"Valerie was crying, too. She was laughing and sniffling back sobs. "I'm going to marry my snuggy wuggums," she said.

Morelli paused, his fork halfway to the roast chicken platter. He slid his eyes to me and leaned close. "If you ever call me snuggy wuggums in public I'll lock you in the cellar and chain you to the furnace."

(taken from Ten Big Ones by Janet Evanovich)

Disclaimer: Stephanie Plum and Joe Morelli are the property of Janet Evanovich, as are the other characters from the Stephanie Plum series. She is the sole creator and owner of the series. These characters are being used without her permission, but are NOT being used for profit. What follows is intended solely for entertainment purposes among Stephanie Plum fans. Please do not sue—I am a poor librarian and am still living at home with my parents.

Nasty Nicknames

I didn't really want to humiliate Joe Morelli in front of all of his colleagues, but what he'd said the other night made me think he'd deserve it.

Okay, so I was as fed up as the rest of my family with Valerie calling Albert Kloughn cutesy nicknames in front of everyone. I got that when you were in love with someone, you'd probably give that person an embarrassing nickname. So, it followed that you might use that nickname, on occasion, accidentally, in front of other people. Given that, it seemed like a normal person would realize their mistake and never let it happen again.

Valerie, on the other hand, used cutesy nicknames which resembled baby talk to describe her fiancé on an hourly basis. Completely oblivious to the fact that other people might feel a little uncomfortable about hearing what was usually a kind of private thing.

I mean, Morelli and I liked to experiment in the bedroom, but did we talk about it in front of my mother? Just imagining the conversation made me feel sick to my stomach. And even though Morelli called me "Cupcake" on occasion in front of other people, there's a world of a difference between "cuddle umpkins" and "Cupcake". "Cupcake" was sweet and endearing. "Cuddle umpkins" was too much information.

So, on a purely intellectual level, I understood Morelli's threat that if I ever referred to him as "snuggy wuggums" in front of a group of people, he'd never let me forget it. But threatening to lock me in the cellar and chain me to the furnace? Was he crazy? More to the point, did Morelli visualize ways of inflicting pain on me when I drove him nuts?

This was coming from the same guy who'd handcuffed me to my shower curtain rod after I'd commandeered his car. I suppose you could say I'd stolen it, but in my defense, my other car was a complete piece of junk and a hazard to the streets of New Jersey. Besides, it wasn't like Joe Morelli could go around driving his own car. He was FTA at the time, and the car would have to sit there indefinitely because he was too smart to drive it as a felon. I'd done him a service, really, by preventing his car battery from dying. Morelli hadn't seen it like that, of course. Eventually, it became a moot point because the car exploded, but the memory of Joe using my own handcuffs on me in my own apartment wasn't likely to disappear anytime soon. Yeah, he'd apologized, but that's not the kind of thing you're likely to forget.

That being said, the whole threat of being locked up again wasn't something I was going to take lying down.

Never mind the fact that I was as disgusted by cutesy nicknames as Joe Morelli. Or that I'd probably die from embarrassment if I did use a cutesy nickname on him, in public or not.

Joe Morelli had said the wrong thing, and he was going down.

Once again, in my defense, I hadn't intended for it to be a revenge thing. Initially, I'd been bugged by it, but figured I'd let it go. Except maybe some subconscious part of me didn't want to let it go, because of course I told the story to Connie and Lula the following day at the bail bonds office.

"So, I hear your sister's really excited about getting married," Connie told me after handing me a pile of skips.

Lula, busy doing her nails, looked up. "Oh yeah? I didn't know she and Kloughn were that serious!"

I took a seat on the couch next to Lula. "They're really serious. I think the whole baby thing was what did it. Now, Val's all 'cuddle umpkins' this and 'snuggy wuggums' that. She has Sally planning their wedding."

"Cuddle umpkins?" Connie and Lula exclaimed simultaneously.

"Man, she's got it bad," Lula observed.

"I'm surprised that Kloughn doesn't mind that she does that in front of other people," Connie laughed.

"Not me. He's so eager to please, Steph's sister could call him Pissy Puddle and he wouldn't care."

I raised my eyebrows. "Pissy Puddle?"

"Hey, it was all I could come up with on the spot. You don't think I sit around thinking of nasty nicknames to call people, do you?" Lula retorted, placing her hand without the painted nails on her hip.

"No, she goes around telling people she'll shoot 'em," Connie answered. "'Specially if they call her fat."

"Which I ain't! I'm big, and I'm beautiful, but I ain't no fat chick," Lula snapped. "And you'd better not be implyin' otherwise."

"Not in the least."

Connie and I exchanged raised eyebrows while Lula continued to paint her nails.

"What does Joe say about all of this?" Connie questioned, obviously in search of a separate topic. "He calls you Cupcake on occasion."

I rolled my eyes. "He basically threatened to kill me if I called him a pet name in public."

Lula's eyes went wide. "Nah uh! Did he really?"

"His exact words were that he's lock me in his cellar and chain me to his furnace."

"Hell yeah, that's just like saying you're gonna kill someone. Well, he can't get away with that. You can't let him!"

I turned to Connie. "What do you think?"

Connie shifted in her seat. "To be honest, I think that Morelli was probably joking. It's not like you call him sweetie pie or anything like that in front of his friends…"

"That's all the more reason to let him know you ain't gonna take his shit! It's like, he's asking for that when he gives that kind of an ultimatum, you know? Girl, you gotta invent a really sickeningly sweet nickname and use it on him in front of everyone he knows."

"I wouldn't do that," Connie cautioned. "If he was dumb enough to threaten you when he figured you wouldn't do it, who's to say what he'd do if you actually did do it?"

Connie's logic made sense, but this merely confirmed what Lula was saying. I'd broken up with Morelli before for insisting I quit my job. Wasn't this kind of the same thing? Sure, he'd given me a demand that I'd have no trouble agreeing to, but just putting it out there made the idea that much more tempting.

I guess this had been similar to what happened with Eve in the Garden of Eden. Probably, the apple God had told her not to eat didn't even look that good at first. Maybe it was filled with worms. I mean, if God came down and told me not to eat a piece of broccoli, I'd have no problem obeying. I didn't even like broccoli.

Except being told not to do something would be enough of an incentive to do it. Maybe that apple looked a lot more appetizing to Eve after God told her she'd die if she ate it. Maybe the worms wouldn't really spoil the taste. After all, if God told her not to do something, made it the only thing in the world she couldn't do, and the whole world was pretty much perfection at this point in time, then maybe the one thing she couldn't do was a thousand times better than the things she could do. Maybe that apple—even with the worms—would make all of the other fruit taste horrible in comparison.

Like broccoli.

I was starting to see Joe Morelli's ultimatum as the same thing. Okay, so I'd been grossed out by all of the baby talk Val used on her fiancé. I'd never think of repeating that kind of thing to Morelli. And for the most part, Morelli was a decent guy and had pretty much stopped placing demands on me. We were at a good point in our relationship, committed to each other but not engaged. Neither of us were ready to get married, but we might want to try living together at some point in the future. Morelli had stopped nagging me about my job. We didn't really argue, as long as we avoided certain topics, like Ranger and his endless supply of cars. Why not just leave well enough alone?

Because of what he'd said the night before. And because, being Stephanie Plum, I knew that I wouldn't be able to let it go.

I'd have to give Joe Morelli an extremely embarrassing nickname and use it in front of people we both knew.

To hell with the consequences.

"I think I'm starting to see Lula's side of this," I admitted. "Now, I just got to think of the perfect nickname."

There was a long silence while the three of us considered, broken by Lula's sudden high pitched laugh.

"Oh, I've got the perfect one! You're gonna love it, Steph!"

To be continued…

A/N: I intend for this to be a very short fic. Next chapter will probably be the concluding one.

As always, if you've read this far, PLEASE leave a review! Thank you.