Royally Pucked (The Copper Valley Thrusters Book 2)

Four weeks later…

The problem with staring at dicks all day long is that you lose all normal sense of what’s supposed to be attractive in a man.

Take Ted, for example.

He’s six-two and still has a full head of dark hair. Runs marathons, eats vegetables without complaint, and never turns down cookies. Can quote poetry, sometimes in French. He’s also usually quite happy to be the one holding the beer when someone says watch this.

I’ve known Ted so long that I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t know Ted. And my sister has known Ted so long that she only had to have a minimal background check run on him when she heard through the rumor mill that he’d asked me out for dinner.

Joey is such a pain in the ass sometimes.

I’d hoped she’d loosen up now that she’s found someone else she loves enough to torment all day long—and now that she’s getting some action of her own regularly—but noooooo.

She still has to butt her head in where my vagina’s concerned.

But as I sit here on Ted’s couch, eyes bulging while he gyrates his hips in his tighty-whities in an impromptu striptease that I didn’t see coming, I’m not thinking about Joey’s beaver-blocking ways.

Fine. Maybe I’m actually wishing that she’d activate her beaver-blocker superpower and call my phone right now. Right. Now.

Because the other thing I’m contemplating is the lack of stretching going on in the front of Ted’s briefs as he belts out Elvis and gives me a show. Like maybe I need to find a way to slip into conversation that he might want to talk to his doctor about that.

This afternoon, in the secret back room of my bakery, I printed two dozen round sugar cookies with a dick that was so long, I almost had to crop the head off to make it fit on the cookie. And it wasn’t just long. It was girthy. Like one of those burritos that are the size of your head, except twice as long.

It’s like a mermaid dick. You don’t believe it actually exists, but hope springs eternal, and you keep scuba diving until you finally realize the futility and give up.

Except, unfortunately, I know dicks that big exist.

And yes, that’s also Joey’s fault, and yes, I should probably talk to a therapist or someone about the emotional scarring.

But enough about Joey and her supersized hockey boyfriend and what I caught them doing last week.

Let’s chat about Ted.

Ted, who has a one-armed premature baby octopus in his pants. It’s wiggling and a little underdeveloped and I’m worried it needs its mommy.

Note: I am not now, nor do I ever wish to be, its mommy.

And that glass of wine I had at dinner is settling all wrong in my belly, so the combination of suppressing a burp, completely sobering up, and the one-armed octopus are putting me in an awkward situation.

Plus, he’s no Manning Frey, Prince of Stölland, current darling of the Copper Valley Thrusters, who are on a winning streak so hot it’s a wonder the ice stays frozen beneath their feet.

Not that I’ve been following hockey news. Exactly.

Somehow the radio in my office got flipped to a sports station. Must’ve been Joey.

Also, I know a guy selling oceanfront property up in Tennessee.

Ted curls his lip as he brings his Elvis impersonation closer to the couch, which also brings the baby one-armed octopus right to eye level.

“Can’t…help…falling in BED—” he sings.

My stomach lurches, and I slap a hand to my mouth as a hiccup the size of Texas rumbles out of my gut.

Ted meets my gaze, and a slow smile creeps over his features as I hiccup again. “That sounds like fun for the Tedinator.”

I wince, because first, that’s the worst wanna give me a blow job? proposition I’ve ever heard, and second, The Tedinator? “Uh, Ted—”

Except I don’t get past the Te part, because I’m suddenly hiccuping again. I just said Teccup!

And it’s not a normal hiccup either. It’s like some strange hiccup-burp that leaves this weird taste in my mouth. Weird, and honestly a little on the gross side. I’m seriously worried about Ted now if he actually thinks sticking his dick in the hiccup-burp acid in my mouth would be a good idea, because I’m pretty sure I’d burn his tentacle off.

Also?

I don’t want to suck his dick.

Now, Manning’s dick…Stop it, Gracie. Once and done, and I’m dating and moving on because hockey-playing princes don’t have futures with small-town Alabama girls. But I’ll always have the memory of that time I braved the big world beyond Goat’s Tit, grabbed spontaneity by the balls, and had a fling with a man so worldly, I can’t believe he ever came into my orbit.

Ted’s brows crease as I hiccup three times in rapid succession. “Okay, Gracie, this is getting a little weird.”

My stomach gurgles. Like the bad kind of gurgle. Like the get thee to a privy, posthaste kind of gurgle.

Thank dog this is a date with Ted and not Manning.

Whom I will never date, see, or sleep with again.

Because princesses don’t hiccup-burp.

Even if his dick wouldn’t fit on one of my cookies either.

I lurch off the couch.

No thinking about dicks. No thinking about dicks. I need to get to a bathroom.

Now.

In case you’re wondering, being picked up from a date by your big sister the guard dog when you’re twenty-seven sucks donkey balls.

Which is why I don’t text Joey the SOS.

Nope, I text her business partner, Peach, who arrives almost as fast as if she’d flown up to Goat’s Tit from Huntsville. Not that Goat’s Tit—yes, yes, I’m from Goat’s Tit, Alabama, which maybe we can talk about when I’m not freaking hiccupping out every orifice of my body—is all that far of a drive from Huntsville, but when you’re hiding in a date-gone-wrong’s bathroom because you’re afraid you’re somehow committing accidental suicide by hiccup, every minute counts.

Every. Damn. Minute.

“Gracie Diamonte, what in the holy hell happened to you?”

I stumble into the passenger seat of Peach’s F-350 and take the barf bag she offers.

One good thing about being related to and friends with people who own a private air adventure company?

Barf bags. Barf bags everywhere. I don’t think I need one, but I’m still grateful for it.

“I don’t know,” I wail. “I need to go home.”

I live five minutes from Ted’s house, because in Goat’s Tit, everything is five minutes away. Gas station? Five minutes. Piggly Wiggly? Five minutes. Taxidermist? Five minutes. Although, if you’re already at the taxidermist, you can get your will notarized or your nether region waxed just by turning around and walking in a different door.

Ted could’ve taken me home. My friend Tammy who runs the auto shop could’ve driven me home. Hell, Tammy’s mom, Nancy, who runs the counter at my bakery every day, could’ve driven me home.

But when I feel like shit, I want my mom.

Which is basically the same thing as wanting Joey, since she’s the closest thing I’ve ever had.

But she’s in New York visiting Zeus, her boyfriend—New York, New York, the city that never sleeps, jealous sigh—so her business partner, Peach, is next in line. Peach and I are always challenging each other to step competitions with our fitness trackers, which means generally I hate Peach like normal people hate runny grits since I swear to dog she cheats, but she runs interference with Joey when I want a date, she finds the most amazing shoe sales ever, and she understands the value of a hug.

I hiccup every time she hits a bump between Ted’s house and my house.

And I need to send Ted flowers and a gift certificate for Beth Anne’s Busy Beaver Cleaners tomorrow. For…something I’m going to permanently block from my memory and do not want to talk about.

Let’s just say Ted won’t be offering me any more chances with the Tedinator.

Or to use his bathroom.

Which is just as well, because it was a rebound date anyway.

Can you have rebound dates from one-night stands?

“Gracie-girl,” Peach says when she pulls into my driveway, “I don’t know what you’ve been eating, but day-um. Smells like a wet dog fornicated with a skunk in here. Where’d that boy take you for dinner?”

“Chub’s.”

“Huh. That’s usually pretty good.”

It was delicious. Pierre, the owner and chef, moved to Goat’s Tit from Chicago six years ago to try to win his ex-wife back. He eventually caught her sleeping with Gomer Smith and gave up on her, but he’d been adopted by all of us by then and decided to stay. He fusses a lot about backcountry living—like we don’t get Food Network out here in the boonies—and the way everyone refuses to order anything on the menu that sounds pretentious, but we all know he loves the challenge of convincing us to eat fancy-ass food.

And we love giving him shit and pretending we don’t like his fancy-ass food unless he calls a chicken a chicken and lettuce lettuce.

Also, his restaurant is actually called Bistro A La Biscuit—he thought he was being cute and Southern—but it was Chub’s before that for as long as I can remember, so Chub’s we still call it.

Which drives Pierre nuts. But he stays. So there’s that.

“What’d you eat?” she asks.

“Fuji apple salad with a side of steak. And a glass of red. Or maybe two glasses. Ted’s cute—” when he’s dressed “—but I think the chemistry was off.”

“Well, duh. He’s not royalty.”

“You hush your mouth when you’re talking to me. The problem isn’t who he isn’t. The problem is I’ve known him forever and it really eliminates the cute factor.”

Peach rolls the windows down before we climb out of the truck. I’m sweating by the time we reach the door. And not because it’s hot. It’s October, which means we’re finally getting to tolerable temperatures here in Alabama.

I push into my cute little cottage, ignoring Peach’s cringe at the fact that I leave my front door unlocked.

Yes, yes, I know. Lock your door, Gracie. The rapists and murders could be about. And dog help you if those religious zealots or salespeople who come knocking door-to-door realize they have an open invitation.

First of all, a sheriff’s deputy lives right next door and has this hound that’ll alert everyone in the entire county if a leaf so much as breathes wrong within a two-block radius.

And second—and probably more relevant—I lost my house keys a week ago.

Don’t be hating. You’ve done it too and we all know it.

I make it three steps into my door and I hiccup-burp again. Rotten grapes fester on my tongue, my stomach lurches, and I don’t know if I need a Tums or an exorcism.

Or both.

Peach puts a hand to my forehead and studies me up and down. If you’d told me fifteen years ago that my take-no-shit, girly-crap-is-for-sissies, badass sister would become best friends and business partners with a cute Southern belle, I would’ve laughed my ass off.

But Peach is so much more than her sweet dimpled smile and blond curls suggest. Which is why she’s so awesome at business. “Gracie-pie, this here ain’t normal.”

No shit. “I should call Pierre. In case it was the salad.”

She purses her pink lips together. “You ever had a salad do this to you?”

“I’ve never had anything do this to me.” I punctuate my statement with another hiccup that feels like it came from my toes. “Am I total loser if I go to the emergency room for hiccups?”

Here’s the thing about Peach and Joey. Joey’s dark and growly and shows her love by not letting you die or do stupid things, but on the inside—like way, way down deep under about sixty thousand layers of badass—she’s actually a marshmallow.

Peach is the picture of cotton candy and cupcakes and free hugs, but on the inside she’s actually Donkey Kong. Do something dumb enough to disturb her softer bits—or, you know, try to take advantage of her in business—and she’s going to freaking throw barrels of truth and destruction and horror at you until she not only knocks you off the stairs, she takes the whole fucking building with her.

So when Peach starts frowning like Joey, my pulse kicks up and the pit of my stomach lurches and I simultaneously hiccup and pass wind.

“Never had this happen before?” she repeats.

“I think I’d remember hiccupping my guts out.”

“Gracie, hon, what exactly have you been doing with your free time the last month or so?”

Other than getting my one free ride on a royal rocket, and apparently losing a friend in the process, because he hasn’t replied to a single message since with anything but prim and proper royalness, and always at least twelve hours after my last message?

Not a damn thing. Which shouldn’t be surprising, because he’s honestly so far out of my league that the sex was undoubtedly ho-hum for him even if it was the crazy-wildest sex I’ve ever had in my life.

That night—that night was—oh, shit.

My shoulders sag and I feel my eyeballs try to climb out of their sockets as a new wave of horror washes through me.

I know where Peach is going with this.

And I’m done hiccupping.

Because now I need to puke.