Page 5 of Snowed in with the SEALs

While everyone around Adrienne cheered her on, Miriam narrowed her eyes at her. No one dared to outbid her after that. Ten million dollars to a billionaire was nothing. But if she was certain and had assured herself that she hadn’t lost her mind before, this confirmed she had been lying to herself. Quite terribly, actually.

“Going once,” Cassie shouted, overly excited, knowing she would be the talk of the town for raising that amount of money at a charity auction. “Sold to Ms. Adrienne Palmer. Emerson Foley, Darien Price, and Austin Brown for a whopping ten million dollars.” Cassie skipped over thegoing twicepart. “Adrienne, they’re all yours. Enjoy.” Her husband, Scott, hurried over to Adrienne with a key card to the hotel suite where they would have dinner.

Right.

Miriam still hadn’t lifted her jaw off the floor, but her eyes wavered between concern and pride.

“What?” Adrienne asked innocently, resisting the urge to bite her lip again but failing. “I decided I needed some…”

“Threesome?” Miriam asked in a hoarse voice.

“You know me. I don’t put all my eggs in one basket. Three, in case two of them don’t work out.”

“You know what you’re doing, queen?” Miriam asked seriously.

“I do,” she whispered. “See you soon.” She kissed Miriam’s cheek and allowed herself to be escorted to the hotel room upstairs by one of the staff.

Surprisingly, she managed to stride across the hall confidently despite the tremor in her whole body.

Once inside the presidential suite, she stood quietly in the middle of the living area. The aroma of food wafted to her from the dining area, where two servers waited in attendance.

She dismissed them and made a mental note of their names so she could tip them at the front desk before she left.

Alone, she pulled out her phone and read the text again, then, nodding once, slipped it back into her purse and laid it down on a marble side table.

She took a deep breath when a knock sounded on the door, then, with purpose and confidence, strode to open it.

She turned her back on them as they entered.

All three of them.

“Gentlemen.” She spun around to face them. It was now or never.

God, they were so young. At least ten years younger than she was, maybe a little more. But that was beside the point. It was a one-night stand with one of them. She planned never to see any one of them after this because, come tomorrow, she was going off-grid for as long as she liked.

There was no more mulling things over. Should she, shouldn’t she? Fate made the decision for her.

She also had to rectify to herself that while the text she received prompted her decision to disappear, she wasn’t running away out of fear.

No.

She was slipping into oblivion because she would rather not have to deal with the situation, which, truthfully, was more of a nasty hindrance than anything else.

“You’re probably wondering why all three of you are here. It’s actually very simple. I always have a plan B or C in this case, in case two of you don’t work out.”

Good.

If she treated it like a business arrangement, she’d automatically revert to her tough-as-nails persona. She needed that right now because, as a trio standing next to each other, they were disgustingly and unreasonably beautiful. They disrupted her train of thought consistently, and she had to dig deep into her brain to sound coherent.

They had no idea what it cost her not to start trembling like some fangirling twenty-year-old at the sight of them.

“And how will you know who goes and who stays?” Austin asked, his hazel eyes skimming over her.

“I have my ways.”

She had zero way of knowing which one of them was going to work out, but hopefully, she was going to find out once they started.

The suite was enormous, but they seemed to engulf its entirety, including her, with their casual masculinity and their indifference to the opulence of the decor around them. They seemed unimpressed with their surroundings, unperturbed by the luxury, while they themselves were also dressed in suits that … hmm … were worn by billionaires and not millionaires or merely wealthy people.

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