Page 1 of Good Girls Don't Kiss and Tell

Chapter One

“I’m sorry, but am I the only one who thinks co-ed anything is stupid? Ladies, why would we want to ruin things like bachelorette parties and baby showers by including men? My advice…keep it separate and enjoy the male strippers.” - Miss Know-It-All’s Gossip Column.

Gracie McAllister put the last little frosting owl on the cake and leaned back to examine her work. This was the second cake she’d made for her best friend Gemma Bowers’s baby shower, because the first had turned out funky.

This one was pure perfection, though. Since Gemma wasn’t finding out the sex of her babies, yep, plural, the color scheme of the shower was brown, gray, and orange. Gracie had fought hard for a cake that would reveal the sex of the twins, but Gemma and Travis had been insistent. And it hadn’t turned out bad, with the gray background, brown tree, and falling orange, yellow, and red leaves on the sheet cake. With the owls hanging out on the branches, it was actually pretty damn adorable.

Even if all she’d had to work with were poop colors.

Gracie took a few quick pictures with her smart phone for evidence of its awesomeness. Then, carefully, she slid the cake lid over it and snapped it into place. Now she had to carry it out to her car, drive it out to Gemma and Travis’s place, and pray that nothing befell the cake on the way.

No problem.

She’d just set the cake into the back of her Honda CRV when her cell blasted“She Got It From Her Mama.”Just the sound of her mother’s ringtone caused a cold sweat to break out on her forehead despite the chill in the November air.

She’d talked to her mother yesterday. Most weeks they spoke three times at most, and they’d reached that quota. Ever since her parents had retired to Florida, her mother had three reasons to call: to ask why Gracie hadn’t called her, to ask her how to do something that involved an electronic device, or the worst phone call of all…was she seeing anyone?

Luckily, Gracie had been seeing Darrin Quinn for a little over two weeks. He was handsome, settled, and nice. A lawyer who worked for the DA’s office in Twin Falls. Her mother would be thrilled.

Which was why Gracie hadn’t told her a thing. She didn’t want to jinx it.

Of course, the fact that he’d bailed on her an hour ago for the baby shower wasn’t awesome, but she could understand. It was a little early in their relationship for a co-ed baby shower.

She slid her thumb over the screen and answered cheerfully. “Mom. How are you?”

“Gracie? Why do you sound likethat?”

“Like what?”

“All high-pitched and out of breath.”

Insulting her already? Shocker. “Because I was carrying Gemma’s baby shower cake, and it was heavy. Could be that I’m excited to hear from you, too.”

“Hmm, okay…” There was definite doubt and suspicion in her mother’s voice, but she didn’t press her. “Did you remember the gift I sent Gemma?”

Ah, the ‘check up on her’ phone call. She’d forgotten that one. “Yes, it is sitting right next to mine in the house. I was just heading in to grab it.”

“Well, I won’t keep you then. I just wanted to make sure you give Gemma my best.”

“I will.”

“Oh, and your father and I have decided to come back to Rock Canyon for the holidays, so you won’t need to get a plane ticket this year.”

Gracie stopped walking up the steps to her house—her tiny, tiny house—and her heart did the River Dance in her chest. “You are? When are you coming?”

“The twelfth. We really miss our friends and the town, and figured we’d come back for a nice long visit. Do you think you can pick us up from the airport in Boise? It was less expensive than flying into Twin Falls.”

But an hour-and-a-half drive two ways for me is okay?

“Sure, Mom, of course I can get you guys. Where are you going to stay?”

“Well, we just assumed we’d stay with you, sweetheart.”

Gracie wanted to slam her head into something. The whole reason she flew down to freaking Florida for the holidays was to spend it with her parents, who had a three-bedroom house on the beach. Yet now they wanted to come up here and stay in her one-bedroom house, while she’d get stuck sleeping on the couch for two weeks?

“Of course, if that’s a problem, I suppose we could find a hotel or something,” her mother said.

Passive aggressiveness rears its ugly head.

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