Chapter One
Roly
“Roly, heads up!”
I turn and pluck the flying pizza box out of the air. Evie, my lavender-haired, rockabilly-styled bestie, is popping them up as fast as I can fill them with her legendary gourmet pizzas.
It’s 10:30 in the morning, and we’re racing to finish the preorders. There’s already a line for dine-in, and wait times for a seat are starting to get ridiculous.
“Thank god y’all are opening up a second shop,” I say as I slide two more pizzas into the hot ovens.
“Don’t I know it. I’m glad we’re busy, but we need more bodies,” she says, sounding a bit more stressed than usual as she washes her hands. They’re about to lose their best employee to the post-college world, and finding a good replacement is taking longer than they’d like.
Evie goes back to the prep station with my cousin Scout, whose tall, lanky frame and lesbian-chic look contrasts with Evie’s curvy, femme style. They’ve been married a little under a year, and I smile as I watch them work together, perfectly in sync, making the pies as fast as they can while sneaking glances and leaning in to whisper sweet things to each other.
That doesn’t mean my cousin hasn’t been paying attention. “You still haven’t answered my question, Roly. Evie and I have five bucks on whether or not you got in before two this morning.”
I laugh while handing off the second-to-last preorder. “Hell, two is when I finally met up with that bear who’d been prowling on me.”
“Roly!” they both exclaim in unison. Evie grumbles about losing the bet, and Scout leans down and whispers something about there being more than one way to pay it off.
I hold up my hands, willing for them to stop with the schmoop. “First of all, euww, my virgin ears—” To which they both laugh a little too hard. “—and second, I had to do the taxes for the gym.”
Scout arches one of her acrobatic eyebrows. “Why don’t you hire someone to do that?”
“I dunno, the same reason you haven’t hired more people here?” I tease back.
Honestly, it’s no hardship for me to help out. Before my cousin Nick and I went in on the gym together, I worked here full-time as Evie’s right-hand guy, and sometimes I take a shift just to be able to hang out with them.
Evie squints at me. “Still, you look fresh as a daisy. Aren’t you tired?”
Exhausted, actually, buttoo busyis kind of my sweet spot. Also, hello, concealer.
“Evie, love, you know I don’t have time to be tired. Besides, you and Scout have been here since o’dark thirty and haven’t even taken a bathroom break. We’re nearly done with the last preorder—go put some food in your face before we open the dine-in.”
Evie makes a protesting sound, but Scout is already grabbing her elbow and herding her toward the door as I shout out, “Bring me coffee or suffer the consequences!”
They laugh, and I feel a twinge of jealousy when Scout snakes her long arm across Evie’s shoulders and Evie looks up at her with those beautiful amber eyes, their love for each other undeniable.
I remind myself of my strict policy against catching feelings and refocus on the task at hand, grateful for a few seconds of quiet before we open the doors to the growing line of people outside. The bell above the door sounds out a few minutes later, and a deep voice registers. “Fifteen pizzas for Treadway.”
“Working on that right now, be there in a flash. Fresh out of the oven,” I call out over my shoulder.
I quickly put the last three pizzas into their boxes and carry them over to the counter. “Need help carrying these out to your car, hon?”
Silence.
I finish fiddling with the edge of the pizza box to make sure that it closes properly, and look up, curious.
Hotdamn. Bear alert, DEFCON 1.
I’m confronted with a deliciously brawny chest, dark hair sprouting from the top of a sharp, patterned button-down. My eyes drift up and a serious, and seriously gorgeous, face fills my vision, his thick brunet hair pushed up and back at a stylish angle. Think Kyle Andrew, only chubbier, a whole lot beard-ier, and inexplicably angrier.
Be still, my heart.
He hasn’t answered, so I take a chance and flirt a little, hoping to give him a reason to smile. “Oh, well, I guessnot. Big, sexy guy like you? Bet you could handle fifteen pizzas all by yourself.”
His face turns a bright red, and he steps back. “What thefuckdo you mean by that?” he asks, his voice low and dangerous.
