Page 7 of My Best Friend's Triplet Brothers

Chapter 3

Igotthecorrect room key from a harried-looking young man and rushed to my room, finding my suitcases in it. I should’ve known right away that Warren’s suite wasn’t my room when I didn’t find my own things. I was just so excited about a suite that I didn’t think twice about it. I didn’t think twice about anything. That all changed in the silence of my room. I had time to think two, three, four times over about what I’d done.

I fell back on the bed and stared up at the vaulted ceiling. I’d messed up. Sleeping with Macy’s brother was a giant mistake. One that I was sure was going to bite me in the ass.

The feeling of Warren’s release leaking from my body shocked me into hurrying into the bathroom. I turned on the hot water in the huge shower and stripped. I hated myself for not being disgusted by it. I should’ve been. Having a man’s seed inside of me wasn’t something I’d ever liked, or allowed. It’d happened a few times, but I wasn’t a fan. With Warren, I’d felt like I needed it. Jesus, what a mess.

I scrubbed my body in the shower, trying my best to rinse away any trace of what I’d done. When I looked in the mirror after I was scrubbed clean, though, I knew there was no getting rid of the secret marks that Warren had left. Teeth marks marred my shoulder and the top of my breasts. My mouth was red and swollen from our kisses, and his stubble had left a redness on my neck. I looked like a woman who’d been thoroughly fucked.

I didn’t have a lot of time to wallow in my bad choice before the barbeque, so I focused on spending my time hiding what I’d done. A higher cut dress that had sleeves hid the marks on my body, while smartly applied makeup hid the ones on my face. I took my time curling my hair in an attempt to distract from anything else that might be noticeable.

Part of me also wanted to make sure I looked good. As vain as it was, I didn’t want Warren to look at me and wonder why he’d wanted me. The stupid, selfish part of me wanted him to want me again. Not that it mattered. Nothing could happen again.

The closer the barbeque came, the sicker I felt. What if Macy could see it on my face? What if she took one look at me and knew what I’d done? She’d hate me for doing it. Friends didn’t sleep with their friends’ brothers. It was code. I sucked.

Before I could work myself into a real panic, a knock sounded at my door. I jerked upright and frowned. Surely Warren wouldn’t try to walk me to the barbeque. He couldn’t be that crazy.

I thought about pretending like I wasn’t there, but another knock rang out and I decided to just face it head-on. Swinging open the door, I faced off with Megan, Macy’s best friend from college.

Megan, almost a foot shorter than me and as quirky as the day was long, grinned as she looked me over. “Whoa. You look great!”

I felt my face turn red but ignored it. “Thanks! You, too. When did you get here?”

“Just a bit ago. My plane landed late.” She nodded down the hallway. “Should we go? If we’re late to any of the stuff Macy has planned, you know she’ll want to murder us.”

“Want to? More like actually murder us.” I forced out a shaky laugh and looked back in my room. “Let me just slip some shoes on.”

Megan came in after me and sighed. “She’d also want to murder me if she knew the thoughts I was just having upstairs. Her brothers were in the lobby when I got in. It should be illegal for three men to look that good and be that successful.”

I shuddered and hoped that I’d be able to keep a straight face around her if she was going to talk about the brothers. I stepped into matching heels and turned back to Megan. “Okay, ready.”

“You’re not going to agree with me about the brothers?” She laughed. “Maybe you’re a better friend than me.”

A stab of guilt crushed down on me. I was the worst friend. “I can’t. I knew them growing up. It’s different.”

“Bullshit. It’s nice of you to pretend that you don’t notice their beauty, though.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me with her. “Come on, come on, come on. I’m ready for meat and liquor.”

I laughed and let her tug me out of my room and upstairs to the restaurant. Andrew had rented out the entire resort for the two weeks we’d be there. We’d have plenty of privacy to celebrate Macy’s wedding.

“Wow.” Megan let go of my hand to spin around under the magnificent chandelier that decorated the restaurant. The entire room was glittery with warm light and luxurious furnishings.

I seconded her feeling and walked to the windows that looked out over the snow-covered tundra. I could see elk in the distance, roaming free. It was so beautiful that it took my breath away. I had the stark realization that I had barely been out of the bakery for more than a few hours at a time since I’d started working for Malorie Shore, the owner of A Sweet, Shore Thing. I definitely hadn’t ever witnessed anything like elk moving through nature.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

I glanced over to see Lucas Strickland, standing with a glass of amber-colored liquid, watching me. He looked identical to Warren, except for the tattoos I could see stretching up from the collar of his white T-shirt and down his arms. His face looked harder, with one scar cutting through his eyebrow and another cutting through his upper lip. Somehow, he just looked even more handsome because of it, if not a little dangerous.

Looking back out the window, I swallowed my nerves and nodded. “It is beautiful. Macy picked a great venue.”

“How’ve you been, Cupcake? It’s been a long time since I last saw you.”

Hearing him call me the same name his brother had been moaning earlier sent a forbidden shiver down my spine, and it was all I could do to not run away. I needed a church or something. I needed someone to cleanse the dirtiness from my brain so I could be a decent person again.

The other thing Lucas said hit me a second later, and that long-buried memory invaded the front of my brain like a speeding train. The last time he’d seen me was the night of my high school graduation. Their parents had thrown a party for Macy and the triplets had come home to celebrate. Someone had spiked the punch, and I’d gotten hammered without realizing it. When the cutest boy my age had approached me and had taken me outside to make out under the stars, the triplets had shown up. They’d shown up just to humiliate me. They’d told the boy, I couldn’t even remember his name, that I was a silly little virgin that didn’t know a single thing about what the boy wanted.

I’d been mortified. Drunkenly mortified, so I’d tried to fight with the brothers. I’d tried to argue with the boy that I was woman enough for him, which had sent him running. Then, I’d taken a swing at Andrew. All before Lucas tossed me in the pool in my white dress, in front of everyone. That had been the end cap of over ten years of them teasing me about any and everything. They’d tortured me for years and years and then left me the laughingstock of my graduating class after that party.

I remembered never wanting to see them again. I’d managed to make it so long that I’d forgotten some of those feelings. Hearing Lucas mention that night, however, brought everything back. Shame washed over me. I’d slept with the enemy. Warren might be older, but he was still the man who’d laughed when almost my entire graduating class saw me come out of that pool in a see-through white dress and the biggest granny panties ever.

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