A Wood-Fired Christmas (Mistletoe Kisses)

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

EZRA BLAKE BELTED out lyrics that might have been considered “in tune with the radio” as long as there weren’t any listeners. In an empty pizzeria, there weren’t. With speakers blaring, singing words he knew by heart, he shot his pizza peel into the brick oven and snaked out a hot cheese pizza with mushrooms and meatballs. He barely noticed the aroma of seasoned ground beef and the hiss of cooked semolina as it slid into the box. Ezra sliced it, set the plastic table on the center, and sealed it up. He tucked the box over the oven to stay warm, then retrieved the second pizza.

The jangle of the shop door silenced his singing but left the music untouched. Ezra didn’t look toward whoever had come in. Even if he had a customer, pizzas in an 800-degree wood-fired oven cooked in ninety seconds.

Customers could wait. Burning a pizza would be a crime.

Finally, with the second pie tucked atop the oven, Ezra turned and found himself facing the gray-haired, polo-shirt-wearing shop owner. “Barrett,” Ezra said automatically, not immediately registering the red-headed woman at the owner’s side.

The red-headed young woman.

Seriously, she could have been Barrett’s granddaughter. And she was gorgeous. Sure, he was rich, but did he have to bring his arm candy into the shop?

As Ezra fumbled to turn off the music, Barrett waved him down with a laugh. “Go on doing what you’re doing, just like the master you are.” He turned to the young woman. “As you’ve probably guessed, this is Ezra, who does everything.”

Yeah, everything except dating a woman who could be his granddaughter—which, to be fair, would be impossible on the grounds that Ezra was only twenty-five.

Instead of talking to Barrett and his cute date (the mischievous sort of cute), Ezra wiped down the pizza peel with a dry cloth, then raked inside the wood-fired oven to make sure everything stayed at a good burn. This oven was a marvel, able to retain heat forever, but even so, he chucked in another log and tucked it toward the back.

By the time he’d finished, an actual customer had arrived. Barrett made himself useful by running the customer’s card and handing over those previous two pizzas, probably trying to impress on the young woman that although he was an absentee owner, Barrett Lovelace wasn’t exactly useless. He just chose to be useful somewhere else most of the time.

When the door closed behind the customer, Ezra returned to the counter. “You guys want anything?”

Barrett beamed. “Relax! I just wanted to introduce you to Lacey.” When Ezra glanced at her, Barrett added, “She’ll be the new owner.”

The new owner.

The new owner…of Loveless Pizza?

Ezra shook Lacey’s hand while the pieces fitted together in his mind the same way a pizza gets assembled on the line. Dough, followed by sauce, followed by cheese, followed by toppings, followed by ninety seconds in the oven, followed by boxing up. Words, followed by meaning, followed by implications, followed by…

“You’re selling the place?” Ezra’s mouth was dryer than the sun-dried tomatoes.

Barrett laughed. “I’m getting too old for this. It’s time, you know?”

No, he didn’t know. How could it be time for Barrett to get rid of the place when he’d never done anything with it from the start…? When Ezra had been the only reason the pizzeria survived at all…? When from the beginning, it had been nothing but a hole in the wall…until Ezra turned it into a hole in the wall to be proud of.

Lacey still hadn’t said anything, which was fine because Ezra didn’t want to hear her. He wanted to pepper Barrett with a hundred questions, except the only one that came out was, “What makes it time?”

Barrett shrugged. “I’m an old man, and we both know I’m not doing everything with this place that it could be. Lacey bounced some ideas off me, and I decided it’s her turn.”

Ezra glanced at her again. Short. Red-headed. Clever-eyed. Smiling.

Well, why shouldn’t she be smiling? She was about to own Loveless Pizza.

Was Ezra being fired? Was he about to look for a job with a month to go before Christmas?

Barrett looked unconcerned, which of course he would be because he had all the money in the world. “I’ll get the paperwork done over the next month, but she’ll take over in my place for now, and I figure by New Year’s, we’ll have Lacey all set up and ready to go.”

Five weeks.

Why her? Why had Barrett never said anything about getting out of the business? Except what good would it have done if he had, given that Ezra could never have afforded to buy the place? This job had been the difference between living in his car and living in a rented bedroom, but that tip jar wouldn’t fund taking over the establishment.

Ezra should do something, say something, muster a smile. “Congratulations,” he forced out, only then the phone rang, thank goodness, and he grabbed it so he could take the order. Sixty seconds later, he was staring at a receipt full of writing he couldn’t remember scrawling on it, but indicating three pizzas that needed assembling.

One, two, three. November, December, January.

He looked up to find Lacey sitting on one of exactly two stools. She had her elbows on the counter, as she watched Ezra smear on the tomato sauce.

He said, “Deciding if you’ll fire me?”

She offered a smile. “I figured the only things that got fired here were the pizzas.”

Hah. Ezra said, “Why would you want to buy a pizzeria?” More to the point, why this pizzeria? “Do you work in the restaurant industry?”

She nodded. “A bit.”

Awesome. Loveless Pizza was about to go straight down a ditch.

Well, maybe not. Barrett hadn’t known a single thing about pizza the day he’d opened Loveless, and as far as Ezra knew, he hadn’t learned anything since. Lacey might do exactly the same thing, and after she’d finished patting herself on the back for owning a pizzeria—as if she’d just earned her twentieth merit badge—she’d stop by once a month to impress her friends and make sure the business hadn’t closed.

Barrett returned with one of their paper menus and was talking up a storm to Lacey about the different options and things she could change. Enlightened self interest was the only thing that prevented Ezra from asking if they’d both lost their minds. You don’t come into a successful business and change things on day one before you know anything about it.

Ezra had been here on the literal day one, leaning into the front door with a key that thunked open a reluctant lock, then flipping on the lights to discover every bulb but one was burnt out. He’d explored the whole place and figured it was a sinking ship, but at the same time, he’d needed it to sail, so he’d climbed aboard.

The changes he’d made were all good changes, though. Changes like “changing the light bulbs” and “changing the name on the electric bill to Barrett Lovelace.” And then, slowly, changing their reputation in Hartwell, Maine until people actually liked ordering from them.

Ezra said, almost to himself, “We were voted the number one pizza in the region last year.”

Lacey nodded. “I saw that.”

Barrett and Lacey sat at one of the two tables, their laptops open and Lacey taking notes the whole time. Ezra kept working on orders, and their driver—his sister Shelly—spent two minutes in the shop to pick up the next delivery.

Ezra returned to the oven and the flaming wood. Everything was about to change before Christmas, but the only real change was Lacey.