Power Play - A MFMMM Reverse Harem Billionaire Romance (You Can't Resist a Bad Boy Book 6)
Page 1
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilogue
Power Play
Layla Valentine
Ana Sparks
Contents
Layla Valentine & Ana Sparks
Power Play
1. Gabrielle
2. Liam
3. Gabrielle
4. Gabrielle
5. Liam
6. Gabrielle
7. Gabrielle
8. Gabrielle
9. Jason
10. Gabrielle
11. Gabrielle
12. Liam
13. Gabrielle
14. Liam
15. Gabrielle
16. Gabrielle
17. Gabrielle
18. Gabrielle
19. Gabrielle
20. Liam
21. Gabrielle
Epilogue
Ana Sparks & Layla Valentine
Baby Bet
Introduction
Prologue
1. Sean
2. Violet
3. Sean
4. Violet
5. Sean
6. Violet
7. Violet
8. Frank
9. Sean
10. Violet
11. Frank
12. Frank
13. Violet
14. Violet
15. Sean
16. Violet
17. Sean
18. Violet
19. Sean
20. Violet
21. Sean
22. Violet
23. Violet
24. Violet
25. Sean
Layla Valentine & Ana Sparks
Theirs To Share
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Layla Valentine & Ana Sparks
Wanna Puck?
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Layla Valentine
STEAL ME
Introduction
1. Owen
2. Emily
3. Emily
4. Owen
5. Emily
6. Owen
7. Owen
8. Owen
9. Emily
10. Emily
11. Emily
12. Owen
13. Emily
14. Owen
15. Emily
16. Owen
17. Emily
18. Emily
19. Emily
20. Owen
21. Owen
22. Emily
23. Emily
24. Emily
Ana Sparks & Layla Valentine
Triplets For The Billionaire
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilogue
Also by Layla Valentine
Power Play
Layla Valentine & Ana Sparks
Copyright 2018 by Layla Valentine and Ana Sparks
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.
All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
Gabrielle
The great thing about cooking with vegetables is you can pretend you’re chopping off the heads of your enemies.
Not that I had any enemies. Just annoying editors. I cut into the onion with a little more viciousness than was required.
“Editors who send me out to cover a stupid fucking celebrity charity event,” I grumbled, chopping away.
I was supposed to be an investigative reporter. I was supposed to be rubbing shoulders with Anderson Cooper and Lisa Ling. What had happened? Where had it all gone wrong?
Some of my hair got into my face, which just made me more irritated. I kept it in a bob, which I thought looked chic and professional. It certainly looked nice paired with my suits. But when it came to cooking or exercising, it was too short to tie back and just got in the way.
The haircut might also have been a bit of a rebellion against my mom’s side of the family, the traditionalists who thought that my pursuing a career in investigative journalism and not settling down with a nice Latino man and providing grandchildren was a sin. Not that I didn’t want to provide grandchildren or anything. I did want kids someday. Just not right now, not while my career was stalled at the starting line.
I grabbed a tomato and took great pleasure in chopping at it with my oversized knife. I was supposed to be reporting on real issues, things like unfiltered water and politicians and the Middle East, for crying out loud. Not celebrity antics. But no, my editor, Paul, wanted me to prove myself in the goddamn gossip column first, of all places.
“What does that even mean?” I asked aloud. I had this habit of talking to myself; it used to scare the crap out of Mom sometimes. Although, really, she should’ve been prepared for it. I got all my craziness from Dad.
“How the hell does sniffing out some big scandal equal investigating war crimes?” I asked the empty air and the soup pot. “Oh no, another big-name director is cheating on his wife with an actress half his age, somebody quick, call the papers! It’s front-page news!”
I slammed the lid onto the soup pot. I hoped Kelsie was in the mood for soup. I liked to go all out with dinner when I could. Kelsie was a professional chef, but as much as she loved her job, she hated having to do more cooking when she came home. That meant dinner fell to me, and Kelsie had a huge weakness for my grandmother’s recipes. She was always trying to get the recipes from me, but they were a family secret. Abuela would have my head, literally, if I gave those away.
But tonight, after the long and fruitless chat with Paul, I was not in the mood to spend an hour cooking. So, soup it was. Cut up ingredients, stick in broth, and turn on stove. Done.
I braced my hands on the counter and tried not to cry. I felt like a failure. I was the only child in my family and I just…felt like I had to amount to something big. Something important. Maybe if I’d had five siblings, I could have disappeared into the crowd more easily. I was all Mom and Dad had—hell, I was all my dad’s parents had too. I couldn’t help but feel that I had to live up to what I’d said as a child: that I would be an important investigative reporter. That I’d be making national news. That I’d do something that would change the world. Or, y’know, at least win a Pulitzer.
Maybe I should have gone to New York City, like I’d originally planned. Or even Los Angeles. Somewhere, anywhere, but I’d gone to Santa Barbara.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. I could get the discount on college since I’d grown up in-state, it was still close enough to where I’d grown up that I could see my parents, and it was small. It was good to start small, or so I’d thought. I could work my way up the food chain here, get some good stories under my belt, and then head to NYC or Washington D.C. with experience and a solid resume.
If I listened hard enough, I could hear the universe laughing at me.
Four years since graduation and I was still getting stuck with dead-end jobs like these, working the gossip column. I would have to find something big and scandal-worthy if I was ever going to convince Paul to push me into the political section. Then I’d have to earn my rank there for a year or two. And then…
It was starting to look like I wouldn’t make it to the big leagues until I was thirty. And, sure, I was only twenty-five now, but things take time. Nobody just trusts a journalist right off the bat. You had to prove yourself. Five years, as I had learned, could pass by in a blur. The last four years sure had, and the four years of college before that.
Hot tears stung my eyes and I wiped them away quickly, telling myself it was the onion. Stupid, stupid. This was what everyone in their twenties went through. I would be fine. Being melodramatic wouldn’t solve anything, anyway.
Luckily, a distraction arrived.
“I’m home!” Kelsie shouted in a sing-song voice, banging the door open.
They say that opposites attract, and while I wasn’t sure if that was true in romance, it was true in our friendship. Kelsie was the fun-loving, hard-partying yin to my boring, introverted yang. A curvy redhead with creamy skin and a rosebud mouth, she looked like she belonged in magazines. Why she’d decided to be a personal chef when she could be making millions pouting for a camera, I’d never know. I sure liked to tease her about it, though.
“The barista gave me his number,” Kelsie told me, grinning as she flopped onto the sofa. “Mmm, and whatever that is smells delicious!”
“I hope you told him no; isn’t he like nineteen or something?” I replied. Men were always hitting on Kelsie rather than me, thank God. It wasn’t that I wasn’t attractive, but Kelsie just had one of those personalities that you couldn’t help but be attracted to, the kind that you really noticed and eclipsed everyone else. I appreciated it, most of the time. I didn’t trust men easily, and I’d had a few bad relationships in college. Nothing abusive, or anything, just regular assholes. I wasn’t keen to repeat the experience.
“He’s a sweet boy,” Kelsie said.
“He’s also nineteen. Men our own age are immature enough. You remember how the guys were in college.”
Kelsie had been my college roommate back at UC Santa Barbara. We’d basically been inseparable for those four years and since we’d gotten a little apartment in Isla Vista together, we’d definitely been as close to inseparable as you could get.
“I’m not saying that I’m going to date him or anything,” Kelsie said. “Just…have a little fun.”
“You’ll break his precious baby heart, you cougar, you,” I teased.
“Hardy har-har,” Kelsie replied. “Honestly, it smells so good. What’s for dinner?”
“I’ll ignore your blatant attempt at a subject change to tell you that it’s just good old chicken tortilla. I wasn’t really in t
he mood to do something fancy, sorry.”
“As much as I would kill a man for those pork tamales, I’m sure soup’ll be good too.” Kelsie winked at me. “What’s got you in a mood?”
I sighed. Kelsie could always see right through me.
“My stupid editor. I tried to get him to let me cover something important. The local elections, maybe. He said not until I cover something big. He just wants a goddamn scandal.”
Kelsie offered a sympathetic grin. “You shouldn’t let your editor or anyone else get you down. You’re a good reporter, Gabs. You’ve got this way with your writing that just draws people in. And don’t give me that look, I’ve read your stuff, remember? Even the shitty first drafts. You’re talented. You really make the reader feel like they know who you’re writing about.”
“I just wish I was writing about something important.” I sighed again, and leaned back against the counter to face her properly. “Who’s really going to remember any of the tawdry stuff I write now, huh? Five years from now, will any of it matter? But Watergate, the Vietnam war, all of that, people remember. I want to make a difference.”
“And you will,” Kelsie said. As always, she had that patient, calming tone. It made me think of a still ocean. “These things always take longer than we want them to.”
“Says you. Look at you, already working at your dream job and…” I trailed off as I eyed the shopping bag on the coffee table. It hadn’t been there before Kelsie had walked in so she must have dumped it when she entered. I must have really been deep in my thoughts to miss that. “What is that?”
Kelsie saw where my eyesight was going and grinned. “That, my darling, is the bag containing my new pair of Louboutin shoes!”
“Louboutin?” I frowned. I knew that I probably looked and sounded like Kelsie’s mother. Or worse, my mother. But I couldn’t help it. There was a reason we lived in Isla Vista instead of Santa Barbara proper—it was far less expensive. “How much did those cost?”
“A ton,” she replied, cheerfully unconcerned.
“I’m not covering you for rent,” I told her. I’d never had to cover Kelsie’s rent before, but then Kelsie had never bought a pair of what were possibly one-thousand-dollar shoes before.
“You won’t have to.” Kelsie sat up properly, draping her hands over the back of the couch. “These are a sort of celebration.”
“Did you score a big client or something?” My mind raced as I tried to think of who it might be. Kelsie had so far been a personal chef for various rich, busy businessmen and women. They were the kind of people that wanted to eat healthy and fancy, but didn’t have time to cook and didn’t always want to go out to restaurants. She was the one holding up the bulk of our expenses, if I was being honest.