Royally Pucked (The Copper Valley Thrusters Book 2)

Princesses don’t say fuck.

They don’t dress up like dinosaurs to toilet paper the freaky weird blow-up Halloween decoration zoo on the high school band director’s front lawn either, or count on people ordering sugar cookies printed with dick pics for half their monthly income.

Wanna guess how many of those I’ve already done today?

Well, you’re wrong.

The toilet papering was last year.

And, for the record, I’ve printed more cookies with pussies on them than dicks today.

Which doesn’t make any of this any better. Or worse, I guess.

I’m not some fancy-clothes-wearing, trained-from-birth, brilliantly worldly princess-in-waiting.

I’m just a woman who once wanted to be a nurse but couldn’t pass school and settled in for a safe and easy life in her hometown instead, and then accidentally got pregnant with a prince’s baby the one time she tried to be something more.

A charming, sweet, and handsome prince who’s committed to marrying another woman.

Which he didn’t see fit to mention.

The fucker.

So I can keep saying fuck—though not when the baby’s listening—keep wearing my dinosaur costume anytime I want for any reason I want until my belly outgrows it, and I’ll keep making a living with X-rated cookies.

My baby might not grow up in tiaras—or possibly even normal—and I might never find my totally normal, non-royal prince charming to be her father in every way that counts, but she’ll know she’s loved, and she’ll never know the meaning of the phrase royal duty.

Or horseshit, as I like to call it.

“Gracie?” Nancy calls through the door of my office where I’ve been holed up this afternoon. “Gracie, hon, you about done with the faces for the day?”

It’s well-known in Goat’s Tit that I have an online Etsy store where I sell Facookies, custom-ordered sugar cookies printed with people’s faces. I get orders for graduations, weddings, retirements, and once for a political victory party. Except the victory part was premature, and now there are pictures all over the internet of campaign staff biting the losing candidate’s head in two.

Pretty epic.

Sales quadrupled for a few weeks there, and all was well until I opened my email and found a giant dick staring at me on an order form.

That’s when I accidentally got into selling Dickookies. And because I’m an equal-opportunity cookie-printer, I sell Pussookies too.

Like all my good secrets, only Peach knows. Peach and that bottle of moonshine we shared the night I decided to expand my online business. I can talk to Peach. She doesn’t judge. She does my books on the weekends because she knows how much I hate numbers. She also does my books because I can’t exactly ask the mayor—who’s also the town accountant—to crunch my Dickookie profits for me.

You might even say Peach encourages me.

Not that Joey doesn’t, but Joey…it’s complicated. And Nancy certainly doesn’t know, because you don’t stay in business in Goat’s Tit by dabbling in erotic cookies.

That’s me.

A real boundary pusher. Living on the edge.

Me and my one and only really good secret. Until the prince’s baby thing.

“Yes, ma’am,” I call to Nancy as I open the door. “All ready for the post office.”

But it’s not Nancy standing on the other side of the door.

It’s Joey.

She’s an inch or two taller and an inch or two less round than I am—probably because she works out and flies a plane that takes people to zero-gravity while I sample cookies and binge-watch everything I can find on Netflix—and her whose ass do I have to kick today face is making her dark hair frizz and her dark eyes about as warm as deep space.

I sigh. I can’t help it. “Are you terrorizing my staff?”

She pushes me back into my cookie printing room—my office, really, where I tell my staff they can’t go because I promise my Facookie customers complete and total privacy—shuts the door with her foot, and strangles me in a hug before I can get out much more than a muffled objection.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

See?

That’s Joey. She’ll bend over backwards and get all up in my business to keep me from doing something I can’t take back, but when the shit hits the fan, are you okay? is her first question.

And dammit, now my eyes are leaking. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Gracie.”

Translation: Don’t fuck with me today. I know your secret. I know all your secrets, and if you don’t tell me what I can do to make this better, I’ll come up with my own solution.

“Peach told you.”

She ushers me to the computer desk. My laptop’s still open, with a big hairy pussy glowing on the screen. Seriously. This chick has glow-in-the-dark pussy paint decorating her pubes, and she ordered two dozen cookies printed with it to be sent to an ex-boyfriend to remind him of what he lost. That was one order well worth struggling through reading the additional comments on the order form. I’m usually not so forgetful about leaving stuff like this up, so I sit and slam the screen shut before Joey notices.

“Too little, too late,” she says dryly. “We’re both going to keep pretending I know nothing. How far along are you? Are you taking your vitamins? Do I need to get my lawyer on the phone?”

“How—”

“Goat’s Tit has a blog. Your hiccups are front page news.”

Well, fuckle-dee-doo-dah. “What all do they say about…” I start to wave at the computer, then shake my head. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

“You really don’t,” she confirms.

My face erupts in a mega-blush, because what she means is they know everything too. “My business is none of their business,” I hiss at my sister. “And if they don’t like that I’m a self-sufficient businesswoman, they can just—”

“Keep coming in here for muffins and cookies and cobblers like they’ve always done?” she suggests. She’s standing like she’s still in the military, all stiff and straight and militant. “Possibly giving you bigger tips to save your soul?”

“You have dirt on every person in this town to use against them if they try to blackball me, don’t you?”

She doesn’t blink.

Which means she doesn’t, but she’s not above pretending like she does—or hiring someone to find the dirt—if it’ll keep me in the black.

I glare at her.

She cracks a rare smile. “To the best of my knowledge, you’ve done the impossible and kept that a secret. Though it won’t be for long if you keep the pictures up on your computer.”

“I should just tell them all anyway. Especially since I’m single-handedly keeping Gloria’s Treasures in business with my shoe habit, which I couldn’t afford without my creative cookie business.”

I am definitely not going to voluntarily tell anyone about printing Dickookies and Pussookies in my office.

It’s not that I’m ashamed of my business.

It’s more that everyone who comes in every day for muffins, cookies, and cobblers all head over to the Baptist church at the edge of the town square every Sunday morning. Girls still get sent home from the high school for wearing shirts that don’t cover their shoulders or skirts that don’t go all the way to their knees. And the whole town was scandalized when Gomer’s duck quacked all over town with chewed-up bits of that book in its beak. And I’d also like it known that I still worry my daddy’s ghost is going to show up and kick my ass over this.

Goat’s Tit might be named after barnyard animal nipples, but that doesn’t mean we’ve joined the new millennium when it comes to sex.

Or single motherhood. “Fuck,” I mutter.

“They honestly wouldn’t run you out of town,” Joey says to me. “They’d blame it on your raising.”

I growl.

I can’t help it. Reading and math nearly killed me, and I might’ve had to turn to my backup plan to make a living, but I learned that if you smile pretty and bake sweet things, people like you despite your shortcomings and your relatives.

“Although, if they ran you out here, you’d move to Huntsville with me.”

She didn’t specifically say move in with me, but it’s implied, because I don’t have a job in Huntsville, and my Etsy businesses aren’t quite big enough to support me. And if I moved in with Joey, we’d kill each other. She has this anal-retentive side. I have this be free, laundry! Find your home and bask in the glow of living wherever you land until I have to clean you or go shopping! side.

But she could probably also single-handedly deal with any ugly side effects of me carrying a prince’s baby.

And now I’m wondering why she hasn’t asked who my baby’s father is.

Ares saw me at Manning’s apartment. The guy never says much, and we haven’t hung out often because Joey and Zeus didn’t seriously hook up until hockey season started, but I assume he recognized me. And I know he texts Joey because sometimes when we’re together, she gets all what the fuck? and shows me gif texts from him of things like unicorn people with rainbows shooting out their hoohas or cats jumping away from cucumbers.

I also don’t know what she might’ve done to him to coax the truth out.

“You know, don’t you?” I say.

Gah, now she’s using the poker face. The real poker face. She doesn’t know, but she suspects. And she’s going to stay silent until I blurt it out.

“It’s Gomer’s duck,” I declare. “We’re having Gracelings.”

She rubs her eyeballs with her palms. “Do I need to know?”

“I can handle this.” Fuck, I hope I can handle this. I was going to look up child custody lawyers tonight. Or next week. Or soon. Since the lawyer Peach referred me to for all the mountain of legal disclaimers I needed on my Dickookie website doesn’t do family law stuff.

My sister pins me with another look.

Our mom left before I was old enough to have real memories of her. Joey’s all I’ve ever had in the way of a mother figure, which is probably the real reason everyone in Goat’s Tit is so tolerant of me. Poor thing, growing up with just her daddy and that strange little creature that God declared a girl. It’s not her fault she turned out this way, but it’s up to us to help her find some normal.

But it also means Joey and I can read each other pretty well, and that look?

Let’s just say she’s holding in some frustrated profanity of her own. Which is commendable. Truly.

She usually just lets it fly.

“Zeus has been a really good influence on your potty mouth,” I tell her.

Aw, how cute. She’s trying for another of her badass pilot glares—and also, Zeus cusses like four times as much as Joey, which is impressive—but the mention of Zeus’s name is making her eyes go soft and gooey and her lips twitch up like she wants to smile.

I always figured if she ever settled down and fell in love, it would be with some scrawny guy who wrote poetry and arranged flowers and was happy to let her wear the pants in their relationship.

Instead, she’s dating a guy who’s tall as a giraffe, probably weighs as much as my car, has the attitude and presence to make him seem even bigger than he is, and who has the biggest—never mind.

We agreed to never speak about what I walked into a few weeks back in her kitchen.

“Would you rather talk to Zeus about this?” she asks.

“Dog, no.”

“He has a sister. He could handle it.”

“First, poor woman. Second, are you trying to torture me or your boyfriend more?”

Now she’s almost fully smiling. She finally sits on the edge of the desk. “I like to torture you both equally. How are you feeling? Honestly? The blog says you’re trying to set a world record for epic hiccups.”

I grimace, because epic hiccups is putting it mildly. It’s been four days—two since I saw Manning, who’s still texting me approximately every four hours even if I haven’t texted him back because he’s freaking engaged—and I’ve had exactly one meal that hasn’t given me the monster hiccups. “I apparently need to make some changes to my diet, and I feel a little queasy for an hour or so when I first get up, but otherwise, I’m fine.”

“And that royal guard outside has nothing to do with you?”

All the blood drains from my face so fast, I go lightheaded. “That fucker. I told him—”

Joey’s frown turns into something more sharknado-ish than displeased mother-ish, and I realize she has me.

As if it matters.

“That was low,” I tell her.

She squeezes my shoulder. “Whatever you need—anything—I’m here. Okay?”

Shit damn fuck hell. This would be easier if she started yelling and throwing things and calling me stupid, but that’s not Joey’s style. No matter what people think of her.

She always has my back, even when we disagree about what I need. And since there’s no going back now, she’s just here. I’m going to cry again. “I’ve got this.”

“I know.” She purses her lips together a moment. “Also…there’s no royal guard outside.”

“Mother ducker. I am such an idiot.”

She slides off the desk. “You are not. Ever. Up for pizza? My treat.”

It’ll probably make me burp, and I have the weirdest craving for banana peppers, pineapple, and ground lamb.

To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never had ground lamb in my life, and I don’t have the slightest clue what it even tastes like, but there you have it.

“Sure. I’m heading out in an hour.”

“Great,” she says. “I’ll be back then.”

I eyeball her.

She gives me the straight-faced, I’m not up to anything because I don’t do bullshit expression in reply—though she was pulling some bullshit with tricking me into basically admitting Manning is my baby’s father, the engaged bastard—before stepping back out of my secret lair.

I don’t ask if everyone in town knows my hiccups mean I’m pregnant. I’ve heard of the town blog, but honestly, I get all my news from Ginny Jo Rasmussen, who’s in here every morning whispering about who’s dating who and whose pet goats fought with whose pet chickens and if Larry Dinkelbarger’s having hair replacement surgery down in Birmingham next month. Who needs the blog?

With another sigh—I love Joey, I do, but she brings the sighs out of me every time—I grab my phone.

I’ve ignored most of Manning’s texts since I left, mostly because I need to for my own piece of mind. I won’t be the other woman. I refuse. And I’m pissed as hell that he didn’t tell me he was engaged.

Don’t give me any of that bullshit about it being different for royals either.

Marriage is marriage is marriage.

Still, if his life is in danger, he should know.

“Honey badger, text Manning. Joey knows,” I tell my phone. Maybe he’ll see it for the threat I kinda want it to be.

He fucking should’ve told me he was engaged.

The phone voice assistant sends the text message. I gather up the boxes that need to go to the post office, open my door, and my phone dings. “Incoming message from Manning,” honey badger says. “Shall I read it?”

“Yes,” I tell the voice assistant.

“Pity. It’s been a good life,” honey badger says mechanically. “Don’t suppose you could spare one last night in the sack for a man sentenced to inevitable death? Though one could say that was already my sentence before I met you.”

Nancy pauses just inside the kitchen and lifts her painted-on brows at me while I sputter at his nerve.

“Audiobook,” I lie. “The hero’s a real asshole.”

She smiles sweetly. “It sounds like a good one. What’s it called?”

“Incoming message from Manning,” honey badger announces. “Shall I read it?”

“No,” I tell my phone. I turn to Nancy. “Can you make sure these boxes get out tonight?”

“Gonna need more staff and space to keep up with just your Facookie business,” she says as she eyes the stacks of boxes. “What did you say that book was called?”

“Oh, gosh, I can’t remember. You know me and titles. I’ll look it up later and text you. After I get everything cleaned up in here.”

My phone rings, and we both look at it.

Manning’s smiling face appears. My heart does a pitter-patter—yes, he’s handsome, and no, I’m not immune, even though I know he’s unavailable and there’s more than a little shame and fury burning in my gut—and Nancy purrs an appreciative hum.

I hit the ignore button, shove my phone in my back pocket, and secretly wish he would sprout a few warts, then instantly regret the idea of being so mean to my baby’s father.

Why can’t I be mean like a normal person?

“So, the post office,” I say.

“Mm,” she agrees. “The post office.”

As if that’s the last I’ll hear on the subject.

I’ll probably be on the blog again before bedtime.

Fuck.