I wasn’t angry. I was hurt. I’d had the best time with them and thought we had some kind of connection. Turned out, it was only one-sided. Or I was overreacting. Could be either.
Concentration on my work never came. I half-assed replies to emails, giving the shortest version of a response I could come up with.
“Aideen,” a coworker said, coming into my cubicle.
“What?” No one came into my cubicle. No one. I was friendly enough but wasn’t in the groups who hung out together.
“You’re late for the meeting. Come on. I’m late too. I saw you sitting here.”
“Oh, shit. I’m following you.”
The meeting was one voice drowning out another in the most mind-numbing, drawn-out way. Again, it could’ve been a memo. An attachment. A shared doc. All of the above.
But not a damned meeting.
I was distracted the whole time anyway. Was that text message a blow-off? Should I add this to my list of online datingfails and flops? And if it was only two dates, then why was I so damned heartbroken? It hurt in the center of my chest to think about never seeing them again. Not to feel my lips draw up in a smile when Dash’s hair brushed against his forehead. To miss Blitz’s searing kiss that set me on fire from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. To never feel Comet’s arm wrapped around me or to wonder what was hiding behind his broodiness.
What would be worse than sitting in this meeting? Crying in the middle of this meeting.
When it ended, I almost let out a whoop of joy.
Even though I’d convinced myself my time with the three reindeer shifters was over, as soon as I got back to my desk, I checked my phone. If I’d had it in that meeting, I would’ve paid even less attention than I had. Thank goodness one of the girls snuck her phone in and recorded the whole thing. She always emailed us the bullet points later.
The message was from all three of them but came from Comet.
Are you free this weekend? We’d like to take you on a trip.
I shot up to stand and did a shimmy of joy before my brain took over. A trip? Alone? Like a sexy trip? A first-time-together sexy trip? It was a bit too soon for that, even though the thought of it made me want to run back to their house and go right this very moment.
I had to word my text carefully. Then again, I’d always been direct with them.
It’s a little too soon for a sexy weekend away. What kind of girl do you think I am?
The dots came up on the screen almost immediately. The reply came from Dash.
The kind of girl we want to take on a trip and she will have her own room. What kind of men do you thinkweare?
The best kind. The sweetest kind. The sexiest men on the planet.
Gentlemen. How silly of me. Where are we going? I need to know what to pack.
Against my senses and my best logical reasoning, I had already decided to go. There was no denying the pull they had on me.
I hoped they were as addicted to me as I was to them.
That means you will go with us?Blitz. I almost drooled thinking of him from the morning before.
I will. Yes. But you still haven’t told me where we are going.
We texted through the day, but they weren’t ever going to tell me where we were going. It was a surprise. That should’ve put all the warning bells up for me, going alone on a trip to an unknown destination with three men I hardly knew, but it didn’t.
I felt safe with them. They would never hurt me. Don’t ask me how I knew that, but I did.
The hardest part of the upcoming trip? Making it through the week until I saw them again. They promised to call me that night but told me no matter how much I begged, they wouldn’t tell me where we were going.
Told me I should get used to being surprised.
Chapter Fifteen
