Size Matters

Book 2: Handcuffs & Happily Everafters

by Robyn Peterman

Genres: Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

A quest for Bigfoot and big love from the New York Times bestselling author of How Hard Can It? “For a good time, read Robyn Peterman!”—Michelle Rowen, national bestselling author A few hard truths . . . Don’t bet on Hasselhoff, Bigfoot might actually exist, and searching for the impossible may lead you to your heart’s desire . . . It’s a big fat hairy deal when I lose yet another bet to my best friend, Rena. Not only do I end up attending Bigfoot meetings with her kooky Aunt Phyllis, I find myself traveling with a band of reality TV, Sasquatch-hunting nut-jobs! Not to mention a suspiciously shady film crew. As if those little nuggets aren’t enough to send me on the express train to Crazytown . . . I stupidly swear off men! Clearly all this would mess up any gal’s social life, but the worst part of the story? The minute I send my libido on vacation, I meet Mitch. Yep, Mitch, the sexiest cop ev-ah. The hottest, best kissing, finest tushied, SINGLE guy I’ve ever laid eyes on. I’d rather be hot on his trail than anything that involves the word Big or Foot. But sometimes what you’re hunting for has been right in front of you all along . . . “Robyn Peterman has this fantastically kooky/dirty/off the wall sense of humor that totally turns my crank . . . If you want/need a slapstick-esque romance with adventure you need to read Size Matters.”— The Book Vixen “Incredibly funny and well written . . . All around it was just a romping good time!”— The Geeky Blogger’s Book Blog

Release date: December 1, 2013

Publisher: eOriginals

Print pages: 300

Sample

“You’re kidding me,” I said, shaking my head in shock.

“I’m absofuckinglutely not.” My best friend and roommate grinned, gently stroking her six-foot-tall cardboard cutout of Brett Favre. “Did you think I would take a bet where I might lose my cardboard quarterback boyfriend?”

“B-but you have a real boyfriend,” I stammered, realizing the magnitude of my stupidity. I knew there was no way out. I couldn’t plead brain damage or lack of sex. Actually I could plead lack of sex, but I didn’t really want Rena to know that little tidbit right at the moment. Having a kind-of boyfriend who traveled more than he was in town had put a crimp in any activity south of my belly button.

“I do have a real boyfriend,” Rena agreed, “but no one can replace my life-size cardboard cutout of Brett Favre.”

“Does it have to be Bigfoot?” I whispered, praying to Lutheran Jesus for a reprieve. “What if I do your laundry for a month? Or babysit the little people that live in your aunt Phyllis’s TV?”

“Tempting.” My best friend, who I hated at the moment, grinned evilly. “But, no.”

“How does this always happen to me?” I moaned, running my hands through the bane of my existence. The wild blond curls all over my head and halfway down my back were the envy of every woman I met, but drove me to drink occasionally. “I’m cutting the hair off,” I muttered, trying to extract my hand.

“No, you’re not. I will personally kill you if you do,” Rena informed me. “I want your hair worse than I want Angelina Jolie’s lips. And to answer your question, you said, David Hasselhoff is a big star in France and I said, no, he’s not. Then you said, Do you want to bet? and I said yes. I then proved, via some scary Internet footage, that he’s a rock star in Germany and they don’t give a shit about him in France. The end result is that I’m keeping Cardboard Brett Favre and you’re going to accompany my aunt Phyllis to her Bigfoot meetings for the next two months.”

“Oh my God,” I said. The reality of what I’d done was almost too much to bear.

“What if I pretend I’m you and go for your Pap smear?” I was desperate.

That stopped her cold. Rena had an unnatural phobia of Bryant Gumbel and gynecologists. “How many years?” she asked, eyeing me narrowly.

“Um . . . two?”

“If you had said twelve, I might have considered it,” she informed me as she lovingly dusted Cardboard Brett Favre’s abs.

“Twelve?” I shouted. “How does twelve years of double Pap smears equate to two months of Bigfoot meetings?”

“Just wait and see, Kristy.” She grinned and handed me the Sasquatch get-together schedule.

“You suck.”

“You suck more,” she laughed.

My eyes darted around Rena’s office as I tried to come up with a reasonable way out of this, or at least an alternate exit. I had an office down the hall, where I did fund-raising work for the women’s shelter I’d started. The rest of the space was filled with New York Times best-selling authors. Long story.

“Oh, I almost forgot, Louise called from the shelter. She’s a little concerned,” Rena said.

“Why?” I racked my brain trying to remember if there was anything complicated scheduled at the women’s shelter today. I had turned the day-to-day running of the shelter over to Louise, one of the most levelheaded and calm people I’d ever met. Hell, it had to be something bad for her to be rattled.

“Apparently Edith and Mrs. C showed up to give knitting lessons.”

“Oh, hell no,” I screeched as I ran from Rena’s office and continued to run all twelve city blocks to the shelter.

“Are they here?” I huffed, trying desperately to catch my breath. My lungs were burning and sweat dripped from my face. I hadn’t sprinted like that in . . . ever. I’d never sprinted in my twenty-eight years on earth, but the thought of Edith and Mrs. C alone with women who were trying to get their lives together was comparable to hosting an AA meeting at George’s Liquor Emporium.

“They just waddled out,” a pale-faced Louise informed me. “It was bad, but most of the women here today don’t speak much English.”

“Thank Jesus,” I gasped, plopping down on the couch in Louise’s office. “Did they use the phrase ‘Bless your heart’?”

“Yep”—she shook her head ruefully—“right before or after they said something emotionally crippling about someone’s hair, shoes, face, clothes, or accent.”

Edith and Mrs. C were seventy-year-old evil twins and they scared the hell out of me. I had inherited them from my recently deceased not-evil grandmother along with said grandmother’s knitting shop, A Stitch in Time, where the two devil incarnates worked.

“What did they want?” I asked as I covered my eyes and tried to block out the disaster that was my life.

“You,” Louise deadpanned. “As I recall, it went something like this . . . Tell that no-good lazy large-bottomed cow she better show her huge ass up at the store or we’ll burn it down, bless her heart.”

“Oh my God, my ass isn’t big,” I hissed.

“No,” Louise laughed, “actually, it belongs on the cover of Sports Illustrated. So, hot ass, great boobs, and amazing hair aside, I think they were serious about burning the store down.”

“Motherhumpin’ cowballs,” I muttered. “I don’t want the knitting store and I certainly don’t want the two hags that come with it. I already have a job that I love. God, I don’t have time for this.”

“You’re going to have to make time,” she informed me in her no-nonsense way. “Mariah Carey almost beat the living daylights out of them.”

“What is Mariah Carey doing in this building? I banned her from coming here for three weeks until she completes an anger management course.”

“Apparently she did it online in two days and is cured.” Louise grinned.

Mariah Carey (no relation) was a 97-pound ball of fury with the voice of a 275-pound Minnesota Vikings linebacker. I had helped her get her GED and six jobs, all of which she’d been promptly fired from. The reasons varied, but a similar theme kept popping up. Someone looked at her funny, so she broke his nose . . . someone tried to return something without a receipt, so she broke his nose . . . someone said their fries were cold, so she broke his nose. Always men, never women. Her past was rough, but she’d never have a future if she kept getting arrested for aggravated assault.

“Mariah Carey,” I shouted, “get in here.”

All five foot nothing of the unfortunately named pain in my ass entered the office with a sheepish grin on her face. “Sorry, dude,” she muttered in a voice that had me wondering for the umpteenth time if she were actually a tiny man with boobs.

“Sorry’s not going to cut it, little missy. Why’d you try to smack down on the old ladies?” I asked.

“Well, um.” She pulled on her stringy hair, which was dyed blue this week. Possibly to match her fingernails. “They said nasty things to Consuela and Rosita and they called me a man.”

Hmm, interesting. “So what happened?”

“Nothing, dude,” Mariah Carey mumbled. “I just got up in their faces and threatened them.”

“For God’s sake, Mariah, last week you put a metal chair through the TV set and the week before that you set the rug in my office on fire and the week before that you painted swear words all over the lobby . . . why in the hell didn’t you deck the old bitches?” I yelled.

“Kristy,” Louise gasped with disapproval, “you did not just tell her she should have taken out the old ladies.”

“I would never tell her to take out old ladies, but they’re not ladies . . . they’re mean old hags who are making my life a living hell and said I had a big butt. If Mariah had taken them down, maybe they would have . . .”

“Died?” Louise spat.

“Oh crap,” I moaned, and dropped my head into my hands. “What is wrong with me?”

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” Louise said, sitting down next to me and gently rubbing my back. Mariah Carey wedged herself in on my other side and played with my hair. A little odd, but strangely comforting. “You started this shelter all by yourself three years ago and have worked 24/7 until you hired me six months ago. You have raised enough money, in a shitty economy, through grants and donations so we can keep our doors open the rest of the year. Your grandma died a month ago and your boyfriend seems like a douche. A very attractive douche, but a douche. You now own a store run by Satan’s twin spawns and you need a break. But you can’t tell Mariah she can bust down on old ladies, no matter how vile they are.”

“I’m so sorry,” I told Mariah and Louise between the splayed fingers that covered my face. “I think I need a little vacation.”

“When’s the next major fund-raiser?” Louise asked, pulling my face out of my hands.

“October,” I muttered, yanking on a curl and putting it in my mouth.

“That’s four months away,” she said matter-of-factly. “Do you have savings?” I nodded mutely. “You are going to take the summer off. I have it under control at the shelter and you need to figure out what you’re going to do with the knitting shop.”

I shuddered inwardly at the thought of facing the Beelzebub twins, but I knew I had no choice. I’d deal with them and take the rest of the summer off. For the first time in a while I felt lighter.

“Thank you,” I whispered, giving Louise a hug.

“Can I make a suggestion?” Mariah Carey offered.

“Does it involve killing old women with blunt objects or folding chairs?” I asked, giving her the disapproving eyebrow.

“Um, no,” she chuckled, “but that sounds like a good time.”

“So what’s your advice, Mariah?” I grinned, waiting for something appalling or illegal to come out of her mouth.

She yanked on her hair and punched me in the arm. “You need to get laid.”

“Don’t I know it,” I laughed, flopping back on the couch. “Don’t I know it.”

The shop smelled like my grandma. I realized I hadn’t been here since she’d died a month ago. It smelled of freesia and lilies with a hint of brown sugar. Like Grandma. It smelled so familiar, I wanted to cry. I kept expecting her to pop out from behind a tower of purple yarn and plant her wet noisy kisses on my face . . . but that was impossible. She was gone and I was here. I had no choice. Grandma had left me the store and I was supposed to run it.

“God, Grandma, I miss you,” I whispered as I ran my hand over a display of quilts she had made.

I now owned the store, the stock, and the lovely old building that the store was housed in. It was in Uptown, a great little trendy nook of Minneapolis. There were two other storefronts in the building that rented from Grandma . . . I mean me. Curl Up and Dye, a hair salon that catered to the young hip crowd, although the older-lady following was quite large too. It was run by a supercute gay couple, Steve and Steve. Tall, skinny Steve and short, fat Steve. The Steves, as they were known, were covered in multiple piercings and tattoos. I love them and my grandma did too. They had coveted my hair for years and had their own wigs made to match my curls. The Steves also happened to be fabulous drag queens. I adore a good drag show.

The other storefront was home to the accounting firm that Rena used to be a slave to before she started her own company. I had temped there for a number of years while I got the shelter up and running. It was lovely to know that the pencil-pushing weenies were now at my mercy instead of Rena and me being at theirs. If I had a nickel for every time one of those nerds had touched my butt, I’d be able to retire. I suppose both Rena and I could have sued for sexual harassment, but that would have been too easy.

It was much more fun to screw with them.

Like the time they hosted accountants from the entire state of Minnesota and we sent them off with pot-laced brownies (compliments of the Steves). Apparently they ate all the brownies, laughed like hyenas throughout all the meetings, and were banned from accountant get-togethers for five years. That, by the way, is a huge slap in the nuts to geeks in the numbers world. They moped for a year about that one. The best though, was when we mailed them explicit secret-admirer notes from each other. It was fabulous to watch them blush and stammer and avoid each other in the small confines of the office. It took eighteen months for them to be able to make eye contact with each other. Good times.

The Steves were great, the accountants were asses, but the old ladies . . . they were scary. Grandma had tolerated them and they’d loved her, but everyone loved my grandma. Nobody except my grandma even remotely liked the old buzzards.

They wore their sweatpants high on the waist, right below their torpedo tits. Sweater sets were their normal uniform, lighter colors in the summer and darker in the winter. Today it was cotton candy pink. Occasionally they wore Disney Princess T-shirts. There is something inherently wrong with combining braless seventy-year-olds and Cinderella. Of course, the crowning jewel of their ensembles was the footwear . . . black rubber rain boots. That offended me beyond words.

Both biddies sported steel gray hair, bushy unibrows and beady little eyes. I never knew what color they were because they were always in slits of disgust when I was around.

This afternoon, nothing had changed.

“Hello, ladies,” I yelled at the top of my lungs, feigning joy at seeing them.

“We’re old, not deaf, you moron,” Edith let me know.

“Yes, yes, of course,” I shouted, pointing to my ears. “Double ear infection.”

Edith slapped one of her mean little claws down on the counter and pointed at me with the other one. “I thought you had the flu and pinkeye, you dirty liar!”

What the fu . . . ? She’d busted me. I couldn’t for the life of me remember what excuse I’d given them to explain my absence. Crap. The self-satisfied smirk on her face was clear evidence of her win. It was going to take everything I had not to kill them. Where was Mariah Carey when you needed her?

“The flu developed into a double ear infection,” I screamed, just to piss them off.

They backed away. I realized volume was my friend. They started talking quietly, assuming I couldn’t hear them due to the ear infection. I smiled, stared off into space, and let them have at it.

“Bless her heart,” Mrs. C said, “what in the Lord’s name is wrong with her face? She looks like a shiny albino or a deranged clown.”

Ouch, that hurt. I hadn’t had any time to sunbathe and I’d sprinted a mile about an hour ago . . . what in the hell did they expect?

“She always looked deranged to me,” Edith sniffed.

“I heard her mother, bless her heart, that slut, dropped her on her head repeatedly as a child.”

Holy hell, my mother was a lot of things, but slut was definitely not one of them. Plus, if anyone was going to call my mother unflattering names, it was going to be me, not the old bags.

“Look at her,” Edith told Mrs. C, barely moving her mouth. To screw with any lipreading skills I might have, I suppose. “She’s getting too old to find a husband, so she’s going to attract some old geezer with those disgusting knockers. I’m sure this slutty idiot right here got a boob job.”

“I think you’re right,” Mrs. C agreed. “Bless her heart, new boobies won’t get her a man. She’s as dumb as a box of hair.”

“Some men don’t care about brains,” Edith piped in. “A good set of hooters can go a long way.”

“Ladies,” I shrieked, making them jump. Shoot, I was hoping to give one or both of them a heart attack. Dumb as a box of hair, my ass. “Apparently”—I kept the volume high because it was so enjoyable to watch them wince—“we’ve had some complaints. Several customers have left the shop in tears. Many people are swearing never to come back because you two are such horrid bitches.”

Mouths agape, they stared at me in shock.

“What did she say?” Mrs. C whispered to Edith.

“She called you a bitch,” Edith whispered back.

“No,” Mrs. C hissed, “she called you a bitch.”

“No,” I shouted, “I called both of you bitches, because that’s what you are. For the sake of clarity,” I continued to bellow, “I believe I called you horrid bitches . . . not just plain old, disgusting, putrid bitches.”

“She doesn’t have a double ear infection, does she?” Mrs. C asked Edith. Edith shrugged her bony shoulders.

“No, I don’t,” I answered her, grinning from ear to ear.

“That was a dirty underhanded trick, you awful girl,” Mrs. C wasped at me.

“I thought it was pretty good. By the way, the boobs are real. Quite honestly, ladies, your obsession with knockers alarms me. It makes me ponder your relationship.”

They paled considerably and began to fidget. No. Way. I was just trying to mess with them. I didn’t really think they were lesbians. Sweet Lutheran God, the visual was enough to give me nightmares for the rest of my natural life.

“You can’t speak to your elders like that, little hussy,” Edith snapped, trying to swat me with her claw. It seemed she thought she could scare me or beat me into forgetting they were gay. If it were only that easy.

“You’re right, I can’t,” I said to the pair of self-satisfied smirking old biddies. They looked so superior sitting there, looking down their mean old lesbian noses at me. Bushy unibrows a-twitching. Had they never heard of tweezers? They truly believed they had the upper hand and I would cave to whatever their demands were, enabling them to continue to terrorize the knitters and quilters of Minneapolis . . . while I paid them.

There was one thing they hadn’t counted on . . . I was at the end of my rope. I was exhausted, overworked, and undersexed. And I was getting more pissed off with every moment I had to spend with these evil women who gave lesbians a bad name. Life lesson: Never mess with an overly tired, cranky, horny girl.

“You’re right, I can’t talk to you like that. Come to think of it, I don’t want to talk to you ever again.” Was I brave enough? My stomach clenched in excitement and my hands shook. “You’re fired,” I shouted at them.

“You can’t fire us, you little potlicker,” Mrs. C yelled.

What in the hell was a potlicker? Whatever. I narrowed my eyes at the abominations sitting behind the counter in my beloved grandma’s shop and I smiled sweetly.

“I believe I just did.” A huge weight began to lift from my shoulders.

They didn’t move a muscle . . . just sat there like they owned the place. “You just wait,” Edith threatened, “this whole town is gonna hear about that boob job.”

“That’s okay,” I countered gleefully, “I can’t wait to tell everyone you guys are muff divers.”

Their shrieks of rage were music to my ears, but they still didn’t budge from their perch behind the counter.

“I think it’s time for you gals to leave,” I told them as I walked toward the front door.

“I think it’s time for you to read the stipulations in your grandma’s will,” Edith said smugly.

The blood in my veins turned to ice. “What are you talking about?”

“You can’t fire us. We come with the store,” Edith cackled.

Who did I screw over in a past life? I simply didn’t deserve this crap. “Fine,” I snapped, “I’ll sell the damn place.”

“Can’t do that either,” Mrs. C chimed in. “At least, not for five years. You might want to pay your grandma’s lawyer a visit, girlie.”

I gave them a hostile glare and tried to come up with a brilliant parting shot, but I was in shock. If what they said was true, I was screwed. Nothing but the word assclown came to mind, and I don’t really know what that means . . . so I stayed silent, turned my back on the old cow patties, and left. The lightness I had felt only moments earlier had disappeared. The weight of the world was squarely back on my shoulders. Crap.

“Gotcha!” Jack jumped out from nowhere and trapped me in a suffocating bear hug while showering me with noogies.

Jack had an apartment downstairs, but since he and Rena were in luurve, he spent all his free time in our apartment . . . hogging the couch and the remote.

“Get off me, you dork,” I laughed, pushing the six-foot-two Greek god away.

“Leave her alone,” Rena chimed in, smacking him on the butt. “She’s had a day from hell.”

I moaned in agreement, threw my purse on the kitchen table, and flopped down on the couch. The tension in my neck began to loosen as I grabbed my Minnesota Vikings fleece blanket and curled into a tight ball. I was home. My day from hell was over and I had the entire evening ahead of me to watch bad reality TV . . . Heaven. I closed my eyes, but didn’t miss the wild-eyed look of concern that passed between the lovebirds. I really, really hoped they were going out. I so didn’t want to rehash my day and have them try to make me feel better.

Rena was the sister I’d never had and by default, Jack had become my overprotective obnoxious older brother. Their love was true and slightly nauseating. As happy as I was that my best friend in the world had found the real deal . . . I was a little jealous. I wanted what they had too. I just couldn’t seem to stop dating losers . . . like the douche, oops, I mean Ethan, my absent boyfriend. Why I even labeled him boyfriend was becoming a mystery to me. We had only gone out on six dates. He was hot and exceedingly polite. He’d made several bizarrely considerate comments about my rear end. He badly needed to work on his flirting, but his looks made up for his strangely well-mannered lack of finesse . . . I think. Originally from somewhere in Texas, he’d relocated to Minneapolis three months ago. Oh, and he was Jack’s boss. For a cop he sure traveled a lot.

“Are you guys going out tonight?” I asked, snuggling deeper into my purple and gold blanket.

“Um . . . no,” Rena replied quickly. “I thought we’d hang out here, eat ice cream, and watch Housewives of Whatever-the-Fuck.”

I sat up swiftly and narrowed my eyes at a very guilty-looking duo. “All right, who died?”

“Why would you ask something like that?” Rena laughed, not quite meeting my eyes.

“Because you hate the Housewives and we only eat ice cream for dinner when really bad stuff is going down,” I informed her calmly as my insides danced wildly. I glanced at Jack, who seemed to find the ceiling fascinating. “Spit it out. I’ve had a crap day and I can’t take any more bad news.”

“Did Edith and Mrs. C do anything awful at the shelter?” she asked, scooping ice cream into bowls as if her life depended on it.

“No, Mariah Carey threatened them and they left before they could do much damage.”

Jack decided the ceiling was just fine and chose to rejoin us. “Did she break their noses?” he asked, trying unsuccessfully not to laugh.

“How do you know about Mariah Carey and her nose-rearranging issues?” I giggled, forgetting for a moment they were the enemy.

“Kristy,” he explained, still grinning, “every cop in Minneapolis and the surrounding area knows Mariah Carey. She’s at the station almost as much as I am.”

“Damn,” I muttered. “I keep trying to help her get a handle on her fists, but she clearly has a few anger management problems.”

“Jail time might help,” Rena offered, shoving a bowl of ice cream into Jack’s hands and placing one on the coffee table in front of me.

“Maybe,” Jack agreed, “but the irony of it all is every guy that she mangles is the kind of guy we’d all like to mangle if we weren’t law-abiding citizens.”

“Maybe so,” I said through a clump of black raspberry chip ice cream, “but it’s kind of hard to hold down a job if you assault the customers, no matter how well deserved.”

“She does have a certain charm,” Jack admitted, “but that voice . . .”

“What about her voice?” Rena asked, pulling out our last box of Thin Mints. The Girl Scout cookies proved definitively that the pair were hiding something, but I didn’t know if I had the strength or the brain cells left to pry it out of them.

“She sounds like a defensive end for the Vikings.” Jack, spoon in hand, slapped his hand over his mouth, spraying ice cream all over the wall behind him.

“Oh my God,” I shouted. “Did Brett Favre die?”

“No,” Rena interjected, grabbing the Thin Mints and shoving them at me. “Brett Favre is just fine.”

“Guys”—I closed my eyes, feeling utterly miserable—“stop plying me with sweets and tell me what’s going on.”

Rena sat on one side of me and Jack sat on the other. Oh shit, this was going to be bad. Jack rarely sat down . . . ever. I drew in a deep breath and blew it out. What could they want to tell me that merited this buildup?

“Oh sweet baby Jesus,” I shrieked. “You guys are breaking up.” I felt my eyes well up with tears. This could not be happening. They were perfect together . . . of course I would back Rena, but I’d grown to love Jack too. It had taken Rena so long to find the man who could deal with and love her brand of crazy. God, I felt sick . . .

“Hell no, we’re not breaking up,” Jack said. “If Rena tried anything like that, I’d cuff her to the bed till she changed her mind.”

“Oh please,” Rena giggled, “if Jack tried to leave me I’d cut his substantial man-bits off with a dull butter knife. We are not breaking up.”

“Ookay,” I said, trying to escape the visuals they’d just planted. “If Brett Favre is alive and you guys are still together, then what is going on here?”

“Honey.” Rena took my hand. “How much do you like Nathan?”

“Who is Nathan?” I demanded.

They exchanged a bewildered look. Jack grabbed the cookies and put four in his mouth. He clearly found my lack of recognition disturbing.

“Again,” I said, grabbing the cookies from Jack, “who in the hell is Nathan?”

“Jack’s boss . . . the guy you’ve been dating,” Rena supplied, seizing the cookies from my hand and cramming a few into her mouth.

“His name is Nathan?” Even I could hear the faint thread of hysteria in my voice.

“Um . . . yep,” Jack said.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I yelled, fighting to control emotions I couldn’t name. “I’ve been calling him Ethan for three months. Are you positive it’s Nathan?”

“It’s definitely Nathan,” Jack said, moving away from me. I didn’t blame him. I wasn’t sure if I was going to laugh, cry, or sp. . .