1. Nora #2
The villa sprawled across the high end of the island like something out of a magazine I'd never read. Open walls, glass doors, white stone, tropical wood. My guest suite was bigger than my entire apartment. There were two showerheads in the bathroom. Two. I locked myself in and called Dina.
"There are two showerheads in here," I whispered.
"Why are you whispering?"
"I don't know. This place is too nice. I feel like I'm going to break something just by existing near it."
Dina's laugh crackled through the phone. "Babe. Your dad married into billionaire world. You're allowed to use both showerheads. At the same time. Live a little."
The rehearsal dinner started at sunset. I wore a sundress—mint green, cotton, Target clearance rack—and felt immediately, violently underdressed the second I stepped outside. Everyone else looked like they'd walked off a yacht ad. I almost turned around and went back to my room.
Then I saw them.
Cade was standing near the bar. I noticed him first because he was impossible to miss—six-five, broad-shouldered, built like he was designed to take up space and didn't apologize for it.
Black hair cut short. Brown eyes. Stubble that looked permanent.
He wore a white linen shirt with the top three buttons undone, sleeves rolled to his elbows, and I could see the edge of a tattoo on his left pec.
He looked up when I walked in.
Not a glance. A look. Slow. Deliberate. His eyes moved from my face down to my sandals and back up, and I swear—I swear—the corner of his mouth lifted. Just barely. Just enough.
Heat crawled up my neck. Instant. I'd never felt anything like it. My face burned and I didn't know why and I decided it was the humidity. Caribbean humidity. That was all.
Rhett was sitting at one of the long tables, legs stretched out, talking to some older man in a suit.
He stood when Dad walked over to introduce us, and I had to physically tilt my head back to look at him.
Six-seven. The tallest person I'd ever stood next to.
Black hair, longer on top, falling across his forehead.
Gray eyes—actual gray, like storm clouds, like rain.
He shook Dad's hand. Then he looked at me.
"Nora," he said. Just my name. That's it. His voice was lower than I expected, quieter, and the way he said my name made something in my stomach twist sideways.
I managed to say "Hi" without choking on it. Barely.
Jude found me ten minutes later while I was standing near the edge of the terrace pretending to look at the ocean. He walked up with a grin so wide it was almost stupid and said, "So you're the sister."
"Stepsister," I corrected automatically.
"Stepsister," he repeated, still grinning. "Even better."
He was six-four—the shortest of the three, which was insane because he was still a full foot taller than me.
Dark brown hair. Hazel eyes that caught the string lights overhead.
Tattoo sleeves on both arms disappearing into his rolled shirtsleeves.
He stuck out his hand and I shook it and he held on a beat too long, his thumb brushing across my knuckles before he let go.
"I'm Jude. The fun one."
"Good to know," I said, because what else do you say to that?
"Cade's the scary one. Rhett's the one who overthinks everything. I'm the one who makes bad decisions and looks good doing it." He leaned in, close enough that I could smell his cologne—something clean and sharp. "You'll like me best."
I laughed. Couldn't help it. "That confident, huh?"
"It's not confidence if it's true."
The next forty-eight hours were a blur of moments I can't stop replaying.
Cade standing behind me during the ceremony, close enough that I felt the heat from his body through the back of my dress.
Rhett pulling out my chair at dinner without being asked, his hand brushing my shoulder as I sat.
Jude making me laugh so hard during the reception that I bent in half, and when I looked up he was staring at me like he'd just won something.
The toast where Cade's eyes found mine across the table and held. Three seconds. Four. Long enough that I looked away first because I didn't know what else to do.
The dance floor where Jude asked me to dance and I said no because I was terrified of what his hands on my waist would do to me.
The beach at midnight where Rhett found me alone, handed me a glass of champagne, and didn't say anything—just stood next to me in the dark while the waves rolled in.
For forty-eight hours I felt too warm. Too tight. Too aware of my own skin. My body did things it had never done before—ached in places I didn't have names for, clenched at sounds that shouldn't have mattered, flushed at glances that probably meant nothing.
Twenty-one years. Twenty-one years of nothing—no crushes, no butterflies, no heat, no want—and my body picks now to wake up.
Not for one guy. For three. Three men who are technically my stepbrothers.
Three men who probably don't even think of me that way because why would they?
I'm a twenty-one-year-old in a clearance-rack sundress who smells like the rescue center's industrial hand soap. They're?—
They're—
I don't know what they are. But they're not for me.
I don't run to my suite. I walk. Fast. My sandals slap against the marble floors and the sound echoes and I hate it. I close the door behind me and press my back against it.
"I'm still a virgin."
I said that. Out loud. To three men I met two days ago. On a private island. Where I'm now stuck. For two days.
I groan and slide down until I'm sitting on the floor, knees pulled to my chest.
My phone buzzes. I pull it out. Three texts from Dina.
DINA: how's the island
DINA: did u survive the wedding
DINA: also i need details on the stepbrothers u have been HOLDING OUT
I type back with shaking hands.
ME: dina i told them im a virgin
Three dots appear immediately.
DINA: WHAT
DINA: NORA GRACE MERCER
DINA: THEM??? PLURAL??? HOW MANY IS THEM
I put the phone face-down on the floor and press my palms against my eyes hard enough to see spots.
I try to sleep.
Can't.