Daye, Rainey - An Unconventional Love (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (16 page)

“I’ve been doing some thinking about that,” Alex said as he continued to shake up the bag, giving no indication that she had embarrassed herself. “And I think we should go on the dates in the order that we draw them out of the bag, rather than first piecing our jigsaw together to figure out who all is participating on the dates and then trying to decide what to do first. Weather and event depending, of course,” he quickly added before either of them could point out that some of the dates on the strips were indeed seasonal activities.

“And if one of the dates is something that has a time limit to it but isn’t drawn until the very end, then what? That date gets trashed? That doesn’t seem fair,” Jess complained. “I was really looking forward to that concert choice.”

“I’m not saying we have to do all the dates that way.” Alex glared at him. “Or follow it to the letter. It’s just a way to figure out who gets the actual first date with Maggie with no hard feelings involved. Unless you want to play Rock, Paper, Scissors for it?” he asked sarcastically.

“Oh,” Jess said, shaking his head at Alex’s suggestion.

“We haven’t really discussed how this is going to actually work out once we figured out who is participating in any given date. Hell, the only reason I made that suggestion was so that it could take away the pressure of trying to figure out what date to go on or how to dress for it. Instead of dithering about it, we can simply whip out our list to consult and say, ‘Well, babe, looks like tonight we’re going to be going dancing, so go put on that sexy red dress of yours with the slit in the thigh.’”

They both raised their brows at him. “The red dress, huh?” Jess asked.

“Oh, yeah, the red dress,” Alex sighed.

“But you’ve never even seen me in it,” Maggie pointed out.

“But you showed it to us when you brought it home the day you bought it. We’ve both jerked off to fantasies of seeing you in it ever since,” Alex stated, causing her to blush.

“So, back to the topic we were discussing,” Maggie found herself stammering.

“Give me a minute,” Jess said. “I’m still visualizing you in that red dress.”

Giving him a startled look, Maggie saw that Jess’s eyes were indeed closed, and there was a blissful look on his face. Until a bunched-up piece of paper bounced off his head, and he started out of his fantasy, shooting a dirty look at Alex for throwing the paper ball at him.

“As I was saying,” Alex continued once again. “If we keep track of the order that the dates were chosen in, then it gives us a roadmap to follow. Takes the pressure off where we should go, what we should do, or even what we should wear. And it has the added bonus of letting us know the order of our dates.”

“The order of our dates?” Jesse asked him.

“Yeah, we are actually dealing with four different dating dynamics here.”

“Four?” both Jesse and Maggie asked this time.

“Four,” he confirmed as he started ticking them off on his fingers. “One is a group date involving all three of us, then there is Jesse and Maggie’s date, my and Maggie’s date, and my and Jesse’s date. So that’s four altogether. We need to keep revolving around them so there is no favoritism or hard feelings or someone being left home alone too often.”

“Oh, that makes sense. I hadn’t actually thought about that,” Jess said.

“Neither had I,” Maggie admitted, having forgotten for a moment that the two men she was she going to be dating would also be dating each other at the same time.

“So how do we decide on the order of dates?” Jess asked, but when Alex opened his mouth, surely to point out that that had been what he’d been talking about all along, Jess quickly raised his hand.

“No, no,” Jess quickly said. “I get that the first of our strips that is an only match for one of Maggie’s determines the first one-on-one with her, I really do. But how do we determine the order from there? Is it really fair to leave it up to chance? Say for example that I get the first date with Maggie. Then the next is one of ours and the one after that turns out to be a group date. That’s not really fair, is it? I’ve now had three dates in a row and two of them already with Maggie before you ever have your first individual date with her, and who knows how many more strips will be drawn before you actually get your first one-on-one with her. So solve the logistics of that.” He finished with a challenge, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back in his chair.

Disgruntled, Alex opened and closed his mouth several times without saying a word as he tried to work it out in his head.

Wanting to solve this new dilemma, since Jess’s point was perfectly reasonable, Maggie opened the notebook in front of her where she had been planning on taking notes on the strips they were going to draw and instead started trying to work out the logistics of this problem so that no one was forced to sit home alone any more than they had to.

“Okay,” she finally said a few minutes later. “I think I have it worked out. Instead of going on dates in the order that they were drawn, the order should provide an idea of what we are doing on our upcoming dates, like Alex said earlier. Since you two both seem to be as anxious as I am to have your individual dates with me, then I suggest we have those two dates back-to-back along with your individual date in there and that we save the group date for last, although no matter how we work it, someone is going to have three dates in a row.
However
,” she quickly added as the guys started to groan, “if we follow the rotation, eventually we’ll all experience the three-date-in-a-row phenomenon.” She tore the piece of paper she had been scribbling on out of her notebook and showed it to them.

They both leaned forward to take a closer look at the lists she had worked out, using their initials to differentiate between them and to see what exactly she was trying to explain to them, instructing them to read each list vertically.

“So, our group initials are ‘jam,’ huh?” Jess teased her after he had looked over her lists. “Is that because we’re a jammin’ hot threesome?” he added with a devilish grin.

“You know, this really looks like it could work out,” Alex said thoughtfully as he continued to look carefully over the lists she had drawn up.

“Yeah,” Jess agreed, “but I think we should throw out the last two lists.”

“Why?” Maggie wanted to know, reclaiming the paper and looking at it carefully to see if she had messed something up.

“Because you have Alex and I having an individual date together before either of us have one with you. And no offense, bro,” he added to Alex, “I’ve been dating you for about four years now, and I’m much more anxious to go out on a date with Maggie than I am to have another one with you.”

“No offense taken,” Alex assured him. “I feel the same way.”

“Well, then,” Jesse said. “It’s settled. The first slip drawn from the bag will determine who has the first one-on-one date with Maggie, and that will tell us if we’re following List One or List Two, and the order of the draw will help us determine what we’ll be doing on all our dates.”

“And on that note,” Alex said, “I volunteer Maggie to draw from the bag to see who gets the first date with her.”

“Why me?” Maggie squeaked, suddenly feeling performance anxiety.

“Because that way there will be no hard feelings between the two of us, and we won’t feel the need to call foul if either of us were to draw our own selection from the bag and wind up having the first date with you.”

“Yeah,” Jesse concurred. “I would definitely demand a do-over if Alex was to do the drawing and he won the first one with you.”

“Ditto,” Alex agreed. “So you get to do the honors.” He solemnly held the bag out to her.

Maggie felt her stomach contract and was afraid she was going to be sick as she shakily reached her hand inside the bag and moved it around amongst all the slips of folded paper inside. This was it. The moment of truth. All their talks and discussions were over, and the moment was now at hand. What type of date did she want the first one to be? Did she want it to take place in a public or private venue? Did she want the semisecurity of a crowd around them? Did she want idle chitchat with handholding and romantic kisses, or did she want noisy and raucous? Maybe a silly, fun-filled activity, or perhaps one that would have more of a serious air to it. Then again, she could always have one wrought with sexual tension since they all seemed to be thrumming with it.

“Maggie?” Alex’s concerned voice broke into her jumbled thoughts. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” She tried to swallow her panic. “I’m just suddenly finding myself very nervous,” she confessed.

“If it makes you feel better, I’m nervous, too,” Jess said.

“Really?” she breathed, having a hard time seeing the happy-go-lucky Jesse experiencing a case of nerves.

“Really,” he said while Alex gave a solemn nod acknowledging his own nervousness.

Feeling suddenly better, Maggie finally allowed her hand to close around one of the slips of paper and slowly drew it out of the bag. She looked at the folded slip in her hand for a long moment before she took a deep breath and opened it while the men held their breaths in expectation.

“Horseback riding,” she said in a carefully neutral tone as Alex immediately flipped through the master list he had compiled for himself on the computer from the slips he had been given in his original bag and printed out so that he could make notes on their dates.

“Whose initial is next to it?” he wanted to know, his pen poised over the item on his list.

“Mine,” Maggie admitted, disappointed that the anticipation wasn’t over yet and that she would have to keep drawing until she drew a match from the bag, suddenly realizing that horseback riding could very well be a group activity and berating herself for not realizing sooner that she might have to make many draws before the first one-on-one date was finally revealed.