The Better Man (Allen Brothers Series Book 2)

by Barbie Bohrman

  Bang, bang, bang.

  “Get the fuck out of there!” A woman’s voice yelled.

  Our attention snapped to the door again. And as much as I hated to do it, I hopped off the counter and decided to make my getaway. Scurrying to the bathroom door, I was prepared to make my escape. With my back to Max, I could hear him laughing a little at my expense.

  He had been right. And I was so wrong.

  “See,” I said, my voice slightly cracking, “I’m not jealous at all. Happy now?” I asked him, not daring to spare him a glance. “Can we get back to work now?”

  “Sure, if you say so, Daphne.”

  I unlocked the door only to be greeted by a bunch of angry women who were waiting to use the bathroom. And I totally understood how they felt. Because I was pissed at myself, pissed at Max, pissed at his kisses that were the most perfect kisses I’d ever been given.

  Passing the irritated mob of women, I left Max to fend for himself. This was only fair since I would have to fend for myself from now on, whenever and wherever Max was concerned. Because not only was he right that I was jealous about that dancer friend of his from earlier, but I was also one hundred percent positive that I was falling for Max Allen.

  It was official; Daphne was going to be the death of me.

  Specifically, that bathroom break last night between us was going to be the death of me.

  Since it happened, I had been replaying it over and over in my head, to the point that even I was thinking to myself, not again, Max.

  But, yes, again, I found my thoughts drifting back to Daphne and the way she moaned into my mouth, pulled my hair, and made me feel like I was going to come in my pants like I was in fucking junior high school. The whole time afterwards, we had been taping our segments and were actually working last night, but it felt like this giant unspoken and unsettled thing between us. Because that kiss and the super-hot moment afterwards was supposed to prove that Daphne was jealous when she saw me with an old high school friend. But all it ended up proving was how much I wanted to kiss her lips again; to touch her, taste her, lick her, fuck her. I wanted all of those things with Daphne.

  And I wanted them badly.

  So badly, in fact, that I was willing to pretend I didn’t want any of those things with her.

  That’s how crazy she made me. God knows that I was not a saint by any stretch of the imagination, and I could be a total pain in the ass. In fact, I would bet that my brothers would confirm just how much of an asshole I could be. But, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, could Daphne test the patience of the biggest goody-two-shoes out there.

  If she wanted to play it off like none of it happened, so be it.

  Because I could play the same game, only better.

  Having stopped at the Starbucks down the street, I was carefully trying not to spill the tray that held cups of coffee for Adam, Daphne, and me. It felt like it was the dawn of a new day, full of new opportunities to annoy Daphne and push all of her buttons. And something told me she would be extra annoyed by the coffee gesture this morning, so I decided to get her one this time. It definitely wasn’t because I was trying to be extra nice or anything.

  Strolling into the office lobby, my usual ten minutes or so late, I had a huge smile stretching my face. I must have looked like a walking and talking overly annoying inspirational Instagram post by that random person you barely knew but you kept right on following them just in case.

  “If it isn’t the man about town,” Paulie number one said.

  “Morning, Paulies.”

  “Don’t you wish you had this guy’s life?” Paulie number two asked of Paulie number one. “This guy is the guy that other guys want to be. Am I right, Paulie?”

  “When you’re right, you’re right, Paulie.”

  “Thanks, Paulies,” I told them as I was catching the elevator. “Have a great day, guys.”

  When I eventually reached our shared cubicle, I noticed Adam first. He was already starting to splice together some of the footage from last night and oblivious to anyone around him. His headphones were on and his back was to me. Placing the coffee just outside his peripheral, he gave thumbs up in greeting. That was enough for me.

  “You’re welcome,” I said even though he couldn’t hear me.

  Daphne hadn’t turned around to greet me. Usually, she would at least snort or something to acknowledge my existence. But this morning, she had her head buried in her phone scrolling away at the speed of light.

  “And one for the lady,” I told her and put her coffee down on her desk.

  Being the prick that I was I waited for her to say thanks, but nothing ever came. Also, I wanted her to look at me. I found myself not only wanting those dark eyes of Daphne’s on me, but I felt like I needed to see them, too. That fact should’ve freaked me out a lot more than it was. But I chose to ignore the newness of it. Like last night after our kiss turned grind-fest…her eyes told me how much she wanted me, us, to happen before we were interrupted; how much she loved every second of it.

  “A thank you wouldn’t kill you, you know,” I said. Taking a seat, I rolled my chair over to hers. She was still engrossed in her phone. “A good morning would work, too, by the way.”

  Still looking at her phone, I managed to catch Daphne rolling her eyes at me.

  “Looks like someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.” I took a sip of my coffee.

  Without lifting her gaze from her phone, she sighed. “Looks like someone is in dire need of attention, yet again. Thank you and good morning.”

  “See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  Holding back a surprised laugh, I tried to peek over her shoulder at her phone screen.

  “Nosy much?”

  “All the time and don’t mind if I do.”

  She chuckled a little bit this time. “Fine, let me finishing reading some of what I’ve been catching up on this morning while you were busy being late. Again.”

  “Um, I’m late again because I decided out of the kindness of my heart to get you some coffee.”

  Daphne looked over her shoulder at me with the most annoyed look on her face. It was priceless, really. “Do you actually believe your own bullshit, Max?”

  In my best salesman pitch voice, I told her, “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”

  Shaking her head at me, she went back to looking at her phone. “Anyway, so the gossip pages got some information from our outing last night.”

  “This is going to be good,” I mumbled and repositioned my chair.

  Leaning back, I kicked my legs up to rest at the corner of what was technically my desk. Because knowing Daphne, she had mentally demarcated up to a tenth of an inch of where my desk ended and hers began. She stared anyway for a few beats and must have been mentally measuring the distance. When she seemed satisfied, she finally reached over and grabbed the coffee I brought her. After taking a sip, her eyes temporarily closed in bliss before putting it back down.

  “So last night’s little stunt seems to have spread worse than herpes simplex ten in a whorehouse.” Daphne refocused her efforts on her phone. Pressed a few buttons and swiped a couple of more times. “Looks like someone posted a video of you dragging me into—”

  “I didn’t drag you.”

  She did that head turn thing again that made her look eerily similar to Linda Blair and my balls told me to shut the fuck. “Yes, you did.”

  I knew better than to argue that point.

  She went on. “As I was saying, someone posted a video of you dragging me into the ladies room. And it’s now all over the social media hemisphere.”

  “Is that a thing?”

  “Is what a thing?”

  “’Social media hemisphere.’ I’m pretty sure that’s not a thing,” I told her. “I don’t think that it could be a thing because it doesn’t even sound right.”

  “What am I going to do with you?” she asked so exasperated that it made me grin from ear to ear. I loved ge
tting under her skin. Now, if she would only let me get under her clothes so I could see more of her skin, I would be all set.

  Winking, I answered with, “I can think of a few things.”

  “Gross.”

  “You weren’t thinking it was gross last night.

  Daphne turned her chair around so that she was facing me head on. The level of pissed etched all across her face was pretty plain to anyone who was looking. Namely me. But did I care? Nope. I was having too much fun at her expense.

  “You know what, Max?” she asked and

  “No, what?”

  I licked my lips while leaning in closer to her.

  “Oh my God, you two! Do you ever stop?!” Adam yelled.

  “Dude, relax. Put your headphones back on if you don’t want to listen. Nobody asked you for your opinion anyway,” I told him without sparing him a glance. Instead, I kept my eyes trained on Daphne, who didn’t even flinch with Adam’s interruption. “You were about to tell me something very, very important. Go on, please. I’m all ears.”

  She stared at me, no fear at all in those almost midnight eyes of hers. But all of a sudden, I could see a hint of hesitation hit her and she thought better than to say whatever it was that was on her mind. Don’t ask me how I knew, I just did. I had been around Daphne enough to be able to tell when she was holding back and biting her tongue. And this was one of those times.

  “Nothing, Max. It’s not important,” she said.

  Narrowing my eyes, I leaned all the way back in my chair again. “That’s not what you were going to say. So say what you planned on saying…or…I’ll do what I did last night right now in front of everyone in this office.”

  “I dare you,” she whispered, almost defiantly.

  “You’re daring me?”

  “I triple dog dare you, Max.”

  Stifling a laugh, I told her, “You’re so full of shit.”

  It took me a second to catch up with this situation. This had gone south quickly, I wasn’t sure what to do. Was Daphne really trying to get me to take her somewhere private? From the look in her eyes, I thought I could see a glimmer of something playful. But fuck, if I was wrong I was totally screwed.

  “You do know that the rules of daring follow a hierarchy of order, yes?” I asked, feeling her out. “I mean, you’re not supposed to jump right over to triple dog dare without stopping at double first.”

  “And do you know that you’re not the only person around here who has seen A Christmas Story, right?” she countered. “Look, Max, if you can’t put your money where your mouth—”

  “Oh, I’m going to put my mouth somewhere, all right. Let’s go.”

  All in one fell swoop, I stood up, took her by the hand and then started walking quickly through the office bullpen before she could even think about changing her mind. While we were navigating our way past the cubicle, I was hoping that my palm wasn’t feeling as sweaty in Daphne’s hand as I felt it was on my end. It was borderline embarrassing how excitedly nervous I was at the idea of being with her behind closed doors. And even though my mind started to conjure up all the things I wanted to do with her and to her, I forced myself to stop because I didn’t want to jinx myself. Because who knew how far this little game of ours was going to go this time. It felt like a high stakes game of chicken that could end either horribly wrong or sinfully perfect. I was hoping and praying for the latter when we banked a left at the last set of cubicles and almost ran straight into Oliver.

  “Watch where you’re going, mate…and what’s this?” he asked and poked his head around me to get a better look at Daphne. “Are you two holding hands?! Guys, you’re doing a bang up job of fooling everyone around here, including me! Keep up the great work and the free publicity!”

  As Oliver went past us, and with Daphne still behind me, I felt more than I saw her hand fall out of mine. And I knew…I fucking knew she had changed her mind. Or maybe she never had any intention of going through with it. Either way, I wasn’t going to push her.

  Putting my hands in my pockets, I made sure to have the world’s best poker face in place before I turned around to look at Daphne. Sure enough, the expression on her face made it clear this was the end of the line between us today.

  “All right, well, that was fun,” she said shyly smiling through the sudden awkwardness settling in between us. “I’m going to go back to work if that’s okay with you.”

  “Yeah, sure, sure. I was just joking anyway.” Trying too hard to pull off a relaxed vibe was making me come across like a grade-A idiot. “I’ll meet you back at our cubicle in a bit. I’m just gonna head to the…” I couldn’t remember the last time I was at a loss for words while talking to a woman. Shit, maybe junior high school?

  “Where are you going, Max?”

  “Oh, sorry, yeah, I’m going to run across the way to the marketing department to go over some things.”

  I had no intention of doing this, but it seemed to sound like a good enough reason to her for me to not follow her back to our cube. Thankfully, Daphne bought it hook, line, and sinker.

  “Okay, sounds good.”

  She was gone and I wasn’t even a tiny bit embarrassed that I watched her walk away, enjoying the view. If that made me a pig, I didn’t give a shit. As I stared, I let my mind wander at what could have happened between us if Oliver hadn’t stopped us.

  Would she have gone through with it?

  We would still have to work together so maybe all of this flirting was a bad idea. Because Daphne didn’t strike me as the one-timer type, which was the only type I spent time with. But I had the feeling that this game of wills we were playing was going to end one way or the other…and sooner than later.

  “Excuse me, but aren’t you the Max Allen?”

  I had heard that question so many times from women up and down New York City and, quite honestly, it never got old. For instance, hearing it right now from the cute-as-a-button blonde who I dubbed “Pixie,” because her hair was cut shorter than mine.

  “Yes, that would be me.”

  Normally, I might ask for a name, but I could not give a flying fuck what her name was. I was still in a bit of a weird mood from my day today…specifically my day with Daphne. So all I was trying to do was get Pixie to fulfill my drink order before my brother Trevor arrived. He had texted me a little while ago asking if I wanted to meet up for an early happy hour. I could not have said yes any faster if I tried. Actually, now that I think of it, Trevor was kind dodgy about the reason he wanted to meet since it wasn’t like him to ask me to hang out. It was always the other way around.

  The bartender, AKA Pixie still wasn’t moving to get my drinks. Instead, she leaned into the bar and rested her chin on her elbow. Batting her eyelashes, she said, “Hi, it’s so nice to meet you.”

  “Yeah, same here.”

  I did my best to smile. Even that was a chore. Because she kept on staring at me like was I the goose that had laid the golden egg. And I guess to her, I was exactly that.

  “Do you think you could make my drinks, miss?”

  She giggled like a schoolgirl. “Oh, yeah, right. Sorry. And please, call me Gwen.”

  Her name could have been Amanda Huginkiss and I wouldn’t care or remember. Because to me, she would forever be known as Pixie. I’d had a habit of doing that with women for as long as I can remember. Not to be a total douche, but for someone like me, it got incredibly confusing and tiresome to remember who was who. So, I’d give anyone completely inconsequential to my life a nickname that would stick.

  Pixie finally put our beers on the bar just as Trevor slapped me on the back hard. “What’s up, loser. How’s it going?”

  “Same shit, different day. How about you?”

  “Good, good. Can’t complain.”

  We clinked glasses and both took a good long drink of our beers. “Is this a Summer Ale? Already?” Trevor asked.

  “Trev, I’m sure you don’t give a damn whether it’s Oktoberfest or Summer Ale. So cut the small talk and g
et to the point.”

  “Damn, someone’s in a bad mood,” he told me. “What crawled up your ass and died?”

  “Everything. Nothing. I don’t know,” I said. “Just having a bad day, I guess. Doesn’t matter.”

  “All righty then. That took a turn,” he mumbled under his breath before taking another drink of his beer. “Should I even ask how the show and the new co-host thing is going?”

  “It’s going.”

  “That bad?” he asked. “Me and Vern watched the last episode and it seemed less—”

  “Less what, exactly?”

  “Relax,” Trevor said through a chuckle. “I was going to say we noticed that it seemed less strained between the two of you.”

  This was slightly good news, I guess. Especially since Trevor, who normally wouldn’t notice anything unless it was right smack dab underneath his nose, could see a change between Daphne and me. Then again, maybe that was just all smoke and mirrors because of Oliver’s requests…and Adam’s awesome editing skills.

  “That’s good to hear, thanks.”

  “Are you sure? Because you don’t look so happy to hear shit, Max.”

  I wasn’t one to share my personal life’s ins and outs with anyone. Not even my brothers, who were the closest things I had in my life to being my best friends. But it felt weird to share what had been going on with Daphne to anyone.

  “Max?”

  “Oh, sorry, Trev,” I said. “I zoned out there for a second.”

  Trevor almost choked on the beer he had been drinking. “Dude, now I know something is up with you. Since when the fuck do you zone out?”

  He was right. I never did that shit. Zoning out was for clueless people like Trevor here. The guy was famous for that kind of crap.

  “I’m fine, Trev,” I told him dismissively and tried to change the subject. “So what brings you out tonight? The ball and chain let you leave her sights for a little while.”