I cringed. Why couldn’t I stop accidentally turning my thoughts sexual when it came to him? I was supposed to want to punch him in the mouth, not kiss it. A few minutes alone with him was poisoning seven years of painstakingly maintained anger, and I needed to put an end to that before it got any worse. Somehow.
“Hey,” Nick called from behind me. “Wait a sec.”
I turned around and couldn’t help drinking him in all over again. He was like a sweet wine with a bitter aftertaste. The first glimpse made jolts of excitement run through me, but then the past would bubble up and make my stomach turn.
Dark hair, dark-green eyes, glasses, and a heavy dose of brooding. His brothers could’ve been cast as the superheroes in any blockbuster movie, but Nick had a touch of the traits that would’ve made for the perfect sympathetic villain. He would’ve been the kind of villain audiences swooned over and rooted for, even as he was crushing the world under his boots.
Nick had always stood apart from his brothers in more ways than one. It had been what made me develop a hopeless crush on him back in high school. He usually wore an expression like he was trying to think through some impossible problem. The Nick I knew was always struggling to find something worthwhile for that bright mind of his, and whether anyone else wanted to admit it or not, I knew he was the backbone of Sion’s multibillion-dollar success. Nick was the smartest man I’d ever met, and that was part of the reason I’d never forgiven him for dating Kira all those years ago. He was too smart to claim he didn’t know how I’d felt about him back then. He’d also been too kind to let me write a poem like that for him and then pretend it had never happened.
But he’d changed, even in the last few months. It seemed like he was trying to date his way through every woman in West Valley before the end of the year. Except me, of course. Maybe watching his brothers pair off into relationships had him putting some kind of pressure on himself to compete.
He was standing now with that scrutinizing look. He wasn’t the boy from high school anymore with the broad shoulders and the thin frame. He’d thickened up with a touch of muscle in the right places, and his face had matured in ways that made it hard not to gawk. Regardless, I would’ve had to dig very deep to find any warmth for him in my heart. I felt it in my skin and my stomach, but not where it counted. Seven years of holding a grudge did wonders for quenching flames, after all.
“Yes?” I asked. I made a monumental effort to be professional. I’d decided that was the final stage of this whirlwind. No matter how I might feel about this, all I had to do was do my job and do it well. My feelings for Nick—or lack thereof—could sit in the back seat and get into as much trouble as they wanted so long as the car got where it needed to go.
“You dropped this.” Nick held out a candy wrapper for me. The irritating twinkle in his eye made a wave of jittery panic run through me.
Calm, I reminded myself. Be calm. I reached out a steady hand and took it from him. “It must’ve fallen out of my purse.”
“Since when do you eat candy?” Cade asked. He was still sitting in the lobby with his eyes glued to his phone. “I thought you were a green-smoothie-and-detox kind of person. You know, they make detoxing sound so clean and fancy. Nobody tells you it’s just the process of blasting the contents of your stomach out in the form of liquid—”
“Cade,” I said quickly. “If you would stay out of this, it’d be great.”
“Stay out of this?” he asked. “Oh my. I hadn’t realized you and Nick already graduated to this status. Well done, Nick. You’ve started to warm the heart of the ice queen, after all. Next, you’ll just need to work that warmth down, and down, and—”
“It’s just a”—I took a shaky breath, then regained my composure, which wasn’t easy with two King brothers watching me and Cade spouting nonsense—“figure of speech. And unless I dropped some more trash, I should be going.”
Nick licked his lips. “Actually, I was thinking we could grab something to eat. Break the ice and smooth over old wounds before your first day.”
Cade looked up from his phone. “Are you barking mad? She swore an oath that she’d never date you. An oath.”
Nick and I both glared at him.
Cade looked between us, then sighed. “It was a pun. Bark Bites. Barking mad? Never mind. I don’t need you to laugh to know I’m funny.”
“Puns are only funny when they fit the context of a conversation,” Nick said. “That’s half of the art of a good pun.”
Cade held up a finger to silence his brother while he tapped something into his phone and squinted at the screen. “Look,” he said, still reading off his phone. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. Today has been ruff, and . . .” Cade suddenly laughed. “Oh, wait, did I ever tell you about the time I went to the zoo and they only had one small dog? It was a shih tzu.” He laughed again. “Shit zoo—you get it, right? Like the zoo was shit, but the dog was—”
“Are you just reading puns off a list online?” Nick asked.
Cade set his phone in his lap. “Uh, no? I was multitasking. Work emails, I shih tzu not.”
“As much fun as it is to listen to my brain cells committing suicide one by one, I should really go,” I said.
“Wait,” Nick said. “You never gave me an answer.”
“About lunch? I don’t think that’d be a good idea.”
Cade nodded. “She’s right. You put that much chemistry in a small restaurant booth? Boom. Might as well jump into a swimming pool filled with soda while wearing a full bodysuit covered in Mentos. Bad idea. Trust me.” He made an explosion noise and spread his fingers out. “Clothes everywhere. Just naked bodies. Sweat. Passion. Maybe a grilled cheese stuck on Nick’s butt cheek.” He put his hand to the side of his mouth and whisper-yelled the rest. “He’s really into the whole food-mixed-with-sex thing. Also something about pegging? Pirate legs? I forgot the details, but really just anything pirate related would—”
“Could you . . . not?” Nick asked.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” I said.
“Oh,” Nick said. “One more thing. Cade, can you go grab . . . the package?”
The evil twinkle in Cade’s eyes immediately told me I wasn’t going to like whatever the package was. He actually set off at a jog and disappeared into a room for a few seconds. When he emerged, he was holding a leash attached to the ugliest dog I’d ever seen.
It was some sort of mutt with short brown hair and an underbite so extreme that all its lower teeth were permanently visible. It was freakishly big, too, and it immediately jumped up on me and wagged its tail so hard that its butt was shaking.
I cringed, but the beast was unrelenting. It kept pawing at me until I finally gave in and gave it one grudging scratch on the top of its head.
“Meet Thug. He’s kind of like the company mascot, and we apparently inherited him when we bought the business.”
“Thug?” I asked. “What kind of name is that for a dog?”
“Well, his full legal name is actually Bone Thug. But Dan said he’ll answer to Thug.”
As if confirming this, Thug’s head whipped toward Nick at the sound of his name. I was grateful to have what must’ve been all one hundred pounds of the creature off me. “Okay. Great to meet him, but I’m going to go.”
“Well, that’s the thing. I need you to find somebody at the company who can adopt him.”
“Dan seriously just left his dog?”
“It’s a mascot,” Nick said. “Thug is part of the image, and we need him to be happy and healthy. So until you find a good home, I want you to keep him.”
Nick stuck the leash out toward my hand. I stared at it.
“You want me to . . . I’ve never even owned a dog.”
Nick shrugged. “It’ll be good for you.” He reached out and took my hand, peeling my fingers open before sticking the leash in my palm. “I think you two are going to make a great team.”
I made the mistake of looking at Cade, who was practically giddy. The bas
tard was enjoying this. I considered finding out if Thug knew any attack commands but decided that’d be about as dangerous as pointing a gun at Cade and finding out whether it was loaded. I wasn’t quite there yet.
“Okay. Fine. I’ll find somebody to take him first thing tomorrow. How bad could one night be?”
“See?” Nick said. “That’s the spirit.”
I left as quickly as I could to avoid getting dragged any deeper into the madness that was the King brothers—except, I realized with a sinking kind of dread, escaping today was only delaying the inevitable.
The last ten minutes had made me feel like I was circling some kind of black hole, just barely resisting enough to be pulled any deeper, but caught in its orbit all the same. I knew I’d been spending too much time around Cade King, because I could practically hear his voice in my head. You’re circling Nick’s black hole, huh? Some kind of fetish you want to tell us about?
Despite everything, I grinned to myself.
This new chapter of my life was exactly the kind of thing I’d been avoiding for as long as I could remember. It was unpredictable. It stripped away control from me and put it in the hands of a man who had already proved he was capable of breaking my heart once.
I should’ve been terrified, but I had to admit there was a part of me that could hardly wait to see how this all went. It was either going to end in catastrophe, or it’d turn into the biggest challenge I’d ever overcome. At least there’d be fireworks either way.
I met Kira and Iris inside the West Valley High School gym for the annual pig-wrangling show. It was packed, just like every other town event in West Valley. Even the light snow outside and biting cold weren’t going to stop anyone. We all met up in front of the little foldout table where high school kids were selling entrance tickets for two dollars apiece. Once we had our tickets, we headed inside the crowded gym.
I should’ve been feeling better, but my run-in with Nick King still had my brain spinning. I had a new job, but it had come with a sloppy side serving of complicated mess.
Kira nudged me. “You coming?”
I smiled and nodded. “Yeah, sorry.”
“Actually,” Iris said, “she probably isn’t doing a whole lot of coming these days. Unless she busted that monster dildo back out again. What did you name it again, the ClamJammer?”
“I thought we agreed not to talk about that anymore. And, no, I called it the UpperCunter,” I said tightly. I discreetly looked around to make sure nobody had overheard.
Iris and Kira both stifled laughter.
“Sometimes,” Iris said wistfully, “I still see it when I close my eyes. Big. Black. Shiny. So imposing. I remember wondering how any woman could possibly fit such a beast ins—”
I pressed my palm to her mouth. My voice was wire tight. “I was going through a lot of stress in college. Okay?”
“I’d be stressed, too, if somebody tried to put that twenty-pound monster up my hoo-ha,” Iris said.
Kira tried to hold back a smile but failed.
“What?” I asked. “You too?”
“I’m sorry,” Kira said. “But I mean, come on. It was under your pillow. Unless you were planning to beat a home invader unconscious with that thing . . .”
“A change of subject would be great,” I said. “Or maybe just two friends who are sympathetic after a breakup instead of teasing me about being single.”
“Since when do you want sympathy?” Iris asked. “I got you a get-well-soon card once, and you lit it on fire because you refused to admit you were sick. Ten minutes later, I was holding your hair back while you blew chunks in the kitchen sink.”
“Wait,” Kira said. “I cooked you dinner that night. You threw up in the sink? Did you even sanitize it?”
“Could we all just agree to stop roasting me when I’m at a bit of a low point already?” I asked. “I thought best friends were supposed to help you out of the crappy parts, not smash your face farther into them.”
Iris held up her fingers and turned them counterclockwise, making a clicking noise with her mouth.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Roasters are off,” she said in a dull tone that meant I was stupid for needing it explained. “Oh, but speaking of monsters. How is the Thug life?”
I rolled my eyes. “Did Cade make you ask me that?”
She grinned. “No comment. But I have to admit the idea of some huge out-of-control dog in your perfect little life is kind of amazing.”
“Who says he’s out of control? I kind of assumed he was well trained.”
Kira’s eyes widened. “Did you put him in a cage or anything before you left?”
“A cage? Where am I supposed to get a cage big enough to hold a dog the size of a small horse?”
“Well,” Kira said cheerily. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
I felt a lump of anxiety the size of a basketball thump into my stomach. I put a lot of work into keeping my house pristine, and now my mind was racing with the possibilities of what Mr. Bone Thug could be doing to it while I was gone. “Maybe I should go back home and check.”
“Nope,” Iris said. “Your perfect little house will be fine. Poop cleans out of carpets, walls, and clothes. Just ask Kira.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Kira asked.
Despite my nerves, I couldn’t help laughing with Iris. “I’m not surprised the violent pooper herself decided to repress the memory.”
Kira folded her arms. “I told you two a million times that it wasn’t me.”
“And that’s exactly what you’d say if it was you,” Iris said. “So forgive us if we’re not entirely convinced. Besides, it’s always the ones you least expect. Like serial killers.”
I wiggled my eyebrows at Iris, just because it was fun to watch Kira get worked up. “You’re right. But maybe Kira is a serial pooper. One bathroom after another. She devastates them and waits for somebody else to take the fall.”
“I’m going to break up with both of you,” Kira said. “I have perfectly normal bowel habits, and I can’t believe you two just made me say that out loud.”
Iris and I laughed. We finally decided to stop picking on Kira once we worked our way deeper into the building and more people were crowded in around us. It was one thing to tease her among the three of us, but we’d never risk letting something like that spin into a rumor. West Valley was worse than high school when it came to rumors.
“Wait,” Kira said. She had her hair pulled back in a bun and her glasses on tonight. She had started dressing a little fancier since she’d reconnected with Rich, but she somehow still managed to look like she could fit right in restocking books at the local library. Of course, she was beautiful, too, but she was the wholesome sort of pretty that never seemed to bring out cattiness in other women. “I thought the event tonight was the apple cannon thing. Why are the criminals here?”
She was looking toward the center of the gym, which we could see now that we’d climbed up the bleachers a few rows. Three men in handcuffs were sitting inside a fenced-off area where a greased-up baby pig was snorting and sniffing around piles of hay. Seeing the pig explained the smell I’d noticed when we came in. I’d thought maybe it was just the collective sweat of a few hundred people, since everyone seemed to think the heat needed to get cranked up to sweltering whenever the temperature outside dipped below seventy-two.
“Uh, no,” Iris said. She had started letting her short black hair grow out so that it now reached her shoulders. I wondered if that had been at Cade’s request, or if Iris had just decided she was done trying so hard to look the way she thought a police officer should look. To me, she’d always been somebody who could kick my ass and look good doing it. For all Cade’s negative qualities, he did seem to at least have a positive impact on Iris and her confidence. “The apple cannon thing is in July. How did you get that mixed up?”
Kira sighed. “I guess I just kind of show up most of the time. It’s all some different version
of crazy, anyway, right?”
“This one seems extra demented,” I said.
“Why?” Iris asked. “Is it the criminal part?”
“There are kids here. What if one of them breaks loose and goes on a murderous rampage or something?” I asked.
Iris laughed. “Okay, see, you’re forgetting we’re in West Valley. Goat theft is about as criminal as things get around here. More often, we’re looking at public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and that kind of jazz. So, unless you brought a goat with you tonight, I don’t think you need to be afraid of our criminals.”
“I didn’t bring a goat, but I did bring you. Is that close enough?” I asked.
Iris shot me an icy glare. “Careful. The roasters are still off, but I won’t hesitate to flip you over and cook the other side if you test me.”
I rolled my eyes and smiled.
“Why do they agree to try to catch the greased pig again?” Kira asked. “Isn’t it kind of demeaning for them?”
“Because we give them a nice mattress and some other perks in their cell for a few weeks if they win,” Iris said. “Oh, and don’t look, but a certain ex-boyfriend is walking straight toward you, Miranda.”
Robbie was shouldering his tall frame through the crowd and climbing up the bleachers. He was handsome. He’d been everything I’d thought I wanted in a partner when I’d met him at a company luncheon a few months ago. He was the kind of good looking that everybody could agree upon. There was nothing risky about him, from his safe, classical, and sensible features to the way he managed his life. Everything about him was always in order. After just a couple of months together, I’d been able to know almost for certain how our future would turn out. A few kids, a nice home, regular vacations.
Anyone But Nick Page 4