Page 1 of Love By the Slice

CHAPTER ONE

GREG SAW THE order come in and didn’t bother assembling the pizza.

“I wasn’t born yesterday” was a cliché, so sometimes he said, “I was born at night, but not last night,” and even that seemed like too much effort for this attempted scam. First, the order was for a pie with anchovies and pineapple. Second, although Loveless Pizza was running a coupon special (and everyone today seemed to have used it) this one didn’t bother. Third, Greg knew Mill Pond Road, and there wasn’t a 117 on it. Mill Pond Road topped out at 42.

The delivery name might as well have been Scammy DeFraud, but instead it was Joe Miller—who Greg would bet didn’t exist.

Might as well save Shelly the gas so she didn’t try to deliver a scam pizza to an address in Lala Land. Also, he could save the dough and make a pizza someone would actually eat. So, instead of making the pizza, Greg clicked the trackpad and deleted the order. If by some chance the customer existed, Mr. Joe McScam Miller would call back in outrage, and Greg would comp half the pizza. Greg could be wrong, but really, he was usually right, and everything would work out.

Also, that freed up one more pizza on the countdown timer. Loveless Pizza had a daily limit—the infamous Loveless One Hundred—and once they sold out, they sold out.

(Give or take a few. The owners insisted on making a few extra doughs in case of accidents. Also, if the last person called in for five pizzas, but they were already at ninety-eight, they could accommodate. But that was unnecessarily pedantic. Call it what it was: the Loveless One Hundred. And, to be truly pedantic, not the Love-Lace One Hundred. While “Lovelace Pizza was their actual name, no one called it that. Northern Maine? It was Loveless.)

Shelly returned from a delivery run, cheeks pink, eyes bright. “Behold! I come bearing a New Year’s Eve tip!” She held up a twenty.

Greg flashed her a thumbs up. “Good job!”

She snickered, raking her brown hair back from her forehead so it cascaded over her shoulder. “I delivered five pepperoni pizzas to a house full of drunk guys, and they probably thought they were handing me a single.” She rubbed her gloved hands together while glancing at the warming spot over the wood-fired oven. “Oh, good, nothing else is ready to go. I can un-chill for a minute.”

She stood near the oven. Greg pointed toward the pizzas surrounded by flames. “Say hi to your new delivery. It’ll be ready in forty-five.”

She forced a smile. “Just long enough for my teeth to stop chattering.”

Delivering pizzas in Maine had to be the lousiest job on earth, but Shelly could fit deliveries around her classes. On nights like tonight, the money was good. It might even pay for the wear and tear on her car. Or the gas. Or the exhaustion because for New Year’s Eve, there was no Loveless One Hundred.

The owners, Ezra and Lacey, were out at the Hartwell, Maine “First Night” celebration, selling as many pizzas as their food truck could handle. There’d be concerts, games, and a 5K race beginning at midnight. (Scratch what Greg said about deliveringpizzas in the snow: managing a 5K in the snow had to be the worst job. Imagine standing at the finish line, putting medals around the necks of runners blowing off heat while you couldn’t move at all?) At the same time, Greg and Shelly were holding down the fort here.

The cheese was bubbling, so Greg grabbed the peel and snaked all three pizzas out of the oven, sliding them onto the paper in the cardboard boxes with a grainy-sounding swish. The little plastic table went into the center, and he locked all three boxes tight.

Shelly sighed. “Back into the night I go.”

He glanced at her, and again, her eyes were bright and gorgeous. She carried the faintest air of mischief, as though pizza delivery were a subversive operation. Intelligence sparked in her smile, and she exuded energy. She was a wonder to behold.

She was also his boss’s younger sister. More to the point, his good friend’s younger sister. His protective good friend who barely tolerated Greg’s idiosyncrasies, and therefore would boot Greg out into the night if he ever dared approach her.

Shelly loaded the pizzas into the thermal carrier, looking less intense than Ezra’s iron-cold focus, then turned to Greg. “I’ll be back before midnight, so maybe we can open a can of soda.”

Greg said, “Not champagne?”

She zippered her jacket to the neck. “Drinking in front of a nine hundred degree oven. What could go wrong?”

Greg shrugged. “Nothing’s going to go wrong. I know what I’m doing.”

He readied one more pizza, and then, after he heard Shelly’s car pull away, pulled on his jacket and waited for the motion sensitive lights at the back door.

CHAPTER TWO

GREG WAS TOO cute. That much, Shelly knew for a fact. He was tall brown-haired and doe-eyed and wicked smart, except Ezra made fun of him because he tended to space things off. Greg always figured life would work itself out.

Shelly, on the other hand, knew life never worked itself out. Instead, you worked life out. You worked it out by working. By saving up so you could get a car. By using that car to get to community college. By using that to get a room near the college so you could work full time and take classes full time. And then, eventually, you could help your younger brothers and sisters get out of the same disaster you escaped.

Meanwhile, in Hartwell, Shelly found the work tolerable. Most people shoveled their front steps. Most people who ordered pizzas would tip…not well, but reasonably. Or, at all. Ezra had banned a couple of chronic non-tippers. Tonight were the New Year’s Eve parties, so she’d been really busy between seven and ten. Now, at eleven thirty, not so much. That was fine. Her gas light had blinked on two deliveries ago. Her car was running on fumes, and so was she.

She’d make it through this delivery. Ezra didn’t want her driving all the way home with drunks on the road, though, so she’d stay tonight with him in Hartwell. Gas would happen tomorrow, along with her beginning the one winter term classthat would get her within shooting distance of the credits she needed to graduate in May.

After that: a better job. Although it also meant she’d be leaving Loveless Pizza. And Greg.

Well, maybe she could keep delivering. More money never hurt.

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