“Excited to be off for winter break?” Angelo helped Nicholas reconnect the engine to the coal car.
“Yep. Dad says we’re gonna go to the Field Museum next week. You wanna come with us?”
Angelo ruffled Nicholas’s hair. “I’d love that, kiddo.” The boy smiled.
Nicholas was more like Alessia and in many ways like Angelo. He was a quiet, thoughtful boy. Still waters ran deep in him, just like Angelo. Millie, on the other hand, was a whirling dervish of joy and energy, like rest of the Vertuccis. Right now she was performing pirouettes in the kitchen, showing off her moves to her grandparents, who watched with adoration and clapped when she finished.
“Angelo dear, your kitchen is a mess,” his mother chided. She tutted and fretted over the counters where he’d prepped the food. He’d only just put everything on the stove and in the oven when the first knock at the door came. He hadn’t had a chance to clean up, and of course his mother thought he’d left the mess on purpose.
He chuckled and let out a sigh. “Aye, mama,” he said, his American accent slipping briefly into Italian. “Let it go. Everything is in the oven.” He groaned and rolled his eyes, making his father laugh.
His father pulled Francesca away from the ovens and kissed her soundly to distract her. Something sharp pinched in Angelo’s chest. He longed for that… to have a woman to hold, someone to kiss and call his own.
He was, once again, alone this time of year. In past years he’d spent the holidays with his two best friends and hadn’t felt so alone. Now one was married with a baby, and the other was planning to propose on Christmas Day to his own woman. Which left Angelo to face the holidays with his family, and no other single men for his mother to tease about getting married. Just him.
Jennifer, his most recent ex, had been an amazing woman. He’d enjoyed being with her, but they’d agreed that the spark they’d been searching for hadn’t been there for either of them. So here he was, feeling foolish he was spending another Christmas without someone.
It wasn’t that he wanted a woman to complete his life or ease his need for companionship. He had a bone-deep need to give his heart, his joy, his everything to another person. Heachedto love someone. His Nonna, his mother’s mother, had christened him a giver when he was a young child. She’d cupped his face in her wrinkled hands, and her smile lit up the room as she’d whispered the words that would change his life forever.
“Angelo, you are a giver. You give love, and when you cannot give love you must give food. Come. You will learn to cook with me.”
He’d spent every summer in Italy at his grandmother’s side in the sun-drenched city of Ortigia, learning his craft for ten straight years. She’d passed just before he finished culinary school, but knew she would have been proud of him.
Now he owned his own restaurant, The Italian Village. His father’s younger brother, Uncle Luigi, was one of the cooks, and the restaurant had become a smashing success, especially with tourists.
Nonna’s words still ran deeper than his chest. “You are a giver. You give love…”
So why couldn’t he find the right woman to give that love to? He had watched his best friends, Jared and Thad, find women who were their very worlds in the last few years. But not him.
His mother poked him in the ribs. “Angelo, smile. It’s Christmas!” Francesca watched Millie prance about the room, performing part of her ballet. “Why can’t you give me some grandbabies?”
Angelo let out a sigh.Grandbabies. Every year.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want any, but it had to be with the right woman at the right time. Dante used to tease him about yearning for a soulmate. The sad thing was that his brother was right. He wanted someone he could build a life with, a woman who truly was the mate of his soul. Maybe that made him old-fashioned, or naive, but that’s what he wanted. To see someone from across a room and feel the strings of fate pull at him, that flash of lightning beneath his skin, to know that his heart was destined to belong to that woman.
That didn’t happen in real life. Real love was built on solid foundations of friendship and respect. But he wanted passion too and felt greedy for wanting all three things at once right away.
His two best friends had found all three. Why not him?
Jared, his workaholic lawyer friend, had stumbled on his own soulmate, quite literally, in his bed. His younger brother had been throwing a Halloween party, and Felicity, dressed in a princess gown, had passed out in his room. He’d been too tired and crashed in bed beside her. She’d woke up with no idea who Jared was, and he’d assured her nothing had happened between them. But he’d asked her out and just like that, they’d started falling in love. That had been it for Jared’s single life.
Angelo’s other best friend, Thad Worthington, was a real estate mogul who—had it not been for Jared daring him to ask out a baristawithoutthe intention of just sleeping with her—might have missed out on Veronica, a young widow with a four-year-old daughter who’d captured his heart. Now Thad was in Disney World for the holidays, filled with hope and a ring in his pocket, planning to make his new family official.
Angelo was happy for them, of course, but sometimes that happiness felt bittersweet. He wanted what they had—the joy of belonging to someone the way they did. He had so much love to give, but no one to give it to.
“Angelo.” His mother’s voice drew him back into the kitchen. She was hovering near his double ovens, and he could practically feel his eye start to twitch.
He gently steered her away from the ovens when she tried to open one. “Yeah, mom?”
“This year you promised me you’d find a nice girl and settle down,” she reminded him. “And yet I see no pretty girl in this kitchen for you to cook for. No woman helping to decorate your home or make you smile.”
She searched his face as though looking for the same answers he sought, making his stomach pitch and his skin heat with embarrassment. He desperately tried to divert her focus from his face to his words, and he said the first thing he could think of…which was absolutely the wrong thing to say.
“Perhaps I’ve met a nice girl.”
He hadn’t of course, that was a lie. Why the heck had he just said that? His mother’s face lit up and he knew it was a mistake.
“Oh Angelo… really? Why haven’t I met her yet?” Francesca asked.
