She clapped both her hands over her mouth, as if she could shove the words back inside. “We just found out. It’s early, so we’re keeping it to ourselves, but I can’t not tell you,” she said through her fingers.

“Congratulations!” I threw my arms around her. “I mean, I assume you’re excited. Are you excited? I guess I should have asked you that first. Lacey! I cannot believe you let me blather on about my own stupid uterus this entire time!”

Lacey hugged me back. “I still can’t believe it’s real,” she said into my hair. “I don’t remember being lackadaisical about birth control, but here we are, so…I think it’s fate.” She pulled away and smiled, and it was brighter than the room’s paint job. “It’ll set back my graduate work for a bit, but I have my whole life to hit that target. I’m really, really happy about it, Bex,” she said. “It feels really, really right.”

“Then I’m really, really thrilled,” I said. “I am going to be amazing at coming over and giving the baby very loud gifts and then leaving.”

“Yeah, well, that street goes both ways,” Lacey said, but she was grinning. “You have a contract to fulfill, remember? Don’t give me all your rude ideas.”

I leaned against the counter and dropped my head on her shoulder. “I’m so happy for you, Lace.”

“Good,” Lacey said. “Because I need a favor.”

“Anything.”

“Can you help me plan a wedding?” she asked.

I grinned at her. “Because mine went so well?”

“Nowhere to go but up,” she said.

*  *  *

How’s the prep going, Killer?

Two days before we were due to leave for Canada, I was standing on a wooden box in my dressing room amid a ring of mirrors as Donna ran a final check on the weights keeping my skirts in place so that I didn’t scandalize North America with a glimpse of my cellulite. She had been working relentlessly on looks for all fifty-two engagements in our diaries—plus emergency alternates in the event that I accidentally sat on a piece of chocolate and melted it to my butt, or something similarly horrific—and she was so stressed that she’d taken up smoking just for an excuse to go outside.

It had been twenty-nine hours since I got a text from anyone but Bea, so when I saw that my phone had a message from Freddie and not, say, a stern reminder about a pedicure, I was so pleased that I actually yelped.

Donna panicked. “What happened? Did I stab you? Are you bleeding? Are you bleeding on a Greta Constantine that took me nine weeks to get?!?”

“No!” I assured her. “No, I’m sorry. Everything is fine. I just got a text. It doesn’t have anything to do with the tour.”