Chapter Five
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C lementine
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“O kay, what is going on?” Tierney Vaughn asks, perplexed, as she walks into my office at Leashed to Love . Tierney is freshly married, and I’m surprised her husbands, Colter, Nolan, and Jace, let her out of their honeymoon bed to come to work. They’ve been married for three months already.
So silly me for thinking it was a Sunday. After my episode with the construction workers, I had to shower, dress, and come into the office myself.
“Clem?” Haley questions, equally confused, and I can’t help but worry about the worry in her eyes. While Tierney glows more brightly than the rocks on her finger, Haley and I are still facing marriage dilemmas.
Except Haley’s feels more serious. She has to marry to save her family from financial ruin while I’m getting married, temporarily, to prove a point to my father. In the end, I truly believe we’ll both be fine.
Both my friends are in my office after I sent out our signature: I have news, I’m in trouble , Bring ice cream , Bring tampons , fire emoji.
“Ta da, I’m getting married,” I say. I swear Honeypot gives me a look that undeniably says, ‘ I told you to have sex with them, not marry them.’ But whatever.
I wait for the bomb to explode. There’s a moment of complete silence, in which I wonder whether my best friends would ever speak again. Nope, I had nothing to worry about.
Their flabbergasted screams and confused squeals and frantic questions sail into the ether around me.
“Okay, okay,” I say, holding up my hands. “I’ll start at the beginning.”
I give them a recap of my weekend. The showdown with my father, him bullying me into marrying someone of his choosing, threatening to take my gran’s ring away and giving it to my cousin if I don’t do as he says, me angry-painting, losing an entire day in the process, berating three construction workers for making a racket on a Sunday morning, only it was Monday—see losing an entire day.
I take a breath and carry on to the part where Honeypot lets me know there’s sexual chemistry with all three guys—my fur baby’s hypothesis fully supported by the funny business in my panties and then me asking one of them to marry me so I can stick it to my father.
“Do you know anything about him?” Tierney cries, still shocked and now worried about my state of mind.
“What if he’s a serial killer?” Haley shouts. “You can’t do things like this, Clem.”
“What if they’re serial killers ?” I say, emphasizing the plurals.
“Wait, what?” They both yell at the same time.
“Well, clearly I have reverse harem on my brain thanks to you, Tierney, and your billionaire ranchers, so when one of them said they come as a package of three, all of them or none of them, I said I’ll take the lot, verbatim.”
My friends are now too stunned to speak.
“It’s only temporary,” I say, filling in the silence. “Three months. Then we call it quits, divorce, and have a nice life, separately, of course. It’ll just be enough to show my father I won’t be pushed around by money and status. He wants me to marry some stuffy heir. No, thank you very much. Meet my actual husbands; they’re construction workers. They work hard for their money doing honest work. They’re the backs on which society falls back on. And they’re happy. That’s the kind of life I want.”
“Are you really going to go through with this?” Haley asks.
I nod.
“We’re meeting at the city clerk’s office today.”
“Fine. How hot are they?” Tierney asks, defeated.
“So, so, so fucking hot,” I deadpan.
“So this isn’t a marriage of convenience , is it? You’re going to jump their bones, aren’t you?” Haley asks.
“I’m going to grind their bones to dust, and then I’m going to do it again and again and again until I get the T-shirt that says, ‘Been there, done them.' I need to get rid of my virginity. They’re going to be my temporary husbands. It’s a simple equation. In three months, I’ll be a divorced woman with a seasoned sex life. Bam.”
“Have you told your father about it yet?”
“No. I’m saving that for when he comes around again to bulldoze me into marrying some pompous rich jerk who thinks the sun shines out of his ass. So soon.”
I fold my lips to hide my smile. Oh, this is so good. Talk about a counter strike against my father. He would never guess my move in a million years. But, no, I can’t say anything to him yet, not until the ink is dry. Revenge is a dish best served cold, right?
Tierney and Haley spend the next thirty minutes stalking the living heck out of Holt Kissinger, Steele Adams, and Ryder MacMurphy online and come up empty-handed.
“Of course they’re not online. They’re too busy living in the real world, working hard for their money,” I say, happily, and begin the rest of the admin it takes to get married.
I keep them up to date on everything through our group chat and receive nothing from Holt, a thumbs up from Ryder, and a text from Steele to say they'll be there.
The rest of the time in my office happens in a blur. And now it’s two minutes after they were supposed to meet me outside the city clerk’s office.
Three minutes go by, and they’re still not here.
I pace the sidewalk, my stomach sinking as I think the worst.