Page 16 of A Very Grumpy Father's Day
SIX
Piper
DROUGHT-ENDER
The warden tossed Maddie and Piper into an underground thieves’ hole. The year was 1743. The location—the Scottish Highlands. Their crime? Being too sassy. The sassynach women—yes, they were both women: one was a married mother, the other was a sixteen-year-old who was not a girl, not yet a woman. But she had the fertile imagination of someone who was all woman. She just didn’t have much in the way of boobs yet. However, she was the kind of young woman Shawn Mendes would fall madly in love with if he only knew she existed. Only this was the 1740s, so Shawn Mendes had not technically been born yet. Then again, technically, Piper and Maddie also had not been born yet… And also, Piper had already experienced her first real kiss the night of Eddie and Birdie’s wedding in Los Angeles, with someone who was not Shawn Mendes—not that it meant she wasn’t available—but that was another story, and she was writing about it in her super-duper secret diary that her mother would never find.
(*Note to self: Maybe technically Los Angeles also hadn’t been born yet? Ugh.)
Maddie looked distraught. But her hair, as always, was shiny and amazing. She was the CEO of looking fierce, even in a filthy underground cave prison. But she worked as the executive assistant to a kind yet busy solicitor called Ned Gowan. She’d been working long hours lately, helping him to defend women who were accused of being too sassy, which was super ironic and which was also why she had ink stains on her hands and clothes. Ned Gowan had actually asked her to return to work later that night because they were preparing for a big trial in the morning. She was on her way home after work when she bumped into her favorite niece, and then they both got sassy with some slob who had hollered at them. What were they supposed to do? Not give him sass for calling Piper “Poops”?
She did not regret it, but she could not believe she was now stuck in this cave when she had to get home to her husband for their date night. Her husband was so fire. He was probably pacing around their castle, clenching his fists and also clenching his impossibly tight butt cheeks. That big daddy lawyer was extra thirsty to Netflix and Chill with his honey. This drought had lasted forever, it seemed. Despite still being very much in love, they had not found time to connect recently, so their favorite niece had kindly arranged for her own mother, Maddie’s sister, to babysit Ciara so Maddie and Declan could have some sensual married couple alone time.
Piper had to change and get to Harper C.’s super chill gathering because Elijah F. would be there, so she was equally anxious. “You only have yerself to blame!” Piper exclaimed, in her super cool Scottish accent.
“What? You’re saying this is my fault?” Maddie replied, in a fancy English accent. “I’m the one that warned you not to be so sassy to the officer.”
“Well, it was yer fault for bein’ so sassy and for inspirin’ me to be sassy too! Who’d ye think I learned it from—my mother? Hah!”
They shared a laugh at that because they both knew how basic Piper’s mother was.
All of a sudden, the warden tossed a loaf of crusty bread through the locked cage door thingy above them. “Food for the sassynachs,” he grunted and then turned to go.
“Wait!” Maddie cried out. “There’s been a terrible mistake!”
“Oh yeah?”
“I am Maddie Cooper Cannavale. Wife of Declan Cannavale, Esquire. Clan O’Sullivan! General counsel at Sentinel! One of the most prestigious real estate firms in all the land!”
The man snorted. “And I am Harvey Specter of the future TV showSuits.” He dragged a fat finger beneath his nose and disappeared from view.
“Harvey Specter has a way cuter butt,” Piper muttered.
Maddie looked distraught again. “I just want to go home! I just want to go home to my husband’s inspiring butt that is snatched AF.” Maddie was cool, but she had been overusing the termsnatchedever since she learned it from her niece. At least she didn’t pronounce itsnatch-edlike Piper’s mother. “I just want to stroke his abs and low-key lick his sexy stubbled face and then let him get all up in my lady cave. Not to be confused with the cave you and I are in RN. I mean, right now. People shouldn’t use text abbreviations when they’re talking IRL. Anyway… It has been far too long since my husband and I have lain together, for work and baby reasons.”
“We won’t be here long,” Piper assured her. “Zac Efron will save us.”
Her Aunt Maddie scoffed at her. “Zac Efron is too busy saving the world to save us. Also, he hasn’t been born yet.”
Piper realized she was right. She also wondered if Zac Efron or Shawn Mendes had any Scottish ancestors… But wait, maybe…
“Dylan Efron has not been born yet either,” Maddie said before Piper could even suggest it.
Piper blew out a frustrated breath. Everything was so unfair, always. What kind of a world would allow her to know about the existence of two perfect Efrons when she could not be in the same time zone or time frame or time dimension or whatever it was called as they were in?
Piper and Maddie ate the crusty bread and curled up on the ground, hoping to fall asleep early, expecting to awaken the next morning to be taken to trial for their sassiness.
But as soon as they closed their eyes, they heard a familiar, anguished deep (and some would say grumpy yet cocky) voice in the distance. “Where is my wife?!” he shouted. He had a Scottish accent, even though he was half Irish and half Italian, because they were in Scotland. They heard the clanging of swords. Big ones. The kind that could split you in two. They heard the hurling of men into barrels. “I swore an oath in front of Mary Margaret O’Sullivan Cannavale to protect that woman! If ye ken yerselves to be of a higher power than that of me ma, then God help ya! I am in no mood for a battle of wits with morons. The first man forward shall be the first man down. Drop yer metal swords, or say goodbye to yer pork swords.”
Maddie and Piper giggled and then heard the sound of metal swords dropping to the ground.
“We’re down here, Dec!”
“I’m coming for ye, hot wife and beloved niece Piper who is not related to me by blood!”
And come for them he did. He unlocked the metal prison door in the ground thing with the key he’d taken from the warden, and flung it open. Then he reached a tanned, veiny arm down to lift both Maddie and Piper up and out of the hole—both of them at the same time! His muscles were sinewy but oh, so strong, and his strength was amped up because of all that protective alpha testosterone! Fortunately, he was wearing pants instead of a kilt because even though Declan has nice knees, it would be a shame to hide his butt under all that heavy fabric.
“How dare they imprison ye fer bein’ sassy,” he said. Then he lowered his voice and said to his wife, “It is I, Declan Sullivan Cannavale, Esquire, who has the right to punish ye fer bein’ sassy—and my right alone.”
