Betting on Bailey (Menage MfM Romance Novel) (Playing For Love Book 1)

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his book is
a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Stephanie Rice has her sex life all figured out. She fucks six different men on six days of the week. Monday is the Chef. Tuesday, the Technician. Wednesday is the Playboy. Thursday, Mr. Buttman has his way with her. Friday, she has an appointment with the Doctor, and on Saturday, the Dominant works her over.

On Sunday, she normally does laundry. However, on this particular Sunday, her worlds collide. All six men find out about each other, and they are determined to give Stephanie an evening she will never forget.

“
P
rofessor Moore
,” Maria Rivera knocks at my office door and sticks her head in. “Do you have a moment? Sameer’s reviewing my grant application, and he suggested you look it over as well.”

I glance at the clock at the bottom of my computer screen. It’s a quarter to seven. I’m supposed to meet my boyfriend Trevor at seven thirty to watch him play pool, and he gets extremely irritated when I’m late. There’s no point telling him that my job is demanding and leaving on time isn’t always an option. According to Trevor, if my job was important, I’d make a lot of money. I don’t, therefore my career is not to be taken seriously.

“I have,” I tell Maria, rising to my feet and gathering the small pile of rings and bracelets that I’ve taken off to type, “exactly fifteen minutes, then I have to leave.”

“Thanks so much,” she says gratefully as I follow her into Sameer Shah’s office, slipping my turquoise ring on my finger and fastening the coral bracelet around my wrist. I like the gemstones. I dress, in typical New York style, in black almost all the time. The jewelry adds some color. “It’s the section on gender roles in the Taiga that we thought you should review,” she elaborates.

Ah. That makes sense. I’m the resident expert on the Siberian Taiga, having spent a year there as part of the research for my doctoral dissertation.

“Hey Bailey,” Sameer greets me as I walk into his office, his eyes glued to the computer screen. “Pull up a chair, will you? Can you tell me what you think of this bit?”

I read over his shoulder. Maria’s done a reasonable job describing why the people who live in the remoteness of Siberia are important and why they deserve study. She’s mentioned all the important points — the arrival of the Internet is eroding cohesion in the community, language is being lost and we are, in essence, in a race against time to study and preserve this slice of the world that has so far remained untouched by modern influences.

“Who’s funding this grant?” I ask her. “The National Science Foundation?”

She shakes her head. “No, the NSF’s budget has been halved. This grant is from a private company. Hartman. Have you heard of them?”

“Nope.” I’m not really listening to Maria’s words; I’m digesting the impact of her first sentence. Damn it. I knew the National Science Foundation wasn’t going to budget very much money this year for liberal arts. Everything’s about science and technology these days. It’s a great time to be in the STEM fields, and a terrible time to be in the humanities.

Thank heavens they’ve already approved my grant to go to Argentina in the fall.

Of course, thinking of Argentina reminds me of Trevor’s reaction last week when he heard I needed to be away for five months doing research on the myth and the reality of the
gauchos
in Patagonia. Let’s just say he wasn’t supportive.

Since I seem to be becoming an expert on ignoring the many reasons Trevor is wrong for me, I push those thoughts to the background and focus on Maria’s problems instead. “Okay,” I pull up a chair and reach for a pad of paper, pushing the bangles back from my right wrist so I’ll be able to write. “This is a great start, but you also need to add…”

I have multiple mechanisms in place to prevent me from being late. Alarms going off on my phone in fifteen minute intervals. Flashing screens on my laptop warning me to stop working. My computer is even programmed to shut down automatically at seven thirty.

But I’ve left my cell phone in my office, and engrossed as we are in strengthening Maria’s grant application, none of us hear the alarm when it goes off at seven. There’s another alarm that’s supposed to chime at seven fifteen, but if I can’t tell you if it went off — I don’t hear it either. When I finally look up at Sameer’s screen to check the time, I’m horrified to note that it’s seven thirty five. “Fuck,” I swear. “Fuck. And fuck again. Sorry, Maria. Pretend you didn’t hear me.” I don’t bother apologizing to Sameer. He has the office next to me. He’s heard me curse before.

She laughs. “Sure thing, Professor Moore,” she says easily. “Thank you so much for your help. This is fantastic.”

“Sorry to keep you here late on a Friday night,” Sameer adds apologetically. “You doing something fun?”

“Not really. I’m going to watch my boyfriend Trevor play pool. You guys met him at the faculty mixer two months ago, right?”

“Ah.” Sameer’s voice is flat, and he exchanges glances with Maria. “Yes, Trevor. You should go.”

I furrow my brow. Trevor had too much to drink at the mixer, and he’d insulted a bunch of my co-workers by going on an extended rant about the pointlessness of liberal arts. Finally, mortified by his rudeness, I’d had to drag him away. It had not been a good evening, and judging from Sameer’s reaction, Trevor has left an impression.

I ignore the big honking signs the universe is giving me about my relationship. Making my excuses, I head back to my own office and dig around the stacks of papers till I find my phone. Crossing my fingers, I dial Trevor’s number. As luck would have it, I get his voicemail. “Hey, I’m running late,” I tell the machine. “Sorry! I’m leaving right now, and I’ll see you soon.” The bar Trevor’s team is playing at is in SoHo, a ten minute walk away. With any luck, I’ll only be fifteen minutes late, and he won’t be too pissy.

T
hree hours later
, I’m wondering why I even bothered to come out tonight. Trevor’s been in a snit all evening long. I’ve been reduced to sitting in the corner with a beer, trying to pretend that he isn’t looking down the shirt of the size-two blonde as she bends over the pool table to make her shot.

The brunette standing next to me has been openly flirting with Trevor, though she knows we are together. I’m not the jealous kind, but even so, I’m getting a little irritated.
Come on,
I think.
Have some class.

Of course, Trevor isn’t exactly discouraging her flirting. That’s the kind of special guy that he is.

“What do you think this is?” Even her voice is whiny. There’s a few of Trevor’s teammates within hearing distance, but she’s looking straight at me.
Shit, she’s talking to me. I have to make conversation?

She’s holding her finger out to me. For a second, I think she's making a rude gesture, then I realize she's saying something about a wound. “Something bit me when I went camping a month ago,” she pouts. “Look, it’s still swollen.”

It’s
barely
swollen. Apart from everything else, she’s a hypochondriac. Absolutely
fucking
lovely.

I know I'm being cranky and anti-social, yet I can't stop myself. A devil-may-care attitude grips me.
Flirt with my boyfriend right in front of me? Honey, you don’t know what’s going to hit you.

“Oh my god,” I yelp, bending over her finger and pasting a serious expression on my face. “Did you go to the hospital?”

“No,” she shakes her head. “My sister,” she gestures to the blonde whose rack Trevor’s still ogling, “told me it was nothing.”

I make a tut-tut sound, allowing urgency to infuse my voice. “I’m a professor of anthropology. When I trekked in the jungles of Indonesia, a spider bit our guide. His wound looked exactly like this.”

I
am
a professor of anthropology, and I
have
trekked in the jungles of Indonesia multiple times. But I assure you that I know absolutely nothing about infectious diseases. Brunette Barbie, who clearly doesn’t know what anthropologists do, has no idea that I’m making up the story of the guide’s finger.

“He had the same kind of swelling,” I continue, my voice hushed. “Same red color. Nothing happened for a few weeks…” I swallow a sob. “Then…”

“What happened?” Her voice is shrill, her eyes are wide with fear.
I’ve got her.

“The eggs were incubating. One day, they all hatched.” I clench my eyes shut, and my voice is very low. “That poor man. He had three children.”

Her face pales, and she lets out an ear-splitting shriek, which causes her sister to miss her shot at the table.

Ladies and gentlemen, my work here is done.

O
nce the blonde
misses her shot, I watch my boyfriend strut up to the table. The cocky swagger is earned - Trevor is an exceptional pool player. The American PoolPlayer League ranks all their players by skill, and Trevor is a seven, which is the highest level.

They don’t rank douchebaginess, but if they did, Trevor would be a seven there too.

I wince at that churlish thought. I’m being unusually crabby tonight. But everything is irritating me - the way Trevor’s opponent is flirting with him, the way he’s responding, the way the bartender has served all the thin, pretty girls, while ignoring the fact that I’ve been standing at the bar for the last five minutes, waiting for a beer.

The sad truth is - I don’t really care how many women my boyfriend checks out. I don’t even mind if he’s sleeping around - that’ll give me the push I need to break up with him. Our relationship has been on life-support for a long time now, but I’m too embarrassed to pull the plug.

‘Why are you with him?’
my friend Gabby asked me once. She’s made no effort to conceal that she doesn’t like him.

I don’t know,
I wanted to reply. Maybe because I’m the chubby girl and I get friend-zoned by guys. When Trevor, a good-looking and successful guy showed interest in me, I was flattered and swept off my feet. At the six month mark of our relationship, I even hoped I was in love with him. When he suggested moving in together, I’d been so thrilled that I’d held my tongue when he picked an apartment that I could not afford. I wanted the fairy tale.

Five months later, I’ve come to the unpleasant realization that fairy tales are for children. As uncomfortable as the truth can sometimes be, hiding from it won’t solve anything. Trevor doesn’t love me. The reason he’s dating me is because I can open some doors for him in Manhattan’s cultural scene. Trevor’s a social climber, and it’s prestigious to date a professor at NYU.

And I’m dating him because I’m too passive to end it, which is
pitiful
.

Something my dad told me when I was ten comes to mind. We’d been on a hike that had felt never-ending, and I had been tired and cold and miserable. “Can we go home yet?” I’d whined.

My father had crouched down so he was level with my face, and he’d looked into my eyes. “Look Bailey,” he’d gestured to the path, which curved round a corner. “Don’t you want to know what lies ahead? If you stay right here, how will you find out?”

And though the ten-year old me hadn’t thought very much of my dad’s reasoning, the adult version can appreciate those words. Life might not be a fairy tale, and true love might not exist. But I’ll never know if I stay with Trevor. I’ll never find out what lies ahead.

O
nce Trevor finishes his game
, his teammates beckon me over. They’ve won handily tonight, and consequently, everyone’s in a good mood. “Bailey,” one of them, a guy called Peter says, his expression jovial, “why don’t you play a game with Trevor?”

Oh, dear god no.

I’ve tried to play a few times, but I’m dreadful. I have terrible hand-eye coordination. Trevor always looms over me, making me nervous. My overly-generous boobs graze the table, and I'm very self-conscious about them. One time, my breasts had knocked a ball out of the way. You would have thought I had tortured a puppy from the way Trevor reacted to that.

Trevor looks just as unhappy as I feel. “Bailey can’t really play,” he says. “I’ve tried teaching her, but she’s hopeless.”

At that, my temper, normally held well in check, flares, and I straighten my back. I know he’ll beat me. But I’d be damned if he’s going to talk me out of playing.

“Come on, man,” another one of his teammates says. He’s looking at me with pity in his eyes. “Don’t be a jerk.”

Trevor flushes. He’s generally pretty careful to treat me well in public. “Of course, honey,” he says, gritting his teeth.

I select a pool stick from the rack on the wall, knowing without even asking that Trevor isn’t going to offer me one of the cues in his case. “Do you want to break?” I ask him.

“No,” he says. There’s an unpleasant curl to his lips. “Why don’t you show us what you can do?”

I hate breaking. I can never hit the cue ball fast enough and with enough accuracy. The hallmark of a successful break is a satisfactory scattering of the balls all over the table. Me, I consider it a win if my cue ball even makes contact with the racked balls.

It feels like the entire bar is watching me. I don’t want to bend over the table - the black t-shirt I’m wearing will show too much cleavage if I do so. Trevor called my breasts cow-like once in the heat of an argument, and I’ve never forgotten those hurtful words.

I try to hold myself so I’m standing straight and I take the shot, but even before I make contact, I know I’ve failed. My cue stick careens out of control and barely grazes the white ball, which rolls a foot down the table and stops, humiliatingly, before it even hits the balls in the center.

My face is fiery. Trevor mutters a curse before he stalks forward. “You are supposed to bend over,” he says. He lines up his shot. “Like this.”

Thwack
. He hits the rack of balls dead on. Three balls roll into pockets and Trevor walks around to make his next shot.

“I’ve taught you how to break.” He doesn’t look at me, and he’s careful to pitch his voice low so I’m the only one who can hear the corrosive words. The solid green ball rolls into the side pocket. “But this isn’t book learning, is it? You can’t study your way to success.” The four slides into a pocket, followed by the three. He lifts his head up and chalks his cue tip. “Face it, Bailey. You huddle in academia because you can’t cut it in the real world.”