Pucker Up Read online

  Pucker Up

  By Valerie Seimas

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  PUCKER UP

  Copyright © 2015 by Valerie Seimas

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Ravenborn

  www.selfpubbookcovers.com/ravenborn

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited without express written permission of the author.

  First eBook Edition: October 2015

  Kindle Edition

  Manufactured in the United State of America

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  RomCon – A Not So Cinderella Tale

  Royally Screwed – A Prince and a Damsel not at all in distress

  About the Author

  One Last Thing . . .

  Prologue

  Dustin slowed at the top of the stairs, staring at the open door in trepidation. He was not equipped to deal with this – what twenty-three-year-old guy was? Another clap of thunder sounded, and he heard the floor creak as someone moved across it. He squared his shoulders, summoned all of his courage, and pushed the door open.

  Two small faces with wide eyes stared back at him, framed by two sets of pigtails, one blonde, one brown. Lightning slashed across the sky and the girls squeaked and hugged each other closer.

  “It’s okay,” Dustin said. He tried to smile reassuringly but his face wouldn’t go, settling into a grimace they frowned at. “It’s just a storm. Nothing to worry about.”

  “It’s louder than at home,” Harmony said, her bottom lip quivering.

  “She means the old apartment,” Melody clarified, her eyes looking at the floor.

  “I know,” he whispered, not sure if they even heard. This was new for them, for him, for Peter downstairs.

  “Will you tell us a story?” Harmony asked, earnestness shining out of her nine-year-old face.

  “A story?”

  “Mom always told us a story when we couldn’t sleep.”

  “He doesn’t know any stories,” Melody admonished, trying to radiate authority.

  “Peter – I mean Dad – he knows some good stories. Can you get him?”

  “I know stories.” Dustin gulped. He knew stories – couldn’t think of any remotely appropriate to tell little girls, but he knew there had to be one. Hell, if Peter could do it, he could definitely do it. He was the smarter twin anyway.

  “Really?” Harmony’s face brightened into a wide grin and his heart was lost. How could he take away her simple joy?

  “Really?” Melody’s reply was much more disbelieving. She lifted her eyes and he saw the need behind her skepticism, trying to be brave.

  “Yes, really.” He sat in the chair across the room and turned to his attentive audience. “So there’s this ninja – ”

  “No,” Harmony said with a shake of her head.

  “Zombie?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Army Ranger?”

  “Nope.”

  “Football player?”

  “As if.”

  “You, my dear, are hugely opinionated,” Dustin grumbled as he smiled on the inside.

  “Yep!” Her eyes sparkled with impish glee. He and Peter were going to be in so much trouble.

  “So what, you only like sparkly girl stuff?”

  “A story about zombies is not going to help us get to sleep,” Melody said with an eye roll. “We want to have sweet dreams.”

  “Tell us something with a happy ending,” Harmony demanded. Shit, what did he know about happy endings? His mind flittered to another night, another storm, watching the love of his life leave. They’d been so close, just a breath away. If that story had ended just a bit sooner, it could have seemed like a dream come true.

  “Okay,” he said, clearing his throat. “Once upon a time –”

  “What’s this story called?” Harmony asked, sitting up in bed.

  “You need a title now?”

  “Yep,” she said, hugging her stuffed rabbit closer. “All the real bedtime stories have titles. This is a real bedtime story, right?”

  A title popped up, from where he didn’t know, but he couldn’t tell them. Pucker Up wasn’t at all an appropriate name for a children’s story. It wouldn’t make much sense to them; he wasn’t planning on telling them that the heroine was one of the Attitunes who sang that catchy song. How he used to whisper those words to her meaning so many different things – I need you, I miss you, I love you. How just thinking them had him wanting the taste of her on his lips. Two years wasn’t long enough to quiet his yearning.

  “A title,” he murmured. “A title… okay, this story is called… Ally and the Truly Remarkable Happily Ever After.” He couldn’t tell them her real name – the twelve-year-old might know it.

  “That’s definitely gonna have a happy ending,” Harmony whispered to her sister with a grin.

  “Sounds like it,” she responded, her head cocked to the side as she contemplated Dustin.

  “Absolutely,” he whispered back. He hadn’t gotten his happy ending in real life, but he’d find one in fiction – one that would bring some smiles back to the little girls’ faces even for just a moment. So they could keep believing that things turned out for the best, even in the face of so much proof to the contrary.

  “Once upon a time,” he began again, “a long time ago, a girl with curly red hair decided she was going to take a vacation…”

  Chapter 1

  Faith finished writing with a flourish, placing a slanted exclamation point at the end of the line. Her eyes scanned the staff paper, running the notes and lyrics through her head once more. She smiled at the result; all the heaviness had leaked away into the song, and she was content once more. Her fingers idly strummed the strings of her guitar as she refocused on the walls of her study. Photographs surrounded her, all with her bright smile, designed to remind her of the person she was – the cheerful one.

  She cracked her knuckles, nervous energy at the seemingly insane decision she’d made, and grabbed her cell phone. Seven text messages and three missed calls from Jackson. Wonderful. She threw the phone back onto the couch and cringed, not wanting to think about him, about what they’d talked about at her birthday party a few days ago. This was her week, her time to fall apart and put herself back together, and she didn’t need any well-meaning lawyers, managers, or best friends telling her the way to do it.

  “Invasion incoming.”

  Faith couldn’t help but laugh at the computerized voice that pulled her out of her worrying. She laid her guitar down and stretched the tight muscles in her shoulders as she crossed to the window, peeking out at the narrow driveway. Her house was set far back into the hill, and even though they’d checked in at the gate, they hadn’t crested over the peak and come into v
iew yet.

  As the last of the songwriting haze leaked away, she couldn’t stop a little niggle of uncertainty. For the last decade she’d retreated into herself this one week of the year, succumbing to the dark, bleak sadness she was able to keep reasonably at bay the other fifty-one. In her twenties, after realizing alcohol wasn’t helping her forget, it had been the only way she could figure out how to cope. She knew she couldn’t keep doing it forever though.

  The car finally appeared and pulled to a stop. Faith stepped away from the window and quickly tidied the mess of her afternoon. She was ready to shed one disguise – that didn’t mean she had to share all her secrets with her houseguests.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know.” The boyishly handsome man on her doorstep smiled at her. It was insanely infectious. If anyone could keep her smiling, it would be him. He didn’t know it yet but he was doing her a much bigger favor.

  “I couldn’t leave my friends out on the street, now could I? Especially the very pregnant ones.”

  Madison gave her a slightly patronizing look Faith knew wasn’t at all real. “I don’t think I’ve made it to very pregnant yet. I’m stuck firmly at adequately pregnant – all of the bloat and hormones, still able to fit through doorways.” She cast a sidelong glance at her husband. “That is if he’ll let me over the threshold.”

  Trevor wrapped an arm around his wife’s waist. “I feel bad putting her out because pregnancy has given you a phobia of germ-ridden hotels. We should have rescheduled the remodel on our place – it’s big enough for a crib anyway. Mady’s sister has the tiniest apartment; Mom’s house is too far to commute every day. My sister has the flu, Sophie has termites – how the hell she got those I’ll never know, and – ” Faith’s eyes started to glaze over at the amount of information he was spouting so quickly.

  Madison shook her head, short blonde curls bouncing, and moved past him into the house. “Forgive him and his rambling – he still gets nervous around famous people. It’s quite endearing most of the time – except when he makes me stand in doorways when my feet are killing me.”

  Faith laughed. “He’s met me at least a handful of times.” They’d become fast friends when she started guest-starring as a space troubadour on Madison’s geeky television show – and with a pregnant wife, Trevor was not far from the set when his work allowed.

  “I think it’s the accessories – the huge estate, the guarded gate, the fancy cars. You can just shut the door and leave him out there.”

  “I’m really not that bad,” Trevor protested, the grin never leaving his face. And still not coming in.

  “Really?” Madison said with a raised brow before turning to look at Faith and pulling her deeper into the house. “Did I tell you about the time Trevor and I went to dinner at Jasper Carlisle’s?”

  “Okay,” Trevor yelled after them, finally entering and running to catch up, “don’t believe anything she says. She tells this story all wrong.” Faith laughed at the pair of them and her hands itched for her guitar.

  Trevor’s phone beeped, preempting his story, and he slipped it out of his pocket. “It’s Tess. She says that Matt just left for our apartment, and oh, she wants us to get Faith’s autograph on this week’s issue of People?”

  Faith had almost forgotten about that. “Yeah, they wanted to do an article on me and my ‘career resurgence’.” She hated that term even though it was probably accurate. With the rising album sales of her solo release and all those charting singles, not to mention her first acting role, she was definitely back in the public eye. She tried not to scoff at that – she’d hadn’t really ever left.

  “I know what that’s like – I was in People once too,” Trevor said, winking at her.

  “I remember.” And she did. Those pictures had been smoldering. “Nothing quite that scandalous this time. I think I have a copy here, and I’ll be happy to sign it for your sister.” She stopped at her desk and rummaged through the papers, looking for the envelope she hadn’t even opened yet.

  “We were scandalous?”

  Madison gave him an affectionate pat on the chest. “Of course. I’m never boring, remember?”

  Faith found the magazine and looked up; her heart caught in her throat. Trevor was whispering in Madison’s ear and she gave a throaty chuckle at his words. When he pulled back, his smile was so easy and intimate that Faith’s gut clenched. She liked these people, truly did, but when they looked at each other like that she couldn’t stop the spike of agony piercing her heart.

  Madison’s eyes met hers, and a shadow passed through them. It looked too close to understanding for Faith’s liking. Madison stepped away from Trevor’s embrace and sunk down onto the couch. “Didn’t you want to put Trevor to work? Get him moving before he forgets he’s starstruck.”

  Faith was flipping through the magazine, trying to get the sudden jealous need out of her eyes, and found her own face smiling back. There was nothing revolutionary about it, just the same girl that stared at her every day in the mirror. The small picture in the corner, though, of the girl she used to be, gave her pause. Decade-ago-Faith and everything that she’d been bloomed to life inside of her, a time she’d been trying to forget for just as long. The urge to run and hide was strong – her bold attempt at company seeming the most foolish of mistakes.

  Faith pushed down her uncertainty and looked up with a smile in place, the kind that should be effortless. She was very good at burying her emotions until they were convenient; this was not one of those times. “I do have something, but I could just hire some guys from the record company to come take care of it.”

  “I want to thank you for letting us stay. You don’t want me thinking up another way; I’m not very good at it.”

  Madison laughed from the couch. “Trust me; he’s not. He’d ask for help from the other musketeers, and then, well, you’d have a fun time, but you’d also have a God-awful mess.”

  Trevor’s eyes scanned the office. “Some people aren’t as chaos-adverse as you are, honey.” Faith’s smile turned genuine at that comment – no one had ever mistaken her for neat. Too much order got in the way of her creative process; you had to be willing to color outside of the lines sometimes.

  “Okay, I’ll let you help me, no chaos-limit instituted.” His smile was so relieved that Faith wondered what type of trouble a nice, normal IT guy got himself into. “I want to set up a home recording studio. I’ve already bought most of the stuff, but I need someone to put it together and show me how to use it. You up for that, Trevor?”

  His brown eyes shone in delight. “I think you just gave him the best gift ever,” his wife said, struggling up from the couch. “The only thing that would make it better would be if it somehow involved comic books.”

  “You like comic books?” Faith knew another guy that liked comic books. He’d spent hours trying to convince her she should read them too. Or at the very least dress up as Harley Quinn. How did she even still remember that?

  “Main reason I married her is so I can go to bed with a superhero every night.” He blew his wife a kiss and skirted out of reach.

  “And the main reason I married him is so someone can fix my computer when I spill wine on it.” Madison joined Faith at the desk and took the magazine from her, skimming the article with interest. “Let’s put Trevor to work and then go get lunch. I’m starved.”

  Faith’s eyes traveled from the magazine in Madison’s hand to Trevor’s kind smile. Suddenly they reminded her so much of another couple that could have been if she hadn’t destroyed it ten years ago. Decade-ago-Faith, who had taken a different fork in the road. His name rose up in the back of her mind. Her soul sighed for him. Dustin.

  Dustin adjusted the brim of his hat, the sun on the back of his neck annoying but also the best medicine for the next few days. Her memory still shook him more than he’d like to admit – the dreams had started up again like clockwork – but he knew how to cope with that feeling. Exhaustive physical labor without his crew in sight.


  “What are you doing?”

  Dustin put down the lumber and turned, removing the hat from his head and placing his hands on his hips. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “Making a God-awful mess,” Harmony murmured with a wide smile. Well, at least she wasn’t annoyed with him anymore for not falling head over heels with the lady she’d deemed his soulmate last night. They’d tried to marry him off so many time, he didn’t know how they got anything else done. Teenagers were such a handful; they should have come with a manual. “But the real mystery is why you’re making a mess.”

  “Well, Nancy Drew, what do the clues tell you?”

  Harmony rolled her eyes. “You know you have to tell me what construction flight of fancy you’re on every year, even though you leave the evidence plain for me to find.” He knew that and grinned on the inside. “Sorry, Uncle Dust, but architect I am not. I can’t read your blueprints any more than I can Latin – though I have tried on both accounts.”

  “You think I should just tell you? Where would the fun in that be?”

  “Well, it would be awfully fun for me, personally.” She grinned again, and Dustin was close to joining the imp, her smiles irresistible no matter how much he tried to resist them. Those girls rattled his gruff façade more than he ever thought possible.

  “Well, you know I live for your amusement, Harm. Grand purpose of my life.”

  “As well it should be.” She shot him a winning smile then shrugged when he didn’t return it, grabbing the long curtain of her brown hair and twisting it up into a knot on the top of her head. “All right, gonna make me think, aren’t you?”

  “Might come in handy one day.”

  “If you don’t think I think, then you should help Dad grade his papers. You’d be amazed at the amount of thinking those things require.” Harmony shoved her hands in her back pockets and started circling the building supplies. “Okay, let’s have a simple exercise in deduction.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Instead of trying to figure out what you’re planning on doing, I’ll figure out what needs doing. No plants and I’ll assume you’re not decking over your prized garden so no to the backyard. I know you’re not remodeling the kitchen because that’s been done. As has every single bathroom in the house, probably twice.”