Page 3 of Three Corporate Kings and a Hands-Off Bride

Alicia Robertson took more out of them than a meeting during an extremely hostile takeover with a gun wearing CEO and his gangster bodyguards.

“She’s up to something else,” Baxter said, taking a sip of his Scotch. Day time drinking was a perk of having her in their lives, in their home, in their goddamn heads.

But not one of them was going to talk about the strange sense of relief they felt that she was only taking pictures of her room, and they didn’t have to commit murder in the middle of the damn day.

And fuck, the things in that scrapbook, innocent as they were… just fuck. She had no right thinking about those things.

It was probably too dangerous being around her right now, not when their blood still stirred with fury that she wanted someoneto touch her, someone they hadn’t even met, and downright frustration that she was living with them, in the first place.

One hundred and sixty-four days couldn’t pass quicker in their minds, so they could pack her up and send her as far away from them as possible.

They each had their own count-down timer.

Chapter Three

Well, clearly,theyhadn’t heard about scrapbooking manifestation, Alicia Roberts thought as she started to clear her bedroom of all its seductive delights. In fact, she hadn’t heard of it either until that morning. But she woke up feeling restless, bored out of her mind, and a whole lemon meringue pie away from a complete existential crisis.

But a solution to her malaise came from her best friend in the whole wide world, Holly Jacobs. While Alicia lay in bed absorbing the bright spring sunlight, blue-eyed, blonde-haired Holly insisted that all Alicia needed was monkey, chandelier swinging, burning the sheets sex and all her problems would go away. Holly had only just lost her virginity to her boyfriend a few months ago and couldn’t recommend sex enough.

Alicia now ended their conversations and texts with a reminder to chug down cranberry juice. She was a good friend looking out for Holly’s urinary health.

But Holly’s words lingered. She definitely needed a new challenge. So why couldn’t it be her condition–or lack there-of–condition downstairs?

Being a virgin at twenty-one was probably unheard of. God knows her friends ripped her about it mercilessly—but she just hadn’t been interested in dating. On the few occasions she did go out on a date, and everything seemed to be going fine; the guy was great, the ambience nice, but then the instant he kissed her, no stars would explode behind her closed eyes, and she would render the date unsuccessful and unequivocally over.

Holly had teased her that maybe she should try closing her eyes in the first place if she wanted fireworks to happen. But that was the other thing. She had no idea why her eyes remained open every time a guy kissed her.

Also, she supposed no man wanted to put his heart, soul and testosterone into locking lips with her with, his eyes closed, mind you, only to open them and find her staring at him, thinking about her shopping list while she did so.

In reality, on a scale of one to dateability, she was a fat zero. But… maybe it wasn’t her fault. She just hadn’t found the right guy.

Cue in her V card, particularly how she could go about losing it, because surely that would give her something to do for the next few weeks, or she was going to go quite crazy. For someone who always knew what they wanted, when and how, with a tightly outlined agenda, making the biggest decision of her life, for her life had started to give her nightmares. This had been the absolute perfect diversion–losing her virginity for once and all. She couldn’t put off facing her reality forever, but she was buying herself some time.

She got online for tips and immediately discarded signing up for dating apps. No, it had to be more spectacular than a swipe right situation. Since she waited this long, she very much wantedto go out with a bang. Never mind stars exploding, she wanted planets to go poof. She wanted something with more oomph and glamor.It boiled down to finding the right candidate to get the job done.

Then she saw it.

Scrapbooking manifestation. So easy, so simply. Why hadn’t she done this before?

And so herV Card Nixedproject was born and now she was officially in her woo-woo era and loving it. Serious, life changing decisions had nothing on this.

All she had to do was stick some pictures of what she wanted, dreamed of, needed in her life into a book, decorate with fluff and bows, wait for the universe to read heraspirations and voila, her wants and wishes would be granted straight into existence. More people should be doing this. Seriously.

Given that she’d only started that morning, she was already a pro at scrapbooking—high achiever and all that. Also, she certainly had to be convincing enough for her wardens—that’s how she referred to them—Cade Kissinger, Eli Nicholson, and Baxter Gardner, to believe that it was actually going to happen. She was actually going to wish a guy into existence who was going to take her virginity by merely putting it out there in the universe.

Considering Cade, Eli, and Baxter were the quintessential wet blankets, if they had to give her a warning, then they anticipated she was capable of bringing it into reality.

If she knew anything about the three men her dad put in charge of her, she knew they were wondering what she was up to next since she didn’t fight them when they took herVCNscrapbook,Oh she thought about it. It had been right there on the tip of her tongue to give them blue murder.

But then her heart started to pound out of nowhere, and she felt weak and dizzy and then excited and exhilarated. The weird feeling just grew and grew. The more she looked at Cade, Eli, and Baxter, the stronger her heart started to pound, her mind to swim in thoughts and flashes of memory. A vivid image of her mom flashed into her mind and stayed.

Mom.

Gone before Alicia turned twelve, taken by an illness that took her quickly, the memories Alicia had of her mother, remained glued in her head for all time. And suddenly Alicia knew it was time. She just knew what she had to do now. Had it been staring at her in the face all that time?

Her mom had left her a letter, one Alicia would receive only on her very special day, as her mom had called it. And now, nothing mattered but reading her mom’s words.

She had to get married. That’s when she would receive the letter her mom had left her. On her wedding day. That quickly diminishing but still very logical part of her brain, told her she was just finding another way to deflect her responsibilities. She shut that voice down. Now was not the time for that.

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