Layla's Love: The Ivyhurst Series, #2

By Ava Bleu

Romance isn't for the faint of heart, and it's not for Layla Smith, either.

Who's got time for romance when there's Layla's Gourmet Pizza Shop, a charming restaurant that won't run itself?

And then there's the growing pressure from the newly developed New Ivyhurst community members, determined to make her declare loyalty and allegiance to the new town over the old.

Layla just wants to make pizza.

And … she might just want to sample a taste of Raymond; handsome businessman and Wednesday night customer, Mr. Double Cheese, himself. Raymond; tastier than all the toppings of her very best pizzas put together.

With loyal workers Darryl and Lucas pressuring her to live her best life, and Layla just trying to live one day to the next, all she knows for sure is that love might just be the most dangerous thing of all.

So it's a darn shame it's creeping up on her all the same.

Layla's Love is approximately 25K words; it's a sweet, standalone, HEA novella. It can be read on its own but it's much better read in order with the series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Persuasion Media, LLC
• Release date: Aug 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393212874

Book preview

Layla’s Love

(The Ivyhurst Series Book 2)

By

Ava Bleu

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Layla’s Love (The Ivyhurst Series Book 2)

Copyright @ 2019 by Ava Bleu

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written consent of the author or Persuasion Media, LLC except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

Cover Art by Briana Jacobs

Persuasion Media, LLC

P.O. Box 625

Blacklick, OH 43004

United States of America

Acknowledgement

––––––––

Throughout neighborhoods across the country there’s been a rise in redevelopment and growth. Often, the missing piece in the changing landscape is the inclusion of the communities, themselves, in the planning and conversations. All residents in a community feel the pain when things are at their worst. They all pay taxes for infrastructure. They often express their concerns in community organizations and with local city officials. So when the happy day comes when redevelopment and growth is on the horizon, they should get to experience the joy of that, as well. 

I try very hard not to get on a soapbox in my fiction so please forgive me if I slip up here or there. Hopefully, through the lives and loves of the people of Ivyhurst I can put a human face on the issue. Beauty exists if we look for it. And value is—and always will be—with the people who reside in a community they love. This series is for those people, wherever they may be.

That’s all I got. Hope you enjoy.

Contents

Ava Bleu

Acknowledgement

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Sneak Peek

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Chapter One

Romance isn’t for the faint of heart.

This applies to reading it, dreaming about it, or living it in real life, because when you get sucked into the whole romance notion, you start to see it everywhere. Suddenly, the whole world becomes a chapter in a romance novel, and you don’t know if you’re the heroine or destined to be the unfortunate side-kick, perpetually unlucky in love.

I don’t have a particular desire to engage in a life where romance matters; I’m too busy making pizza.

I’m the proud owner of Layla’s Gourmet Pizza, and I make the best pizza in Ohio. It’s hard work standing on my feet hours at a time, making dough by hand, and chopping produce like a line cook in a produce-chopping contest every single day. No days off. From 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. or 12 a.m., I’m in my shop, making the best damned pizza south of Lake Erie.

I never get an hour off, let alone a day. And despite my walking-exhaustion syndrome, I have to be cheerful all the time because no one wants to eat hand-made artisan pizza prepared by a cranky, short, curvy, brown-skinned woman, no matter how talented she is.

Back to the whole romance bit, how it hit me and what it did to my life ...

I didn’t believe in romance... or maybe that’s what I was telling myself because I wasn’t getting any. It could be that my aversion to romance was a by-product of my life.  After all, any thinking, modern African American woman who owns a pizza shop has to be pragmatic just to get in the game. I had to toss dreams out the window and create a strategic plan to launch and grow my business. That plan leaves me with just enough time every day to shower, pull jeans over my ample apple-bottom and make sure my boobie tips are pointing due north in my DD cup bra. I have barely enough time to put a flat iron bump in my collarbone length black hair, a swipe of mulberry blush on my medium brown cheeks to take away the gray-tone of dead tired, and add a smudge of lip stain on my full lips to simulate health and vigor. I don’t even bother with perfume. What’s the point when by 9:30 a.m., daily, I smell like garlic and sundried tomatoes?

That’s me in a nutshell. No room for dreams of fuzzy, cuddly stuff. Plenty of room for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and even chubbier thighs, if I’m not careful.

One morning I was in the kitchen of my restaurant reading a letter from the Ivyhurst Community Association for the fifth time and feeling that blood pressure thingy happening. The association was brainstorming ways to quickly rid the community of the residents in the remaining part of the old neighborhood, and wanted all business owners to show a good faith effort toward that end. At the bottom of the form letter, an asterisk and handwritten note...

*We missed you at the last meeting. That makes the second in a row. The other new owners and residents would love to see your smiling face at the meeting. We look forward to seeing you Saturday!

Humph, not even a veiled invitation. It was like they were telling me I had to show up.

Ivyhurst was the latest neighborhood to be gentrified, and the Community Association wanted buy-in from all the retailers. This wasn’t a level of commitment I was ready to give, even though they’d been at me with growing intensity over the last couple of months. I ripped the letter in two and left it on top of the stack of previous letters I had also ignored. I didn’t want them, but for some reason I was afraid to throw them away. I had taken the do-nothing strategy. It was working so far.

Twisted Margherita! I called, signaling the name of the pizza I picked up, heading out of the kitchen to the counter area and the newlywed couple that ordered that same pizza every week, always arriving hand-in-hand to pick it up together. They told me they always shared my artisan creation at home, with soft music piping through their expensive modern condo, along with a bottle of Merlot and a heavy dose of sappy, smarmy romance.

There she is! said the husband on seeing me. Layla, it’s not the same when you’re not here, you know. It doesn’t even taste as good when you’re not here to give it to us.

It was flattering, and I felt a twinge of guilt that they didn’t realize I was always there. Sometimes I just couldn’t stomach their sappy love demonstrations, so I sent Darryl, my sous chef, or Lucas, my accountant and backup manager, out to deliver the goods with some lie about me being indisposed or having contracted bubonic plague. Any story worked so long as it got those  two out of my shop. If I couldn’t have love, I really didn’t want to have to gush over theirs. Yes, kind of mean, but hey, exhaustion makes one cranky.

You’re so sweet, I said, instead. You better watch him, I winked at the missus. I might have to snatch him up!

Their gales of laughter rang as I rang them up as fast as I possibly could. I sighed with relief when they left.

From across the room I could feel Darryl’s smirk as he cleared a small table. My restaurant was not really big enough for too many people to sit and eat but it was beautiful, with flowering plants in the corners and white tablecloths and a candle with a tiny