On a Roll by Beth Bolden (free ebook novel .txt) 📗

person. And that person poked his head out of the front window just as Gabriel arrived.

The opening salvo Gabriel had been preparing as he stormed over died in his throat.

The guy was young. Maybe even younger than Gabriel. And he was goddamn adorable.

Dark blond hair, shaggy and in need of a trim fell over one grayish-blue eye. The guy’s nose wrinkled, his forehead crinkling cutely as he regarded Gabriel.

“I’m afraid we’re not open yet,” the guy said. “But if you’re hungry, I’m sure I can find you something.”

He was also nice.

Gabriel did not want him to be nice. He wanted him to be rude and bossy and just as fucking pissed off as Gabriel was.

“Hi,” he said shortly. “I’m good, thanks. But you might want to consider changing the name of your truck.”

“The name?”

Gabriel had never found confusion on any single creature to be so goddamn appealing. Somehow this guy managed it. While also, simultaneously, being an enormous pain in Gabriel’s ass.

“Yes,” Gabriel said, none-too-patiently. “The name. You know, the exact name that you copied from me.”

That last part was technically not true. They’d both probably done their research off-season, and figured they were in the clear. But Gabriel had a feeling that this guy was soft (and new, if he was going by the look of the brand-new truck and the fact that Gabe had never seen him around before), and he could get under his skin and get him to change his name more easily if he came out swinging.

“I didn’t copy my truck’s name from anyone,” the guy said primly. But with an undertone of steel that belied all that adorable confusion.

Had Gabriel read him wrong? He decided he didn’t care, and forged ahead, recklessly.

“Yet, somehow we have the exact same name,” Gabriel said, pointing across the worn grassy field to his own truck, slightly less shiny in the morning sunlight but still his.

“Oh, look at that,” the guy said. Unconcerned. “Well, I hope there won’t be any confusion.”

“There won’t be,” Gabriel said between clenched teeth, “because you’ll be changing your truck’s name. Tomorrow.”

“Really?” The guy looked skeptical. “I really don’t have plans to change it, especially since this is the first day.”

“It’s your first day?” Gabriel said. Not that it hadn’t been obvious from the pristine truck. There wasn’t even any mud on the tires, for god’s sake.

The man’s eyes narrowed. “You know it’s my first day, which is why you’re over here, trying to bully me into changing my name. Well, I won’t. So you might as well save your breath.”

Gabriel flinched, like he’d just been punched in the face. He had not expected that. Not from the guy who was still smiling at him so sweetly.

“This isn’t over,” Gabriel said.

“I expected that it wasn’t,” the guy said firmly. “I’m not exactly thrilled either, I’ll have you know. First day out, and already someone making trouble for me.”

“Making . . .” Gabriel wondered when he’d lost control of the conversation. Maybe . . . maybe he’d never been in charge of it in the first place. He’d just thought he was.

“Making trouble,” the guy confirmed with a sharp nod. “And no, I appreciate your concern, and I share it, but I won’t be changing my name. Goodbye.”

And before Gabriel could argue, the blond man had turned around, clearly done with the conversation, and with him.

That stung.

However, Gabriel had no intention of taking any of it lying down.

———

The next time he ran into the blond guy with the identical name, it was a week later, and Gabriel had discovered a few things about the copycat.

1) He was not only new to the food truck scene, he was new to Los Angeles. Nobody Gabriel talked to had ever heard of him before. And thanks to being friends with Tony and his brother, Wyatt, Gabriel knew or knew of a whole lot of people.

2) The wrong version of On a Roll already had five reviews on Yelp, and a 4.9 rating.

3) One person had already confused the two trucks, because one of those reviews was his.

4) The guy’s name was Sean Cooper.

5) Gabriel had already spent more time obsessing about Sean than he was willing to admit to anyone. He’d found the copycat’s Twitter account and Instagram and had proceeded to follow both, only to tweet himself that if you wanted the real On a Roll in LA, you had to come see him.

Sean, annoyingly, had not responded to the bait.

“You should just change your name back,” Tony said, as Gabriel stirred his tomato sauce, AKA his nonna’s “gravy,” in the enormous pot on the back of the stove.

“I do not want to change my name back,” Gabriel said between clenched teeth. “I asked you if you had any advice. That’s not advice. That’s a knife in the back.”

“Hey!” Tony said in mock outrage. “That’s not fair. I’m trying to help here.”

“What you’re trying to do is take his side,” Gabriel muttered. “He’s been here a week, and already everyone likes him better.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Tony argued.

“I saw him having a real friendly chat with Ash,” Gabriel said. Ash was his friend. Ash should be on his side. But instead, Ash had been talking and laughing between lunch and dinner with Sean.

And it was definitely not because Ren, his cousin who helped him at the truck, had proclaimed them a “cute new couple.” No sirree, he was definitely not jealous. No way. Yes, Sean might be a little cute, a fact that Ren had pointed out half a dozen times already, until Gabriel had really wished that he could fire him. But Lorenzo was his cousin, and Ren’s dad, Stefano—his father’s younger brother—would never forgive him. And Luca? Luca, his oldest brother and officially now the head of the family since his parents had retired, would be down in LA in a flash, and the last thing Gabriel wanted was to deal with Luca’s profound inflexibility.

Okay, Luca was now the second to the last thing Gabriel