I can't believe it. I seriously can't believe it."
Cori rolled her eyes and handed Ava another martini. It was her third, but she
still hadn't shut up about how her attorney's advice had been to simply go to
Bliss and do what Rudy wanted.
"All he said was that it was the easiest thing," Brynn commented, her
words soft and a little slurry. She was definitely mellowed out from her one
martini. But then Brynn was a lightweight.
It would take another couple of rounds for Ava to start to relax. The woman was
so tightly wound that Cori was seriously concerned. Ava had always been driven
and worked nearly nonstop, but this whole trust and Bliss, Kansas thing might
just be the final straw.
Brynn waited until Ava had taken a huge drink, then said, "I think this could be
a good thing."
Ava lifted one perfectly waxed brow, her glass poised before her shiny Coral
Crush lips. She was in loose cotton pants and a tank top just as Cori and Brynn
were, but where Brynn never wore makeup and Cori had already taken hers
off—shoes, bra, makeup were the first things to come off when she got home, in
that order—Ava still looked like she could pose for a magazine cover.
"You think us moving to Kansas for a year could be a good thing?" Ava asked.
Brynn lifted a shoulder. "Why not?"
Ava lowered her glass. "Why not? Why not?" she asked, her voice rising.
Again. They'd already done this ranting and raving bit. "I have a company to
run."
"Yes. A pie shop, I believe," Cori said dryly.
"Oh sure," Ava scoffed. "A pie shop. Because that makes tons of sense."
"You know." Cori shifted on her sister's custom-made sofa upholstered in the
softest leather Cori had ever rubbed her body against. And she intended to do
more of that before she left. "Maybe it does make sense."
Ava shook her head. "No. It doesn't."
"Listen, if Rudy wanted to give us each a new experience, something to expand
our horizons, then coming up with something that is almost exactly opposite of
what we're doing now makes sense," Cori said. She'd been thinking about
everything a lot while she made dinner, and dessert of course, for her sisters.
And she was on board.
She couldn't believe it, really. It irked her a little to be going along with
Rudy's decree, honestly. But she couldn't deny that she was curious about Bliss.
And her father's life there. She didn't know why she would take Evan Stone's
word for it, but he said Rudy had changed, that he was a different guy than the
one Cori knew. Cori wanted to see what that was about.
It was like every dare she'd ever taken—which would be any and all ever issued
to her. Heading into a house they claimed was haunted? She had to see the
apparitions for herself. Taking a bite of a pepper people claimed made grown men
cry? She had to feel the fiery burn for herself. Visiting a town that claimed to
have changed Rudy Carmichael into a decent human being? Yeah, she was going to
have to live there herself.
A pretend relationship…within a pretend relationship.
Attorney Evan Stone knows every crazy stipulation in billionaire Rudy
Carmichael's will. After all, he wrote it. And he's determined to make sure each
one is fully met by Rudy's triplet daughters. Even if that means dating the
workaholic CEO, Ava. Or pretending to at least. And even if it means resisting
the so-right-for-him-she's-totally-wrong party girl, Cori.
Cori's only got three things on her to do list from her dad:
Move to
Bliss, Kansas.
Run his pie shop with her sisters for a year.
No dating. For six months.
But stepping in for her sister when
it's clear that Ava and Evan aren't fooling anyone with their "romance" isn't
really dating. And falling for her sister's pretend boyfriend while pretending
to be her sister…well, that's ridiculous. No matter how real things feel
whenever she and Evan are together.
Romance Contemporary
[Author Self-Published, On Sale: January 26, 2018,
e-Book, ISBN: 2940154939246 / eISBN: 9780998894720]
Erin Nicholas has been reading and writing romantic fiction since her mother
gave her a romance novel in high school and she discovered happily-ever-after
suddenly went a little beyond glass slippers and fairy godmothers! She lives in
the Midwest with her husband who only wants to read the sex scenes in her books,
her kids who will never read the sex scenes in her books, and family and friends
who say they're shocked by the sex scenes in her books (yeah, right!).