––––––––
Rafe
––––––––
And there she is.Ourfuture fake bride in the flesh.
Fuck, she’s gorgeous.The photo didn’t do her enough justice.Those expressive eyes of hers shimmer more brilliantly in person.
Her lips are fuller, softer, and undeniably more kissable.She’s so magnetic that I don’t even notice anyone else in the room but her.Cove and Rafe will say the same.
But what is it about this Adalynn Miller that has my blood surging hotly through my veins before it passes through my thudding heart and heads to my cock?From the moment we learned of her existence, she completely bewitched us, and none of us can explain it—not even a little.
Sure, in business, our rule is to never let on what our next move is going to be.But fuck, our next move surprised the hell even out of us.We had no idea what we were doing when we contemplated how she would react if we showed up at her door.
And now here we are, in the home her family rents for the holidays, obsessed with finding out why she claimed to be engaged to us.All three of us.At the same time.
She intrigued the hell out of us, and we decided the only way to shake her out of our systems would be to take her in first.
We’re going to have so much fun playing with this beauty.But who is our little con artist?Is she even a con artist to start with?Why is she spreading rumors about being engaged to us?What’s her endgame?Is she working for someone?And the biggest question of all: why the fuck do we care so much that we rearranged our entire lives to come and play a cat-and-mouse game with her in her own territory?
Yet instinct tells us it’s something entirely different altogether.
The room we’re in is decorated with hearts and balloons; “Love is the season to be jolly” is printed on a silk banner draped above the fireplace.
There’s a board with pictures of couples, hearts drawn around each of them, and their names in glitter, but it looks like only one half of each couple is here in this room—except for Adalynn.She’s standing alone in her photo, accompanied by a couple of question marks.
Very curious.
Did she make up a story about being engaged to her family because she was the only one unattached?But the question still remains: why did she choose us as her imaginary fiancés?And we’re not going anywhere until she tells us everything.
She would have gotten away with it too, but clearly, she hasn’t met our grandmother, whose life work is to see us married with children before she turns eighty at least, or sooner.She’s pushing for sooner.
The woman has a network of spies spread globally.Before Adalynn, the last time our grandmother paid us a visit with our two adopted aunts in tow was when she heard through some clandestine grapevine system she has on us that Cove was secretly engaged to an oil heiress.He wasn’t.
The time before that, she thought I had married an actress in a secret ceremony in Spain.I wasn’t married at all.And the time before that, she believed Tylan had fathered a son, and dammit, she was going to make an honest man of him by ensuring he took care of his kid.He fathered zero children.
As for how she came to know about Adalynn?Well, a cab driver overheard a mother talking to her sister-in-law about her daughter being secretly engaged to the CEOs of Acclivity.That cab driver told his girlfriend, who is a waitress at The Valley of Grace.The waitress told her boss.Her boss told one of our grandmother’s friendly enemies dining at his restaurant, who in turn called our grandmother to gloat that her grandsons were engaged to a cheap department store jewelry maker with no connections at all.
Then she showed us something that we couldn’t quite explain: a zoomed-in version of Adalynn Miller’s left hand, still holding the cupcake.It’s unmistakable now.Each of the three bands, encircled by a layer of diamonds on her hand, is inscribed with the names Cove, Rafe, and Tylan.
Curiouser and curiouser.
The beauty pales before our eyes, her gorgeous gaze widening as if she’s seen a ghost—or three.
She did not expect to see us in person in her lifetime, that’s for sure.And I can’t help but grin at her panic-stricken expression.She looks ready to bolt at any moment now.Except...
Is she choking on something?
Oh fuck.She’s really choking or at least struggling to swallow whatever is in her mouth.Standing closest to her, I reach her first.The scent of her—warm vanilla and hints of some delicate rare flower—consumes me as I close the gap between us.
Crystal tears stream down her cheeks.She looks as if she’s also hyperventilating.
“You’re all right,” I say, taking her in my arms and soothing her.My intimate presence clearly spooks her further, and when she regains some of her composure, enough to take a breath, she balls her fists against my chest, ready to push me away and bolt.
Where is she going to go?There’s no place on earth she can escape to, and we won’t find her now that we know she exists.The sooner she learns that, the better it’ll be for her.
I tighten my arms around her.She gasps, and my cock thickens.Does she make that same sound—maybe a little more uninhibited—when she comes?
