CALLIE (The Naughty Ones Book 1) (2 page)

Meet Nan

Callie

              The only thing that’s worse than being friends with India, is being blood related to my nanny, Elsa Landry.

For purposes that drive her crazy on a daily basis, we all call her the smallest Billy Goat Gruff—Gruffy for short. She’s a tiny little battle ax who sported a head of carrot-orange hair and hazel eyes in her youth but now has snow-white puffs of cotton wool and a will that would make Stalin stand up straighter with pride.

She’s my mom, dad, and every other family member rolled into one now that Gramps kicked the bucket, and I love her to death. Most days, at least.

Gruffy is and has always been my rock. She was there for me after my mom dumped me on her doorstep and went off to “find herself.” I just assumed she was tired of having to look at me after once I turned five and started asking her who my dad was.

She gave me four names, three of which I tracked down when I was ten. The fourth, who I believe is actually my dad—I think he’s either dead or still running.

What a dick.

I have three dads who aren’t blood relatives. Bill, the one who colors my hair for free at his salon. Ted, who gives me free cold cuts since he and his wife, Deidre, run a butcher shop. And Murray, the florist, who is also married.

So I have Gruffy, three dads, two stepmoms, and four sisters who make the worst sister look like a freaking dream. And not one has let me live it down in the three days since my walk of shame.

The only consolation to this farce is the number of hits my video got, making me surmise that Percy was right. My ass looked fabulous in that thong.

“It’s a travesty, I tell ye. Why every and any pervert can go to that evil spider’s web and look at your wee, ahem, big arse on their laps,” Gruffy yells as I continue to scramble eggs for our usual Saturday morning smack-talk session.

It’s been like this since India, that ass, came over here to personally show Gruffy the video. The old bird called me at two this morning to lay into me again.

“Gruffy, it’s called
the Net
. You know, that
Internet
thing you hate so much, and so freaking what? The worst that happened after that was that Delights got three new clients and we’re catering something for a celebrity brunch next week. As far as I can tell, something good came out of me doing that shit.”

The eggs and bacon are done, as well as the rolls and the croissants she can’t live without by the time she’s chewed a strip off my ass and the others arrive.

“Thanks, India. Freaking thanks,” I mutter around a mouthful of buttery roll as Gruffy starts in on her food. How she chews is beyond me, but according to the eighty-year-old bat, “Teeth are for the lazy.”

Who am I to argue?

“You’re so totally welcome. Oh come on, Cal! You know those old birds she plays bridge with every Wednesday all have Internet and hip young grandkids. She’d have heard about it eventually. This way, at least, you didn’t have to explain it yourself.”

Yeah freaking right. Luci recorded the whole conversation, and as far as I can tell, Indie enjoyed the hell out of breaking the news to Gruffy.

“I’d have appreciated not being ambushed by the cane brigade when I came in to drop off her freaking groceries, you asshole! Now shut up and eat your breakfast. Even dead men walking get a last meal,” I say, giving her the evil eye when she snorts and tries unsuccessfully to hide a giggle.

“So, Gruff, what you and those old birds been up to lately?” Dot trills, changing the subject like the superstar she is.

Have I mentioned that I adore Dot? She’s like my own personal Obi-Wan, a tactful peacekeeper to the core.

Gruffy takes the hint with only one derisive snort my way and smiles kindly at Dot. She really likes Dot a lot, and most of us have agreed that being mean to Dot would be like kicking a puppy.

              “The usual, dearest. I won this week’s pot, and Clifford’s agreed that we should all take up yoga for the elderly. My bonny arse, I say. I couldn’t do that nonsense when I was eighteen, and I sure as all get out will not be doing it at eighty. She’s also gone on some green juice route that makes my short ones want to curl back up into my crotch. Now I remember when I was young and having some padding was all the rage.”

Yeah, yeah, and your husbands slept in a twin bed in the same room and wore long johns. I chuckle silently, fondly recalling Gramps’s affinity for the things, no matter the season.

“So are you going?” Luci laughs when Gruffy sneers and then shrugs resignedly.

“I’m thinking I could give it a try now that I have to redeem my granddaughter’s honor in some way. Can’t have people going to yoga in the park and talking about her as if she’s a hoor without being there to defend her. No matter if it’s true,” she muses.

I swear, I feel my fillings go molten before I catch her teasing wink to the others and let my lips twitch.

“You’re a trial, you know that, you old bat?”

“True, and yet the five of you always come back for more, huh? Must be something in my water.”

“Or something. So, how’s Aggy?”

“Still being a total pain in the arse. She’s a geggy one, that.”

Gruffy complains about her nurse Aggy on a constant basis and enjoys insulting the hell out of the middle-aged woman who cares for her five days a week, but the one time the woman was too ill to come to work, you’d have sworn Gruffy was going to die from quick onset depression. Worst three days of my life and the reason I would rather flog an organ than not be able to afford her salary.

“You say she’s mouthy, and yet I haven’t met a more vocal person than you, Gruffy.” I laugh, getting up to grab the coffeepot and give everyone a refill.

“Hmm, and yet it wasn’t me hotfooting it out of a swanky hotel in nothing but my underwear and the last shreds of one’s pride,” she points out lazily.

“You know, Gruffy, I’ve suffered enough for that! I can’t go to the store without at least one person smirking at me, and
these
four wild dogs never stop mentioning it,” I huff, going for another roll for the hell of it.

Butter could be my friend.

“I’ll get over it eventually, I think. If you explain to me what you were doing walking out of a place like that at eight in the morning when I know full and well you should have been at work hours before.”

“Dammit, India! You can’t just leave me one freaking bone without throwing my carcass at her feet?” I yell, disgusted beyond my limits when Luci and Percy start cackling and Gruffy rolls her eyes as if to say “you’d think she knew us by now.”

“Look, she starting asking questions about it and I didn’t want to lie, okay?”

Yeah I’ll bet. I didn’t see her throwing the truth around three years ago when she thought she had crabs, but thankfully discovered an allergy to the new fabric softener she was using. Best two days of my life watching her scratch her crotch raw.

“Stop picking on my poor Indie bear and start talking. little girl. Is it true you had a…a….what did you call that thing again, Indie darling?”

Darling!

“A night flower hookup.”

My face hits my palms and I groan when Gruffy cackles and repeats her question, this time using Indie’s words and basically calling me a free hooker.

“Look, I was having a bad day. The Dobber called and that PA I was dealing with for the event was making a million last-minute changes and I was just…having a bad day. So I may have celebrated a little too hard in the kitchen while we were packing up and…and I was a little over my limit when I saw him!”

Not that I can clearly remember what he looks like right now. I don’t mention that to Gruffy or the others, because hello! I’m facing enough ridicule from the freaking Goon Squad as it is.

I do remember lips—full, kissable, do-naughty-things-to-me lips. And eyes such a clear grey that they almost didn’t seem real.

Damn, there go my clean panties again.

“Bad day! Well in my day—”

“You wore corsets and got around in a carriage drawn by a horse. Yeah, yeah, you can save the Stone Age lecture, old lady. I get where we’re all going with this, and I gotta say, I am not impressed by your lack of support. I had a shitty morning after a one-nighter, which I never do. Oh, and the worst part? Mr. Hotel told them to kick my ass out of the room before noon.”

Okay, don’t cry, Callie. The last time you did that The Dobber was balls deep in some other asshole’s junk and you hated yourself afterward for showing your feelings.

Dobber is my ex, who saw nothing wrong with screwing anyone.

I caught him cheating. Well, that’s not true. I suspected for a while that he was cheating on me, and when I mentioned it he made me feel so bad for not trusting him that I took the last of my savings and took him on vacation.

A week after we got back I found him boning one of his college students in my bed. On my favorite sheets! Man, I miss those sheets.

“Wait, uh, back that up a mite. Did you just tell your old gran that the man you blessed with your slice of heaven not only ran out after sex, but he also had you kicked out of the room before you were fully ready to leave?”

Yes! Here comes the love and sympathy I’ve been needing all week. Just one kind word from my Gruffy will make this all go away, I know it will.

“Yeah.” Sniffle, sniffle.

Gruffy huffs and shakes her head, her full lips thinning.

“Well, girlie, it’s official then, aye? You didn’t listen to a word I said when I gave you girls the sex talk.”

No. God, please no.

“Now the way you give a decent gam and gobble—”

“No, Gruffy!”

This time it’s not just me yelling but Indie, Percy, Luci, and even Dot as memories of The Talk filter back and cause full-body shudders. See, Gruffy isn’t your average grandmother, and when she decides to do something she does it right and proper (as she says).

Her version of The Talk ended up being a sex education that no fourteen-year-old should ever have.

It scarred us all so deeply, we made it to college without losing our virginities, and that’s saying a lot since the five of us were always wild and nuts when we were together.

Hearing your grandmother calmly educate you not just about the mechanics and dangers of sex, but also the fine techniques that would ensure that we “got ours too” went a long way in convincing us all that sex was just plain evil.

I’ll never give a blowjob without at least one shiver-inducing flashback to my toothless gran and Gramps cackling in the background.

Ew.

She sniffs at our desperate screams and the way Dot slaps her hands over her ears and shakes her head.

“The way you girls carry on, talking about sex isn’t natural.”

“It isn’t. Not the way you made it sound. I was terrified to let anyone so much as see
it,
and that time Dave Brokowski tried to show me his stuff I started screaming and running. The teachers at school thought I was having a fit!”

Percy’s words have her laughing so hard, I take a minute to actually think about her glee and I feel my eye twitch.

“You evil, evil woman.”

“What? You all thought I was going to let you run wild and surround me with a hoard of your demon spawn before you finished your schooling? Give me some credit, girls. My dear old Abel warned me, he did. He said, ‘Elsie, darling, if you don’t do something about those five hooligans, you’ll be bottle-feeding a litter of the whelps’ whelps.’ God save me, I already had my hands full with the lot of you.”

Fair point. Fair enough, at least, that not even Indie has a thing to say to that and instead turns back to me with an evil glint in her eye.

“Back to the morning in question.”

“Did you at least
try
with this one, Calliopeia Landry?” Gruffy asks, rolling her eyes at Indie. “Really, girl, a little effort wouldn’t kill you.”

What? As if I never tried with The Dobber? What gall. Okay, so maybe it is a teeny tiny bit accuratem, but give me a break. My ex’s idea of good sex apparently did not include anything even resembling a clitoris. Or he was afraid of the poor little thing.

I wonder if his gran also gave him the talk, and if she possessed a heart of brimstone and evil like Gruffy.

“Gruffy.”

“No. Really, Callie darling, touching it every now and then won’t have your hands falling off, and men…well, they need a lot more instruction and incentive than we do.”

Not Mr. Hotel. Oh heck no. I may not remember anything of actual note, but I’ve been reliving some of it in my dreams. If I remember correctly, the man knows where my clit is and he knows how to use the thing for maximum output.

God, I still get the shivers just remembering the well-sated feeling I finally registered when I didn’t want to die of embarrassment. I bet if I hadn’t been plastered, I’d be obsessed by now.

“For your information, I did and he did and we did and it was
good
.”

So good.

That has them all giving me looks of disbelief and I find my offended sensibilities rearing their ugly little heads and making my lips loosen to a degree that I know will come back to bite me in the ass.