Kiss the Girl (Naughty Princess Club 3)

After my dad trudged off, grumbling about how he thought strippers were supposed to be more fun and he couldn’t believe no one wanted to celebrate the fact that he made Sebastian piss his pants with just a look, we came back to Cindy’s house. I am currently icing my hand and sipping a cold glass of wine on her couch.

Yes, I am slowly sipping a nice, cold glass of Moscato instead of chugging right from the bottle, even though I really, really want to. Cindy told me I was in time-out and not allowed to give Anastasia any more fodder for Snapchat, which means being day-drunk is clearly out.

Now that the adrenaline from kicking Sebastian’s ass and telling him off has left my body, I’m back to feeling blah. I miss Eric. I miss him so much I want to curl up in the fetal position and go back to being unshowered and smelling like regret and desperation while shoveling an entire canister of Pringles in my mouth. My first thought when I walked out of that hotel room was that I couldn’t wait to tell Eric what I did. I even reached for my phone to send him a text—but I couldn’t do that. What kind of a mixed message would that send? I left him and told him it was because he was too much of a distraction. In his mind, I’m supposed to be busy concentrating on the Naughty Princess Club and not on a man. It doesn’t make it any easier that he hasn’t sent me a text himself since that last one, hours ago, with a picture of Derrick’s balls. Not that receiving texts from him has made anything about this easier, but at least they would put a smile on my face for a few minutes. He’s been texting me at least every hour since I left him. This is the longest he’s gone without sending me something, and now I’m starting to wonder if he finally realized there’s nothing he could say to get me to change my mind. If he finally realized I’m not worth all this trouble and begging—and that thought breaks my heart into a million pieces all over again.

Being responsible and trying to do the right thing sucks goat balls. And not yoga goat balls because those were tiny pygmy goats with tiny pygmy goat balls. It sucks massive, freak-of-nature, mountain goat balls.

“We need to figure out a way to trip her up during the board meeting. Make her admit what she did,” Cindy suggests.

I continue staring into my glass of wine while Belle and Cindy sit together on the love seat across from me, trying to come up with ideas for the board meeting.

“She’ll never fall for any trick we could come up with,” I tell them with a sigh. “She’s a bitch, but she’s smart. I’m telling you guys, we need to just go in there with all of our stats and figures, give them the facts, get our approval, and go.”

I can see it written all over Belle and Cindy’s faces that they absolutely do not agree with me, but what else can we do? Maybe we can figure something out after the board meeting and we secure our approval, but for right now, we need to play by Ursula’s rules. We’re already losing money this week, since I had to cancel all of our party bookings until we get the business license. We were able to do business temporarily without the license because our town has a minimum amount of money a business needs to make before a license is required. We never expected to go over that amount so quickly, and we got a letter after the denial saying that we’re forbidden from operating at this time. I’m not about to jeopardize the entire business just because I want to take Ursula down, which could backfire in our faces.

The doorbell rings, saving me from having to explain to the girls once again why we shouldn’t be wasting time trying to figure out a way to make Ursula pay for what she’s done. Cindy leaves the room to answer the door, coming back a few minutes later with a small white box with a red satin bow on it. She hands it to me.

I look at her questioningly, and she just shrugs.

“No clue. A courier just dropped it off and said it was for you.”

Setting my wine glass and bag of ice on the table in front of me, I carefully untie the bow and remove the lid from the box to find a key sitting inside on a bed of cotton. Pulling the key out, I find a business card under it with just an address on it, along with the number 150.

“What is that? Who’s it from?” Belle asks, getting up from the love seat to walk over to me.