Chapter 1
The Plus-Size Baker Told the Ruthless Mafia Boss No, Then He Canceled a Million-Dollar Wedding When He Learned Who Had Been Trying to Break Her
When Damian Romano walked into Bennett’s Bakery with four men in dark suits and offered enough money to erase every debt Clara Bennett had, nobody expected her to refuse him.
Nobody expected her to slide his check back across the counter.
And absolutely nobody expected the plus-size baker with flour on her cheek to point toward the front door and tell the most feared man in Chicago that he was frightening her customers.
But Clara did.
Thirty days later, Damian would stand beneath a chandelier at his own engagement reception, remove a diamond ring from another woman’s hand, cancel a wedding worth more than Clara’s bakery would earn in twenty years, and walk out beside the woman who had once thrown him out.
By then, however, the question was no longer why Damian Romano had fallen for Clara Bennett.
The real question was what he would do when he discovered that the debt threatening her little bakery had never been an accident.
It had been created deliberately.
And the name behind it belonged to the woman he was supposed to marry.
On the morning Damian Romano first entered Bennett’s Bakery, Clara had been awake since 3:45.
That was normal.
At thirty-two, she had spent nearly a decade measuring her life in batches of dough, oven timers and coffee refills. She knew which customers wanted extra cinnamon, which elderly neighbors pretended they were buying two pies because they were hungry rather than lonely, and which children would quietly stare through the glass display case until she slipped a cookie into a paper bag and pretended it had been an accident.
The bakery occupied a narrow brick storefront in a working-class Chicago neighborhood far enough from downtown that tourists rarely found it and close enough that developers had recently begun sending letters with phrases such as exciting redevelopment opportunity.
Clara hated those letters.
Her grandmother, June Bennett, had opened the bakery forty-one years earlier.
June had taught Clara to make pie crust when Clara was eight, to handle grief when she was fourteen and to survive without apologizing for taking up space by the time she was eighteen.
The last lesson had been the hardest.
Clara had been curvy since adolescence, and strangers had always seemed convinced that her body was an invitation for commentary.
Too big for that dress.
Pretty face, though.
You’d be gorgeous if you lost some weight.
Do you really need dessert?
June had answered the world differently.
“Sweetheart,” she had told Clara once while rolling dough beneath strong, wrinkled hands, “people who are unhappy with themselves will always try to make you smaller. Don’t help them.”
Clara never forgot it.
After June died, the bakery became Clara’s.
So did its aging ovens.
Its leaking roof.
Its customers.
Its memories.
And unfortunately, its debt.
Three months behind on a business loan, Clara had stopped paying herself regularly and quietly canceled plans to replace a failing commercial mixer. She worked fourteen-hour days and still gave away food every Friday morning.
That Friday started no differently.
Mrs. Evelyn Wilson, an eighty-one-year-old widow, sat beside the window with a cup of tea.
A construction crew occupied the corner table.
Two nurses finishing an overnight shift were splitting a blueberry muffin.
Clara slid an apple pie onto a cooling rack when the bell above the door rang.
Four men entered.
Conversations faded one by one.
The men wore dark suits, discreet earpieces and expressions that suggested they did not spend much time waiting for tables.
Then Damian Romano stepped inside.
At thirty-nine, Damian had the kind of presence that altered a room before he spoke. He was tall, broad-shouldered and dressed in a charcoal suit cut so precisely it probably cost more than Clara’s first car. His dark hair was neatly combed back, his expression unreadable, and his gray eyes moved across the bakery with the calm assessment of someone accustomed to knowing where every exit was.
Most Chicago residents had heard his name.
Some called him a businessman.
Others used darker words.
The Romano family owned shipping companies, construction firms, nightclubs, restaurants and enough private property to make the line between legitimate influence and criminal power deliberately difficult to see.
Clara knew exactly who he was.
She also had three customers waiting to pay.
So she kept wrapping a peach pie.
Damian approached the counter.
“I’ve heard your apple pie is the best in Chicago.”
Clara tied the box with string. “That depends on who you ask.”
“I’m asking you.”
“Then yes.”
One of the construction workers nearly choked on his coffee.
Damian’s mouth moved slightly, almost a smile.
“How many do you make?”
“Depends on the day.”
“I’ll buy every apple pie you produce for the next month.”
Now Clara looked at him.
“Every one?”
“Every one.”
“That’s a lot of pie.”
“I can afford pie.”
He removed a folded check from his jacket and placed it on the counter.
Clara glanced down.
Then stared.
The amount was more than her bakery’s annual profit.
Mrs. Wilson actually whispered, “Good Lord.”
Clara looked at Damian again.
“What exactly are you buying?”
“Your production for thirty days.”
“No.”
The bodyguard nearest Damian blinked.
Damian did not.
“Excuse me?”
“You can buy six today.”
“I want all of them.”
“And Mrs. Wilson wants one Friday afternoon because that’s when her daughter used to visit before she moved to Arizona. Danny from the firehouse orders two every Wednesday. The community center gets four on Saturday. And three kids already ordered pies for their grandparents this weekend.”
Damian looked as if Clara had started speaking another language.
“I’m offering you several times what those customers will pay.”
“I noticed.”
“So name your price.”
Clara pushed the check toward him.
“They aren’t for sale.”
A bodyguard stepped closer.
“Do you understand who you’re talking to?”
Clara looked past him.
One of her regular customers had quietly taken his daughter’s hand.
Fear had entered the bakery.
That changed Clara’s expression.
She removed her apron gloves, folded her flour-covered arms and looked directly at Damian.
“I know exactly who I’m talking to.”
The room became silent.
“And these people were here first. No amount of money can buy what isn’t for sale, Mr. Romano.”
His eyes narrowed.
Clara pointed toward his men.
“Also, your friends are frightening my customers.”
One guard looked offended.
Clara continued, “So either they wait outside or all of you leave.”
Someone behind Damian inhaled sharply.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
People later disagreed about what they saw in Damian’s face.
Anger.
Surprise.
Amusement.
What Clara saw was confusion.
Not because she had rejected his money.
Because she had not been afraid.
Then Damian picked up the check.
“Interesting.”
“It’s pie.”
“No.” His gaze remained on her. “It isn’t.”
He turned and walked out.
His men followed.
The black SUVs disappeared down the street.
Only after they were gone did the bakery seem to breathe again.
Mrs. Wilson came to the counter.
“Clara Bennett.”
May you like
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Have you completely lost your mind?”
