I Pucking Love You (The Copper Valley Thrusters #5) - Pippa Grant Page 0,11

love with Nick Murphy, her best friend’s older brother, basically since high school, and she pulled a total baller move last year that had him crawling on his hands and knees begging her to love him for like a month, which is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

And three, she has the cutest baby on the entire planet.

Naturally.

Despite Nick being the baby’s daddy.

I pull my car to a stop in front of the house that Nick bought her as his final please take me back gesture, which I can’t be mad at him for, since the house came with room for their pet cow-dog, and he got lucky in that Kami’s always wanted to live in a Victorian mansion and that was the kind of house for sale when he needed a few acres for farm animals too.

Long story.

There’s an Escalade parked in the driveway, which means Ares Berger is probably here as well, but it’s not a big deal. Ares doesn’t talk, so he won’t repeat anything he’s about to overhear.

And it’s time for me to spill my guts to Kami.

Some of them, anyway.

I bang on the front door, hear a subtle moooo in the backyard, and take that as the cow-dog giving me permission to go in.

And would you look at that?

The door’s unlocked.

“Kami?” I whisper-shriek, in case the baby’s sleeping.

“Muffy?” comes my cousin’s louder reply from the living room.

I bolt for the sound of her voice. “Kami! Kami, I need Nick.”

She’s still in her scrubs from work—she’s a vet, naturally—as she rises from the rocking chair, baby cradled in her arms, like she just finished feeding him. “You…need Nick?”

It’s a strange request. I get it. If I had a leaky toilet or I needed something off a high shelf, Nick wouldn’t be my first choice. Ever.

Not because he’s not tall or capable—he is—but I have a stepladder. Also, never trust Nick Murphy around a toilet. It’s a rule.

Which means I wouldn’t trust Nick for other home repairs either. Or most anything else.

Nick, the dark-haired, green-eyed, prank-pulling goaltender for the Thrusters, pokes his head in from the dining room. He’s eyeing me like I’m an alien being who shouldn’t be trusted around his wife and baby, which is probably fair. He nods, still wary. “Muffy.”

“I need a fake date to a thing on Monday morning. Can you glue on a super thick villain mustache, use a fake earring, wear color-changing contacts, and answer to Renaldo for a day?”

He blinks once at me, slides a look to Kami, and disappears again.

So I turn back to my cousin, who’s now eyeballing me like I have finally gone off the deep end.

For the record, I once set her up on a date with an octogenarian criminal—yes, yes, the same one my mother was having breakfast with this morning who Heimliched my boobs—so it does actually take a lot for her to think I’ve lost my marbles.

“Please?” I drop to my knees and clasp my hands. “Please talk him into being my fake date. I won’t kiss him, I won’t touch him except to possibly take his elbow since that’s something a date would do, and I won’t talk on the drive there or back since I know it would annoy him. I’ll even spring for his hotel room Sunday night since it…doesn’t make sense…to drive in Monday morning. I only need him to make me look good. Like I’m not a total disaster.”

“Muffy, you’re not—”

“I live with my mother, my matchmaking business is improving but it’s called Muff Matchers, and we all know there’s only so good it can get after that. I have student loans that the authorities will probably ask your kids to repay for me someday, and I also found a really weird mole behind my knee this morning that had me freaking out until I showered and it came off because it was a smudge of ketchup. Ask me the last time I had ketchup. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know when I had it or how it got under my pants. I am the very definition of a total disaster. And I cannot go to this fu—thing with these people who already saw me at my very worst without looking like a million bucks, and the only way to look like a million bucks is to stand in its shadow, so please. I need Nick. For one day.”

Kami bounces in place and pats the baby’s bottom while she frowns at