“What the hell is your problem?”

I was annoyed that she barged in, yet I felt my pulse start to speed up. That only happened on two occasions—when I was about to get into a physical fight, which I’d managed to avoid for at least ten years now, or when I was about to sink inside a woman.

“Sure. Come on in. Don’t knock or anything.”

“Knocking would be polite, and obviously we aren’t doing polite anymore.”

I pressed my knuckles into my desk and leaned forward. “What’s the problem, Annalise? Competitors aren’t supposed to be polite. Football players don’t take the spikes out of their shoes before stepping on a man down to get to the end zone. It’s the nature of the game.”

She took a few steps toward me and planted her hands on her hips. “What happened between the bar the other night and today? Did I miss something?” Although her stance was firm, her voice bent toward vulnerable. “Did I do something to upset you?”

Feeling like the dick I was, I lowered my eyes. When they rose up before I spoke again, they couldn’t help but travel over the woman I was about to address. Only along the way, they snagged on something. Annalise’s nipples were pebbled and trying to pierce through her black, silky shirt. They looked like two big, round diamonds calling to a poor man—come and get me, I’m your riches for the taking.

I swallowed. What the hell did she just ask me? I raised my eyes to meet hers and realized she’d just watched the whole thing—what had stolen my attention and made my mouth salivate. Rightly, she looked even more confused. One minute I was accusing her of sleeping with clients, and the next I was ogling her like I wanted to sleep with her.

It wasn’t just her who was confused. I had no idea what the fuck I was doing.

We stared at each other for a moment. Eventually, I pulled my shit together, remembered what she’d asked me, and cleared my throat.

“It’s not personal, Texas. I just think it’s better if we don’t…if we’re not…friendly. There’s no way I can relocate, and the last thing I need is to be distracted because I feel badly that I’m kicking your ass.”

Annalise’s chin rose. “That’s fine. But you need to be courteous, at least. I didn’t deserve that comment about sleeping with clients, especially not in front of Jonas.”

I nodded. “Understood. I’m sorry.”

“And if you don’t want to be friends, you’re going to have to stop following me to hotels.”

I liked her sassy much better than vulnerable. It took a lot to keep my smirk under wraps. “Noted.”

She nodded and turned to leave. My eyes immediately dropped to her ass. Once a dick, always a dick. Before I could raise them back up, Annalise turned around to say something else and caught me. This time, it was her trying to hide a smirk. “Non-friends also don’t ogle non-friends.”

She turned back around, then tossed words over her shoulder as she walked through the doorway. “No matter how great her T&A are.”

Chapter 15

* * *

Annalise

“How’s the hot guy at work?” Madison asked before biting into a piece of the beef Wellington she’d ordered.

Her nose scrunched up as she chewed. She didn’t like it. I felt bad for the restaurant owner. It was the third strike, and we were only just beginning our main course. First, the waiter had brought out the wrong appetizers. Then when Madison had asked for wine and dinner recommendations, he’d recommended the most expensive items. The review was going to be painful.

“Hot guy? Well, he’s an asshole. Then he’s really sweet, but tries to pretend he’s not. Then he’s pretty much an asshole all over again. I don’t want to talk about him.”

Madison shrugged. “Okay. How’s everything else at work, then? Do you like the people at the new office?”

I put down my fork. “I just don’t understand it. One day he goes out of his way to help me, and the next he’s rude and ignoring me.”

She picked up her wine. “Are we talking about the hot guy?”

“Bennett, yes.”

She smirked and brought the glass to her lips. “Thought you didn’t want to talk about him.”

“I don’t. It’s just… He’s so infuriating.”

“So he’s hot and cold to you.”

“Scalding and icy would be more like it. Last week, I went to meet Andrew for dinner. Bennett followed me to the hotel because he somehow knew things were not going to end well. And they didn’t. Bennett and I wound up getting something to eat together and talking until midnight. The next morning I saw him in the break room, and he gave me attitude—like the entire night before had never happened.”

Madison set down her wine glass. “Back up. You met Andrew for dinner? I didn’t get a midnight call or early morning visit the next day. And now we’ve been through drinks and appetizers and this was never mentioned?”

I sighed. “Yeah. It’s a long story.”

She pushed her side of mashed potatoes around with her fork. “My food was delivered cold anyway. Start at the beginning.”

I ran her through Andrew asking me to meet, him rubbing my arm at the hotel restaurant while telling me how much he missed me, but then him also backing up as fast as he could when I asked point blank if he was saying he wanted to be together again. I also filled her in on Bennett’s thoughts on what Andrew wanted before I went and how he’d showed up to pick up the pieces.

Madison tapped a fingernail to her lips. “So basically you’re saying Bennett’s an asshole to women, so he’s able to foresee what other asshole men are after?”

“I guess. But the thing that doesn’t reconcile is, if he’s such an asshole to women, why would he try to warn me about Andrew and then be there for me when everything he’d warned me about came true? An asshole wouldn’t care what happened to me before or after. He should’ve been saying I told you so the next day at work instead of letting me talk through things that night.”

The waiter came by and asked how our meals were. Madison would normally send subpar food back to see how the restaurant handled it, and then give them another chance if they acted professionally. But instead, she fake smiled to the waiter, saying dinner was fine, and ordered another bottle of wine. I had a feeling our discussion was sidetracking her assessment at the moment.

“Sounds like Bennett might have Beast syndrome,” she said.

“Beast syndrome?”

“All men fit into one Disney character or another. That guy I went out with a few months ago who had three video game consoles and hung out with his friends five nights a week? Peter Pan syndrome. Remember last year I dated a guy who told me he was the VP of Finance for a tech company, only to find out he worked in customer service taking orders? Pinocchio syndrome. That gorgeous French guy I went out with who wanted to do it in his bathroom in front of the mirror so he could look at himself? Gaston.”

I chuckled. “You’re nuts. But I’ll bite. What’s Beast syndrome? Because Bennett is gorgeous, not beastly.”

“Beast syndrome is when a man constantly roars at you to scare you away. Perhaps he was less than magnanimous in his early days, which he thinks defines who he’s forever banished to be. So he tries to keep people from getting too close. But he’s not really the villain he thinks he is, and every once in a while, a peek of the prince underneath shines through. That usually just makes him roar louder.”

“So…like, he was a player, and now he thinks he always needs to be that guy instead of a nice guy?”

Madison shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe he was mean to an old beggar woman. I don’t know the reason, but it sounds like he’s afraid that showing too much of his underlying prince will cause him to get hurt.”

“I’m not so sure about that. But I do know it’s time I move on from Andrew.”

“I couldn’t agree more. He’s been stringing you along for years now—claiming you guys couldn’t move in together because he couldn’t have distractions while writing his dumb book for three years. Then when the book was finished, he wasn’t ready to move on because he’d fallen into a depression because the book didn’t do as well as he’d hoped. Guess what? Life sucks. We all have disappointments. You know what we do? We get drunk for a week, then dust ourselves off and get back to work and try harder, not dump the person we love.”

“You’re right. I’ll always love Andrew. But things have changed from what we had in college and after graduation. He’s not the same happy, spontaneous person he used to be, and he hasn’t been in a long time. I guess I was holding out that he’d magically go back to being the guy who used to show up at my place with a bottle of wine and surprise me with a weekend at a bed and breakfast.”