“Fuck off, Falcon.” Bennett’s voice turned terse. “If I’d met her in a bar, I’d have kept my distance after spending three minutes with her. Trust me.”

I’d never actually been in a fistfight, yet I suddenly knew what a punch in the gut felt like. My insides felt a hollow pain. What had I been thinking? Allowing myself to believe his drunken words were a confession of feelings of some sort and more than incoherent drivel? Worse, I’d let myself start to think that beneath the arrogant Beast was some sort of misunderstood Prince Charming.

Sometimes a beast is just a beast, no matter how many layers you peel back.

The sound of footsteps snapped me out of my momentary pity party. I turned around and started to walk in the other direction. Jim had moved closer to the door, so I could still hear him as I put distance between us.

“It’s been a while. Let’s do happy hour Friday night. We’ll find you someone mean, ugly, and stupid to drag you out of this mood.”

***

The hot-and-cold relationship I had with Bennett took a turn into the tundra by midweek. Only this time it was me doing the instigating.

Jonas had assigned the second account the board planned to judge us on, Billings Media, and we were both in the thick of working on early drafts of our separate Star campaigns. Near the end of our weekly meeting, I mentioned to Jonas that I had an appointment scheduled for next week with one of the VPs from Star. I knew that would piss Bennett off. He glared at me, but said nothing, and I ignored him and continued talking to the boss.

When Tobias had originally offered to look at any early designs, I’d assumed both Bennett and I would take him up on it. But that was back when I was an idiot who thought the playing field should be fair so the true better person could win.

After the crap Bennett pulled in L.A., and overhearing how he really felt about me, I no longer had any doubt that the better person was going to win—me.

I’d just returned to my office and picked up the phone to return some calls, when Bennett barged in without knocking.

“The door was shut because I’m busy.”

He took an exaggerated look around my neat office. “Don’t look busy to me.”

I sighed. “I need to make some calls. What do you want, Bennett?”

“Flying to L.A. for a lunch? Let me guess, you’re meeting at a hotel?”

“Screw you.”

He glared at me. “No, thanks. I told you, I don’t like to share. Certainly not with Toby boy.”

I stood. “Did you come into my office for any reason other than to pick a fight?”

“Your friend Tobias isn’t taking my calls. Is that your doing?”

Tobias hadn’t even mentioned that Bennett had called. “Absolutely not.”

“I walked over while Marina happened to be making your flight reservations the other day. That’s the only reason I even knew you’d decided to go see your friend. Nice teamwork, by the way. I’d almost fallen for your we’re one team bullshit. When the invite was extended for them to take a sneak peek at our work, I assumed it was a company invitation…not a personal Annalise invitation.”

I leaned my palms on my desk and put on a saccharine sweet smile. “Me too. Guess we’ve both learned a lot about each other since L.A.”

Chapter 20

* * *

Bennett

Well, well, well. The night just got a fuck of a lot more interesting.

I sucked back the rest of the beer I’d been nursing for the better part of an hour and motioned to the bartender. “Ever hear of a drink called a sore loser?”

“I think so. Vodka, sweet and sour mix, grenadine, orange juice, and sugar around the rim, right?”

“And a maraschino cherry or two.”

The bartender made a face. “Sounds more like a recipe for a hangover, if you ask me.”

“Yeah. That’s why it’s perfect.” I motioned down to the other end of the bar, where Annalise had just walked in with Marina, of all people. “See the sexy blonde talking to the crazy-looking redhead?”

He looked down the bar. “Sure.”

“Can you whip up one of those drinks and send it to down to her? Make sure she knows the name of the drink and who sent it.”

“If you say so.”

“And I’ll take another beer when you get a chance.”

Our unofficial company happy hour had quite a turnout tonight. It was the first time both the Wren and Foster Burnett crew had socialized outside of the office. I’d guess at least thirty people showed up, half of them from the marketing department since Jim Falcon always organized this.

I kept my eye on Annalise while the bartender mixed together the drink and walked to the other end of the bar to deliver it. She smiled and looked down at the fancy glass filled with pink liquid and then followed to where the bartender pointed. Seeing me, her lips immediately soured to a frown. Marina, of course, joined her in shooting daggers in my direction. Too bad I hadn’t thought of it earlier; it would’ve been funnier if I’d had a PB&J delivered for Marina along with Annalise’s sore loser—funny to me, at least.

From the other end of the bar, Annalise held up her drink with a frosty smile and tipped her head to me in thanks.

For the next hour and a half, I attempted to mingle. But the more I caught myself sneaking glances at Annalise, the more I got annoyed. She, on the other hand, didn’t appear the slightest bit distracted or even to notice that I had grown obsessed with following her every move.

At one point, a guy who didn’t work at Foster, Burnett and Wren sidled up to her and started to chew her ear off. The asshole had on a brown tweed jacket with leather elbow pads and worn loafers—probably a writer like her last douchey boyfriend or a professor of some useless subject like philosophy.

Look, if you’re thinking I’m jealous, I’m not. Get that shit right out of your head. Jealous is when you want something another has achieved—and Annalise has not and will not achieve anything over me—or when someone has something that’s yours, and we all know I never have, nor ever will, claim any woman as mine.

I’m just protective by nature, that’s all. And while the woman might have worked her way up the corporate ranks to a position equal to mine, she clearly didn’t know shit about men.

At some point between throwing her head back in laughter and tossing around her hair, she excused herself from the now half-hour-long conversation she’d been having with Mr. Brown Tweed. My eyes followed her down the corridor I knew led to the bathrooms. I told myself to stay put, not go over there and fuck with her…but…

I wasn’t a great listener.

I raised my hand to the bartender, ordered another sore loser, and then walked it over to the ladies’ room. I stood outside and waited until she stepped out. She took two strides down the hall and almost crashed right into me.

Her eyes squinted so tightly, it was a wonder she could even see. “What are you doing, Bennett?”

I extended the drink. “Thought you’d like another drink.”

“No, thanks.” She went to step around me, but I sidestepped in front of her.

“Get out of my way.”

“No.”

Her eyes widened. “No?”

I grinned. In hindsight, that probably was a dickish thing to do, even for me. “That’s right. No.”

“Look. Whatever game you’re playing, I don’t want to play.”

“No game. I’m just looking out for you, making sure you haven’t drunk so much that you’re falling for the lines some random guy feeds you. Clearly your ability to judge a man’s character, even when you’re sober, is poor.”

Her face turned red. A fire danced in her baby blue eyes, and it looked like smoke might start billowing from her nose. I’d seen her pissed. Hell, it had become one of my favorite pastimes over the last few weeks to piss her off…but she’d never looked this angry. I actually took a step back.

And you know what she did?

You guessed it.

She took one forward.

I’ll admit, I got a little scared then.

Jabbing her finger into my chest, she started in on a staccato tirade.

“You” Jab

“think” Jab

“I’m” Jab

“a” Jab

“bad” Jab

“judge” Jab

“of” Jab

“character?” Jab

She actually waited for me to answer. I shrugged like a coward.

“Well, you know what? You’re absolutely right. I let Andrew string me along for way too long. Yet somehow, when I found out who he was, it didn’t sting half as much as it did realizing how wrong I was about you. I was so sure you were just an asshole on the outside and a good person on the inside. I thought if I dug a little deeper, I’d dig past the dirt and find the hidden gold. But I was wrong. I dug through the dirt and you know what I found? More dirt.”