Chapter Six
Mercedes was sure she’d stepped into some eerie time portal to hell with an obscenely twisted sense of humor.
What in the ever-loving heck were her brother’s best friends doing here at his cabin when she’d commandeered the place for herself and her little feline friend down there?
She hadn’t seen them in forever. Well, years, to be precise, yet somehow she instantly recognized them. And her heart did a weird somersault in her chest.
Green-eyed, dark-haired, gorgeous connoisseur grump and deadly stoic master, Holden Reynolds.
Blue-eyed, dark-haired, sexy scoundrel, and lazy lethal, Waylan Gray.
Brown-eyed, dark-haired, hot, and hazardous rogue charmer, Myles Sherwood.
She had no idea where the adjectives gorgeous , sexy , and hot came from when she evaluated them. She knew better. But then again, she had sex on her brain, so could she be blamed? Speaking of sex—the very reason she was here in the first place…
Jeff rarely used this cabin. Since he bought it over two years ago, he hadn’t stayed here, not once. But he made sure to send staff around to do a deep clean and restock all the non-perishables with expiration dates, on the off chance he decided to take a trip to the mountains. At least that was what he always said.
Also, there was no chance of Jeff suddenly appearing at the cabin now because he was in New York, wrapping up some business for the security company he ran. He was due back on Christmas morning.
Just as well, because as soon as Mercedes had remembered her resolution to lose her virginity, she scrambled about making plans. Having a venue for the event became tantamount.
She could hardly do the deed at home. There would have been too many questions and way too much household traffic, what with her mom, Beau, her mom’s husband; Mercedes’ sister-in-law, Tia—Jeff’s new bride; an aunt and Mercedes’ grandfather, Waldo Samson, who was by far Mercedes favorite person in the whole wide world. While her grandmother had been American, her grandad was a British war veteran. Mercedes loved nothing more than to listen to his stories and play chess with him. But yes, too many people under one roof for her to get dirty with a guy.
She then tried to book a room at a hotel and soon realized that had been a futile endeavor. With the holidays, everything was fully booked already, and she was out of options unless she wanted a dingy motel off the highway to nowhere, with mold for furniture, to be the ground of her un-virgining .
Until she remembered her brother’s cabin in the mountains. It couldn’t be any more perfect for her sexcapades. Obviously, she couldn’t tell him she was going to be using the cabin for nefarious reasons, plus he was a little overprotective, and the less he knew, the better, so she quietly snagged the spare key he kept in his study and went on her merry way. What her brother didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him; wasn’t that how the saying went?
And now his best friends showed up and ruined everything.
“Oh my god. What are you doing?” she cried, flinging the blanket off the instant Myles released her from his hold. “What is wrong with you? Ugh. What did you do to Todd?” she asked frantically, not seeing her date anywhere in sight.
“Sent him back to where he came from,” Waylan said, sounding proud of the admission.
Picking up the blanket she’d just discarded, she wrapped it around herself and flung the door open. The blast of icy cold air hitting straight to her bones, warred with the fever soaring inside her since her first sightings of them. She could only put the change in her temperature down to shock and frustration that her meticulously laid plans to get laid were being thwarted. They were the literal flies in her ointment.
She went out onto the porch, her Santa slippers getting soaked in the thin dusting of snow blown onto the enclosed area. But all she could see was Todd’s car driving away in the distance, almost as if he were speedily trying to get away.
“Todd,” she shouted into the wind, stamping her feet. “Todd, come back,” she cried, her voice full of exasperated defeat.
Todd Hampstead had been the perfect candidate, given her time constraints. He was three years older than her and managed a family-owned coffee shop that Mercedes only started frequenting two months ago. They struck up a good friendship immediately, discovering they had a lot in common. He was nice-looking, had good manners, and had excellent hygiene. When she began her madcap plan to lose her virginity two days before Christmas, the first thing on her list of things to do was find a suitable possessor of a penis.
The thought of hiring an escort for the task, while appropriate, didn’t feel right. And so she asked Todd. He felt like the right choice. She felt safe with him, comfortable. Sure, there weren’t any fireworks between them, and there didn’t have to be because he was just one friend helping another friend out. She also made sure to add she wasn’t looking for a relationship, just a standard deflowering, and she was sure this wouldn’t mess up their friendship. She just wanted experience and first-hand knowledge. He understood the assignment even after she’d listed everything she wanted done. Everything was perfect, until it wasn’t.
Just damn. Todd was her ticket out of virgin-ville, and now he was gone. It was all her brother’s best friends’ fault: Holden, Waylan, and Myles.
Furious now, the wavy curls she’d styled her hair into flattened into damp tresses around her face, and now shivering, she stormed back inside to give them the third degree before she killed them. They may be tough, lethal military guys, but they hadn’t met a twenty-two-year-old with a virginity she no longer wanted.