Her Top Dog: An Alpha Man Workplace Romance (Rescue Me Book 2)

by Katana Collins

  Copyright © 2020 by Katana Collins

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by: Shanoff Designs

  Edited by: Erin Marenghi

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Free Read!

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Epilogue

  More by Katana Collins

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  About the Author

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  Who doesn’t love a good freebie??? Am I right, or am I right? Be sure to click this link and grab this totally FREE Maple Grove Cookbook chock full of my—I mean, the Tripp’s—favorite recipes!

  Chapter 1

  Sam

  There are only a few things that I love more than hot soup on a cool evening. For one, my dog, Harley. Two, shower sex. Three… humiliating my brothers on national TV. Then… soup.

  I was the youngest of the four Murphy brothers—and we starred on our own hit network TV series where we pranked the shit out of each other. And got paid for it. It was the best fucking job ever. My oldest brother Josh, the most famous of all of us, had been an actor before our show began. Next born were Dom and Cal—in that order, but on the same day—the twins of the family. Then me.

  I brought the plastic container of tomato soup to my lips and drank it, closing my eyes as the delicious flavor ran over my tongue.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Cal said and shoved my shoulder, sending a bit of soup dribbling down my chin… on national television. Because, that’s right, we were currently filming. That was the other amazing thing about this job. We could eat and fool around while we were in the midst of filming. Because fans loved that almost as much as they loved our pranks. “Can you not slurp soup in my ear? Why don’t you use a damn spoon?”

  Of all my brothers, I annoyed Cal the most. He loved me… we all loved each other of course, but I irritated him like nothing else in the world. And I fucking milked that for all it was worth because it made damn good TV.

  “Aw, c’mon,” Josh said, tossing an elbow to Cal’s ribs. “You know Smurf loves his soup too much to eat it quietly.”

  I inwardly sighed. Fucking hell. If I had known that stupid nickname, Smurf, was going to stick around for life… used not only by my family, but by literally every fan of the show… I would have made sure to do something else to earn a better nickname. It all started when I was in middle school, and my brothers thought it would be hilarious to stain my face with blue food coloring. That, combined with my name—Sam Murphy—gave birth to the world’s worst nickname, Smurf.

  “Would you idiots pay attention?” Dom shouted from where he was in the center of The Grotto… a well-known shopping center in Malibu. “I just finished my turn.” Sure enough, he was stomping back over to us and snapped the back of his hand against my chest. “You’re up, Smurf. Give ‘em hell.”

  I set my soup down and moved out from under the tent where we were mostly hidden from passersby. It was an integral part of our show that the people being tricked didn’t see the other three brothers feeding instructions through our ear pieces to the one pulling the prank. Now that the show was in season four, we were popular enough that this was a challenge. More and more people recognized us on the streets, and our production crew had to stay vigilant to make sure no one standing around blew our cover.

  It took me two hours until my turn in the hot seat was almost complete. That’s the crazy thing about TV—all the viewer sees is a five-minute cut of the time we were busy tricking people and getting pushed by our brothers to do all kinds of crazy shit. But in actuality, we were each actively working on our challenges for hours at a time to get that five minutes of good footage.

  I scrubbed my hand down my face, the weariness settling into my bones. I was exhausted. We had an early call today… earlier than usual at 5:00 a.m., and it was taking its toll on all of us. “Come on, we must have gotten a few things that were usable. Can’t we wrap for the day?”

  I spoke into my empty paper coffee cup—where the microphone was hidden so that the people I approached wouldn’t see it and immediately figure out they were part of some gag.

  From across the courtyard, I saw one of our producers whisper to someone beside him. “Almost, Sam. Almost. They’re telling me that all of you mostly talked with men today, and we need you to interact with a woman before we call it a wrap for the day.”

  I sighed and resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Why the hell couldn’t they have told me that an hour ago? I could have stepped up and approached more women then rather than now at the end of a twelve-hour day when we were all getting cranky.

  I glanced behind me where I was standing in front of a men’s clothing store. “Well, then I should move locations,” I said. My brothers groaned in my ear. “Does that mess up the camera positions?”

  More silence as the producers and some of the crew conversed. Finally, he said, “Not if you only shift over one store front and don’t go past the window display. I glanced to my left where there was a Chanel store, and a breath hitched in my chest.

  Fuck. Maybe I was stereotyping, but I didn’t think most broads leaving fucking Chanel were going to appreciate our specific brand of pranks and humor. I pushed the breath out through my pursed lips and, shaking my head, took a few steps over to that window. “Guys… please don’t get me slapped.”

  “No promises,” Cal joked, and the rest of the guys cracked up laughing.

  Dammit. I shouldn’t have said that. Now their main goal was going to be to get me slapped.

  I waited, watching the people walking buy. Since it was close to dinner time, the crowd was thinning out, with most people heading home to their families or out to dinner. Through the front window of the shop, my eye caught a woman… a gorgeous woman. Her hair was a rich chestnut brown and fell in a sleek curtain over one slender shoulder as she looked through some clothing on a rack at the front of the store. Razor sharp cheekbones slanted down toward perfectly plump bow-shaped lips. Even though her body was hidden by the clothing rack she was perusing, I could see a hint of cleavage curving out of a button-down blouse.

  Fuck me. My cock twitched, and I silently chided myself. Not now. Do not get a fucking boner on television—I’ll never hear the end of it.

  Maybe we can wrap and I can run in to meet her. Introduce myself. I had to know her name. I craved to know it.

  “Sam,” Christina, one of our prop masters interrupted my thoughts—which was probably a blessing in disguise because those thoughts were getting dirtier with every passing second that I stared at that woman through the Chanel window.

  I turned and she pushed a tray into my hands with a clipboard on top and a few small paper cups holding soup samples in them. “This is their next challenge for you.”

  “Is this the soup I was eating?!” Snickers rang in my earpiece. “Guys! That was my fucking dinner! I wasn’t done wi
th that!”

  She shrugged. “It was supposed to be smoothie samples, but an hour ago, your brothers asked me to switch it out and use your soup.” She scrunched her nose and whispered, “Sorry, Sam.”

  “It’s not your fault my brothers are a bunch of assholes.” The crew had a blast on this show. We all laughed so much, but it didn’t take away from the fact that our crew—lighting, camera, props, and producers—had really hard jobs sometimes.

  The tray wobbled in my hand. Shit. This wasn’t good.

  “Also, be aware,” she whispered, “They rewrote a few of the questions just now.”

  My brows creased. That wasn’t totally unheard of—us adding a question or two here and there that we make each other ask our targets. But we’re all on microphones. If we want to add a question, we can just do so on the fly by saying it aloud into the pranking brother’s earpiece.

  “Just now?”

  Christina nodded as another crew member brought over small side table for me to set the tray of soup onto. “I had to handwrite them in real quick.”

  Christina rushed away, tucking herself back onto a bench and pretending, like the rest of our crew, to be a random person enjoying this beautifully cool evening in LA.

  My fingers itched to turn the clipboard over, but we all knew that it was majorly against the rules to see our questions ahead of time. Half the fun for our viewers was watching our reactions.

  “Well, here goes nothing,” I sighed.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” I tried as a woman walked briskly past me, her hand clutching a little girl’s, presumably her daughter’s. “Would you like to try a sample—”

  “Not interested!” she said, not even breaking stride.

  I tried with three more people walking by to get someone—anyone—to have a soup sample. Literally no one stopped. Fuck. Maybe this was going to be a fourteen-hour day.

  “Here!” Josh shouted into the microphone. “Grab this woman coming out of the store.”

  No. Please no…

  Just my luck, when I turned around to the woman exiting Chanel with a big white and black shopping back in hand… it wasn’t just any woman. It was my woman.

  And she was even more spectacularly beautiful up close than she was from far away. Her light blue, button-down shirt brought out the blue-gray in her eyes. She wasn’t wearing much makeup because she didn’t need it—she was stunning, with striking features, an oval jaw that curved into a slender neck. And her body… fuck me. She was lean, but toned, her black pencil skirt hugging a deliciously curvy ass that I wanted nothing more than to wrap my hands around and grip as I drove into her wet heat.

  She blinked, glancing up at me as she closed the store’s door behind her.

  “Now, Smurf!” My brother yelled. “Before she walks away!”

  Dammit. “Hey,” I said and flashed my charming grin that almost always worked when we were at the bar… then again, right now I looked like a checkout boy at a soup store, not the television star I actually was. And not that that would usually matter, but this was a woman who’d most likely just dropped four figures in Chanel. Something told me she didn’t often slum it with the soup guy passing out samples. “Would you like to try our soup?”

  Please say no, please say no, please say no…

  “Sure.”

  Fuck.

  “I love soup,” she said and grinned at me. And of course, that beautiful smile of hers revealed a set of perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth.

  “You love soup?” I asked as she came over and gingerly set her bags on the sidewalk at her feet.

  “I do,” she said. “It might be my favorite food.”

  I startled, jumping back a little. “It’s… it’s my favorite food!”

  She laughed, and the sound was like a balm for my nerves. God, even her laugh was perfect. “Really? There’s not many of us. Most people choose pizza, or tacos, or sushi—”

  “Oh, hell no. Nothing beats soup. On the count of three, say your favorite. One, two, three… Minestrone!”

  “Minestrone!”

  Her eyes went wide, the blue color flashing. “There’s a great place around the corner here. I’m planning to go there tonight for dinner—”

  “Guiseppe’s! I know! That’s where I got this one…”

  I winced, watching as her face shifted into confusion. “This one?” she asked.

  “You idiot,” Cal said.

  “I just mean… I um, I’m passing out samples for Guiseppe’s tonight. This is their tomato soup. It’s to die for. Try it.”

  She gave me a curious glance, and I think I fell a little in love with her as she bypassed the small spoons sitting beside the sample cups on the tray and instead, lifted one of the paper cups to her lips, tipping her head back and drinking the soup directly from the cup. “Oh, that is good.”

  “All right, buddy,” Dom said in my ear. “You know what to do. Pick up that clipboard and get to asking those questions. Turn to page four.”

  Goddammit. I cleared my throat. “Do you mind if I ask you some questions about the soup you just tried?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Great.” I lifted the clipboard and turned it over to look at the first question. Usually, we eased into the harder ones and threw some softball questions first.

  Apparently, not this time.

  I cleared my throat. Fuck.

  “Okay,” I said. “Just to be perfectly clear… I don’t write these questions. They, um, come from the retailer themselves.”

  “Guiseppe’s,” she said with a nod.

  Double fuck. The fact that I mentioned an actual, real restaurant could open us up to a lawsuit. Thankfully, I knew Guiseppe personally and I didn’t think he’d care. Even still… it was a sloppy mistake and I had no doubt that my producer would sit me down for a discussion about it.

  “Right,” I said. “Anyway… How much of that soup were you able to swallow in the first sitting?”

  Her face went blank. There was nothing about her that overtly changed or shifted… and yet, I felt the change.

  “I’m sorry?”

  I read the question again.

  She glanced down at her sample-sized cup and showed it to me. “Um… all of it, I guess?”

  I inhaled slowly and pretended to mark down her answer as the guys laughed in my ear.

  “That’s right, Smurf,” Cal said. “We saw you eying her in that store. These questions are specifically for her, from you!”

  God, I hated them. Then again, if I was on that side of the tent rather than the one conducting the prank, I would have done the same damn thing.

  “Okay,” I said. “Question two. True or False.” Aw, shit. This was only question two? My neck twitched… my biggest tell when I was uncomfortable. “I like my soup how I like my men: Thick, creamy, and…” I winced. “sliding down my throat.”

  I watched as her face tightened, that gorgeous mouth pinching into a tight scowl and somehow, impossibly, she was even more beautiful when she was angry. “What did you just say to me?”

  I sighed. This was the job. I only hoped she had a sense of humor about it when all was said and done. “Do you need me to repeat the question?”

  Her nostrils flared, and I noticed a spray of faint freckles across the bridge of her nose and cheeks. “No. I don’t.”

  “So, your answer is false? Cool.” I barreled through, wanting this to be over as fast as possible. And our rules state that if she doesn’t walk away, I have to continue. “Number Three.” Oh, boy. This was a doozy. “Have you ever gotten naughty with a cucumb—”

  She didn’t let me get the question out and instead, she grabbed the remaining sample cups and dumped them over my head. Lukewarm tomato puree dripped down my forehead and neck.

  Yep. That was about right.

  Chapter 2

  Nina

  Who the hell did this asshole think he was, talking to me like that? And Guiseppe’s? My favorite restaurant in the whole damn city was behind this? That was a
family place. It was where I took most of my clients, and I’d even convinced my firm to host the holiday party there last year.

  Prior to opening his mouth with those obscene questions, I thought this man was hot. Actually, I thought he was sexy as hell when I had spotted him glancing at me through the store window. I was buying myself new shoes to celebrate my new job when those deep brown eyes found mine—so dark, they almost looked onyx. And his large muscles were so thick that it made him seem twice as large as me. I pictured those thick arms scooping me up, his big hands shoving my skirt up my thighs as I clawed that t-shirt from his body. A t-shirt that, despite this job handing out samples, I recognized as Prada because I had bought my ex-boyfriend the exact same shirt for his birthday last year. The same shirt I had found in a pile on the floor atop a cheap sundress from Forever 21 when I came home early from a conference and discovered him with his head between another woman’s legs.

  Man, I had some shitty taste in men. Not only with my ex—but now this guy? This guy that I’d almost been ready to stroll over and ask how long until he was done with his shift so that we could go get a drink. Well, screw that.

  As soon as the cucumber question left his mouth, I didn’t care how utterly gorgeous he was or that he had muscles so strong, he could easily lift me over his shoulder.

  I shuddered at the thought, ignoring the way my nipples pebbled, pushing against my silk shirt. Instead, I reached for what was left of his samples, dumped them over his head, and threw the trash onto the tray in front of him. “You’re a pig,” I said.

  I spun on my stiletto heels and, as tears stung the backs of my eyes, stormed off. All at once, several people rushed toward me, clipboards and pens in their hands. “Excuse me, ma’am!” they called.