“You said we each have three vetoes, and when one of us hates something the other comes up with, all we have to do is say veto and we move on—no debating the idea. I’m invoking my first veto power. I’m not touching that question.”

“Come on. I really want to know. I’ve only gotten a woman’s perspective. And you don’t strike me as the type of guy to bullshit me.”

I studied her carefully. She’d been giggling a few minutes ago, but she also seemed to be sincere in wanting an answer. So I took a deep breath.

“Okay. To me, being on a break means I want to have my cake and eat it, too. I don’t want to commit to just one woman, but I also don’t want her to commit to anyone else—in case the day comes when I decide I’m ready to settle down. So I keep her on the hook, while I go fishing somewhere else for a while.”

She frowned. “Andrew said he needed to discover who he is. On Valentine’s Day. I got dumped on Valentine’s Day.”

What a dick.

“How long were you together?”

“Eight years. Since junior year in college.”

She’d probably hate me for it, but someone had to tell her the truth.

“So he’s what…twenty-eight…thirty?”

“Twenty-nine. He was a year ahead of me.”

“He’s jerking you around.”

Her jaw dropped. “You don’t even know him.”

“Don’t need to. No stand-up, twenty-nine-year-old man who loves a woman is going to set her free because he needs to find himself. Especially on fucking Valentine’s Day.”

She straightened her spine. “And you know this because you’re such a stand-up guy?”

“Didn’t say that. In fact, I’m the opposite of a stand-up guy. Never even had a girlfriend on Valentine’s Day. I make sure I get rid of them beforehand so there’s no expectation of candlelight and romance. That’s why I can say with certainty that your ex doesn’t really need a break to find himself. Because it takes an asshole to know an asshole.”

Annalise’s blue eyes blazed. Her lips pursed, and her cheeks flushed with anger. If I’d been uncertain I was the asshole I’d just admitted to being before, the fact that seeing her getting pissed off made my dick twitch would’ve proved it.

She stared at me for a solid two minutes and then got up to stand at the foosball table. “Let’s go,” she said. “I feel the need to kick your ass.”

***

It was hours later before we made any real progress. But once we started, we got on a roll, and the two of us really started gelling. I’d say one thing, she’d take it and run for a while, that would spark an idea in me, and in the last half hour, we’d come up with a name, sketched out a rough idea for a logo, and jotted down a dozen complementing ad concepts.

Annalise yawned.

I took a look at my watch. “It’s almost midnight. What do you say we call it a night? We have a good start. I can work on the logo tomorrow morning and get something drawn up on the Mac. Maybe we can toss around some more ideas Wednesday so we can nail down which ones we want to present to Jonas.”

She leaned down and slipped on her heels. “That sounds good. I’m wiped out. And I think I may be starting to get a hangover from those shots earlier, if that’s even possible.”

Bent over like that, her blouse gaped, and I had a clear view right down her shirt. The gentlemanly thing to do would have been to turn away. But you already know I’m an asshole. Plus…she had a black lacy bra on. Black lace against pale skin is my kryptonite—something about the contrast let my imagination run wild with a cook in the kitchen, whore in the bedroom fantasy.

Which had me thinking…

I bet she’d look great in a chef’s hat and stilettos.

I definitely needed to get laid. Not a good idea to be fantasizing about someone at work, no less a woman I planned to annihilate. The news of the merger might have deflated my perpetual hard-on, but apparently Miss O’Neil had pulled me through that dry spell. It wasn’t the first time my dick had perked up around her.

I diverted my eyes in the nick of time, a half second before she looked up at me.

Her smile was genuine. “We did good tonight. I’ll admit, I wasn’t so sure we could work together.”

“I’m easy to work with.”

She rolled her eyes—a common response to my shtick, I’d noticed. But this time, it was more playful than real.

We packed up what we’d brought into the bullpen, and Annalise wrapped the leftover pizza in some tinfoil she found in a drawer.

“Can I borrow the Sharpie you were using to sketch before? I want to label these.”

I reached into my pocket and handed it to her. In big, bold letters, she wrote across the front of the silver foil: NOT MARINA’S.

“She’s going to think I did that.”

She smirked. “I know. I agreed you were easy to work with. I didn’t say you weren’t an asshole. I saw you looking down my shirt before.”

I stilled, unsure how to react to her comment, and closed my eyes. The sound of her heels clicking on the floor told me when it was safe to open them. A few steps from the door, she spoke without stopping or turning around. But I could tell from her voice she was amused.

“Good night, Bennett. And stop watching my ass.”

Chapter 10

* * *

Annalise

I hadn’t been to the gym in more than three months.

Andrew was a creature of habit and went daily at six a.m. sharp. I’d tried to join him at least three days a week when we were together, even though I preferred to exercise in the evening. But after our break started, it became awkward to see him there. We’d wave and say hello. Once or twice we even chatted. But the goodbye at the end of our conversation made my heart ache all over again. I’d stopped going for my sanity.

Until today.

I had no idea what possessed me to pick today of all days to go back to the gym, especially since it had been nearly one in the morning by the time I got home from work last night. But I arrived at five fifty, wanting to be already on the treadmill by the time Andrew walked in…if he walked in. We hadn’t seen each other in more than two months, since the wedding of a mutual friend from college, and it had been almost three weeks since we’d even exchanged texts.

Picking a treadmill in the corner—one with a straight view to the locker room exit as well as the front door—I popped in my earbuds and hit shuffle on Pandora on my iPhone. The first five minutes were rough. Maybe avoiding exercise all together hadn’t been that good of an idea after all. I huffed and puffed like a two-pack-a-day smoker until eventually my adrenaline kicked in, and I found my groove with the pace I’d set.

Although finding my groove didn’t stop me from staring at the doors like I was waiting for Ryan Reynolds to walk through at any second.

At ten after six, I felt my shoulders start to relax. Andrew was never late. Unlike me, he was a stickler for time. He must not be coming today. For all I knew, he could be away, or had even changed gyms. Although the latter wasn’t too likely. Andrew didn’t do change—he ate the same whole wheat toast with two spoonfuls of organic peanut butter at five fifteen every morning and walked into the door at the gym at six. By seven, he sat in front of the computer at his desk to start his daily writing.

With the anxiety of anticipating his arrival dissipating, I upped my speed to six miles an hour and made the mental decision to not stop until I’d run a full three miles. It was probably better that he didn’t show up and find me since I was feeling so out of sorts lately, anyway.

After I hit the three-mile marker, I did a ten-minute cool down walk and then wiped off the machine. I hadn’t brought clothes to shower, but I needed to pick up my purse from the locker and stop in the ladies’ room before heading home to get ready for work. I’d made it halfway to the locker room when the front door opened and two people walked in, Andrew being the second person. My heart raced faster than it had on the treadmill. And that was before the woman who’d walked in right before him turned to laugh at whatever he’d just said.

They’d come together.

I stopped in place about two seconds before Andrew looked up and saw me. I must’ve looked like a deer in the headlights about to get creamed by a Mack truck. He said something I couldn’t hear to the woman he’d walked in with, and she looked up at me, frowned, and headed toward the elliptical machines.

Andrew took a few hesitant steps toward me.

“Hey. How are you? I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Obviously.

I nodded and swallowed back the taste of salt in my throat. “You’re late.”

“I changed up my routine. Writing later in the day. Even at night sometimes.”

I forced a fake smile. “That’s great.”

“I heard about Wren. How are things going with the merger?”

“It’s tough.”

Small talk was killing me. I looked over my shoulder and found the woman he’d walked in with watching us. She turned her head away immediately. My pride wanted me to not mention her and escape with my head held high.

But I couldn’t help myself. “New workout partner?”

“We didn’t arrive together, if that’s what you’re thinking.”