Try and Play Me, Boy (The Playgirls #2)

Chapter 1:

The previous night.

By the time Colt was done with the girl, he was in no mood for drinking and joking around.

He’d managed to get Kim in a car within twenty minutes, and then, he’d returned to the ballroom, intending to make a bee line for Alice Vaughan.

He needed to kiss his girlfriend, and get the memory of the long pink fake nails – and the equally pink and fake lips – out of his mind.

Kim. Fucking Kim. He was going to have a chat with her on Monday, when she sobered up. It wouldn’t be another private word, this time. He fully intended to ask his mother and a HR representative to join the party. Colt had made allowances over the years, but she'd gone too far

He was happy to keep Kim in the company, if she accepted a demotion to a post where he didn’t have to personally deal with her, but if she made a fuss, she was out.

His eyes went straight to the other end of the room, where Alice had been chatting with his mother, but the two women had left their table.

One glance on his left explained it: his father had reappeared from the billiard room, so of course, Gia was hanging to his arm like a teenage girl with a crush.

Barf.

The parental unit’s unwavering and apparent chemistry was a constant matter of disgust amongst the younger Colburns; disgust, and – might as well admit it – envy.

Colt wanted that; a woman towards whom he’d still be passionate in thirty years.

And he’d found her.

“She isn’t here,” Kane told him, when his eyes resumed their search.

And that was the beginning of the end.

•

The silence was getting on his nerves; none of the others spoke, as if someone was dead or something.

It wasn’t the first time a relationship of his ended, for Christ’s sake! Normally, they joked about it and toasted to his freedom. This time, everyone around the dinner table at Xander’s was acting like he’d just been amputated.

Well, it sort of felt like he had, but their behavior didn’t help – especially since most of his siblings clearly believed that
he
was in the wrong. He’d seen the way they exchanged glances when he’d explained that he’d been dumped. 

Actually, he hadn’t even been dumped, strictly speaking.

He recalled Alice’s flat, detached tone when she told him
I don’t have anything else to offer you
.

She was happy to give him pussy, and that was it. No more presents, no more dinners; she was done with the intimacy.

Alice had proposed that they carried on their previous arrangement of sex-without-strings – probably for the sake of the article she hadn’t finished writing – but she didn’t want to pursue a relationship with him.

It was fucking stupid, unfair, and if she was that childish, he was better off without her, anyway.

Keep telling yourself that.

The pep talk wasn’t working. He would have been better off with her at his side; always.

They’d dated for less than a month, but he’d known without the shadow of a doubt that she was it. The one. Whatever they called it in romance books.

Then, Kim happened.

She got plastered, as she generally did; Kimberly Dennis was definitely a work hard, play harder kind of woman. That was fine by him; in the past, she’d rarely gone out of line, only getting overly touchy-feely with him when he was single.

But he wasn’t single and she knew it; he frowned when she’d ran her hands all over his suit. Colt, determined to avoid any drama, called one of his parent’s drivers and took her to the back while they were turning a car around.

No need to let her make a spectacle of herself in front of other employees; Kim was a high ranking executive.

Leading her to the garden had been an ordeal, she hadn’t stopped touching him, and while he’d tried to reason with her, he hadn’t used force – she was
drunk
. Gentleman didn’t dropkick drunken girls, however much they wished they could.

But apparently, Alice ended up seeing some of the Kim Show, and drew her own conclusions.

“Man,” Kellan said, breaking the silence around the dinner table. “You’ll end up knowing, so it might as well come out now. Kane told her where you were last night.”

And he’d thought he couldn’t possibly feel any worse. He could always count on his twin to show him otherwise.

Fuck.

Kane had always been a royal pain in his ass, all the way back to when he’d brought back an A- in maths, while Colt had been given an A+. He recalled the look of pure hatred he’d sent him then, and he saw it every now and then.

“Chill, Colt. It might not be what you want to hear, but he was doing you a favor.”

Had Xander lost his fucking mind? Taking the best thing that had happened to him this decade had been a favor?

“Kane didn’t make you lead a girl who couldn’t take her claws off you to a secluded area, Colt. Hell, he said he’d be happy to do it for you. You chose to do whatever you pleased, and that’s when you lost Alice. By taking her for granted.”

Colt got to his feet, grabbed his jacket and got the hell out of there. He had enough of this bullshit. He hadn’t done anything wrong!

Haven’t you?

Xander’s words swirled around his mind as he drove to his twin brother’s condo. By the time he’d parked, most of his fury had been redirected.

Shit. He had taken Alice for granted; or at least, he’d taken their relationship for the constant, stable thing it had become in his mind, ignoring the fact that it was days old, and that the woman had been cheated on a number of time; she wasn’t likely to allow for a mistake number five.

Colt could also see Kellan’s point; Kane has just tried to show him that he was being a conceited ass.

He had been. What would he have done, if Alice had taken a guy who touched her boobs and kissed her asides?

He didn’t know, but it would have been less mature than her reaction – or lack of thereof.

Kane answered after a good five minute of relentlessly pressing the doorbell; his expression was guarded, obviously expecting the worst.

Colt walked past him without so much as a glance, saying:

“Whiskey, hold the ice. And you better have some pizza, asshole.”

•

Alice was quite proud of herself; in fact, her response to the situation was worthy of eulogies. Someday, she’d get “that chick was seriously mature” engraved on her tombstone.

She didn’t make a scene. She didn’t write obscenities on Colt’s car with her nail polish. Hell, she didn’t even cry.

Sure, she was furious, but seventy-five percent of her wrath was directed towards herself, rather than he who would thereafter be called Mr. Cheating Ass the Fifth.

She knew what men were like; the normal guys she’d dated before – attractive, with a job and enough cash to afford the occasional meal out – had gone to seek an extra pussy at some point. Why the heck had she believed, even for one instant, that Colt Colburn, dynamite-hot CEO of the Colburn corporation, would be satisfied with just hers?

The only reason why she felt like munching a sandwich filled with hairy balls was the fact that he had been the one talking about pursuing a relationship; she’d gone into their fuckfest with her eyes wide open, taking it for what it was, but dammit, he’d asked for exclusivity.

She walked until spotting a wayward cab, and made it home by eleven.

Alice wasn’t sure how to proceed from there.

A bubble bath sounded heavenly, but she really, really needed the company of an endlessly faithful, disgustingly sweet boyfriend, and there was only one place she could find one of those; but kindles plus bathtubs didn’t mix.

Or, she could always get shitfaced on Champagne.

She sighed, admitting that option one or two wouldn’t be practical, because in one to three hours – depending on the speed of his encounter with Model-Thin-Vamp – she’d have to deal with Colt.

He’d call first, and then, when she sent him straight to voicemail a few times, he’d turn up here. She had all the experience in the world, thanks to Cheating Ass One, Two, Three and Four.

Alice could ask the doorman not to let him in, but there was no point; not now, anyway. She’d give instructions later, depending on the outcome of their discussion, but they needed to speak and dealing with him right then was easier than dodging the ambuscades later on.

So, Alice sat on her bed, surrounding herself by pillows and her old Momo, the faded teddy bear she’d stolen from her brother at age one. Once comfortable, she opened one of the two ultimate classic of her generation.

Yep, sometimes a girl just needed a dose of Twilight.

She looked down at her watch when the doorbell rang; eleven twenty-seven. He’d had a quickie, then.

She let Emma answer, and kept her gaze firmly planted on Bella Swan’s inner mumbling when Colt made it to her room.

“Dammit Alice, why aren’t you answering your cell?”

Because it was turned off; she preferred to do these things face to face.

“Look, my brother told me you went outside when I was getting Kim a driver. She was drunk…”

Blaming the girl; check.

She knew the score. Then, there would be the “you don’t believe in me” and finally, the “I’d never do this to us.” If she was really unlucky, he’d roll on with a declaration of undying love.

Colt didn’t disappoint.

As she didn’t bother replying – or acknowledging – anything coming out of his mouth, he speeded through the expected monologue; no mention of love, there, thank fuck.

When it got a bit too much, she held her hand up, and to his credit, he immediately stopped talking.

“I don’t need to hear this. You could be lying through your teeth or telling the absolute truth; it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change what I’ve seen. Look, let’s keep it factual. Day three into our relationship, you had another girl’s tongue lodged down your throat. I didn’t like it. At all. I don’t want to feel like this again. So, that’s the end of the relationship. Period.”

She was not negotiating that part.

“A few days ago, before we decided to date, that would have been fine.”

It was a lie, she would have hated it just as much regardless, but from now on, she would be prepared.

“We work better as fuck buddies. I don’t mind carrying on bumping uglies, if you’d like. But I don’t have anything else to offer you.”

Alice wouldn’t have backed down in any case, but she might have felt a bit better if he’d insisted; however, as she’d guessed he would, he just nodded – because ultimately, pussy was all he was after.

Chapter 2:

Alice was furiously tapping on the keyboard of her poor MacBook – as she’d been doing for a minimum of twelve hours a day over the course of the last fortnight – when Linda interrupted her.

She reluctantly lifted her head, frowning at her boss. The weekly meeting hadn’t started yet – she’d made it almost an hour early.

“Sorry if I’m interrupting. I wondered if you wanted to go around the numbers for last quarter, as you’re here?”

Alice glanced around her cubicle, checking that no one had been around to hear that.

Steve and Paula were animatedly chatting, and she heard the term Star Wars, which meant that they were completely ignoring anything happening in this universe right now.

The rest of the team was nowhere to be seen; they’d probably either already made their way to the conference floor, or they hadn’t arrived yet.

“Sure,” she replied, shrugging. “Just as long as you realize that I won’t understand a word you’re saying.”

Being successful often went hand in hand with knowing your limits; one of hers was stats. She could deal with straightforward basic maths, but loss, profits, taxes and such like made her want to pull her hair out and scream.

But she still had to hear it.

Alice was one of those people who kept in touch with their friends; a message here and there, the occasional phone call – she never begrudged a two hour drive for a night out with someone who lived away; she’d even been known for taking a plane to catch up with those who’d moved to the other coast.

Three years ago, a few weeks after the secretary of her fourth boyfriend informed her that he’d been fucking her behind her back – she was so
not
getting into details about that one – she’d received a call from Linda, who had been in major need of a girly outing, so she’d driven down to LA.

“I think I might have to resign,” Linda had confessed at dinner.

Which was insane, because her job was perfect for her. After getting her MBA, interning for a year in a soulless corporate firm, she’d landed a cushy job working for a notorious ex-MMA fighter, ex-Marine, bike riding, self-made millionaire who ran a badass Merger and Acquisitions firm.

“Why the hell would you resign?”

That came from Emma, who had just started a similar position; although she’d gone for the well-established Colburns, rather than taking a chance on a newbie.

Linda uncrossed her legs, and crossed them again on the other side, before taking a sip of Prosecco. Yep, typical stalling technique.

“Because,” she eventually said, to no one’s surprise, “I may quite possibly have slept with my boss.”

That won her a round of high fives.

Impossible to blame her; Brett Webber was so hot his bodyguard frequently had to protect him from underage girls who literally threw themselves at him.

It might have something to do with the fact that the man had gone and actually features in an estrogen infused high school flick, before opening his business. It was totally self-inflicted.

“Shit. What are you going to do?”

Linda had said she’d wanted to open her own business; she hadn’t gone to school to become anyone’s glorified secretary. However, while she loved business – numbers, connections, forecasts – she didn’t have a particular venture in mind.

Alice had let it go, and enjoyed the night, but the following afternoon – to allow for the requisite hangover – she’d called and set up a quick meeting with Linda.

Contrarily to her friend, she didn’t have any school debt – a scholarship had paid for the bulk of her expenses, and she’d managed the rest by keeping a part-time job. She’d lived at home since graduation, which meant that she had a fair bit of cash stashed away, money she’d planned to put down as a deposit for a place as soon as humanly possible. Her family was driving her mad.

But Linda’s situation had immediately put an idea in her mind; something she wouldn’t have a hope in hell of achieving by herself. She didn’t have what it took to pull it off; but together…

In her wildest fantasies, Alice had always dreamt of owning a great, trendy, girly, real newspaper. But she really was useless at business.

Linda wasn’t.

“Look, it’s just an idea. I have twenty-seven thousand, that’s not much, but I can make it thirty by January, and my credit’s good. I can raise the rest…”

“Twenty-seven? Shit, A, do you know how much you need to start a newspaper?”

She sighed, disappointed; it had been a silly idea. But at least she’d tried.

“One hundred dollars. Maybe two if you want a good domain name and a fancy logo. Five hundred for marketing it on facebook. That’s it. With ten grand, hell, we’ll make it a hit from month one!”

And they had.

Alice had gone home and said she had a new prospect in LA, without giving any details as to how her perfect job had suddenly landed on her lap.

Her parents weren’t happy, but they weren’t about to try and convince her to stay and carry on pushing paper in a crappy office when she could have a great career instead.

For that reason, Alice had ensured that Linda appeared everywhere as the chairwoman, CEO, you name it.

Nevermind the fact that Alice owned the actual business. No one needed to know.

Well, some people might find out, with a little digging, but she knew her parents weren’t the kind to look into those sort of things.

While the secrecy had been solely to get her family off her back, she found that she liked it; the staff treated Linda differently, with more reserve, although the woman – a tiny thing of twenty-seven, hiding behind large glasses – was hardly intimidating. She had boss written on her office door and that was that.

“The short version, then?” Linda offered, closing the folder she’d brought with her.

“Please. I’m sure you’ll mail me the long one.”

“Well, we’ve been steady September through to December, with an increase when you featured that romance author, and an exponential peak when you managed to bag the Colburns.”

Alice shuddered at her choice of word. She’d bagged a Colburn alright; for about three days.

“I still can’t believe you pulled that one, by the way. Altogether, after every deductible, including what we’ve attributed towards the first quarter of 2016, the business made about a mil and a half.”

She cringed. That sort of number always sounded
way
too much.

“Give us all a bonus, then. That will help reducing the taxes. Right?”

And that would also make her feel less guilty about being dirty rich on paper.

Twenty thousand – that’s all she gave towards On Top; Linda had been adamant they really didn’t need more.

They launched the magazine online – with only a handful of printed version. Alice wrote over half of the articles herself, the first month, and they’d hired freelancers for the rest.

Later, they got in touch with some local journalists, with whom they’d met at Starbucks every now and then. As On Top’s subscribers list grew, they’d rented an office; now, they figured amongst the papers found in most store displays They were talking about buying their own building.

“So, what are we doing this time? You want a withdrawal, or would you prefer to re-inject all the profits in the business?”

That was a no brainer.

The three first months, Alice didn’t accept any pay; she still had a bit of savings and it was stupid to use up a chunk of her own money to pay herself. She’d forced Linda to take a couple of thousand – a fraction of her previous salary – but from the second quarter, the business had made enough money for both of them to get paid as much as she’d earned from her secretarial position.

Three years later, Alice’s salary was on par with a New York City senior reporter – she didn’t need anymore.

“I’m reinvesting it.”

She’d asked to take her profits out the first year, because she’d needed a new computer and her lifetime habit of saving what she could had made her reluctant to take it directly out of her salary; never would she do that again. Ever.

It hadn’t been the thousand dollars she’d expected. Or two. Or three. Or four.

She’d hurriedly put ninety-five percent of what she’d taken out right back where it belonged, before the taxman caught wind of her income.

“Great. That’s that sorted. The meeting is in twenty minutes, but now, while I’ve got you, I wanted to ask: how are you doing with your Valentine’s Day story?”

Alice inwardly growled. Her story was a mess; a great, big, huge thirty-one thousand word mess.

“I’m… Yeah, it’s great. I’m great.”

A proficient liar, she was not.

“I can still get someone else to write it if it’s outside of your comfort zone.”

Alice pushed her Mac towards Linda. It was opened on her latest draft; she scrolled up and let her read it for a minute or two.

Make that five.

“Ok, enough.”

She closed her computer, ignoring Linda’s protests.

“As you see, sex isn’t out of my comfort zone. The problem is that I can’t damn stop writing.”

“Shit, A. That’s not sex. That’s a novel. With a pretty good start, too.”

Alice lifted a dubious eyebrow; she’d done creative writing at college and while her capacity for writing entertaining short non-fiction had stood out, she’d had zero skill in actual book writing. Zero.

“Seriously, it’s gripping. I’ve read ten pages and I want to know what happens next.”

“Whatever. I’m just getting everything in black and white, so I can pick out the best lines to write my article.”

“So, what? You’ll summarize two hundred pages?”

That had been the plan, yes. However, she had to admit, it did sound a tiny bit silly, now she said it out loud.

“Look, given the fact that you’ve entrusted me with three quarter of your life’s savings, it’s safe to assume that you trust me, right?”

Alice nodded carefully; sure, she trusted Linda, however, it was natural to question anyone who started a speech with that.

“Carry on writing; when you hit forty thousand words or so, wrap it up – finish it on a high, with something sweet, if you can. End of the month, we’ll send it to an editor; and instead of writing an article, you can write a review of the book. That’s your column sorted, and we’ll make you a best selling author in the process, under some pen name.”

She just laughed out loud at that. Linda was great, but sometimes, she just lived on another planet. No one published books in six weeks. Whatever publishing house they contacted would get in touch in three to six months if they were lucky.

She told her just that, and it was Linda’s turn to chuckle.

“Ok, we have a meeting to sort out, first. Then, I’ll introduce you to the wonders of Kindle Direct Publishing.”