Spiced

by Jamie Farrell

  “I need to run into the boutique.” She waved at the pizza carrier and clipboard. “And return that. Anyone else up yet?”

  “Negative.”

  Pepper met Margie’s gaze, and a slow smile crept over her lips. “None of them?”

  “If you’re planning a whipped-cream attack, I feel obligated to remind you that this is your house, and you’ve just indicated a need to leave the premises while our sisters are still here.”

  “Whipped-cream attacks are for amateurs.”

  When Margie responded with a rare smile of her own, Pepper dove for her lower cabinet and went to work grabbing supplies. “Not a word,” she whispered.

  “About what? Gran did it.”

  Ah, Gran. She was a handful. Barely been five feet tall, not even a hundred pounds—and at least three of those pounds were wrinkles. Those white curls on her head weren’t her most stubborn feature either. She’d raised six girls and had twenty-nine granddaughters. The woman lived for the privileges that came with age—speaking her mind, bossing around her progeny, and seeing just how much she could get away with.

  One day, god willing, Pepper would be just like her.

  Though she’d probably refrain from hitting on Tony Cross. Not that she could entirely blame Gran—Tony was ruggedly handsome with his dark brown lady-killers, thick dark curls peeking out from under his red hat, and a perpetual five-o’clock shadow two hours past its prime.

  But his cat liked to terrorize poor Sadie, he had a revolving string of women coming to his house, and he’d turned her down flat when she invited him to join the Bridal Retailers Association.

  Arrogant Grumplestiltskin. He wouldn’t be her neighbor long if he didn’t try to fit in here in Bliss.

  She and Margie snuck their supplies into the living room, where half their sisters were sleeping.

  “That’s just mean,” Margie murmured while Pepper shoved a can of Spam into Ginger’s overnight bag. Of the thirteen Blue siblings, Ginger was the one most vocal about her hatred of the canned meat that had been a staple in Mom’s kitchen when they were growing up.

  “She hogged Saffron’s baby at the bridal shower,” Pepper whispered back.

  “Ah. So now you’re even.”

  “Exactly.”

  Margie lifted a blow-up goat from a gift bag near the door. “Shall I dispose of this?”

  “No!” Pepper forced her expression back to neutral. If Margie—or anyone—suspected she wanted the goat for herself, she’d have some explaining to do. And she was not ready for explanations. “Ah, I mean, tuck it in with Rosemary. I want to see her freak out at the idea of another girl.”

  “You do realize this goat doesn’t have magical fertility powers.”

  “Hush. Rosemary believes in it.”

  “I honestly struggle with the concept that I’m actually related to you people.”

  Poppy stirred in her sleeping bag, and Pepper and Margie both froze until her breathing evened out.

  They hadn’t had a sisters slumber party since Saffron got married two years ago. Before Pepper had moved here and bought into Bliss Bridal, before her brother married Nat, her co-owner at the boutique in downtown Bliss, before she’d realized her PCOS was rapidly aging her out of being able to have children while all her ex-boyfriends were getting married and starting families of their own.

  She’d never regretted moving to Bliss—she loved the people, the boutique, her house, even if she would’ve preferred a better next-door neighbor. She loved the nonstop weddings, the annual Knot Festival in the summer and Snow Bride Festival in the winter, the goofball Battle of the Boyfriends every February.

  She even loved the bridezillas.

  But lately, she’d been riding so many hormones and, for the first time in her life, the terror that came with a legitimate fear of failing the biggest project of her life, that she hadn’t felt like herself.

  Seeing Gran and her sisters helped.

  So much.

  Last night had felt so normal. Laughing. Teasing. Dancing.

  And when she was finally ready to tell them about her IVF procedures, when this last attempt proved to be the successful one, they’d support her. Babies were sacred in this family. Sperm might not have been, but babies were.

  She wouldn’t have the husband. But she’d have her family. She’d be a mom.

  Almost everything she ever wanted.

  Almost.

  * * *

  Tony was nodding his head to some classic Metallica and portioning off pizza dough on a stainless steel table mid-morning Sunday when someone knocked on the back door. He wiped his hands on a towel and headed through Pepperoni Tony’s state-of-the-art kitchen to answer it.

  And immediately wished he hadn’t.

  He leaned into the doorway and smiled at his unexpected visitor. He was reasonably sure she liked him even less than he liked her, but hell if he’d let her see she bothered him. “Pepper, you’re looking lovely this morning.”

  Lovely with her thick chestnut hair, proper businesswoman coat, and nothing but I don’t want to be here written in her bright green eyes. She swept a quick glance down his body, and—

  Nothing. No twinges, no twitches, no pole movement at all.

  “Nice apron.” She lifted his red insulated bag. “Your clipboard and the receipt are inside. My apologies for my sisters. And my grandmother. It was the tequila. Honestly, you’re lucky she wasn’t naked.”

  “Never been one to object to bachelorette parties with naked pillow fights.”

  “So sorry. We saved that for after you left.”

  Despite her dry delivery, he tried to picture her and her sisters shrieking naked and flinging pillows at each other while goose feathers floated through the room. Testing…testing… Nope. Still nothing in his happy places.

  Hallelujah. And possibly he needed to have his prostate checked.

  “Let me know next time there’s a repeat performance.” He winked. “Pizza’s on me.”

  There went the smirky eyeball. She glanced past him, her neck craning a smidge, and her nostrils wobbled. “Right.”

  “Did you just sniff my kitchen?”

  Her eyes widened. Caught. “No.”

  “You did.”

  “I—it smells very nice.” She closed her eyes, and this time, she inhaled deeply, chest rising, chin tilting, and a soft smile teasing her lips. “Like pizza crust.”

  This was where he needed to have a snappy comeback. If you like that, wait till you get a sniff of my sauce. Or Didn’t take you for the cheesy kind, but I got something gouda for you.

  But he couldn’t form the words.

  Because all of his blood had suddenly surged south, and for the first time in months, his equipment was fully up and running, springing to life like a caffeinated squirrel coming out of hibernation and sprinting off for the first romp of the year.

  Fuck, that hurt. Hurt so damn good.

  On the one hand, maybe he didn’t need his prostate checked after all. On the other…Pepper Blue? His junk needed to get it together.

  He snatched his insulator before she noticed the party growing in his pants. “Yep. Better get back to it. Thanks. Tell your grandma I’m looking forward to next time.”

  The last thing he saw before he swung the door shut was bewilderment knotting one of her brows. He dropped his head to the cold, hard door and sucked in a breath.

  And another.

  And another.

  He hit his head against the door a few more times for good measure too.

  Pepper Blue was an uptight bridal-town princess-in-training who liked to attack his cat with a squirt gun. She was smart, savvy, and sophisticated. The kind of woman a guy married, not the kind of woman a guy took home to test out his first boner in over a year.

  Figured.

  It just figured.

  2

  Pepper’s sisters had been cleaning the last of the bachelorette party mess when she’d left for the boutique, and she’d thought they’d all be gone before lunch
time. With the exception of Cinna, the baby of the family, none of them lived in Bliss. The older sisters had their families—and in Tarra’s case, a fiancé—and the younger sisters had exciting social lives. They’d all needed to get home after the bachelorette party fun.

  So when Pepper returned mid-afternoon, she was surprised to find Margie and Sage waiting for her in her living room.

  And they weren’t alone.

  “Good, you’re here. Sit.” Gran was in a baby-blue pair of polyester pants and a Bro Code boy band T-shirt under a neon green cardigan today. She was playing with the fringe on Pepper’s green chenille throw, but it wasn’t her fingers that had most of Pepper’s attention.

  No, that went to the fluffy white miniature poodle licking herself on the ivory rug over the wide-plank hardwood floors.

  “Where’s Sadie?” she asked. Her dog was sweet as honey and she loved humans, but she didn’t do well with other canines. Mostly because she thought she was a rabbit.

  “Hiding,” Margie said. “George thought she was a chew toy. We put Gran’s suitcases up in the spare bedroom.”

  Gran wasn’t as quick as she’d been last night, but she still scooted herself off the plush couch with the pluck of a fifty-year-old. “Young lady, I’m here to break your losing streak. I’m not leaving until you’re married or I die trying to get you to the altar.”

  Pepper’s lips parted, but no sound came out.

  “She’s been kicked out of another senior living facility,” Sage said. The second-youngest of the family, she was a veterinarian and typically spent her time on the floor with the dogs. That she was giving George a wide berth, sitting in the easy chair across the room with her legs tucked under her, didn’t bode well. “Which she couldn’t tell us last night because she didn’t want to ruin the mood.”

  “No one else volunteered to watch her?” Pepper said to her sisters.

  Gran harrumphed out a snort that would’ve made even Basil proud. “I’m experienced, not senile and in need of a keeper. And you, young lady, need my know-how.”

  Given her penchant for goosing young men, Pepper couldn’t entirely agree on her not needing a keeper. “I couldn’t possibly ask you to put your life on hold for me.”

  “Ginger tried that once. Didn’t work for her either. And look where she is now.”

  Ginger, third oldest and the one most likely to play martyr at family functions, was married to a high school math teacher and had three daughters rapidly approaching their teenage years. “Are you talking about the part where she has a family of her own, or the part where she hides Oreos in Raisin Bran boxes and goes to ‘book club’ once a week to escape said family?”

  Gran wagged a gnarled finger topped with fluorescent blue nail polish. “It’s a sign a woman’s doing a good job if she has to hide her cookies and run off once or twice a week.”

  “You could use the assistance with your love life,” Margie said. “We considered having the twins take her, but…”

  “But all three of them would end up hitched to strangers in Vegas,” Pepper finished.

  “Such sass from a girl who’s managed to train fifteen boyfriends to be good husbands but couldn’t keep one for herself. Where’s your tuna? George is hungry.”

  “Tuna?”

  “He’s recently decided he’s a cat. Also, we’re going to need your computer. I got you registered on that timber thing, but it says you need a smartphone for the best experience.”

  “Tinder? You registered me for Tinder?”

  “Yep. Got you a profile on MisterGoodEnough.com too. But don’t you worry, honey. I won’t make you do this alone. I’m gonna be right with you, double-dating the whole way.”

  “We stayed to try to stop her when we realized what she was doing,” Sage said. “And don’t worry about those emails from CyLord the Borg God. We canceled that date.”

  Pepper squeezed her eyes shut. Dating was absolutely out of the question right now. Probably for the next nine months. At least. “Gran, this is really sweet of you, but—”

  “Ah, ah. Don’t go thanking me yet. Don’t want to jinx my magic. Now, there’s a nice man named Walter who wants us to go on a date with him and his grandson tomorrow. Clear your calendar, honey. We’re fixin’ your love problems and getting you hitched. Shouldn’t take more than a year or two.”

  A year or two?

  More like nine days. Nine days until she’d have her positive pregnancy test.

  And then Gran would want to stay for an entirely different reason.

  “You’re not on one of those baloney no-carb diets, are you? I need to make some biscuits for dinner, and you need your energy if we’re going to snare you a man. First mission is to get you a date to Tarra’s wedding.”

  “I don’t—”

  “I think you should ask the pizza man,” Sage said. “Did you see the look on his face when you walked in last night? It was like he was seeing the sun for the first time.”

  “He squinted in pain?” Margie said.

  “No, dummy, he was worshipping her with his eyes.”

  “And he has a nice ass,” Gran said.

  He did have a nice ass, but Margie was right. Tony Cross was not boyfriend material, and he didn’t want to be.

  Moreover, she didn’t want him to be. What kind of guy slammed the door in a woman’s face? She’d complimented his kitchen. And she hadn’t had to stop by his pizza place. She could’ve just left his crap on his doorstep. She’d been doing the nice thing.

  The jerk. “You want a pizza-delivery guy to be my baby daddy?” she said to Gran.

  Tony was more than the delivery guy, but Gran didn’t have to know that.

  Also, Pepper’s baby daddy, god willing, was a thirty-year-old doctor with no family history of cancer, diabetes, or heart disease, who had made a donation to a sperm bank so that single women like Pepper could be mothers.

  And as soon as she found out that this last attempt at IVF had been successful, she’d tell her family. Until then, she didn’t need their worries or judgment.

  Or their help with her love life, which was officially on hold indefinitely.

  “Shoot, we’ll take the pizza-delivery guy. You’ve had fifteen ex-boyfriends marry the next woman they met after you. At this point, you can’t be too picky,” Gran said.

  Sage nodded. “You take care of yourself so well, what difference does it make what job your soul mate has?”

  “Soul mates are a concept fabricated by Hallmark and perpetuated by pop culture,” Margie said.

  “One day, Ms. Know-it-all, you’re going to land smack dab on the lily pad of love,” Gran told her. “Until then, you can keep your negative nelly thoughts out of Pepper’s life. She needs some help here.”

  “Gran, you’re welcome to stay, but I don’t need help with my love life.”

  “You kinda do,” Sage said. “Dating is the only thing you’re not good at. And nobody knows you better than we do. We just want to help. We never get to help you with anything.”

  “On that, I can agree,” Margie said. “Feeling useless to aid a dear sister is demoralizing.”

  “You’re demoralized because I don’t need your help?” Pepper didn’t buy it for a second. Margie was super smart, working at some sciency business so complicated, no one understood what she did. She didn’t need to help Pepper to know she was making contributions to the world.

  “Growing up being told all about how you changed your own diapers at six months old and were training the goats before you could even talk? Yes. Also demoralizing.”

  “You don’t actually believe that.”

  “While I acknowledge the story was a myth cultivated by our eldest sisters to encourage feelings of inadequacy and squash any thoughts of superiority in the younger half of the family, feelings are not always swayed by logic. Alas.”

  “At least let us find you a guy who won’t leave with one of the cousins,” Sage said.

  An unexpected sting burrowed into her eyeballs. Not at the reminder of w
hat her date had done at the last family wedding—or her next date at the subsequent wedding of her former date and her cousin—but because her family loved her.

  They wanted to see her happy.

  And when her test turned up positive next week, who better to share impending motherhood with than her grandmother? And her sisters?

  She swiped at her eyes and surreptitiously sniffled. “Who needs a man when I have you?”

  “Nice try, missy,” Gran said. “We’re finding you a man.”

  “I still think we should start with the pizza guy,” Sage said. “She saw him today, I know she did, and she’s not telling what happened.”

  Margie shook her head. “She’ll do far better if her prospective mate is of a similar socioeconomic background, but given that Pepper never fails at anything, if she finds him sexually attractive and intellectually stimulating despite his career choice, she could potentially make it work and be his sugar mama.”

  “So this week’s for reviewing dating profiles,” Pepper said, because arguing was useless. She could play along. Play along and stall until she had that positive pregnancy test.

  Gran and Sage shared a look.

  “You betcha,” Gran finally said. “Time for research. Go grab that computer doohickey, and let’s get to work.”

  This was a good thing, Pepper told herself as she headed up to her bedroom to rescue Sadie. Gran might’ve been headstrong and inappropriate at times, but she was fun. And she loved her family, and she’d be thrilled to be getting another great-grandchild.

  Having Gran move in wasn’t exactly in the plans, but this latest houseguest would be a great distraction from dwelling on the state of her uterus for the next nine days.

  * * *

  Traffic was slow at Pepperoni Tony’s Monday at lunchtime, and Tony was beginning to worry.

  His first shop over in Willow Glen had taken off immediately when he opened it five years ago. His pizza was damn good. It sold itself. Here in Bliss, his was the first brick-oven pizzeria in town. His customers all told him they’d be back, his Yelp ratings were fantastic, the atmosphere oozed warm Italian family, but he was barely breaking even.