Chapter 1 — Flour on a Black Suit

Most people lowered their voices when Roman Duca entered a room.

Clare Bennett threw flour at him.

The five-pound sack struck the center of his black jacket and burst with a soft, satisfying thump. White powder rolled across his lapels, dusted his polished shoes, and drifted onto the bakery floor.

Behind him, two men in dark coats stopped breathing.

Roman looked down at himself.

Then he looked at Clare.

“You negotiate aggressively.”

“That was not a negotiation.” Clare planted both hands on the counter. “My dignity is not for rent.”

Twenty minutes earlier, Roman’s aunt Sophia had swept into Bennett’s Bakery, kissed Clare on both cheeks, and announced to a room full of regulars that her nephew had finally found a woman with enough backbone to survive him.

Roman could have corrected her.

Instead, he had watched Clare over the rim of an espresso cup and said, “It would simplify several family complications.”

Then he had offered Clare twenty-five thousand dollars to pretend Sophia was right.

When Clare refused, he increased the amount.

That was when the flour became involved.

She pointed at the door. “Out.”

Roman brushed a white handprint from his sleeve. “You understand most people would consider the offer generous.”

“Most people don’t wake up at three every morning to knead dough in a building with plumbing from the Kennedy administration. I know exactly what twenty-five thousand dollars is worth.”

“And yet you said no.”

“That is generally how no works.”

Something almost amused moved through his dark eyes.

Clare pointed more firmly.

Roman left.

He returned the next morning at seven fifteen.

Clare saw him through the front window and said no before he opened the door.

He bought a black coffee, did not mention the arrangement, and left a normal tip.

On Wednesday, he came back and ordered a croissant. He sat alone by the window while his security men waited across the street.

On Thursday morning, Clare spotted him on the sidewalk and automatically reached beneath the counter for another sack of flour.

Then she noticed the girl behind him.

She was sixteen at most, with thin shoulders swallowed by an oversized charcoal sweater. Dark hair hid half her face. Her eyes were not defiant, Clare decided. They were tired.

Roman stopped several feet from the counter.

“Clare, this is my niece, Lily.”

Lily glanced between them. “So you’re Uncle Roman’s girlfriend.”

“I absolutely am not.”

For the first time, Lily smiled.

It lasted less than a second.

Roman went completely still.

Clare saw it—the sudden fracture in a man who seemed built from expensive stone. He had not brought Lily to help his ridiculous proposal. He had brought her because he was running out of ideas.

Clare put the flour down.

Lily’s mother, Elena, had died seven months earlier after a long illness. Since then, Lily had stopped playing soccer, stopped answering friends, and stopped speaking to anyone unless a question required a response.

Roman had tried specialists, tutors, vacations, and a private school with a tuition bill large enough to frighten Clare’s mortgage lender.

Nothing had reached her.

Clare took an apron from a hook and tossed it across the counter.

“You can stand there looking miserable,” she told Lily, “or you can help frost twelve cinnamon buns.”

Lily caught the apron. “Is there a third option?”

“You can wash sheet pans.”

“I’ll frost.”

Twenty minutes later, Lily had created twelve cinnamon buns that looked as if they had survived a minor natural disaster.

Clare placed the ugliest one in front of Roman.

“Compliments of the pastry chef.”

Roman studied the collapsed mound of icing. “Is it safe?”

“Probably,” Lily said.

Clare added, “If you’re frightened, one of your men can taste it first.”

Lily laughed.

It was small, startled, and completely real.

Roman turned toward the window too quickly. He lifted his coffee, though the cup was empty.

Clare pretended not to notice the brightness in his eyes.

After Lily moved into the kitchen to argue with Clare’s assistant about chocolate ratios, Roman approached the counter.

“She hasn’t done that since Elena died.”

“That does not make me your fake girlfriend.”

“I know.”

“Good.”

He hesitated. Roman Duca looked like a man who never hesitated, which made the moment feel strangely intimate.

“Would you let her come back?”

That was different.

Clare looked through the kitchen doorway. Lily had chocolate on her sleeve and irritation in her voice. For the first time since entering, she looked sixteen instead of ancient.

“Yes,” Clare said. “But your men stay outside during breakfast. You don’t frighten my customers, and you don’t buy the building because you dislike my rules.”

“I don’t intentionally frighten people.”

“A banker left without one shoe on Tuesday.”

Roman’s mouth twitched.

“Stop doing that too.”

Lily returned every morning before school. She learned dough weights, burned two trays of cookies, and discovered that frosting could be used as a weapon if Clare’s assistant criticized her piping.

Roman kept coming too.

At first he stayed by the door. Then the industrial mixer died during the morning rush, and Roman repaired it with a screwdriver Clare had not seen him take from his coat.

He carried fifty-pound flour sacks without complaint and made coffee so terrible that even his security detail refused it.

More importantly, he listened.

When Clare said no money, he stopped offering money.

When she told him Lily needed room to speak instead of another solution, he tried.

One evening, after the last customer left, Lily sat at the worktable rolling scraps of dough between her fingers.

“Do you miss Mom?” she asked.

Roman’s hand tightened around his coffee.

Clare turned toward the oven and gave them the privacy of her back.

“Every day,” Roman said.

Lily began to cry.

Roman did not tell her it would be all right. He did not promise to fix anything.

He pulled out the chair beside her and sat down.

That was the first time Clare wondered whether the terrifying Roman Duca and the awkward uncle in her bakery might be two different men.

The photograph appeared on Saturday.

Clare was searching an old cabinet for holiday ribbon when Lily pulled a faded picture from behind a stack of recipe books.

“Clare?”

Four young women stood in front of Bennett’s Bakery nearly twenty years earlier. One was Clare’s mother.

Another was unmistakably Elena Duca.

On the back, in faded blue ink, someone had written: Summer 2004. The first place I ever felt like myself. — Elena.

Roman sat down hard.

“My sister worked here?”

“I didn’t know her.” Clare began emptying the cabinet. “My mother never mentioned it.”

Behind the recipe books sat an old metal tin.

Inside were employee schedules, stained recipe cards, photographs, and one sealed envelope.

Across the front, in the same handwriting, were the words: For Lily Duca, if she ever comes looking.

Roman did not reach for it.

He looked at his niece. “It’s yours.”

Lily’s hands shook as she opened it.

Elena wrote that the bakery had once been her escape from the Duca name. Clare’s mother had hired her without caring who her family was. For six months, Elena had been allowed to burn croissants, laugh too loudly, and be ordinary.

Then Lily reached the final paragraph.

Her voice broke as she read aloud.

“Roman will try to solve your grief because solving things is how he survives. Don’t let him turn your sadness into another problem to defeat. Make him sit with you. Make him listen. And when you forget who you are, go back to Bennett’s Bakery.”

The bell above the front door chimed.

Sophia Duca stood inside, tears running down her face.

Clare narrowed her eyes. “You knew.”

Sophia admitted she had known Elena once worked there. She had hoped bringing Clare into Roman’s life would lead Lily to the bakery.

“So the fake-girlfriend disaster was your plan?” Clare asked.

Sophia lifted both hands. “I helped circumstances along.”

Clare reached for the flour.

Sophia stepped behind Roman.

“Please don’t,” Roman said.

Lily laughed again, and Clare lowered the bag.

Hours later, after everyone had gone, Clare locked the front door and switched off the display lights.

Something white waited on the floor beneath the mail slot.

It was an envelope from a Boston law firm.

Clare opened it beneath the dim light over the register.

The letter ordered her to cease all contact with Lily Duca.

At the bottom was a name Clare had never heard before.

Grant Mercer.

Lily’s father.