My phone was buzzing before my alarm was buzzing.

In my world, that was never a good sign.

Whoever was trying to get in touch with me wouldn’t stop until they got me. Rolling over as unwillingly as possible, I blindly patted around my nightstand until hitting pay dirt. My cellphone was still buzzing when I hit the accept button without even looking.

“Who the fuck is this and why are you calling me at…” pulling the phone away from my face, I squinted my eyes to make out the time on the top of the screen. “You’re calling me at barely five o’clock in the morning. This better be a fucking emergency.”

“This is Sam White from The Post. Would you like to comment on your relationship with your new co-host, Daphne Rodriguez?”

My eyes flew wide open and I shot up in my bed.

“You’re who from where and you want to know what exactly?”

As the guy cleared their throat, my phone buzzed in my hand. This Sam person was blabbing away when I was received another call from an unknown number. Fuck me.

“Hold on a second.” I clicked over to the other call. “Hello, who is this?”

“Is this Max Allen?”

“Yeah, who the hell is this?”

“This is Audrey Locke from Daily News. Can you give us a quote about your relationship with a Ms. Rodriguez? She’s your new co-host, right?”

My brain was maybe a little slow this early in the morning but I was quick on my feet with this kind of stuff since I had been dealing with it for as long as I can remember. My nickname of Max-A-Million came from society reporters, so it wasn’t anything new for me.

“No comment, thanks.”

I clicked back to the other call and told them the same thing. Damn, that Chad worked fast with getting the word and those pictures out to the public. He must have loaded them within minutes if The Post and The Daily News were already looking for confirmation for their gossip pages. After silencing my phone completely, I tossed it onto the sea of blankets; out of sight, out of mind and tried to get a little more sleep before I had to be in the office in four hours.

That idea lasted all of two seconds, because if these reporters had tracked me down and were calling me this early for a comment, you can bet your sweet ass that they had tracked down a certain Ms. Daphne Rodriguez from Queens just as quickly.

“I’m in so much trouble,” I said. “Shit, shit, shit!”

Jackknifing out of the bed, I fished my phone out from under the comforter to try and get in touch with Daphne. I called her first, cringing at how early it was. It went straight to voicemail anyway. Shooting off a quick text to her before I jumped into the shower, I hoped she would at least text me back by the time I was finished.

Still dripping wet from the shower, I checked my phone one more time. But there was nothing from her. Radio silence. “Dammit, Daphne.”

My phone buzzed in my hand and scared the living shit out of me. Without looking, I answered thinking it must be her, finally. “Thank God you called me back! Listen I know you’re pissed at me and I’m an asshole, but we need to figure this out now. We’ve got a problem and—”

“Trouble in paradise already, Max? Tsk-tsk. And here I was wondering what poor woman existed to reform the despicable Max Allen. Guess that answers my question.”

“Ava, is that you?”

“Hello, Max, darling. So good of you to remember me,” she drawled.

Ava Lynch ran a gossip website that was the end-all-be-all of New York City. Celebrity types and trust fund babies couldn’t do shit around this city without Ava and her people finding out about it. She was as cunning as a fox and mean as a snake. She could eat you up and spit you out, all before lunch. She had the power to convince anyone who would listen that so-and-so was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Ava also had the power to fuck you over the moment you screwed up….and made sure everyone knew about it. That saying about how with great power came great responsibility? Yeah, Ava Lynch lived and breathed it.

Also, she hated me.

Then again, she hated everyone, so whatever.

“Of course I remember you, Ava. How could I forget? What are you up to these days?”

“Same ol’ same ol’, Max darling. I see you’ve been busy. Again.” Ava sounded as if she was almost just as amused as she was bored with everything in her life. “Must be hard to keep them straight sometimes.”

“No, it’s nothing like that.”

Panicked, I was running around my bedroom now semi-naked looking for anything clean to throw on. Forget the other newspaper fact-checkers, if Ava was calling me to confirm all of this crap with Daphne, I was in deep shit. Scratch that. Daphne and I were both in deep shit.

“So it’s true then? Max Allen, one of New York City’s most eligible bachelors is settling down?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, Ava.”

“Then how far would you go?” she purred. “Anything on the record?”

My mind was racing while I tried to figure out what I could comment with that wouldn’t cost me my balls, courtesy of Daphne. Because I kind of liked my balls. I especially liked how they were attached to my body. And I liked to keep my balls that way.

I decided to roll the dice and hope that I would hit snake eyes with Ava, yes, but more importantly with Daphne. This whole mess I had found myself in, had to be handled with kid gloves now. One little misstep, and I could kiss my ass…and probably balls…goodbye.

“Fine, I’ll go on the record and say that I’m very happy at the moment.”

Ava sneered. “That’s all you got, Max-A-Million? You’re happy?”

“I said I’m very happy. There’s a difference.”

“Fine, as if that one little adverb will make a difference to my followers.” Ava’s nails could be heard over the line clacking away impatiently making a scale up and down, up and down like she was bored to tears with me. “Fair warning, my darling Max, I’ll be back for more.”

It was my turn to smile. “Of course you will.”

As soon as the line went dead, I went into panic mode. I called Daphne one more time, desperate to get her on the line. It rang and rang and it seemed like she still wouldn’t answer. I cursed under my breath for not having chased after her last night to explain myself. Damn that stupid hipster and his clever graphic t-shirt for distracting me, because maybe if I had run after her she wouldn’t be ignoring my calls this morning. Dammit, all of this was such a mess right now and I needed to fix it immediately. “Jesus, pick up your phone already!”

“Jesus doesn’t live here, Max. What do you want?”

“Daph! Thank God! Don’t hang up!”

She yawned, and whatever important business I had to discuss with her went right out the window. My attention, along with all the blood in my head, went rushing down and straight to my dick. He was ready, willing, and able as I was imagining what the beautiful Daphne must look like first thing in the morning. I had to shake my head loose of the thoughts I was envisioning in my head of Daphne in bed…my bed…first thing after a night of fucking her senseless. A slip of skin here and there would peek out from under the covers. I could picture a long tanned leg curled up and over mine as she tried to get closer to me. And then I maybe I would watch her stretch to meet the day while her long dark hair cascaded down her bare back.

Perfection.

Before my mouth could think better of it, I asked her, “What are you wearing?”

“Max, cut the crap.” Her voice now was much more awake and resolved. And it should have been like dousing my cock with a bucket of ice, but nope. It had the exact reverse effect. Because apparently, unbeknownst to me, the fucker liked to be talked down to by Daphne. “Are you still there?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m still here. Listen I needed to talk to you about last night.”

“You couldn’t wait until later today, you know, when like normal people would be awake.”

“Normally, yeah, I would never be up this early to begin with…wait a minute. Why are you not screaming at me about what happened last night? Did I miss something?”

Pulling the phone away from my face, I checked to make sure that I was talking to the Daphne Rodriguez. And sure enough, my cellphone said “Miss Copycat,” as the contact name so I knew I had called the right person. When I last saw her, she was royally pissed at me and left it so I honestly didn’t know if I would ever be able to explain the whole Chad taking pics of us in a semi-compromising position. But the fact that Daphne hasn’t hung on me yet gives me hope. Confused as fuck, but hopeful nonetheless.

“You can thank my best friend Derek for convincing me to give you another chance,” she told me. “I went by his place last night on my way home and he talked me off the ledge.”

“I think I kind of love Derek right now.”

Daphne laughed and, fuck if she didn’t make it sound sinfully decadent. “Derek would be so pleased to hear that because I know that the feeling is completely mutual.”

“So then we’re okay then?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, Max, but at least I’m not going to kill you today.”

My body relaxed a bit. “Okay, so let me try to explain a little bit because that’s part of the reason why I’m calling you so early.”

“I figured,” she cut in. “Wait a second, someone is calling me. Let me—”

“No! Don’t answer it!”

“Oookay. And why shouldn’t I answer it, Max?”

Taking a long breath, and blowing it out, I glanced down at myself, realizing I still had only one leg in a pair of jeans and had been pacing back and forth in my bedroom like a lunatic. But in order to give Daphne the rundown of what really happened last night with Chad taking our picture and all the calls so far this morning, I had to stop moving around. Plopping down at the edge of my bed as calmly as possible, I recounted for Daphne the whole story from beginning to end. Every so often, she would sigh or say something in Spanish. But for the most part and really surprising, she didn’t interrupt me. Thank god, too, because if she had, we would have probably ended up arguing for the millionth time and then where would we be? Nowhere, that’s where. Because if there was one thing I was certain of, it was that Daphne and I had to be a team and work together through this.

“Is that all of it?” she asked once I was done. “No other sneaky surprises waiting for me when I turn a corner, Max?”

“That’s all of it, I promise.”

“A promise from Max-A-Million, I feel honored.”

I chuckled, feeling more relaxed and noticing that she was definitely more receptive if she was joking around. Looking up and out my bedroom window, the sun was about to rise from behind the sea of skyscrapers that usually made up most of my view. It seemed fitting that a dawn of a new day marked the beginning of this shift in my partnership with Daphne. I wasn’t one for being corny or hokey. I definitely wasn’t known for being a little bit deep. However, I was known as the Allen brother who was the prickiest of the pricks, the asshole to rule over all the other assholes in the bunch. But this change, this swing in me and Daphne’s working relationship, made me feel like there was hope for me…us yet.

Also, it made me want her just a teeny-tiny bit more than I already did.

I mean let’s not get ahead of ourselves…I was still a dude, for fucks sake.