Page 8 of Inconveniently Matched

Chapter Five

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Haley

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“How did it go?”

Both Tierney and Clementine shout into the phone as I sit on the floor in my bedroom, wearing pajamas and with an overly grumpy Cass in my lap, demanding that I show my loyalty to her again by rubbing her belly.

How I left their office, I have no idea.Okay, I do.They insisted on following me home because it was late, and they didn’t want me driving alone.

“Oh, great,” I say.“First, I arrive at their office in my Mary Poppins costume and ask to speak to theirdadsbecause my grandmother said they were distinguished and mature.Then I give them a way out of this marriage, and they refuse.I tell them I’m so not marriage material, yet they still want to marry me.I tell them I’m not attracted to them, and then...”I sigh, rubbing my forehead.

“Haley?”my friends ask, concerned.

“Remember my Aunt Sylvia?When she thought my uncle took her out to dinner to tell her he had secretly booked a cruise weeks before, only for him to tell her he was divorcing her and taking his mistress on the cruise instead?She kind of took out her boobs right there in the restaurant and blamed it on a hot flush because she was super stressed and menopausal.”

“Yeah,” Tierney says slowly.

“What did you do, Haley?”Clementine asks.

“I took off my panties to prove I’m not attracted to them because they were dry.Who does something like that?”I cry.

“And were they?”Tierney asks, holding her breath as she waits for my answer.

“My panties were, in fact, not dry,” I say, furious with myself as I allow another layer of shame to envelop me.“Also, I don’t want to talk about it.”

Yep, I had it bad for the billionaires at first sight.Me, a virgin with really no interest in sex at the moment, despite Tierney and Clementine telling me how amazing it is.

But oh, they disrupted the natural order of my brain, made my body sizzle, and made my heart skip beats—not good for my health at all.

They can never know, of course.Never.

Maybe I could visit my local psychic and ask for a spell to ward off my attraction to them.Yes, I’ll do that.

Still, I close my eyes, so embarrassed that my cheeks are still blood-red.

“It’s fine.It’s just because they looked like man-gods.I was taken off guard.I thought I was going to marry their fathers, for goodness' sake.The bottom line is I think I made them believe I’m not attracted to them.Oh my god, what is wrong with me?”I sob.

“Okay, we’re under a lot of pressure, Haley.And besides, I bribed three guys with a couple of thousand acres of land to teach me how to have sex, and Clem over there accosted three guys she’d never met in her life at a construction site to marry her.She offered them two versions of herself—with benefits or without.”

“Exactly, so in terms of our cray-cray index, you’re on par.Don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks, girls.”I already feel a little better about the whole sorry episode.And they’re right.I’m very stressed at the moment.

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