“Quinn.” Elina Adamo beckons me over to where she’s standing, the bakery’s phone in hand. “It’s another call for your candy cane ice cream.”

I pull up the app we use to keep track of all our special orders. “How much do they want?”

“Two quarts. They want to pick it up December 20th.”

“Okay, I can swing that.” I make a note while Elina gets back on the phone to confirm the order. “What’s next?” I ask Bree. “The gingerbread men?”

“Just started them. We still need another batch of sugar cookies.”

“Okay, on it.”

The customer area up front is packed with people waiting to order. We have a few small tables and chairs tucked along the walls, where some of our customers are enjoying their treats. Outside, a light snow is falling, drifting down to dust the ground with a soft layer of white.

Downtown is doing it up big for Christmas. All the shops have decorations, and the old-fashioned lamps that line the main street in the shopping district are wrapped up like candy canes.

My sisters and have tiny colored lights framing our front window, which has been painted with a scene of Santa’s kitchen: a big stone fireplace with a roaring fire, and Santa himself sitting at a table nearby, with a cup of cocoa and a plate of cookies, while Mrs. Claus whips up another batch. Rudolph peeks in from one side, hoping for a treat.

Our idea was simply to have something that suited our business; Callahan’s is a bakery, after all. But judging from the endless stream of customers today, many of them families with young children, our artwork is succeeding beyond our expectations.

“We just got a request for a holiday cake,” Elina says. “They’d like to pick it up tomorrow.”

“I’ll do it,” Jade says. We take turns filling the special orders. “But it won’t be ready before the afternoon, so make sure they’re okay with that, please.”

Elina is one of the nonnas, the Adamo grandmothers and great-grandmothers who keep the family running. She’s helping out for the month, but my sisters and I are talking about hiring on a permanent assistant, things have gotten so hectic.

I’m glad we’re busy. It keeps me from thinking about Matteo.

Okay, that’s a lie. Nothing stops me from thinking about him. Whether I’m awake or asleep, he prowls through my mind.

During the day, I’m constantly distracted; at night, I dream. It’s always the same: I’m lying somewhere unfamiliar. Not in my room at Carlotta’s house, or back at the farm before it burned, but wherever it is, I can turn my head and see the stars, a whole dark sky full of them.

And then Matteo comes to me and … takes me. It’s not gentle, any more than his kiss was; it’s wild and rough and overwhelming.

I’m pretty sure the real thing would be a lot like my dreams. It’s not what I’ve ever wanted with a man, not how I ever imagined sex being. I should be frightened, but my body disagrees; I wake up wet and aching, my womb heavy with need.

“Shit,” Bree whispers.

I blink and come back to the moment. Good thing no one’s noticed me standing here with a spoon in my hand, spacing out. “What?” I whisper back.

“It’s closing time and the place is packed.”

She’s right. The front room is as full as it’s been all day. Normally, things taper off a bit between two and three o’clock, but not today.

Since we start so early in the morning, by the time we finish we’ve already put in far more than an eight-hour day. But I know my sister isn’t complaining about our enthusiastic customers; she’s feeling bad that we have to close.

“We can lock up,” I say. “Turn the sign to closed, maybe turn off the lights in the front room. At least that’ll limit it to who’s in here now.”

“We’ll have to,” she says. “We need to talk tonight about adding extended holiday hours and hiring more help.”

“Agreed.” I grab the keys and go around the counter, weaving among the customers until I reach the front door. There’s a man standing outside, right in front of it.

I hesitate, then crack the door open. “I’m sorry, we’re just closing,” I tell him. “But I can sneak you in if you want to get something.”

He doesn’t answer; he just stares at me. His eyes are cold and flat, and an icy finger of fear trails down my spine. “Okay, well, have a good day,” I say, hoping I sound normal.

I’m half afraid he’s going to stop me from shutting the door, but he doesn’t. I lock it, then look up. He’s still there.

Watching me.

Trying to keep my face impassive, I turn and go into the back. “Is Lando picking us up?” I ask Brianna. None of us are allowed to go anywhere alone, not until we’re certain Santiago is no longer a threat.

“No, he’s on a case. Romero’s coming. Why?”

“Creepy guy out front.”

“Inside?” she says sharply.

“Outside. Not that anything would stop him if he wanted to come in.” The building, and our bakery, have a good security system thanks to the Adamos, but it’s not like the glass is bulletproof.

“I’m texting Carlo.” She grabs her purse and digs out her phone. “He said we should err on the side of paranoia if anyone or anything gave us a bad feeling.”

“Right. Good idea.”

I go back to what I’m doing, but in seconds my mind wanders off again. Despite the guy outside, he’s not the man demanding my attention. Only when Romero comes in the back, stamping the snow off his feet, do I rejoin reality.

Firming my jaw, I force myself to focus. I’ve been like this ever since Thanksgiving. Enough.

My mind and body are my own. I refuse to give them over to some obsession with a man I may never see again. A man who lives in the shadows, who shows no sign of ever leaving them.

“Ladies,” Romero says to me and Bree, and then pulls Jade close for a kiss. It’s chaste, not a makeout session, but the way he looks at her fills me with a bittersweet longing.

Most of me is deeply joyful that my sisters have found their forever men, good men who belong to an amazing family. There’s just that one little part of me that’s jealous. Not because I don’t want the best for them, but because I’m afraid I’ll never find the same thing.

Of course, there are scads of Adamo men, and I’ve only met a few of them. Maybe there’s another one out there who’d be right for me.

No sooner do I think it than guilt stabs at me, the overwhelming sense that I’m being disloyal. And that makes me furious. God knows Matteo isn’t out there somewhere mooning over me. He owes me nothing; I owe him nothing. We shared one kiss – thanks to my ridiculous infatuation with him – and that’s all.

Okay, it was a mindblowing kiss. Earth-shattering. A tiny corner of my heart is certain that no other man will ever be able to make me feel the same way.

But you don’t want a man to make you feel this way. Lonely and needy and tormented. Hell no, I don’t. I want what my sisters have.

For all that Jade and Romero fell hard and fast, they’re realists, not head-in-the-clouds dreamers. They’ve got their feet on the ground and they’re building something amazing together. Looking at them, you’d think they’d known each other for years.

If someone had asked me to predict which of my sisters was most likely to fall for someone overnight, I would have guessed Brianna, not Jade. Bree’s headstrong and daring, the sort to grab hold of life with both hands. Still, she and Lando took longer to make things official.

They’re both wild at heart, but what they have together is anything but reckless. They’re a team, rock solid, ready to have each other’s backs no matter what.

Matteo may be an Adamo, but he’s not like his cousins. Romero and Lando make no secret of how they feel about my sisters. Matteo doesn’t love me – and he never will. If I let myself get hung up on him, I’ll be asking for all kinds of heartache and grief.

Bree’s phone beeps. She reads the text and says, “Carlo’s out back. He wants to know about the creepy guy.”