the tart, acrid taste on her tongue. Trying to remain optimistic, she picked up another one she’d just finished icing and examined it more closely. As if somehow the naked eye could see what her taste buds had already discovered. And deeply regretted.
The cookie appeared to be perfect in every way, something she could proudly display in the old-fashioned glass cases that ran the length of Bellaluna’s Bakeshop. Perfectly brown around the edges, plump in the middle, with a dollop of their special family-recipe Italian cream icing on top. A delicate array of sprinkles added the perfect final touch. It looked like a little piece of bite-sized heaven. She’d followed her Grandma Sophia’s recipe down to the tiniest detail. Just as she had every one of the dozens of other times she’d tried—and failed—to perfect the Bellaluna women’s trademark “special treat.” Bree had even tasted every single ingredient as she’d added it, so there was no logical way it could taste bad. What was not to love about butter, sugar, and Italian cream?
She took a determined bite out of the soft, creamy cookie, then immediately grabbed a napkin and spit it right back out again. It tasted like she’d used two cups of baking soda instead of cake flour. She tossed the napkin and the cookie in the trash, then glared at the remaining ten on the tray, as if they’d personally ganged up on her to dash her hopes and dreams.
“Abriana, dear, I need you to cover the front for a few minutes,” Grandma Sophia said as she pushed through the swinging door that separated the public part of their shop from the extensive kitchen area in the back. “Ah, bella,” she said, as she spied what her granddaughter had been up to. Sophia’s voice was still softly accented from a childhood spent in the sunflower fields of Tuscany. Sophia was seventy-six, but had the timeless beauty of her namesake, Sophia Loren. She had luminescent skin that always held a natural glow and had remained remarkably free of creases and lines. Well, except for the ones that fanned out from the corners of her soft brown eyes when she smiled, which was often. She kept her hair the same rich brown she’d been born with, always in a pretty French twist, with carefully styled tendrils in front of each ear, accenting the cheekbones of her heart-shaped face. Her “vanity curls” as she called them. She wore little makeup other than eyebrow pencil and a bit of lipstick but didn’t need anything more and never had. Her figure remained trim despite the fact that she’d never tired of sampling the treats the Bellaluna family had baked and sold for more than fifty years in Moonbright, and another generation or two before that in the old country.
Bree could only wish she’d been as fortunate in the gene pool department. She’d taken after her Irish poet father in coloring, her hair somewhere between auburn and brown that never managed to capture the luster of either shade, with hazel eyes that couldn’t quite decide between brown or green, pale skin that only glowed for its absence of any color except for the bane of her existence, the freckles she’d never grown out of. They didn’t just sprinkle her nose in some cute, perky, delightful manner. No, they’d splashed themselves with gay abandon on every part of her body early on, and decided they were there to stay.
Along with her dad’s fair coloring, she’d gotten her mother’s soft curves. Okay, maybe “soft” was just another way of saying “plump.” It wasn’t from oversampling the wares, or from lack of exercise. In fact, Bree was healthy as an ox. A fact she was proud of, and reminded herself to be grateful for, every time she tried to find a blouse that would button over her ample bosom. But was it asking too much to want her spirit animal to be more gazelle than beast of burden?
“I’ve told you not to worry yourself with this, mio dolce.” Sophia, who was a good six inches shorter than Bree’s five-foot-eight, even in sensible pumps, gave Bree a little squeeze around the waist. “Your time will come, bellisima.”
“I’m twenty-eight,” Bree reminded her with a dry smile. She hugged her back and pressed her cheek to the top of her grandmother’s head. “Now would be a good time.”
Bree had understood from a young age that she wouldn’t come into possession of the special gifts the Bellaluna women each had until she’d been in love herself. A true love. Bree had had numerous crushes as a young girl and had been in several decent, but ultimately short-lived relationships. She’d even thought she’d been in love once or twice. But true love? She looked at the cookies and sighed. Apparently not. “But shouldn’t they at least taste good?” she asked her grandmother. “I checked each ingredient.”
Sophia tipped up on the toes of the sensible black pumps she’d worn every day of her adult life, and kissed Bree on the cheek, then immediately wiped off the lipstick print left behind with the handkerchief she kept tucked in her apron pocket. “Looks can be deceiving,” she told her granddaughter. “Taste, too. Bellaluna magic isn’t to be wielded lightly. You can’t go dispensing what you don’t understand yourself.”
Bree nodded as if she understood, but her logical, culinary-school-trained mind warred with her soft, romantic heart. If you added up good-tasting ingredients, the result should taste good. Magic or not.
Sophia untied her apron as she bustled around the corner of the shiny, stainless steel worktable. She was nothing if not a constant bustler. She lifted the neck loop over her head, careful not to muss a single strand of her twist, and hung the apron on one of the rows of antique teaspoons that had been fashioned into hooks. They lined a long breadboard that Bree’s great-grandmother had hung on the wall outside the little office tucked in the back corner of the shop. “I just have to run down to the pharmacy for a moment.”
Bree glanced over, brows furrowing in concern. “Is anything wrong?”
Sophia might look and behave like a woman a good decade younger than her actual age, but Bree kept an eye on her grandmother all the same. Sophia wasn’t getting any younger and, at some point, surely time would start to catch up to her.
Sophia waved away her concern, and Bree sighed in relief, happy that time was not today.
“I promised Janice Powell I’d help her pick out some lipstick and nail color, and some sunscreen for the cruise Hank surprised her with on their tenth anniversary last week. I’ll be back in a blink.” She slipped the tube of lipstick out of the apron pocket and took a moment to refresh the pretty rose color, using the tiny locket-style mirror that she’d clipped onto the lipstick cap before blotting on a tissue that somehow magically appeared from the sleeve of her dress.
“What a wonderful anniversary gift,” Bree said, marveling as she always did at her grandmother’s effortless ability to always look perfectly put together despite the fact they spent a large part of their time in a warm kitchen.
Sophia stepped into the office and snagged her handbag from the corner of the desk. It was the size of a small piece of luggage and dwarfed her slender frame. She never went anywhere without it. Bree wondered if maybe that was the key to her grandmother’s fountain-of-youth fitness. Maybe Bree just needed to get a bigger purse
.
Sophia beamed at her. “Isn’t it, though? Hank even dropped by and picked up a quartet of profiteroles to go with the tickets he surprised her with over dinner. Given this is where they first met, it was a lovely touch.”
Bree smiled even as she gave her grandmother a considering look. She knew the Powells were just one of the many couples who had fallen in love after meeting at Bellaluna’s Bakeshop. Sophia took a certain proprietary joy in their ongoing happiness, as Bree supposed she should, considering she’d played at least a partial role in their love story.
Bree had long thought it was a marvelous thing, being even a small part of one of the most important, magical moments in a person’s life. She wondered what it would be like when it was her turn.
“Excuse me,” came a deep voice from the doorway. “I hope I’m not intruding.”
“I’ll be right out,” Bree said automatically, without turning right away. “So sorry to keep you waiting,” she added, a cheery note in her voice. She looked at her grandmother. “I’ll clean up in here after you get back. Tell Mrs. Powell I said hello.”
But Sophia had already stepped past her granddaughter and was waving for the gentleman to join them in the back. “Come in, come in,” Sophia said. “I’m so glad you could stop by.”
Confused now, Bree turned as a tall man with a shock of dark curls, each one seeming to have a mind of its own, stepped fully into the kitchen. He had a lean build and wore a tweed jacket and pale green button-down, over casual khaki trousers. It wasn’t until he glanced at Bree and nodded that she noticed he wore glasses. Glasses that framed maybe the softest blue eyes she’d ever seen. She’d never thought of blue as a warm color until that moment. In fact, she felt all kinds of warmth when a slow, almost shy smile curved his lips. Which was odd, because he wasn’t the type that typically caught her eye.
“I know you told me to knock at the back door,” he said, that deep voice something of a surprise coming from his otherwise quiet-looking demeanor. Well, except for that hair.
She realized she was curling her fingers into the palm of her hand against the sudden desire she had to walk over and sink them into the riot of black silk and see if those curls of his felt as glossy as they looked. That made no sense at all. She wasn’t normally a fan of wild manes and shy, bespectacled smiles, either.
“But I thought it might be best to introduce myself out front,” he finished.
Bree looked from the man to her grandmother. What was she up to now? Bree groaned silently and hoped this was not her grandmother’s latest setup for a date.
“Nonsense,” Sophia told him. “We’re all shopkeepers here. And cooks, too, I suppose. Our kitchen is your kitchen,” she said with a smile, then turned to Bree. “This is Caleb Dimitriou.”
About the Author
USA Today bestselling author DONNA KAUFFMAN is a RITA finalist who has seen her books reviewed in venues ranging from Kirkus Reviews and Library Journal to Entertainment Weekly and Cosmopolitan. The author of over 50 books, she is also a regular contributor to USA Today’s Happy Ever After blog. She has won the National Readers’ Choice award, a PRISM award, as well as numerous awards from Romantic Times. She lives in the lovely Virginia countryside. You can contact her through her website at www.donnakauffman.com.
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