All Bets Are On Read Online Free PDF Page A

she was filled with frustration, hating the fact that she couldn’t face reporting them. Strong Alice Ford, who ate errant juniors for breakfast, couldn’t take a bunch of men to task for messing about in work time at her expense. She had believed herself stronger, more rebuilt than that, and it had crushed her confidence more than she wanted to admit, even to Tilly.
    ‘What if he’s in on the bet too? Why else would he want to take me out?’
    ‘Is it really so impossible to believe that he might just find you attractive?’ Tilly said.
    ‘I’m not the usual kind of girl he goes for.’
    Tilly frowned.
    ‘Maybe he’s upping his game, then. Look, he wasn’t on the list, was he? Are you sure you got a full copy of the names?’
    She shook her head.
    ‘I don’t know... I tore the desk apart looking for a Page Two or, worse, Page Three. That one page is all there was. But I can’t be sure. Even if I asked him he’d deny it.’
    Tilly pursed her lips, considering.
    ‘OK, forget about his motives for a second. Does it even matter whether he’s in on the bet or not? Why not just look at what’s in this for you? Like it or not, you really could do with his input. Don’t you think the insights you could get from dating someone like him, from just watching his behaviour, might be valuable?’
    And suddenly there it was.
    A flash of inspiration that fell on her like a ton of bricks, a bucket of ice, a jolt of electricity. Not a foolproof way through the minefield that was dating, more an approach to it. One that appealed to her constant desire to be in control, to avoid the pitfalls she’d shown herself to be so susceptible to in the past.
    ‘Erm, I think that might be burning,’ Tilly said.
    Alice suddenly realised the chilli was catching on the bottom and Tilly was staring at her. She shook herself and stirred it vigorously.
    ‘I could use him to build up a profile,’ she said, thinking out loud.
    ‘A what?’
    She looked at Tilly with sudden excitement.
    ‘What if I could use him to come up with a behaviour profile? A list of the way players react in certain situations so I can identify that type of man in the future before I get in too deep? I can come up with a list from my own experiences, then test it on Harry. Think about it. Think how much a list like that would have helped me when I was going out with Simon—I would have recognised from the start what kind of man he was and I could have kicked him into touch way before any damage was done.’ And saved myself a whole lot of grief.
    ‘Harry Stephens is the embodiment of everything I need to avoid in a man.’ She shrugged. ‘Well, except for the chiselled face and super-fit body. He’s the worst kind of player. He has zero regard for the women he takes out but he’s so gorgeous that none of them are able to see past that. I’ve seen enough assistants crying into their coffee over him at work to know that. Well, I can see past that, and I can use him to build myself some dating criteria.’
    Tilly was staring at her as if she might be mad.
    ‘Oh, for crying out loud, you and your lists! You can’t possibly be serious. This isn’t the office—this is the real world. You can’t run every facet of your life that way. It won’t work.’
    ‘It can’t hurt. How hard can it be? All I have to do is go on a few dates.’
    ‘While not falling for him. What about that chiselled face and super-fit body? The broad shoulders you told me about? You can’t backtrack now and tell me you don’t find him attractive.’
    ‘OK, he is attractive,’ she conceded, rolling her eyes. ‘But with his track record, falling for him is the last thing I’m going to do.’
    Her mind was running with the idea now, trying to get it off the ground.
    ‘I could take it step by step. How does a player behave on a first date? How long does it take him to call or text? That kind of thing.’
    ‘When does he go for a first kiss? How long does he wait before he tries to get