Free Spanking Her Highness by Patricia Green

particularly different. Maybe a little tired. But she'd been working her butt off with the Boot Camp groups, and Ace had been too busy dealing with a backlog of ranching stuff to help much.
    Her eyes dropped back to the test stick. It had only been seven days since she'd been such a fool. Maybe if she did the test twice?
    A few minutes later, she got the same result. Pregnant. She was pregnant. Knocked up. In the family way. Got a bun in the oven. Going to have a baby.
    She'd been stupid and grossly irresponsible. Her family would be so disappointed in her.
    Of course, this early in the process, the test could still be wrong. The box said it was only about 60% effective. But, if you thought about the way the test worked, testing for the presence of a particular hormone, it seemed unlikely that the test would give a false positive. False negative, yes, but false positive was much less likely.
    So…now what was she to do?
    She looked up in the mirror again and saw tears streaming down her face. Where had those come from? Queenie wanted to be calm, cool. Able to handle this. She wasn't a teenager or a rape victim. She'd done this to herself. Well…with help from Will. It was his fault, too. They'd both been stupid.
    The first person to tell would be Consuela. She'd been like a second mother to Queenie for the last twenty years. She'd understand and be sympathetic, even though Queenie had truly screwed up this time.
    Queenie wiped her face and squared her shoulders, making her way through the house as she looked for the older woman. She finally found her in the family room, dusting off the fireplace mantle.
    "Good morning, Connie."
    Consuela's smile was genuine and she paused for a moment to share it with Queenie. "Queenie. Good morning! How are you today?"
    "Oh, okay. Pregnant."
    A lock of gray hair fell over Consuela's brow, she straightened up so fast. "Qué? What did you say?"
    Queenie felt guilty for the worried crinkles around Consuela's eyes. "That was abrupt. I'm sorry. I'm not sure how to tell folks, though. Maybe I should have asked y'all to sit down or somethin'. Isn't that what they do in the movies?"
    "Sit down, Queenie." She took a seat on the sofa and patted the spot next to her, putting her dust rag down nearby.
    "Yes, ma'am."
    "Are you really pregnant?"
    "Yeah."
    "Dios!" Consuela's lips tightened. "Who is the father?"
    Compelled to tell the truth, Queenie squirmed with discomfort. "Will Mazie."
    "My, my, my. He works fast, I'll say that for him."
    "It's my fault as well as his. I'm a grown-up."
    Consuela patted her hand, her face softening. "You are, si."
    "Daddy's gonna kill me."
    Leo walked into the room. "Why would I kill you?"
    Queenie nearly leapt off the sofa. "Daddy!"
    "Buenos dias," Consuela said smoothly.
    They exchanged a few considerate words in Spanish.
    "Sit down, Leo," Consuela told him at the end of their exchange.
    He eyed his housekeeper and then Queenie. "I'm not gonna like this, am I?"
    Consuela shook her head, and Queenie sank down in the cushions, trying to make herself as small as possible.
    Leo sighed and sat in a leather wing-back chair. "What's got y'all riled up?"
    The women exchanged a look, and Queenie knew it was now or never. "I'm pregnant, Daddy."
    His shoulders relaxed as relief spread on his face. "Well, this is hardly the way I expected my first grandbaby, but I'll take it."
    "Daddy? You're not mad?"
    Leo shook his head. "Other kinds of difficult news would have been much worse, so, although I'm disappointed in you, Queenie, I'm not mad."
    She hurried over to him and bent to hug him. "Thank you, Daddy."
    He squeezed her back. "I ain't gonna endorse this behavior, young lady. You'll be getting' married."
    "I haven't even told Will yet! And I don't want to get married!"
    "Will Mazie, you mean?"
    "Yeah. I uh…it was…"
    He held up a hand. "I don't want the details, thank you. So long as the father ain't Harry Tatum, nearly anyone else would do. But I'm not too happy with Will