She Texted Me Which One She Wants

The Renshaw family, one of the wealthiest in Bellmere high society, wanted a marriage alliance with mine. My father hadn't been particularly productive. He'd only managed to have me and my younger brother, Owen Sutton. Since the Renshaw heir apparent wasn't interested in men, I, Celia Sutton, was the unlucky pawn chosen for the arrangement. Grant Renshaw had always treated me with polite indifference. If my father hadn't been a man himself, he would gladly have married Grant in my place. The old bastard was forever telling me that a woman's greatest bargaining chips were her breasts and her virginity. Tonight was Victor Renshaw's birthday party aboard a cruise ship, and my father had given me very specific instructions. He wanted this settled before anything could go wrong. Whether I had to drug the Renshaw heir apparent or force myself on him, I was to get him into bed. I ducked my head as though frightened and obediently accepted the bottle of drugs. Then I went straight back to the main ballroom and emptied the entire bottle into Grant's drink. I didn't dare linger. I ran all the way out onto the deck before letting out a wicked cackle at the waves. The sweet, obedient daughter was an act. Dragging an untouchable man down from his pedestal was exactly my kind of fun. I stood on the deck, pretending to admire the view while keeping an ear out. Sure enough, after I'd spent 10 minutes in the sea breeze, a tall man in a dark blue suit staggered out of the rear door. Several rounds of drinks had left the guests deep in conversation. No one was looking our way. Gathering my skirt in my left hand and carrying my heels in my right, I followed close behind him, all the way to a guest cabin on the third deck. The door had barely closed before he swept me off my feet in the dark and pinned me to the bed. I hadn't even managed to get a good look at Grant's face before his kisses began raining down on me. He kept his distance in public, but behind closed doors, he acted like a starving animal. 'You're such a fraud!' A moment later, things grew too intense for me to think at all. In the dark, I felt as though I kept soaring and plummeting, over and over. Just before I ran out of breath, he suddenly went rigid. He tried to push himself up, then collapsed onto the mattress beside me. Annoyed at the interruption, I gave Grant's arm a tentative nudge. He didn't move. He might as well have been dead. I fumbled for the light switch. The room flooded with light, and when I saw his face, I froze. He looked like Grant, but he wasn't Grant. 'Who the hell did I just sleep with?' It was Dylan Renshaw, Grant's younger half brother. He was the Renshaw family's illegitimate son, the one they'd kept abroad for years. ***** I was absolutely certain I'd put the drugs in Grant's glass. Yet there I was, staring at a different man lying unconscious in bed. None of it was making sense. I was about to strip off what little clothing he had left and look for clues when I heard someone slide a key card into the suite's door lock. I grabbed a bathrobe, wrapped it around myself, and hurried out. No one was standing at the door. Then I looked down. Grant lay flat on his back on the gray carpet, stiff as a corpse. 'Well, this is convenient. The drugs really couldn't have picked a better moment to kick in.' I grabbed the back of Grant's collar and dragged him into the bedroom, his body thumping along behind me. I'd barely finished arranging him when the phone in my bathrobe pocket started vibrating nonstop. I opened the message and found myself staring in disbelief again. Unknown Number: I really like your boyfriend. Will you break up with him? You probably don't know this, but every night after he says good night to you, he stays on the phone with me until morning. Whenever he kisses me, he tells me my lips are softer than yours. Three people are one too many for a relationship. One of us has to go, don't you think? ***** 'Which one is this supposed to be about? Someone's gone to all this trouble to break us up, and I still don't know which man she means.' I studied the two men lying side by side on the bed, then called the number back. A few seconds later, a ringtone shattered the silence in the room.