“You’ll play her,” I say. “Let’s bet on it. You play her in July and she’ll win her match.”
“How much?”
“Fifty.”
“Fifty dollars?” he sneers. “Fuck off, Hartman.”
“Fifty grand.”
From the look on Clark’s face, I know we’ve got him.
6
Bailey
We know what we are, but not what we may be.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
You have plenty of room for improvement. The words themselves weren’t cruel, but the tone was scathing. Clark, who looks exactly like the comic book Clark Kent, right down to the square black nerd glasses, didn’t bother to gentle his voice and listening to him, I had a bad flashback to Trevor’s cutting words.
As I stand in the alleyway behind the bar, I twist my turquoise ring round my little finger, trying hard to calm myself. Right now, I wish I were more like my friends. Gabby, whose temper erupts hot and fiery when she’s enraged, would have never let Clark speak to her the way he had just done to me. Wendy, who can turn icy when provoked, would have come up with a cutting response. Piper would have given him a contemptuous look and walked away. Me? I ran away and I’m fighting back tears behind the club. Great job, Bailey, I tell myself. I wish I’d grabbed my bag before fleeing. I don’t want to go back in there and feel the eyes of the entire team on me. A team that includes two of the hottest men I’ve ever met. Daniel and Sebastian.
The door opens, and as if thinking about them can actually conjure them from thin air, the two of them come out into the alleyway. And when I see them so close to me that I can reach out and touch them, all thought flees my brain, and I forget to breathe.
“What did Clark say to you?” the big dark-haired man who had introduced himself as Sebastian growls. There’s a hint of stubble on his face and his ocean-blue eyes are clouded with concern. His fists are clenched, his arms are thickly muscled, and his biceps are tattooed, though his t-shirt sleeves obscure the images. For some strange reason, he looks vaguely familiar.
“Just that I need improvement,” I mutter. “No biggie.”
“He upset you,” Daniel, the leaner of the two says.
I shrug uncomfortably. These guys are perfect strangers - I’m not sure what I’m expected to say to them. Am I supposed to pour my heart out and tell them my insecurities? “It’s okay,” I say quietly. “He didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. I’m not sure I’m going to come back anyway.”
“Why not?” Sebastian comes closer, so close that I can see each hair on his chin glimmer under the outdoor light in the alley. A sudden yearning to reach out and touch his face fills me, and I back away until my shoulders hit the wall. “You played two games,” he says. “The woman on the other team kicked your butt, but you didn’t quit. I liked that.” His eyes hold mine captive. “Why quit now?”
Daniel is watching our interaction. His nostrils flare, and his breathing is ever so slightly quicker. Under his intent gaze, I feel very exposed, but I like it. I feel like I am tap-dancing at the knife edge of danger.
I drag my wandering mind back to our conversation. Back to the humiliating scene at the pool table. “Did you see me in there?” My voice rises with frustration. To my horror, I can hear the tears just under. One word will crack the fragile barrier and release them.
“Everyone starts somewhere.” Daniel’s voice is deliberately reassuring, as if he’s soothing a cornered animal. “Everyone’s a beginner once.”
“I’ve been trying to learn to play for eleven months.” Ever since I met Trevor. Almost a year, and what I have to show for it is less than nothing.
“Your teachers are not very good at their task,” he says. Sebastian’s the one watching me now, and he’s so close I can almost feel him. There’s a weird energy that’s humming between the three of us, some kind of undercurrent of attraction that zings under the surface of our conversation, peppering each word with a heated spice. “We’ll be better.”
“You?”
“Sebastian and I can teach you.” There’s a pause in the conversation. “If you want.”
They are way, way above my league, but I’m attracted to these men. I want them. I want to be sandwiched between them. I want to feel suffocated by their hard weight pressing against me. “You’ll teach me how to play pool?” I stammer, in an effort to calm my raging hormones.
They both look amused. “Yes Bailey,” Sebastian confirms. “We’ll teach you how to play.”
“Next Wednesday,” Daniel says. “Get here an hour early.” He fishes a business card from his wallet and hands it to me. “My address and personal phone number is on the back. Call me if something changes.”
My brain cannot seem to string together enough words to form a sentence. I’m so caught up in their spell. An observer of this scene must think that it must be laughably easy to earn a PhD.
A full-blown grin covers Sebastian’s face. “We’re going to enjoy coaching you, Bailey. Don’t be late.”
Unless I’m imagining things, there’s a gleam in Sebastian’s eyes, a subtle emphasis on the word coaching. They aren’t coming on to me, are they?
7
Sebastian
To receive guests is to take charge of their happiness during the entire time they are under your roof.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
For every good, there is a bad. I learned this the painful way. The day after I got my first Michelin star, my dog Buddy died. He’d been ailing for many months, and his death was only a matter of time, but I still can’t think back to that day without sorrow. Such is life.
So I’m not entirely unprepared when I’m sent an absolutely brutal Yelp review of Seb II Thursday morning.
This place sucks big hairy eyeballs.
Sebastian Ardalan might have two fucking Michelin stars, but if the food we ate last night was any indication, the people that hand out these stars have no taste buds.
First, my girlfriend ordered steak, well done. The snotty waiter looked down his nose at us for that. Apparently, when you are paying over a hundred dollars for meat, the only option is rare. Eating raw meat is not an option for her — she’s pregnant. And hey, douchebag waiter, if you are reading this? I’d prefer to tell our family that we are having a baby first, before letting you know.
Then the meat comes out, and of course it’s still bloody. We send it back to be cooked. Comes back thirty minutes (!) later, cold and bloody. I point out how long we’ve been waiting for our food, and the waiter shrugs.
Absolutely terrible experience. We ended up eating at Taco Bell, where some cheerful minimum wage workers made us a delicious steak burrito, and yes, they made sure the steak was well-done without the attitude.
And those two Michelin stars? The chef can stuff it up his ass.
Damn it. If this were a one-time thing, I could ignore it. Sometimes, customers get disgruntled, but this is starting to feel like a pattern. I’ve seen many reviews in the last three months talk about slow service, snotty waiters and more. I need to head down to Seb II right away, and I’m long overdue a conversation with the staff there. I don’t like to go Gordon Ramsey on their asses, but after this review, it seems necessary.
“What the absolute fuck?” I wave my phone, with the offending Yelp review visible on the screen, in the small office space in Seb II. Crammed in there are the sous-chef Ben and the restaurant manager Mina, who is in charge of the front.
Mina looks uncomfortable, but she doesn’t say anything. Ben starts to roll his eyes, then catches a sight of my face and thinks better of it. “Look, Sebastian,” he says. “I wouldn’t get too bent out of shape. They were just tourists.”
“They were just tourists.” My voice is dangerous and my blood pressure is rising. “That’s your response to this? They were just tourists? Do you know how much money tourists bring to Seb II? Do you think our business is all investment bankers and Wall Street analysts? Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?”
Mina finally speaks up. “Yes Chef,” she mumbles. “It’s true. They did send back their steak, and they did wait more than thirty minutes for a refire.” She shoots Ben an irritated look. “I was told the kitchen didn’t feel that tending to the steak was a priority.”
“Bitch, don’t you put this on me,” Ben snarls. “There was a large party of regulars in the room and we were dealing with their orders.”
I’ve been too lax with these guys. Ben’s casually uttered slur against Mina is a sign that the front and the back of the restaurant have become dangerously fractured. I’m not going to tolerate this kind of disrespect. There’s only one person in this room that’s allowed to curse, and that’s me.
“Ben.” My voice is quiet. “If that’s how you want to speak to my staff, you can leave.”
He realizes how close he is to the line. Fuck, I’m not sure he hasn’t crossed the line. He gulps audibly before he speaks. “Sorry, Mina,” he mutters. “Sorry, Chef.”
Mina nods curtly. She doesn’t seem surprised by either the swearing or the half-assed apology. “Mina, I’d like to speak to you alone,” I tell her. “Ben, can you excuse us? I’ll send for you.”
Ben looks unhappy, but leaves without protest. He’s smart enough to know that when you are knee-deep in shit, you need to stop digging. “Okay,” I tell Mina, when we are alone. “Tell me your side.”
“What makes you think I have something to say?”
“Because you are from Nebraska, and are the last person in the city to treat tourists badly. So, what gives?”
She looks at her nails. “Permission to speak frankly, Chef?” she asks finally.
“Go ahead.” I’m not sure why she feels the need to ask, and I don’t like it. Seb II has always been a bit of a problem child, but I sense that things are spiraling out of control.
“The waiter who was rude to the couple is a friend of Ben’s,” she says. “He’s snotty and arrogant.”
“Why is he still employed? We have no place for that here.”
She doesn’t meet my gaze. “I didn’t want to piss off the kitchen,” she replies. “We work on tips. Those guys don’t.”
Okay, this is bullshit. “Did Ben suggest that he’d slow down food service if you fired his friend?”
“No, Chef.”
“So you jumped to conclusions and did nothing about a problem employee?” I cannot believe Mina. I thought she was better than this.
She doesn’t say anything in her defense. But I can read it in her stance. She genuinely believes Ben would have retaliated, and more than anything, that gives me pause. Mina’s been a rock steady manager. She was my fifth hire. I’d prefer not to lose her to Ben’s dismissive misogyny.
“Okay, here’s what we are going to do,” I tell her. “Helen’s going to come in here for the next month and get the kitchen in shape.” I give her a steady look. “In the meanwhile, I want you to clean house. And Mina, I’m not thrilled that it needed to get to this. I expect you to raise a red flag if you are running into issues, not just wait for shit to blow up in our faces.”
She bites her lip. “Sorry, Chef.”
“Let’s get Ben in here and break the news to him.”
Ben is, as expected, thrilled that he’s moving to Seb New York, even if it’s just for a month. Coming right after a second Michelin star, it feels like a promotion to him. I don’t like it. I’m sure Ben’s responsible for as much of the bad behavior as Mina, maybe more.
When Mina’s gone and the two of us are alone, I turn to him. “You aren’t being rewarded,” I say through clenched teeth. “Helen’s going to get your crew ready, and I’m going to be riding your ass at Seb New York. I don’t like a sloppy team, Ben. If you aren’t prepared to put in the work, you don’t belong here.”
“I belong, Chef,” he insists. “You aren’t going to regret this.”
He’s wrong - I already regret this. I don’t have the time to babysit Ben, especially not if this franchise deal that Juliette’s pushing falls into place. I don’t want to give up my Wednesday evenings playing pool to make sure things at Seb New York are working smoothly. If my intuition about this stupid mess is correct, this is going to be a clusterfuck.
8
Bailey
In the Kreung tribe in Cambodia, fathers build a love hut for their daughter when the girl reaches marriageable age. Different boys spend the night in the hut until she finds the one she wants to marry.
from Bailey’s Journal of Interesting Facts from around the World
We are going to enjoy coaching you.
When Sebastian had spoken those words to me, I had gaped at him, unable to think of a witty repartee. I still cannot.
But I wonder about his words all weekend. What did he mean by we? It wasn’t an expression of interest, was it? And if it was, did he really mean both of them wanted me?
Trevor was my third lover. My first was nothing to write home about - a fumbling encounter in Kevin McNamara’s bedroom before his parents got back from work. After that first brief moment of pain, I remember lying back and wondering why people made such a fuss about sex. It was okay, but hardly life-changing.
So I stayed away from boys, much to the delight of my parents, and I focused on my studies. I graduated college with straight A’s, and started my Masters degree immediately after. In my early twenties, all my energy and focus had been on my research.
Things had been better with Ivan in the Taiga. It had been a relationship that had been based on sexual attraction rather than any real underlying compatibility. It hadn’t mattered - we never had a future. Ivan was interested in hunting, fishing and in surviving the harshness of Siberia. I was on the cusp of getting my PhD, and I couldn’t see myself staying in Russia past my research year. When it was time for me to leave, we ended things amicably and without sadness.
The pendulum had swung the other way with Trevor. On paper, he had seemed like the right guy, but our sex life had been pretty dismal.
Which brings me to Daniel and Sebastian. They are two of the hottest guys I’ve seen in a long time, guys whose sex appeal exudes off them in powerful waves. Guys who make my body tighten with longing.
You must have misunderstood them, Bailey, I tell myself. Guys like that aren’t interested in you. In many parts of the world, men are attracted to curvy women, but North America isn’t one of them. Here, men who look more like gods don’t date chubby girls. They date supermodels.
But they’d been nice. When Daniel had smiled at me, the warmth and sincerity were hard to disguise. When Sebastian had grinned conspiratorially at me, I’d felt included. I’d wanted to belong in their little charmed circle.
Gabby’s the only one of us who’s been with more than one person at the same time. In March, she met two men at a bar, and she’d gone to their hotel room. Best sex I’ve ever had, she said dreamily, when she told us. Even now, two months after the fact, I know she can’t forget that one-night stand.
I wonder what it would be like to be with both Sebastian and Daniel. Two men, one with chocolate-brown eyes, the other with eyes that remind me of the ocean. Two strong bodies. For an instant, I close my eyes and allow myself to imagine what it would feel like to be sandwiched between them, engulfed in their heat. Four hands would caress every inch of my body. Two mouths would pleasure me. Two sets of eyes would look at me, heavy with lust.
Yeah. That’s going to happen. Get your head out of your ass, Bailey Moore.
“Level with me, Bailey. You’re attracted to them, aren’t you?”
I’m having lunch with Gabby Monday afternoon at a small Italian bistro overlooking Washington Square park. The Thursday Night Drinking Pack couldn’t meet this evening. Katie’s husband Adam is out of town and she can’t find a sitter for the twins. Piper’s bowed out as well, and Wendy’s texted us that she’s going to be working late. Since that just left Gabby and me, we decided to take advantage of the lovely sp
ring day and meet for lunch instead.
There’s a mountain of corrections at my desk that I’m playing hooky from. My colleagues in the science world can test their undergraduates with multiple-choice questions. I have no such luck. In Cultural Anthropology 101 at NYU, the students write essays. Five 25-page essays per student per semester, essays that need to be read and corrected - by me.
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, you didn’t,” she agrees with a grin. “However, you have spent the last five minutes talking about how kind they were. How nice. And when I asked what they looked like, you went bright red.” She winks at me. “Also, your nipples are hard.”
“They are not.” I look down automatically, and her chuckle turns into a full-throated laugh. “Damn it, Gabby. Maybe I’m just attracted to you.”
She’s not fazed. “Sorry, dollface, you aren’t my type.”
“Dollface?”
She shrugs. “Someone I know speaks like that,” she says vaguely. “Stop changing the subject. Talk to me about Daniel and Sebastian. Which one do you want?”
If she thought I was blushing earlier, I wonder what she thinks of my coloring now. “It doesn’t matter,” I mutter. “It’s not all about what I want. They have to want me, and that’s not going to happen.”
“Hang on.” She leans forward, her pasta primavera forgotten. “You didn’t say Daniel had to want you. Or Sebastian had to want you. You said they.”
I can’t keep the defensiveness out of my voice. “It doesn’t matter,” I repeat. “My fantasies don’t count.”
Ménage in Manhattan: The Complete 5-Book Ménage Romance Collection Page 5