I can’t decide if I’m a hypocrite, or if I was born two hundred years too late and a continent away from where my soul belongs.
Wait. That sounded overly dramatic.
My soul doesn’t belong to anyone or anything but me. Any time in history.
But I’m giving serious consideration to changing my life’s mission from being an independent business owner to being a woman whose sole objective is to pursue a man with a title and a fortune.
I know.
I know.
I might as well don a chastity belt, dig my bra out of the ashes, and burn my feminist card instead, because pursuing a man is exactly what I’m considering doing.
Because Manning Frey, Prince of Stölland, Earl of whatever, Baron blah-blah, honorary captain in His Majesty’s military something-or-other, visitor of children’s hospitals, smiler of great smiles, and royal terror with a hockey stick, has pissed me off good.
Four days ago, he showed up here in Goat’s Tit to tell me he was going to solve his engagement so that he could get to know me.
Four hours ago, he had legal papers delivered quietly to my bakery.
And four minutes ago, Joey and Peach each finished reading them and confirmed that yes, I did understand exactly what that ugly stack of shit meant.
He wants to pay me to go away.
We’re in the conference room at Weightless, Joey and Peach’s adventure flight company. Peach is fuming so hard her skin’s mottled red and there’s a vein throbbing in her neck as she paces between the cushy swivel chairs behind the polished wood table and the wall of motivational airplane posters.
Joey’s lips are pressed in a straight line while she leans back in the head chair and stares into space, doing that creepy overly-calm thing that means she’s probably mentally running him through every torture device she’s ever read about.
Or possibly that she’s thinking I’ve well and truly gone past dumb this time.
Joey’s never called me dumb. Ever. Even when we were kids and I’d bring home a bad report card, she’d tell me that just because book smarts and reading weren’t my strengths, it didn’t mean I was stupid. It meant I was smart in ways that couldn’t be measured on a report card, which was sweet of her.
But this?
Yeah, this is dumb.
When I decided to go for it with Manning in that locker room last month, I wanted a memory of a guy who’d been ridiculously gentlemanly and attentive and clearly attracted to me despite my obvious lack of a social standing in his exotic world, and instead, I got a lifelong souvenir.
With all happy feelings ruined.
Almost all, I should say. Because even though nothing in the mirror this morning showed evidence of my baby, I can’t stop touching my belly.
With every passing hour, I get more and more excited to meet her. It’s going to be a long seven and a half months.
“He’s betrothed,” Joey says. Not like she’s condemning him, but like she’s mulling over what the words mean.
“He and Maleficent deserve each other,” I mutter. I rub my lower belly and add a silent apology to my baby for insulting her father. Not that she’ll ever know said father, but I don’t want her to ever think half her genetic makeup is asshole.
And honestly?
I don’t believe Manning is an asshole.
Maybe I’m ignorant and naïve, but when he looked into my eyes and promised me last week that he was going to solve everything, I thought he meant so he could, at the very least, be a friend to me and a father to our baby. When he kissed me a few days before that and wouldn’t let me leave his apartment—condo, penthouse, rich person abode, whatever—I thought we fit like two missing puzzle pieces.
Apparently he meant I’m going to pay you enough that feelings won’t matter anymore.
“I’m getting some real clear ideas of what that man needs done to his testicles,” Peach declares.
There’s obviously something wrong with me, because now I’m pondering why I didn’t take the time to appreciate his testicles more that night in the locker room.
It’ll be a long time before I see testicles in person again. Or penises. Or a six-pack.
Joey straightens, pulls out her phone, thumbs over the screen, and holds it out to Peach while voices come from the speaker.
“Ares, what was going through your head tonight?” a male voice says on the video.
“Socks,” Ares answers.
“Come on, give us something else. You know more words,” the reporter taunts.
“Don’t mind him, Berger,” Manning’s voice interrupts. “He’s merely jealous he can’t play like that while he thinks of socks.”
Chuckles erupt from Joey’s phone. She shuts off the video.
“I don’t care how many teammates the man covers for if he can’t take fucking responsibility for getting Gracie pregnant,” Peach says. “I’m calling in the crew. We’re flying out there and dropping a load of shit on the top of his fancy-ass apartment building.”
Joey doesn’t answer, which is beginning to worry me.
Her life has always consisted of three things: flying, keeping anything with a penis at least fifty yards from me, and one-upping everything with a penis she’s ever encountered.
So, if you consider the shape of an airplane without its wings attached, basically, Joey’s life is about penises. And now I’m wondering if men ever wish their penises had wings.
But that’s not my point.
Since Zeus came into her life, and now that she’s clearly failed at keeping me a virgin until I’m past child-bearing years, I can actually see her adjusting her game plan on the fly.
My sister.
The impossible, know-it-all, my goal is to terrify all of humankind just by breathing, overprotective pain-in-my-ass is going with the flow.
I can’t decide if this means she has some secret deadly disease and wants my final memories of her to be fond, or if she’s actually giving serious consideration to accepting the idea that I’m an adult who’s made adult choices and is now seeking advice—not orders, mind you, advice—on a path forward.
She scrolls over her phone again and gives the screen a stab with her forefinger. Another video starts playing.
“I don’t give two fucks if you think you were waiting in this line first,” a horrifically and annoyingly familiar voice says. “Do you know who I am? No? Well, you’d better learn, because your good favor with the king will depend on it when I’m his daughter-in-law. Now get the fuck out of my way so I can get a goddamn cup of coffee.”
A chill slinks down my spine.
“Who’s the bitch?” Peach demands.
“Prince Manning’s betrothed,” Joey answers.
The chill is turning into full-out shivers.
Marrying Maleficent would be a horrible sentence for any man, but there’s no doubt in my mind that marriage to her will make him quit smiling.
Forever.
And that would be a crime against humanity.
“You think she sent the papers?” I ask. I hope.
I’m still so pissed at him I could yank his chest hairs out one by one and pour rubbing alcohol over my handiwork, but I can’t bring myself to believe he’s capable of the kind of heartless cruelty that leads to a man buying off the woman carrying his child.
Joey’s dark gaze lands on me. It’s not chiding, but it’s not happy either. “I might actually respect him more if he sent these.”
“What?”
She’s not one to blink away from a fight, but I get the feeling she’d rather not look me in the eye at the moment.
“He’s protecting you.” She wiggles her phone screen at me, where Maleficent is stuck with a half-sneer, one eye closed, the other squinty with her pupil aimed somewhere that makes it appear as though her eyeball is trying to crawl out of her face, and the tip of her tongue is sticking out at an odd angle. “He’s protecting you from this.”
“You just said something nice about Manning,” I whisper.
“You’re a strong, smart, capable woman.”
I swallow hard against a wave of emotion. “You’re damn right.”
“Do you love him?”
“I don’t not love him.”
Peach snorts. “I don’t love him.”
“He told me his betrothal wasn’t by choice,” I tell Joey.
She nods.
Of course she does. She probably knows more about it than I do. Hell, she probably knows the last meal he ate, if he showered this morning, when his royal guards switch shifts, and most likely an embarrassing childhood story or sixteen.
“Why do royal people have to do all this betrothal shit anyway?” I ask. “It’s not like you can’t get just as good of a genetically superior match by using the internet these days. That’s what it’s about, right? Combining genetic lines?”
“I’m still digging.”
She’s digging. Which means she’s trying to help him out of it. Dammit, I don’t like to apologize for my emotions, but I’m getting tired of this weepy-eye thing. “What does Ares say?”
She hits me with a seriously? look.
Because Ares really doesn’t say much.
I fold my arms and glare at her. Because people can say things without using their mouths.
Sort of like I’m silently telling her to fuck off if she doesn’t want to be helpful and ask her boyfriend’s brother, who lives with Manning, what he knows.
Her lips twitch as though my pathetic attempt at a silent temper tantrum amuses her.
“Fine.” I stand. “You know what? I don’t care if the man wants to get to know me or marry me or just pay me off, but this?” I tap the stack of legal papers. “This isn’t the full story. And I’d bet my entire bakery that Manning needs to be rescued. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go rescue my baby daddy from the worst mistake he could ever make in his life. And don’t try to stop me. Because if you do, you’re never going to see my baby either.”
My belly quivers at the idea of leaving Goat’s Tit to embark on a mission to a big city to save a prince, but dammit. Can’t anyone else see that every bit of this situation is just wrong?
Joey’s lips tip up, which is the equivalent of Joey belly-laughing with joy, and the weirdest thing happens.
Her eyes go shiny, and she has to blink a few times.
“What the fuck are you smiling about?” I demand. Because dog help me, I cannot ask my badass sister what she’s crying about.
I can’t.
Because if it’s enough to make Joey a little wet in the eyes, it’ll be enough to make me flat-out bawl my eye sockets out, and I’m already more than a little nervous at the task in front of me.
It would be so much easier to take the money and stay home. Or even reject the money and stay home.
But it’s not what’s right.
“Honey-girl,” Peach says, her voice surprisingly thick as well, “she just watched her own baby grow a pair of balls. That’s enough to make any man cry.”
Joey pushes back from her chair too and grabs me in a tight hug. “Be careful,” she says.
Shit damn fuck hell.
I hate it when she admits how much she loves me. And I hate it even more when she believes in me. Because it’s so much easier to not cry when I’m annoyed with her than when I’m grateful she’s my sister.
Peach wraps her arms around both of us. “You call if you need anything, you hear? And if you want any help making a plan, or cutting his testicles off, you know we’re here.”
I nod to both of them.
I don’t exactly know what I’m about to do, but I know one thing.
My baby deserves a chance to have two parents. And my heart says Manning is a good man who would be an excellent father—and that my own daddy would’ve loved him—but who’s stuck in a situation beyond his own control.
It’s time to get creative and play hero.
