Page 5 of Piper

“Ditto.” He isn’t playing into my pity party.

“Goddamn. How did I become this pussy-whipped moron?” I rub the back of my neck to get all the blown circuits in my mind firing.

“The love a good woman does it to the best of us.” He slaps me on the back. “Don’t try to figure it out, just thank God for your good fortune and run with it.” That sounds like a plan to me. All my plans for the future have changed. In the last few moments, my whole life has done an incredible one-eighty. “After you go grovel your ass off and convince Piper not to go too hard on you.”

“Wish me luck.” I don’t even bother turning off my computer. After grabbing my jacket, I race for the door. I’m not going to waste another second.

“You’re going to need it,” he calls behind me. Fucker. “Before you get too caught up in your quest to regain your manhood, you have actual work to do. Don’t forget you have a one o’clock meeting with Desmond at the bank.” Fuck me with a wooden spoon. I almost missed the meeting I’ve been working for months to get.

“I got it. And my manhood isn’t suffering at all,” I call behind me while my plans circle my mind on a constant loop.

“I don’t know. You’ve been acting like a pussy for two goddamn years.”

“We’ll just have to agree to disagree.” The usual state of our friendship and business relationship. After graduating from college, Wild and I decided to open our investment firm. His boring, cautious attitude works perfectly with my devil-may-care disposition. He reins me in while I force him to take necessary chances. It’s actually a little embarrassing that I ignored my take-charge side and let this relationship with my little spitfire spiral in the wrong direction.

Things start to fall into place for me. I kill two birds with one stone and grab the engagement ring I bought two years ago from the safe deposit box at Desmond’s bank after our successful meeting.

“I have a favor to ask.”Jenna, my best friend and our Editor-in-Chief at Curvy Cuties magazine, strolls in my office door. “And you can’t refuse.”

“Then it’s a demand, not a favor.” I sit back and wait for her to hit me with it.

“It all depends on how you look at it,” she teases and sits on the sofa in front of my desk. Not an easy task with her massive tummy.

“Just spit it out.” I’ve already had the day from hell, and I’m not sure how many more surprises I can handle right now. “I’m not in the mood to deal with you beating around the bush.”

“Okay.” While Jenna rambles on, I space out, thinking about the little white stick I have in my purse. I’ve been feeling sick for the last few weeks and finally decided to take a pregnancy test this morning.To reassure myself that I’m not pregnant…or so I thought. When the little positive sign showed up on the tiny plastic screen, I went into autopilot damage control mode.

I stuck the life-altering little piece of plastic in a Ziploc bag and hid it in my purse, figuring I’d worry about it another time. In other words, I’m burying my head in the sand like I’ve been doing for the last two years. Burying my head in the sand, hoping our secret fling would somehow morph into a lifelong commitment didn’t seem to get me anywhere. Except knocked up and terrified. Now, I’ll have to figure out how I’m going to handle my new circumstances.

“Have you listened to a word I’ve said?” Jenna snaps her fingers in front of my face, dragging me back from la-la land.

“Yep,” I totally lie. “Every single word.”

“Then what did I say?” Oops.

“Uh.” She stares at me with a raised eyebrow while I attempt to fudge my way out of this.

“See? You’re ignoring me.”

Jenna and I have been friends since way back. Actually, we were both still in diapers when we first met. She spent more time with me and my family than she did at her foster home. In high school and college, we added three more girls to our tight circle of friends.

In college, Jenna landed an intern position at Ms. Southern magazine, and her hard work and ingenious ideas impressed the owner, Ms. Milly. When the elderly lady decided to retire, she made a very generous proposal to my friend—control of the magazine in exchange for a small percentage of the profits which are donated to a women and children’s charity in Ms. Milly’s name.

Jenna decided to staff the new and improvedCurvy Cutiesmagazine with her best friends. Since I have a degree in Journalism, I became the Assistant Editor. London, our fashion guru, has a degree in Fashion Design, so Jenna offered her the Fashion Editor position. Emery is the saleswoman of our group, and her Marketing degree works perfectly for the Advertising Executive position. Maddie, the last of us, worked hard to get the Feature Editor position. We thought life was perfect. Then the universe decided to stir things up for us.

Jenna met and married Wild Templeton, followed closely by Emery marrying Marco Grayson, London snagged a rock star, Bender Valentine, and Maddie fell for Fischer Mackenzie. They all have wonderful, supportive husbands while I have a secret fling with the love of my life.

Well, it’s not a secret from my best friend. A while back, I had a few too many margaritas at our girl’s night and ended up spilling my guts to Jenna when she drove my toasted rear end home. While my best friend doesn’t agree with how I’m handling the situation, she has begrudgingly kept my secret from everyone else.

“Mark is totally screwing up the new shoot.” Her words cause my heart to drop. I’m not sure I can handle dealing with our new photographer’s temper tantrums right now. We hired Mark thinking the experienced photographer would be able to handle shoots without us hovering over him. Too bad, we didn’t take into account his artistic temperament, which makes him a nightmare to deal with. We’re losing models left and right, and he’s blowing our schedule right out of the water.

I take a mental deep breath and pull up my big girl panties. First, I’ll fix the work catastrophe, and then, I’ll worry about the mess I’ve made of my love life. “When do I leave?”

Relief shines in Jenna’s bright blue eyes. “I already emailed you your ticket. Your flight leaves at two-fifteen.”

I glance down at my watch and groan, “That’s like six hours from now.”

“Oops. My bad.” She tries the sweet, innocent look that stopped working on me in grade school. I just glare back with a raised eyebrow.

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