Chapter 2

The breakfast conversation was strained, but they all managed to make it through to the end and out to the pool to relax. Drake was no closer to making a decision on who to choose. Every time one of the women talked for a moment, he thought he could see himself with her. When the next woman talked, he could see himself with that person. His mind spun out of control with thoughts of each of the women.

When they all moved out to the pool area, Lauren brought up a topic that many of the other women had been thinking about but hadn’t wanted to say out loud.

“Is Sophia going to come back?” Lauren asked Drake.

“I’ve talked to her, and she’s not going to be coming back. It was great getting to know her, but I decided it was better for her to concentrate on getting better.”

“How are you going to announce the winner?” Cynthia asked.

Drake automatically froze in his spot. He hated that term, winner. It made it feel like all the other women were the losers. And were the women Drake didn’t pick really losers? They would probably have the man of their dreams right around the corner just waiting for them. Drake didn’t like the term winners.

The whole idea that Drake could change someone’s life by choosing them had started to add to his stress. Hell, he would be changing his own life too by choosing one of the women. Drake was getting increasingly overwhelmed as he sat at the pool with the women, and Cynthia and her questions weren’t helping at all.

He couldn’t bring himself to say how he would pick the final woman, though. He really hadn’t decided. While he stared at Cynthia and tried to think of what he wanted to say, the entire group of women stared at him. The uncomfortable silence grew and grew until finally Samantha stepped in.

“Let’s keep it a surprise for now,” she said calmly as she saved Drake from the stares of the women. “Drake, could I talk to you for a minute?”

Samantha strode inside and back to the study where they had been talking before. She didn’t look back at Drake and didn’t even wait for him to answer her when she asked if she could talk to him. Samantha just knew that Drake would be happy to get away from what had become very awkward with all the women.

Samantha had always been there to save Drake in times of need. It was her job, and she did it very well. Throughout the five years of working together, Sam had grown to understand Drake and know him probably better than he knew himself. At first, she thought she knew him so well because she had a crush on him, but as their relationship grew, she thought it was more because she wanted to be the best assistant possible.

If Sam was going to give up a relationship with a smart, good looking guy like Drake, she was going to make sure it was because she was damn good at her job. There wasn’t going to be a single assistant in the L.A. area that was better at their job than she was; Sam made sure of it. She wasn’t going to waste her chance at love and also suck at her job; that wasn’t a possibility.

Sure enough, Drake followed her into the room, again. This time, he was no longer in a joking mood. His face had lost a lot of color, and he shook his head as he ran his fingers through his hair. This was going to be a very rough day. His body clenched with the stress of what was going on. He was going to break a lot of women’s hearts in the next few hours, and that didn’t feel good at all.

“I have no idea. I can’t choose. I’m not sure at all.”

“Okay, let’s stay calm. How about we try something else? Sit down here and close your eyes.”

Drake didn’t have the energy to argue with Samantha, so he sat in the chair and closed his eyes. His heart was pumping hard as the anxiety over choosing just one of the women had started to build up.

“Picture a woman walking toward you right now. She’s coming to kiss you,” Samantha said, moving closer to Drake. “She’s putting her hand on your face and about to kiss you. Who are you visualizing?”

Samantha put her hand gently on Drake’s face as she talked sweetly to him to help him make his decision. She wanted Drake to be happy, and he knew it. But at that moment, an urge came over him that he couldn’t control. He pictured Samantha. Maybe it was because he knew she was the one standing there, or maybe it was because he fantasized about having her, but Drake pictured Sam.

He grabbed Samantha and pulled her into his lap, then he kissed her. Drake felt such an unquestionable pull toward Samantha as she had walked toward him while his eyes were closed. He couldn’t imagine any of the other women—all he could think about was her and how close she was to him.

He expected her to pull away, that’s what Samantha was going to do, and he knew it, but she didn’t. Samantha kissed him back. Her hands wrapped around him, and she pressed her body into his as their mouths moved with one another. Samantha was kissing him, just as much as he was kissing her.

Drake wasn’t about to let go of the moment. For whatever reason, Samantha had given in to her desire for him, and he wanted to take full advantage of it. Their kiss moved from passionate to gentle as he softly touched her lips with his. Drake felt the blood in his body warm with desire, and he wanted to carry her up to his bed and make love to her.

“What if I don’t pick any of them? What if I want you?” Drake whispered.

Samantha instantly stopped kissing him. He had brought her back to reality, and she didn’t like that at all. The look on her face was that of anger; not anger at Drake, though, Samantha was angry at herself for giving in to her desire for Drake.

“No, this was just a small lapse in judgment. It’s not going any farther. It’s too late for us.”

“What are you talking about too late? I’m not married, you’re not married; how on earth could it be too late?”

“Drake, we work together. I don’t want to lose my job because you suddenly had a whim and decided you didn’t want me anymore. I can’t risk that.”

Drake knew what Samantha was talking about. He often decided he didn’t want to date women, and he didn’t have any particular reason for changing his mind. But Drake had wanted Samantha for so long, the idea that he would ever decide he didn’t want her seemed preposterous to him. If she would ever let him have her, he wouldn’t let go of her, ever.

“What if I never decided I wanted to let you go? What if you just gave it a chance?” Drake asked.

“It’s too late, Drake, really. I’m sorry I kissed you back. I have no intention of letting this go any further. You need to pick one of these women. We aren’t right for each other. We argue all the time, and I can’t stand you a lot of the time.”

“We don’t argue that much, and I think you can’t stand me because there are things you want to say and do, but you don’t give in to them.”

“It’s too late for us, Drake.”

“Then who should I pick? I can’t decide. If you know what’s best for me, who should I pick? Scarlett? Is that who you want me to pick? You two are like best friends now. How would it make you feel if I picked her, and you knew she was in my bed every night instead of you?”

Drake had gotten himself worked up and angry at the situation. Basically, Samantha had just admitted that she cared about Drake, yet she still wasn’t willing to give them a chance. Even when he said he was willing to let all the other women leave, Samantha still wouldn’t give him an opportunity to make it work between them.

“Actually, I think Lauren is better for you.”

“Lauren? Really, why Lauren instead of Scarlett?”

“Because you asked me who I thought was best for you, and I think it’s Lauren.”

“Is there something going on between you and Scarlett?” Drake asked.

He sounded like a jealous boyfriend yelling at his girlfriend, and he knew it, but the way those two had been talking and whispering to each other seemed very odd to him. He was jealous of the way they laughed and talked so freely to one another. Drake wanted that with both Scarlett and Samantha, and he was getting denied.

“Really, Drake. Really? What do you think is going on?” Samantha said, starting to return Drake’s anger.

“I don’t know, maybe you two are turning into lesbians and falling in love with each other. Maybe we should all just have a big orgy and get all this sexual tension out before the end of the week.”

“Oh, my God, Drake. Really! You think Scarlett and I have turned into lesbians? Fine, I’m done with all this.”

Samantha stormed out of the room quickly and headed straight out to the backyard. Drake had to run to keep up with her. When they both got out to the pool, everyone was watching them. Samantha walked right up to Scarlett, whispered something in her ear, and then kissed her.

Everyone stopped talking as they looked at Samantha and Scarlett kissing. Robert looked at Drake with eyes that were as big as plums. Drake shrugged his shoulders, and both the men gazed back at the kissing scene. It was a beautiful scene watching his two favorite brunettes making out with each other.

It was every man’s fantasy to have two sexy women kissing in front of him. Drake wanted to be into it; he wanted to remember every single second of the erotic moment, but he didn’t feel excited at all. He knew Samantha was angry with him, and that felt worse than any sexual pleasure he could get out of watching her kiss Scarlett.

When Samantha and Scarlett separated, Samantha walked over to Lauren, whispered something in her ear, and kissed her too!

“Oh, come on, Sam,” Drake said. “Okay, I get your point.”

But Samantha didn’t stop. She kissed Lauren, and Lauren was kissing her back. Their hands moved around each other’s bodies, and again everyone was staring at the women. Robert had to sit down, he was so in shock; yet he wasn’t turning away at all. Robert was married, and it wasn’t likely he got to see women kissing very much; he was taking full advantage of it.

A few years before, Drake had convinced Robert to go out for drinks, but instead of taking him to a regular bar, Drake took him to a lesbian bar. It was one of the best nights of their lives. Not only were they surrounded by women and lots of eye candy, but none of them were interrupting their conversation or flirting with them.

Robert still talked about that night and often tried to get Drake to do it again. The timeline just hadn’t worked out for them, but Robert didn’t have to wait any longer, he was getting to watch a show for free right there in Drake’s house.

“Excellent,” Cynthia said as she sat down and watched the women. “This is the way to end a party.”

Samantha and Lauren seemed pretty into their kiss, but when they finally separated from each other, Drake tried to stop the madness that was going on. One thing he knew very well about Samantha was that she had a temper. She had a way of holding things in for so long that when she finally exploded, her temper was so large that she scared everyone around her.

“Sam, I know you don’t like women. You’re just trying to prove a point. I get it, okay. You can stop kissing everyone.”

“How would you know if I like women or not?” Sam asked defiantly as she walked up to Cynthia.

Cynthia didn’t wait for Samantha to whisper anything in her ear. She grabbed Sam and pulled her onto her lap. Cynthia wrapped her hands around Samantha and grabbed her ass firmly as the two women started to make out. Cynthia was obviously very into women.

“I’ve clearly missed something,” Robert said as he stood next to Drake. “Why is Sam kissing everyone?”

“Drake wanted to have an orgy,” Scarlett said with a mysterious smile.

“What? No, I don’t want an orgy.”

“Samantha is just showing you that she can kiss people, and it doesn’t have to mean something,” Scarlett said.

Drake was grateful Scarlett had added that tidbit of information. He really had no idea what Sam had been trying to prove by kissing all of the girls. If she was trying to prove she wasn’t into Scarlett in that way, it seemed like an odd way to go about it. But if she was trying to prove that her kiss with Drake really didn’t mean anything, then what she was doing seemed reasonable.

Drake’s heart sank. Sam was trying to prove that her kiss with him meant nothing, but he knew it meant something. He felt it in the way her lips pressed against his. He didn’t care if she kissed everyone in Los Angeles, Drake knew it meant something when she had kissed him.

“Sam, you can stop,” Drake said flatly.

“Okay, I’m going to leave now. It was great meeting you all. I’ll check in later tonight when Drake has finally made up his mind.”

Drake followed Samantha back into the house, but she stopped him just inside the door. She looked like she was going to cry, and all Drake wanted to do was hug her. Sam and he had argued a lot over the last week, and he didn’t like that at all. Perhaps the idea of them being together was what had been pushing them to argue so much, but Drake hated it. Maybe just seeing him with all the great women in the house was too much for Sam. He was making much better choices than he had most of his life.

The women in the house were all amazing compared to the women he normally dated. The chemistry he had with them was beyond perfection. There was a sense that Drake really couldn’t go wrong at all. Every one of the women was amazing, and he would be lucky to have them.

“Stop, you’re not following me. You are picking one of those women, and that is it.”

“Since when did you become the boss,” Drake tried to joke, but quickly saw that Sam wasn’t in the mood for it at all.

“I’ll be back at six. Pick who you want. Send girls home that you don’t want. I don’t care, but please be close to your final decision by six. I can’t take this shit much longer.”

Samantha didn’t wait for him to answer and stormed out the front door and to her car. She had made it very clear that there was never going to be any sort of relationship between the two of them. He was going to have to pick one of the women from that week.

There was a part of Drake that felt like he still wanted to send all the women home. It was exhausting to be so emotionally drained for such a long period of time. He couldn’t wait to get back to his normal day to day life when he didn’t have to worry about the emotional well-being of seven women and instead just had to make money in his business.

“Well, that was awkward,” Robert said from behind Drake. “What was that all about?”

“I kissed her, she kissed me back. I thought she was interested in giving us a go.”

“She clearly is not. You don’t want to go there, anyway. You two are great at working together; I don’t think you’ll be so great at anything else. So, you had a house full of seven women and that still wasn’t enough for you? Maybe you just want what you can’t have?”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Drake said.

“But it was friggin’ awesome to watch all that lesbian action tonight. I’m going to have that in my spank bank for years to come.”

Both the men broke out into laughter. Drake had to admit, he’d probably keep those visual images in his mind for years to come as well. It was sexy as hell to watch those women making out together. Drake imagined that when he saw Sam in the office, he might flash back to what he had just seen her do. The delicious kissing scene was burned into his memory.

“I think I’m going to take off and leave you to it,” Robert added. “Do you know who you’d like to pick?”

“That’s the million-dollar question of the day.”

“Can I give you a tip?”

“Of course, Robert. I trust you with my life. Who do you think I should pick?”

“Oh, I’m not going to tell you which one, but you should consider who made you laugh. After being married for so long, I can tell you that laughter is a huge part of happiness. You need a partner that makes you laugh.”

Drake shook his head as he tried to think about which one of the women had made him laugh. Emily was the one that came to mind first. The party at the Playboy Mansion had been a lot of fun. She was definitely a sweet girl. But then he thought about Lauren again. Lauren was always giggling, and her infectious laugh made Drake laugh as well.

“Could you stick around for a bit? I’m going to be talking to each of the girls separately and don’t want to leave the others unattended.”

“I guess if I am being forced to.”

As Drake made his way back to the party, he sat down next to Emily to talk with her for a little bit. She was such a sweet girl, he had enjoyed their date very much. It was exciting to know that he was an official friend of a writer for Playboy. Well, at least they were friends at the moment; Drake had no idea how things were going to go once the end of the day came.

“So that was interesting,” Drake joked to lighten the mood.

The other women were all excited to talk with Drake, but let Drake and Emily have a moment to talk with each other. They pretended to go about their normal conversations, although they were all very much paying attention to what was being said between Drake and Emily. There was no privacy in the house at all, nothing that could keep people from listening in on each other’s conversations.

“Everyone was a bit shocked,” Emily started to say, “but then again, nothing should really shock us after the week we have all had together.”

“Oh, I beg to differ; I was very shocked,” Lauren said with a huge smile.

“Samantha seems like a fun girl,” Cynthia chimed in.

Cynthia liked kissing girls and didn’t pretend that she didn’t. For her, sexuality meant experimenting and playing around. Drake had seen that first hand with their date. But he had learned a lot from all the dates with the women.

Each of the women was so different in what they valued and what they were looking for in a man. If Drake was really honest with himself, there was no way he was the right guy for all of the ladies in his house. He had to really look at each of them and see if he was the best fit for them or not. Sure, he was a good fit with each of them, but was he the best fit? That wasn’t possible. He couldn’t be perfectly matched with each and every one of the women. Drake was going to have to start looking closer at these relationships so he could make his decision.

“Do you think she was trying to tell all of us something? Are we supposed to be kissing one another?” Allison said with a grin.

“I think she was trying to prove something to Drake,” Scarlett said as she caught his eye. “Did she get her point across?”

The way Scarlett asked her question made Drake think that she knew exactly what Samantha had been doing. Scarlett probably knew more about Samantha’s mind than Drake even did. He was wrong to have said something about the two of them being together. It wasn’t like Drake to act in a weird jealous way. In fact, he was the least jealous person he knew.

But the whole situation was getting out of hand, and even the sexual tension between him and Samantha had exploded that week. There were just too many women and not enough Drake to go around. He had to start narrowing down the field. He had to start asking the women to leave.

In Drake’s mind, he wasn’t going to be able to pick the final woman until he started picking the women that he knew wouldn’t work for him. It wasn’t until he sat poolside and watched Samantha kissing the other women that he realized that he had been going about his decision making all wrong.

He had been looking for one woman that seemed absolutely perfect to him, but instead, he needed to let go of the women that he felt might not be perfect. He had to start comparing the women and letting one in each pair go home.

The first pair in his mind was Emily and Lauren. Emily made him laugh and so did Lauren, but which one made him laugh more? Which woman would he rather spend more time with if he only had one of those two to choose from? Instead of comparing all of the women, Drake was going to just concentrate on two of them. His own version of March Madness. A little tournament of sorts between the final six ladies.

“Emily, would you mind if I stole you away and the two of us talked for a bit?” Drake asked.

The other women all froze in their spots. They had no idea what to expect, and Drake certainly didn’t want to torture them throughout the process of the day. But he did owe it to each of the women to spend time with them and give them each the opportunity to talk with him one last time before he made his decision. It was only fair, especially since he still felt like he really didn’t know what he was going to do at the end of the day.

It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was something that lessened the stress on Drake just a little bit. He assumed that no matter what he decided to do, he was likely to feel bad about his decisions in that day when he looked back on it. But he couldn’t do anything about that. All Drake could do was make the best choice for him. He had to stop thinking about Samantha and whatever it was that he had felt for her. It was clear that she didn’t want him, and nothing was going to make that happen.

“I’d be happy to,” Emily said. “Should we go inside?”

“Yes.”

Drake grabbed her hand and held onto it while they walked into the house. It might very well be the last time Drake ever spent time alone with Emily; he was going to take advantage of every moment of it and didn’t want the other women to see.