Page 1 of I Kissed Three Boys…

Chapter 1

ERIN

When I was little, I had so many dreams about how amazing my life was going to be when I grew up. I’d have a great job—and a great guy, of course. Marriage, babies, maybe a nice house, too.

Life didn’t deliver. Or at least, not so far. Things definitely hadn’t turned out as I’d expected.

My twenty-seventh birthday was just around the corner, and I didn’t haveevenonetick inanyof those boxes. After four years together, my college boyfriend decided he was too young to be tied down and promptly disappeared. And, despite working my ass off for the past five years since then, I was nowhere near my dream job.

I’d managed to buy a cute, one-bedroom apartment that I was slowly decorating, but it wasn’t exactly the house full of love and kids that I’d dreamt of. But then again, fairy tale dreams were written for kids, not adults. Right?

So, when an airplane ticket to some random European country turned up in my mailbox, I assumed my parents had won the lottery and sent me a generous gift. They knew I’d always wanted to travel and hadn’t been able to yet, so I figured this must be an early birthday present or something.

With the ticket clasped in my hand and my heart racing in my chest, I called my parents to thank them.

“Hey, Mom!” I said as soon as she picked up the phone. “Did you guys just send me a plane ticket?”

I stared at the papers in my hand. First class, too. They must have wonbig.

“Us?” Mom sounded as shocked as I was excited. “To where? Florida?”

They’d moved to Miami to be closer to the beach, and now that they were three states away, I rarely saw them anymore. As an only child, it kind of sucked.

“Uh... no.” I stared at the very authentic-looking tickets and opened my laptop to do some research.”Maybe it was a prank or something.”

Where the hell was Liechtenstein?

“Someone sent you a plane ticket? Is there a note or instructions or something?” she asked, like I was a regular surprise scavenger hunter or the oft recipient of charity plane tickets that came with instructions for what to do when I landed.

I peered inside the envelope the ticket had arrived in for probably the tenth time. “No. No note.”

“Be careful, sweetheart,” Mom cautioned, ever the wealth of wisdom. “There are a lot of scams around.”

I rolled my eyes. “I know, Mom.”

I was the one who’d grown up in a world with internet, smart phone hacks, and credit card fraud. My mom still had a DVD player because she refused to stream anything and Wi-Fi was a foreign concept, but I loved her more than anything.

Disheartened and more than a little confused, I changed the subject. “How’s Dad?”

She went into detail about Dad’s aching knees. They were weather-sensitive, could apparently predict rain better than the Channel 4 meteorologist, and I zoned out.

Had I missed a piece of the puzzle? Surely, there was more information in the envelope that I hadn’t seen. I grabbed the ticket and looked over every corner of the paperwork. Nothing. The only clue was the time and date of the flight.

When Mom finished giving me all the pertinent information regarding Dad’s ailments and then somehow switched subjects to and then finished telling me all about the people they’d made friends with down in Florida, I hung up and started pacing my apartment.

Would it be crazy to go to the airport and get on that plane? The answer was obvious.Totally. If I thought the ticket was sent to me by mistake, I wouldn’t be so shaken, but the ticket had my name on it. It was definitely for me. In my name. Delivered to me. Which begged the question,why?Only one thing was truly clear. Whoever had sent it meant for me to appear in an obscure European country next week. And he or she finally realized what I’d known all along. I was meant to travel first class.

However, there were flaws to the first-class plan. Insurmountable flaws. Flaws that made this whole thing impossible. An impossibility of insurmountable...work. I had work. Things my employer paid me to do. Counted on me to do.

My cell phone rang, and I stared down at the screen displaying an overseas number. While I’d usually let an unknown caller go to voicemail, my gut told me to pick up.

“Hello, Erin speaking.” This call felt different. It was my first from overseas.

“Hello, Erin. This is Henryk Gabelli.”

His voice was insanely sexy—deep, masculine, exotic. He spoke the Queen’s English but with an accent. The way he spoke—almosttooproper—made me think he was some sort of lawyer or something.

“Hello there, Henryk,” I said, grinning. A call from a sexy-voiced foreigner who knew my name. My normal Saturday was spinning into one mysterious day. “How can I help you?”

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