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Chapter One
Paisley Lloyd plastered a consoling look on her face as she patted her friend’s back, but behind her sympathetic expression, she was planning murder.
On her three guardians.
Possibly with her bare hands.
Paisley was so mad, fury fueled her adrenalin for violence, and she didn’t care that there were three of them, they were almost twice her size at over six-three in height, weighed as much in muscle, had been in the military, and could do deadly things with their little fingers.
They broke what was supposed to be her future best friend. Hannah Grable was supposed to be her best friend for life, dammit, and they deserved punishment for reducing her to nothing more than a besotted, love-sick, heartbroken, unrecognizable mess of her former self.
After constantly being encouraged by her neighbor of three years, Jesse Hartfield, to go out there and find a BFF, Paisley decided it was time to do that exactly especially since Jesse took herself out of the running for best friend on account of her being thirty-eight years old, a mother of five kids with the sixth on the way, a forgetful husband, two dogs, three rabbits, a case of hernia, a mother-in-law from hell and a never-ending mortgage.
The most Jesse said she could give Paisley were stolen moments here and there and she believed Paisley deserved so much more and so began the hunt for a BFF.
Cue Hannah Grable. She passed the only test there was to pass. Don’t fall for Paisley’s guardians.
She did. Eventually.
And for that, her three guardians must die.
“I love them, Paisley,” Hannah said softly.
Arg. No, you don’t. What you’re thinking of is the other l word—the one that rhymes with dust—and it happens to basically every other female that comes into contact with them for some weird-ass reason.
“All three of them?” Paisley asked and dreaded the answer. Imagine having her heart broken three times over. But how could Paisley and Jesse have been this wrong about Hannah? They vetted her so thoroughly.
“Yes, all three of them. I couldn’t pick one. It was impossible.” Tears started to roll down her face with the force of a torrential storm. “I love them,” she wailed. “I’ve never felt this way before, Paisley. I feel it in my heart and soul and everywhere inside me. It is love. I can’t eat or sleep. It happened so suddenly I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I started feeling this way. But when I saw them at the Millers’ dinner, my heart exploded, and I needed to tell them how I felt immediately.”
Because yes, that’s exactly what Hannah decided to do. She blurted out her feelings for them at a business dinner she attended with her father, and apparently her feelings were declined, which didn’t quite fit their ammo when Paisley came to think about it.
Hannah was the most beautiful person she had ever met. Tall, leggy, with luscious hair and stunning eyes, and she was an heiress. She was basically the blueprint of their type.
“I may have loved them from the moment I first saw them,” Hannah continued through her sobs, “And I didn’t even realize it. But I can’t think about anything or anyone else but them. Every minute of every day,” she said, as a fresh river of tears slid down her cheeks. “But they don’t love me.”
Paisley continued to gently pat her now-inconsolably sobbing friend’s back while she tried to stop herself from rolling her eyes and grinding her teeth. If Hannah knew any better, those tears would be tears of joy and not regret. She had escaped being just another number to them, and that was priceless, but her friend did not see it as that at all.
First, she could never understand girls who fell for her guardians, and second, she hated that they made it so freaking easy for girls to fall for them in the first place. Third, she had completely misread Hannah, who had the potential to have become Paisley’s ‘it’ BFF.
She was certain Hannah would be the one girl who would not fall for them, unlike women all over the world who seem to trip head over heels over panties for them. Paisley had seen it happen with her own eyes.
The female race just crumbled at first sight of them, then were just two seconds away from kneeling at their handmade Italian shoes, begging to be picked.
They raved about their exceptional good looks and hot bodies, both of which neither fascinated Paisley in any way nor demanded much attention from her, so she could never understand all the hype, honestly.
But women lost their minds for them. It was as if Benjamin Harris, David Stone, and Jackson Barret were rock stars. Except they sat around boardroom tables in bespoke suits and played around with billions and billions of dollars each day.
They were the quintessential tall, dark, handsome, and stinking rich walking cliches, and they relished those epithets shamelessly.
And now her new friend, who was supposed to become her best friend in the whole wide world, had fallen victim to their charms. And had been rejected. That was kind of a double blow, considering they were nothing but players, and their motto was love ‘em and leave ‘em.
Paisley had known Hannah for just over three months. Hannah volunteered at the same animal shelter that Paisley did every Saturday, and they’d hit it off right away. And Jesse loved her too.
Hannah was a trust fund heiress and grew up with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth, but she was also funny, sweet, and completely down to earth, which explained why Paisley liked her so much. They’d connected from day one, and Paisley was certain they would grow old together. They’d get married within days of each other, if not on the same day. Their kids would go to the same schools and be best friends as well. It was meant to be perfect.
Until Hannah met Paisley’s guardians and seemed to have lost every ounce of common sense that ever existed in that pretty head of hers in the process.
Paisley kept to herself how disappointed she was in her friend. They were meant to be best friends for life. Until death did them part. But her guardians ruined it all by showing up unexpectedly while she and Paisley were swimming one ordinary Friday afternoon, three weeks into their friendship, and so began the slow implosion of Hannah Grable as she fell in love with them without knowing it.
