by Pippa Grant
“Why would someone want four thousand cookies printed with that?”
I’ve seen enough dick picks to be able to say with authority that that dick is less sausage and more cocktail wienie. I force myself to look away, because the hair-to-dick ratio is seriously disturbing. And when I look away from the picture, I see the yellow highlight on the top of the order.
Rush order.
For four thousand Dickookies.
I whimper.
Don’t get me wrong—I charge three bucks a pop on these things, and twelve grand in my bank account is going to go a long way toward getting baby a crib, even before the rush order charge, but ohmydog. The ingredients. Flour and sugar and butter and—
The frosting paper I need to print.
Fuck, I don’t have enough ink.
Can I even bake four thousand cookies in the next forty-eight hours before the shipment is due to go out? And—
Oh, triple fuck with a side of fuck frosting.
“That’s Nick Murphy’s dick.”
Joey shoves a barf bag at me as the hiccups hit hard and fast. “Breathe, Gracie. What do you need?”
First, to have not ever known Nick Murphy has mutantly small, overly-hairy genitals.
Second, probably another frosting printer. Or seven.
Third, about six people on staff to help me with nothing but Dickookies for the next two days.
I click over to my bank app, and—
Yeah.
The money’s already there. Holy shit, that’s a lot of money.
“I need to get busy.” I wince, because now I’m thinking about getting busy, and Nick Murphy, and how he plays for the Thrusters, which is really ironic somehow, and how I’ll have to shut down the entire bakery, and—boxes.
I need boxes too.
“And I need help,” I whisper.
Joey just nods. “Let’s get going then.”
38
Gracie
The minute Joey slingshots us into Goat’s Tit—yes, slingshots, because Joey is a terrible driver who forgets what works in the air doesn’t work on the ground, or maybe she just doesn’t care and wants to feel like she’s flying all the time—things start to happen. She screeches to a stop in front of Etta Jean’s and is out and around her Jeep and throwing open the door to the bakery before I’ve even unbuckled.
“Listen up,” I hear her announce to everyone gathered inside as I hustle after her, barely catching the door. “Gracie got a special Facookie rush order for four thousand cookies. It’s a profane picture, but it’s a shit-ton of money, so you’re all going to either help her or get your asses out of her way so she can make these, understood?”
“Cool your jets,” Nancy says. She steps out from behind the counter and ambles toward me. “We’ve always got Gracie’s back. Welcome home, hon. We missed you.”
She wraps me in a hug and pats my shoulder, and I’m home, and it’s so comfortable and familiar and yet...not.
Nancy pulls away. “Now, let’s get to work. Four thousand cookies? Joey’s right. That’s a shit-ton.”
“Ingredients,” Joey barks at me.
“Extra printer and ink,” I say. My face flames, but I keep talking. “All the information is on the printer in my office. I need every bit of edible ink in the entire state. And boxes. Like seven hundred cookie boxes.”
Nancy’s already heading toward the kitchen, Joey on her heels.
“You need some math, Gracie?” one of the nerd busters asks.
I rattle off my recipe. His fingers fly over his phone, working the calculations for how much I’ll need of all my ingredients.
He rises. “I’ll text Tammy and meet her at Costco in Huntsville. We should be able to get most of it in her truck.”
“Take my credit card. And thank you.”
He grins, and for a split second, his blue eyes remind me of Manning’s. “Sure. Out of curiosity, when Joey said profane—”
“Utter privacy,” I chide.
He could probably hack my phone and find the picture in three seconds if he wanted to.
He glances around, where everyone else is either whispering and pointing and probably saying they knew I was no good, but look how I was raised, or they’re arguing over rearranging my dining room to help with the cookies. More so with the arranging, it appears.
“Just saying,” he says quietly, “that if you’re willing to print dirty cookies, I might know a guy interested in buying a few dozen for a gift.”
I gape at him.
Does he know?
His cheeks go red. “Or not. Forget I asked. Sorry.”
“Email me later, okay?” I whisper. “Like maybe late next week after I’m recovered from this.” I point two fingers at my eyeballs, then at his. “But I’ll be watching, and if you breathe a word of this to anyone, I’ll Photoshop whatever picture you send me. And don’t think I’ll be kind.”
His grin returns. “Yes, ma’am.”
I dash to the kitchen, where Nancy already has all the ovens fired up, the flour bin on the counter, and is pulling every last pound of butter out of the fridge. “You go get printing,” she says. “I’ll start the dough. And you let us know if you need to sit down.” Her gaze drifts down to my belly. “And don’t be thinking this is getting you out of spilling all the details on your little vacation either.”
Now it’s my turn for red cheeks. “I’m not going to have any secrets left by the time tomorrow’s over, am I?”
“No, ma’am.” She winks. “Not that I didn’t know any of this before, but I don’t blame you one little iota for keeping anything quiet. You know Ginny Jo’s gonna have all them Baptists praying for your soul from now until eternity over this.”
“Hey, Gracie,” Joey calls. “We might have another problem.”
I sprint to my office. “What now?”
She points to the screen. “Unless I’m misunderstanding your ordering system, you have twenty-seven other new orders.”
“It’s the The Hollyblog,” Peach announces as she, too, strolls into my office. She must’ve been close on our tail the entire way up from Huntsville. She stops across from my desk and starts marching in place, which I should really be doing too, but I’ve been so freaking tired I keep declining her step challenges. “Some big Halloween party the other night. Liv what’s-her-name posted a picture of her eating a Dickookie.”
Nancy cackles in the kitchen. “Dickookie. I still just love that. Guess it makes sense you couldn’t call ‘em Dookies. But Cockies has a ring to it, don’t you think?”
My email program dings twice more.
All of us look at my computer.
“How do you shut off incoming orders?” Joey asks.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Peach announces. “Sugar, let me at the computer. We’re not shutting down. We’re announcing delays and jacking up prices. Baby’s gotta eat.”
“And she needs a pretty wardrobe,” Nancy chimes in. “And diapers ain’t cheap. Though I’d hope someone is coughing up some serious dough for those puppies.”
My phone rings.
Ted.
Oh, fuck. I’ve been avoiding Ted.
Before I went to Copper Valley, I mean.
“Hello?” I say.
“Hey. Heard you need some help. I’m down in Birmingham. Anything I can pick up for you?”
It’s all so normal, so before-the-baby-octopus-and-hiccup incident, I almost burst into tears. Instead, I ask him to swing by the distributor I get my boxes from and hang up the phone.
And then I burst into tears.
Happy tears. Overwhelmed tears. I-don’t-know-the-next-time-I’ll-see-Manning-or-even-if-I-want-to-after-that-discussion-with-his-father tears.
Peach smothers me in a hug. Joey grabs me from behind and hugs us both. Nancy gets in on the side to wrap us all up too.
“I love you guys,” I sob.
“Aw, honey,” Nancy says. “This is what family’s for.”
39
Manning
I
t’s been over thirty-six hours since I last saw or talked to Gracie, and I’m going bloody mad.
She’s not responding to text messages. Her phone rolls straight to voicemail. The game in Florida starts in thirty minutes, and while I should be well-prepared to take the ice after a reasonable bedtime last night and easy practice this morning, I didn’t bloody sleep and I can’t bloody concentrate.
I’m so desperate, I’ve even tried ringing Joey.
Whose phone doesn’t go straight to voicemail, but it does eventually go to voicemail.
“You’ve not heard from either of them?” I ask Ares as I sit down beside him suit up.
He shakes his head.
“Zeus?” I ask.
“Cookies.”
I don’t have any patience to translate Ares-speak, so I pinch my lips together and concentrate what I can control.
Which is approximately nothing, as the last I heard from my father, Austling still believes Elin to be living at my penthouse and has yet to be made aware that plans are changing.
Because it’s a sensitive political situation, son, with more beneath the surface than we suspected. Another few days, and I expect to have an update.
Also, Yes, Gracie did chew me up one side and down another for not dissolving your betrothal years ago. Doesn’t quite understand royal duty, does she? But if you’re going to fall for a woman, fall for one who’ll keep you in line, son.
Or perhaps one who isn’t avoiding me because my father refused to admit to her that he’d done anything wrong, and possibly intimidated the hell out of her.
Fuck, I need to talk to her.
Murphy sits down beside me with a feral grin, talking to Lavoie on his other side while they suit up. “Four thousand,” he’s saying. “They’re getting delivered to the fucker’s apartment in two days. Over three hundred boxes of them. And I used the most disgusting dick I could find on the internet.”
“Should’ve sent him cookies with pussies instead, since it’s the last pussy he’ll ever eat,” Lavoie replies.
“That’s next week’s order.”
The two of them guffaw.
And my brain clicks. “Did you just say you ordered four thousand dick cookies to be delivered to someone?”
Murphy’s chortling. He pulls out his phone. “Yeah. Felicity’s ex. That fucker fucked with the wrong woman. Check this out. Four thousand of them, going straight to his apartment.”
He flashes a picture I refuse to describe, because it’s wrong. “Where do you purchase these cookies?”
“My favorite Dickookie website,” Lavoie supplies cheerfully.
“Four. Thousand. Cookies,” I repeat.
Murphy and Lavoie both grin like idiots and nod. “And I put a rush order on it.”
Bloody hell.
I grab my phone, look up a number, and ring straight through to the bakery in Goat’s Tit.
“Etta Jean’s,” a breathless voice answers. A honey-sweet, Southern, not Gracie voice.
“Miss Diamonte, please,” I say.
There’s a beat of silence, followed by another beat of silence that’s longer and filled with all sorts of questions, most likely beginning with something akin to you don’t sound like you’re from ‘round here and ending with and what the fuck do you want with our Gracie? “They’re both all tied up with a big project, honey-pie. Can I take a message?”
“No. Thank you.”
I hang up and text Viktor. Charter a plane.
And I don’t wait for him to tell me no, or that we can’t afford it, or that I’m being a bloody nuisance. Because I need to see Gracie.
I need to see her more than I need to breathe.
The game is ugly. I earn myself a split lip, though I also get to immediately score on a penalty shot.
I don’t have a clue if Gracie’s watching or listening, but if she is, you’re damned right I’m playing my heart out. Every time I pass a camera, I look into it as though I might see her looking back.
Ares gets wiped out by one of Florida’s D-men in the second period. He makes it off the ice, but I can tell he’s hurting. At intermission, the team doc orders x-rays on his ankle.
Fuck.
I meet Lavoie’s eyes. We look to Kavanaugh, Sokolov, and then to Bobby. The five of us nod in understanding.
These fuckers are going down.
The last period devolves into a bloodbath. We go up by one. Florida responds by shoving Murphy into the goal. Kavanaugh answers that by taking out their power forward.
I keep my focus only by reminding myself I’m no good to anyone—my teammates, my unborn child, Gracie—if I’m dead or maimed.
We barely pull off the win, and by the time I’m showered and ready to go, half my teammates have been bandaged or splinted.
“Fucking good thing we’ve got three days off,” Murphy mutters. He’s holding a bag of ice to his own split lip. Lavoie’s limping. No one’s seen Ares, but he’s waiting for us when we board the bus, his ankle elevated, which means he’s taking the entire back row since he can’t bloody well prop up a leg the size of a normal human in any less space.
We’re a disaster.
But we’ve survived.
I only hope my budding relationship with Gracie can survive too.
40
Gracie
My legs are rubber, my eyes are so dry they’re nearing raisin status, which is honestly kind of freaky for eyes, and I’m pretty sure I could throw up every hour from now until eternity because morning sickness is an even bigger bitch when you haven’t slept in forty-eight hours, but by dog, we’ve gotten the last of the four thousand cookies packed up, and now Lee from the post office is working with Tammy and her geek buster boyfriend to get the last of the boxes on trucks to be shipped.
The sun is creeping up over town, and all I want to do is collapse in a hot bathtub with some antacids, crackers, and a lamb taco.
No, I can’t explain the lamb taco thing, and I’m not even going to try.
I drag my weary body out to Etta Jean’s dining room and flop next to Joey and Peach at the lone table not pushed together with the others for our work surface. “I am never looking at another dick again in my life,” I declare.
“That would be a pity,” a deliciously accented male voice says behind me.
I manage to make my aching body whirl around, and oh my dog, he looks as bad as I feel. Red-rimmed, tired eyes. A swollen lip and a bruise forming on his cheek.
Worry lines on his forehead.
Peach growls. Joey growls louder.
Viktor sighs. He also looks exhausted. I wave a hand at the counter. “I think there’s coffee,” I tell him. “Help yourself.”
And then I focus back on Manning.
Except I can’t entirely focus, because there are two of him.
Which is not a bad thing at all. Two Mannings. I wonder what they could do to me at the same time. If the second wasn’t a sleep deprivation-induced hallucination.
I giggle.
Peach growls again.
Joey checks my forehead.
And the Mannings pull up two seats to crowd beside me. “Gracie?”
I point to the Manning on the left. “Since there are two of you, Elin can have that one, and I’ll keep this one.”
“Has she slept?” he demands in a voice that I could imagine coming from a throne.
A real royal throne occupied by someone who orders beheadings. Not a toilet throne. Because that would be a weird place to order beheadings from.
“What’s it to you?” Peach asks.
“She’s gotten a few catnaps,” Joey replies. “Have you slept?”
Wow.
That’s double the imperial death glare.
I giggle again. “You’re so cute when you’re mad,” I tell the Mannings.
They both rise, and one of them scoops me up. “Time to go home, love,” he says.
I snuggle into his chest, hiccup, and give a brief thought to puking, because my stomach is not happy with me today. “
You should have two voices too,” I tell him. “And barf bags.”
And two heartbeats. I loop an arm around his neck and press my ear closer to his chest, because it’s so sweet and steady and perfect.
He came to visit me. “Are you free now?” I ask.
“No, love,” he says. “I’m completely yours.”
41
Manning
Because Joey is a pain in the ass, she follows me to my rented SUV. So does the blonde. Viktor trails us all.
“If you’re thinking of kidnapping Gracie, you better also be planning on having your intestines turned inside out and scattered in the slop bins at that big hog farm over in Carlisle County,” the blonde says.
Gracie snores in my arms. Viktor reaches the automobile first, because that’s what he does, and he opens the back door.
“If you’d thought to perhaps allow her to sleep sometime in the last two days, it would be unnecessary for me to provide her with a ride home,” I reply.
Joey slides into the front seat uninvited.
“Excuse me, madam,” I say to the blonde. And I put every ounce of haughty royal dignity into the glare I give her.
“Pretty sure there’s never been an excuse for you,” she replies.
“There’s no sense fighting her,” Joey tells me with a smirk. “She knows where Gracie lives.”
“You’re damn tootin’ I do.”
“Shut up and get in the car, Peach,” Joey says.
Viktor meets my eyes over the door. If I tell him to get rid of her, he will. But we both know I won’t, because I know the only person to blame for Gracie not sleeping is Murphy.
But it’s rather difficult to be angry with anyone when I have her in my arms.
She sighs in her sleep, and gravity pulls her limp arm from around my neck to dangle at her side.
“In we go then,” I say.
The blonde has already climbed into the SUV’s backseat from behind the driver’s door.
“If you touch her boobs while I’m watching, I’ll give you a split in your other lip.”