Delivery Girl (Minnesota Ice #1) Read online

  DELIVERY GIRL

  LILY KATE

  Delivery Girl

  Copyright: Lily Kate

  ISBN: XXXX

  Published: January 20st, 2017

  Kindle Edition

  The right of Lily Kate to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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  SYNOPSIS

  Good things come in extra-large, smoking hot packages.

  Things like…pizza.

  Things like the very pizzas I deliver for my dad’s restaurant, Peretti’s Pizza. It’s a temporary job, something to pay the bills until I graduate from school, but it does the trick. In fact, it’s working quite well until Ryan Pierce of the Minnesota Stars decides to order a pizza from me and life as I know it turns upside down.

  You see, Ryan Pierce doesn’t just open his front door, he opens it buck naked. And suddenly, I’m not the one boasting the biggest, hottest package in the room. However, it’s what happens next that gives me butterflies whenever my phone beeps. Ryan starts to call, and then text, and then fifteen pizza deliveries and one fantastic night later, we’re friends with benefits.

  When he asks me to be his fake girlfriend at his brother’s wedding, I’m happy to help. But the longer we pretend, the more I worry that this is one package I might not be able to handle.

  To my other half.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Scarlett Rutgers for the fabulous cover design.

  Caitlin for her fantastic edits.

  Virginia for her sharp proofreading eyes.

  Next Step PR & Kiki for helping to spread the word.

  All of you, readers—beta readers, ARC readers, bloggers, and the entire book community—each and every one of you are fabulous!

  And, of course, to the very best of friends… you know who you are!

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Contents

  DELIVERY GIRL

  SYNOPSIS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  EPILOGUE

  THE END

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  CHAPTER 1

  Andi

  “I need one order of a smiley face pie,” my dad shouts. He’s known around town as Papa Peretti, and he runs our family-style pizza joint. “Let’s go, Angela. Don’t keep the happy couple waiting. Spit out your gum and get to work.”

  I raise my eyebrows at Angela, who rolls her eyes back. As always, it’s a hectic work environment here at Peretti’s Pizza. It’s a family-run business and, unfortunately, I’m part of the family.

  Angela’s also part of the family. She’s my cousin, and we’ve developed a sort of silent language with our eye rolls to communicate. It’s necessary with a dad like Papa Peretti.

  “I call delivery on this one.” I raise my hands in a truce. “You’re cooking, Ang.”

  Angela spits her gum into the trashcan, scrubs her hands clean, and dives into fresh dough. “Smiley face pizza? Who orders a smiley face pizza?”

  Papa Peretti puts a hand on his hip. “Some guy who probably wants to surprise his girlfriend, so make it extra romantic, please.”

  Angela sets to work arranging a combination of sausage, pepperoni, and basil into a face. Angela is short, stout, and brash. If they held auditions for a remake of Jersey Shore, she’d be first in line.

  Under most circumstances, her orange-ish skin tone would be alarming, but I happen to know she spray tans twice a week, which explains the glow. Then there’s her hair—or more accurately, her helmet. Her hair has enough product in it to set this whole place on fire and is hard as a rock.

  “There,” Angela says as she surveys the grinning pizza. She looks at me and winks. “You think that’ll get a girl turned on, Andi?”

  “Angela, watch your mouth,” my dad says. “This is a family-run business, and I have zero tolerance for that sort of talk.”

  I have no desire to listen to an argument in which my dad and Angela argue about whether or not she’s allowed to say turned on at the office, so I grab the pizza and hightail it out of there as fast as my legs will go.

  I plug in the address listed on the receipt and climb into the old Toyota Camry my dad donated as the company car ten years ago. It’s basically my own personal vehicle, but my dad pays the insurance, so he makes sure I know it’s a business car first. It’s parked in the alley out back, which is a moderately safe place for it.

  Our little shop is located in an old, crumbling brick building on a block that averages three robberies a week, but the Peretti family is not terrified by this alarming statistic. In fact, it doesn’t faze us at all because we’ve started leaving an extra pizza on our back steps most nights. This creates goodwill between us and the criminals, and because of this, we haven’t been robbed once.

  As I wait for the directions to load, I peek under the lid and survey the smiling marinara face. The pepperoni eyeball is winking at me, and I hate to admit that this is the most action I’ve seen in months.

  I wink back anyway.

  Finally, the lovely lady inside the GPS points me in the direction of Los Feliz, an expensive neighborhood on the outskirts of Los Angeles. For the hundredth time, I debate switching the voice to something more reasonable than a clipped English accent, but I leave it be. My mom died a few years ago, and my dad is so lonely that I suspect he likes the soothing sound of this woman’s fancy voice.

  I drive like a madwoman. It’s my last delivery of the night, and I have a show after this. The sooner I finish delivering this pizza, the sooner I can get to the comedy club.

  My whol
e life, I’ve wanted to become a comedienne, a lady comic—it sounds glamorous, doesn’t it? Well, let me assure you, it’s not. I have yet to see a whiff of success, which means I play seedy bars, late-night shows, and extra parts in movies that will never see the silver screen.

  Forty minutes later, I’ve crossed the hellhole known as the 405. I park at the curb of the address listed on my GPS. Then I double-check the numbers…and I check one more time, because this can’t be right.

  This house is a freaking mansion. Nobody in a freaking mansion orders from Peretti’s Pizza. We’re good at what we do, don’t get me wrong—my family has been in the pizza industry ever since great-grandpa Peretti came across the pond from Sicily—but we do basic pizzas, none of that fancy Santa Monica shit with salad and avocado and kale on top.

  I pull out my phone and call Angela. “Hey, can you read me the address again?”

  She rattles it off. “Are you lost?”

  “No, that’s what I have. I’m here. I just parked.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “This place is huge. I don’t even know how to find the doorbell.”

  “Do me a favor: if the guy’s hot, can you get me his number?” She chomps her gum for a bit longer, and my dad yells at her in the background to spit it out. “Scratch that—if he’s rich and ugly, I’ll still take his number.”

  “He probably ordered this pizza to impress a girl, Ang. I’m sure he’s taken.” I look up at the ginormous house. “And if he’s not taken, I saw him first.”

  Angela screeches a retort, but I hang up before she finishes. I grab the pie and check on the cute little smiley face. The pizza really is adorable, except somehow, he lost his smile. Now the poor guy looks disgruntled. I push the row of pepperonis back into a grin with my finger.

  “Stay,” I instruct, feeling like an idiot. “Good boy.”

  The pizza doesn’t respond, but I’m pretty sure we understand each other loud and clear.

  CHAPTER 2

  Andi

  Navigating my way to the mansion’s front door feels like I’m stumbling through an African safari. Then again, it might just be me. You see, I’m not exactly the world’s best athlete, but I do have a very good excuse for why that is: my boobs shrink when I exercise.

  I have a decent amount of boobage, but not a whole lot extra, and I cry a little bit inside when I think about them shrinking. It’s a gradual thing, sort of how Hawaii is disappearing into the ocean. One day, they’ll be poof, gone.

  This is why I feel the best exercise is accomplished in the bedroom—or at the ice cream parlor. I figure raising a spoon to my mouth burns the same number of calories as the elliptical machine in some parallel universe.

  Finally, I reach the front door. I raise a hand to knock, but a movement through the window catches my eye, and I hesitate. It’s a good thing I do because not one second later, the words begin—well, not so much words as noises…noises of…pleasure, and…a squeal?

  It all becomes clear to me when a female voice yells, “Harder, baby, yes!”

  I admit, I’m a little curious to see this couple, the one who couldn’t wait to have sex until after their pizza arrived. It’s not that I’d turn down sex for pizza, but if a pizza was on its way, I could probably hold off for twenty minutes.

  Unfortunately, my opinion doesn’t matter here, and I’m put in a strange spot.

  Do I knock on the door and interrupt their incredibly loud lovemaking?

  Do I set the pizza outside and leave a note with my PayPal information?

  Should I just walk right in, set the pizza down, and applaud them on their performance?

  So many options, and none of them sound good. Instead of making a decision, I hunker down in some bushes and call Angela; she’ll know what to do. She always has answers, even if they’re the wrong ones.

  “Ang, I need help,” I whisper. “I’m standing outside his front door.”

  “Okay, so knock.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not? That’s your job.” Angela blows a loud, snappy bubble. “That pizza’s gotta be cold by now. Just deliver it and get out of there—I don’t need his number that bad.”

  “You don’t understand, I can’t. They’re having sex. In the living room. Which has floor-to-ceiling windows and open shades. It’s loud, and…creative.”

  “Well don’t interrupt them, that’s bad for business.”

  “I don’t think they’re stopping any time soon.”

  “Well, is he hot?”

  “I’m not watching.” I pause. “Angela, I am not watching.”

  “What sort of sex are they having?”

  “What are you talking about? You’re crazy.”

  “You know, what’s it like? Dry humping? The real deal? Are they into costumes and kinky shit? I bet you there’s a whip involved.”

  “I don’t know, Ang. I’m just trying to deliver a pizza.”

  “Well, your dad is yelling at me to get off the phone. If I were you, I’d pound on the door and ask to join.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “No, but I knew it’d make you uncomfortable to picture that. Okay, bye.”

  She hangs up. I’m just as confused about what to do with the pizza as I was five minutes ago, so I just wait patiently in the bushes. My knees crack like popcorn, and I’m afraid this active couple is going to find me paralyzed in their front bushes holding a pizza. My fear is so strong that I finally step out of the bushes and march forward to deliver the goods. It is my job, after all.

  I luck out—the session has now come to an end, although whether that’s a pun or not, I can’t say. I tried not to listen too closely.

  Raising a hand, I knock on the door before the excitable couple begins round two. I’m a little bit angry and extremely frustrated; this delivery is a reminder of all the fun things I’m missing out on with my latest dry spell. At this point, a man could cough in my direction and I’d probably be halfway to an orgasm.

  I brush a few stray leaves and branches out of my hair, straighten my clothes, perfect the smiley, and pound on the door. Now that the moans have stopped, this area is actually quite peaceful. I think I hear an owl hooting a few trees over, and I wonder if the birds enjoyed the show too.

  I knock again, and before I can draw my hand away, the door whips open and I topple through. This is a problem because I don’t have time to catch myself before stumbling headfirst into a half-naked man. I reach out, my hand clapping against his bare chest.

  “I’m really sorry,” I say, pulling back. My face must look horrified. “I just high-fived your nipple, and I apologize.”

  This isn’t the worst of it.

  As I step back, my cheeks burning like a nightlight, I discover that I know the man standing before me. I don’t know him personally, nor do I know him professionally. However, I do know him intimately because he’s been in a few of the magazines I stash in my nightstand.

  His name is Ryan, and he’s not just any old Ryan. He’s the Ryan Pierce, hockey star extraordinaire for the Minnesota Stars. He’s young, attractive, and new to the scene; the hockey universe is predicting big things for him in the upcoming years.

  Furthermore, his face messes with my girl regions. He’s not handsome, he’s hot—a shaggy hot mess of dark hair, dark eyes, and a smile that is now quirking up in my direction.

  “No need to apologize,” he says carefully. “I didn’t mind, but I’m sorry to have startled you.”

  Next, I make the mistake of looking down. Another wave of horror and odd fascination washes over me as I blurt out, “Where are your pants?”

  Most of the time I wish I had a filter, and this is one of those times. Sadly, I do not—a trait I inherited from Papa Peretti.

  He looks down, his gorgeous torso on display. Around his waist hangs a towel, and I can’t think straight. My mind jumps straight to all the dirty thoughts it can muster. Honestly, he is asking for it.

  What man answers the door with a towel around
his waist? With his body, it’s a sin for him to do that to my heart. I could die. I mean, it’s not like I’m an exerciser, for reasons I’ve already covered.

  “Sorry, I just got out of the shower,” he says. “Is that my pizza?”

  “Smiley face, extra cheese,” I say. “Boner is served.” I don’t know why I say this. It makes him smile, but it makes me want to die. “I meant dinner. Goodbye.”

  I shove the box into his hands and turn around. For once, I run. I fly down that path like my life depends on it. Only when I reach Papa Peretti’s car do I realize I haven’t been paid.

  I sigh, and then I climb into my car. I’m late for my show, I owe my dad money, and I just hid in the bushes for what felt like an hour. The only positive in all of this will be the look on Angela’s face when I tell her the story.

  CHAPTER 3

  Ryan

  Damn. I’m standing here in a towel, holding a stack of bills and watching the most adorable delivery girl run away without her money. I can’t exactly go chasing after her because, well, I’m wearing a towel and nothing else.

  “Ry, where’s the pizza?” my brother calls from the living room. “We’re hungry. Get your ass in here.”

  As I turn to head back inside, the sound of a car starting on the street stops me in my tracks. That can’t be her car. It hardly sounds like a motor vehicle at all; it’s more like a fucking tractor with a digestion problem.