Anyone But Nick

by Bloom, Penelope

  Maybe all I needed was some sleep. A few good hours of rest and everything would be more clear in the morning. I hoped.

  I woke to a gentle tapping at my door. Groggily, I got out of bed and threw on one of the complimentary robes to cover myself up. It was comfy, so I tugged it a little tighter around myself and let out a soft, happy little noise. Thug must’ve heard me getting up, because I could hear his stupid, toothy self scrabbling around in the bathtub as he tried to get out. I smiled. I’d never admit it to anyone, but I was starting to enjoy seeing all the varieties of dumb that Thug could get himself into.

  A short man with a silly hat was waiting outside my door. He had a cart with silver domed plate covers and an assortment of condiments and small drinks. “Breakfast?” he asked.

  “Uh, sure,” I said.

  He wheeled his cart into the room and started opening everything up. What I’d assumed was an array of choices for other guests to choose from turned out to be all for me. He set up everything on the table in my cabin on a combination of heated plates for the warm food and chilled plates for the fruits and sweets. When he was done, it looked like a meal big enough to feed four people, complete with eggs, hash browns, bacon, pancakes, fruit with some kind of syrupy drizzle, and endless packets of fancy-looking butter and little glass bottles of condiments.

  I raised my eyebrows at the haul once he’d left. “Well then,” I said to myself. I held up the tiniest ketchup bottle I’d ever seen and marveled at how adorable it was. “I’m totally keeping you,” I whispered.

  Thug was sitting close to the table, licking his lips.

  “Calm down,” I said. “I’ll look up what stuff on here is safe for you to eat and share. But I get to eat first.”

  As if he understood me, Thug let out a pitiful little groan. I sighed and tossed him a pancake, which he caught and smacked down without chewing.

  I looked toward Max’s door and wondered if they had brought him breakfast as well, or if they were assuming I was the only one in the cabin. I raised my hand to knock on the door separating my partition of the cabin from his and paused.

  Max seemed like a nice-enough guy, and I didn’t want him to go hungry. I could invite him over to share some food without it having to have any kind of romantic implications, couldn’t I?

  I knocked on his door twice and waited.

  I heard him unlocking it, then the door swung open. He was thankfully fully clothed this time and apparently already set to start his day. He looked freshly showered, and he was wearing a navy-blue polo. “Morning,” he said.

  “Hey, they brought me enough food to feed a small army. I was making sure they brought you some too.”

  “No such luck,” he said, gesturing to the empty table in his room.

  “Well, come grab yourself whatever you like. I’m not a huge breakfast person, so you can take your pick.”

  Ten minutes later, I was sitting across from Max, who had misunderstood my offer and seated himself at the table in my room to eat. Even though our conversation was completely innocent, I kept feeling a pulsing wrongness about the whole thing. Nick was right next door, and I’d stubbornly insisted on bringing Max here. I just had to keep telling myself how clear Nick seemed to make our situation. He was my boss, and I was his employee. Whether he felt something for me or not, he seemed to have decided not to act on it. So if I was going to be worried about having a man in my room, it should have been only the natural worry of my boss thinking I was behaving inappropriately on a company-sponsored trip.

  “How long have you known him?” Max asked. He ate a forkful of eggs before looking up and waiting for my answer.

  “Who, Nick?” I asked. His question had come out of the blue. A second ago, he had been talking about why he liked golf so much.

  Max nodded.

  “A pretty long time, actually. We met back in high school and were really good friends for a while. Rich and Cade were always kind of the untouchable jock overlord types, but Nick was more approachable back then. I don’t think he knew how cute he was.” I awkwardly swallowed, realizing how weird this was to talk about with Max. As far as I could tell, Max seemed to believe he was charming his way into my life, and he probably wasn’t interested in hearing how cute I thought my boss used to be. “I just mean a lot of girls liked him, and I don’t think he realized he was friend-zoning everybody. He was more innocent back then, I guess. It seems like he has figured out what he has going on lately, though.” The thought was more than a little bitter. I didn’t like knowing that Nick had become so fast and loose with relationships recently, even if I did at least know it was mostly just to keep his parents off his back.

  “Wait,” Max said. He set his fork down for the first time since he’d joined me at the table and leaned in. “You mean your boss was your friend back in high school? How long ago was that, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  Suddenly, I felt less like I was having a quasi date and more like I was being interviewed. “Uh, seven years, give or take.”

  Max leaned back and wiped his mouth. From the way his eyebrows were pressed together, he clearly had some kind of deep thoughts about all of this, even if I couldn’t quite imagine what they’d be.

  Someone knocked at my door. Thug barked one time, and lazily at that. I think he was more interested in waiting to see if Max, who appeared to be a human garbage disposal, was going to leave a single scrap of food for him.

  I opened the door, expecting the guy with the little hat, but I saw Nick standing on the porch like a dark cloud. His hair was still wet—I assumed from a shower—and he wore a dark collared shirt with even darker pants, which looked scandalously good on him. In typical Nick fashion, he didn’t seem to think he needed to explain why he had knocked on my door or why he was just standing there, glaring at me.

  It felt like every bit of moisture in my mouth had evaporated until my tongue was just a stupid, useless blob of dry sandpaper. I wanted to say a dozen things. I wanted to tell him to stop glaring at me like he owned me. But I also wanted to explain why Max was sitting at the table behind me with a stupid look on his face.

  Instead, I just motioned to the table. “Hungry? There’s still some left,” I said.

  I didn’t think Nick could glare any harder, but I was wrong. “Can I have a word?” he asked.

  I nodded and followed him out to the porch. He pushed the door shut behind us—it wasn’t quite a slam, but it was close.

  Nick licked his lips and paced a few steps in a small circle, then ran his hand through his hair. If I wasn’t so on edge, I could’ve laughed out loud to see how at war he seemed to be. I would’ve given anything to know what was going through his head, because I knew whatever came out of his mouth was going to be a half truth, at best.

  “Do I even want to know?” he finally asked.

  I raised my eyebrows and shook my head. “How am I supposed to know what you do or do not want to know? Have you even been honest with me one time since our interview?”

  “Wait. What?” Nick asked. He stopped pacing now and fixed those heavy eyes of his on me. “How did this become about me?”

  “This? Maybe I could help you figure it out if I even knew what this was.”

  Nick scowled, then started to laugh humorlessly. “Fine. If you want me to say it, I’ll say it. As your boss, I’m not impressed to see that my vice president has so little self-control—that she couldn’t even make it one night without letting some doofus with an idiotic name into her bedroom.”

  I pulled my head back, and my mouth hung open. Oh, hell no. He was going to just assume I’d slept with Max? “Jealousy is not a good look on you,” I said tightly. I walked back to the door and put my hand on the handle. “And you know what?” I turned. I was about to say more, but I bit my tongue. I didn’t need to debate him or try to plead my case. He was acting like a child, and if he wanted to act that way, I was happy to treat him like one. I went back into my cabin without so much as glancing his way.

  Chapter 12 />
  NICK

  I didn’t see Miranda all day, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Ever since she stormed off on me in the morning, I’d been hoping to catch her out somewhere. I didn’t dare call her or knock on her door, and I tried to tell myself it wasn’t just because I couldn’t stand seeing that guy in her room again. It had taken everything in my power not to walk in there and do a little sloppy dental work on him.

  Thankfully, I had never been the type of man to let my desires rule over my actions. No matter how fiercely I might be at war in my head, I could keep my eyes forward and do what needed to be done.

  The unfortunate twist to this whole resort situation was that what needed to be done was people watch. It meant I could convince myself I was working while I was probably just hoping to find Miranda somewhere on the resort grounds.

  I didn’t have a fully formed plan for what I’d do when I did find her. I’m sure some of it was just wanting assurance that she wasn’t in her room having wild sex with Max Frost at this very moment. I clenched my teeth at the thought. Another part of my need to find her was to apologize, though.

  While I stood by my right to expect professionalism from my vice president, I knew I’d been a total ass earlier. I should’ve let her explain instead of shoving assumptions down her throat. But it was hard to be reasonable and calm when it felt like my blood was boiling.

  I had taken lunch by the pool. I hadn’t been able to relax because I’d kept expecting Cade to literally jump out of a bush the whole time. When not thinking about Cade, my mind had gone to the idea of her fingers digging into Max’s stupid back. The idea of her sleeping with other men hadn’t occurred to me when I’d thought up this grand scheme of mine, and I was worried it was going to break what little was left of my resolve.

  I had also been constantly licked, sniffed, and prodded by dogs. Apparently, everybody had decided their dogs would like to swim as well, which the resort staff hadn’t seemed pleased by. By the time I had headed back to my room from lunch, I had been soaked from the waist down from canine attention—and numb from the shoulders up after several conversations with women who hadn’t bothered to hide their intentions.

  It was just past seven when I gave up for the night and went back to my room, feeling oddly defeated. I wasn’t used to letting go of control, but that was exactly what I’d done with Miranda. The right thing to do was to keep my nose out of her business, so that was exactly what I was going to do, even if it killed me.

  I heard muted laughter about half an hour later. I half tossed my laptop on the bed and moved to the door, pressing my ear against the wood. I stepped out onto the porch of my cabin and looked toward Miranda’s. She was heading out in a little black number and looked dressed to kill.

  Jealousy spiked through me. Who was she trying so hard to impress, and why did I want to strangle them so badly?

  “Hey,” I called out. Our cabins were separated by only a dozen feet of space, and I barely had to raise my voice to catch her attention.

  “Oh,” she said. “Hey.”

  “Got plans?” I asked.

  She busied herself looking for something in her purse but apparently had no plans to answer me.

  “If you are trying to look for a chocolate bar in there, no thanks. I’ve seen where you stash them for your friends. I can only imagine where one for me would come from.”

  She gave me an odd look. “What?”

  I blew out a breath and rubbed the back of my neck. What the hell? I never had trouble talking to women, but now I was trying so hard to walk some blurry line between professional and personal that I was failing at both. “I was trying to make a joke. Since you had stuffed the candy wrapper ‘for your friend’ in your bra the other day. At the office,” I added awkwardly. I was suddenly wishing I’d been smart enough to stay in my goddamn cabin. I was doing about as well here as a hormonal teenager who was trying to hide a boner behind his calculus book—not that I’d ever had any personal experience with that technique.

  “I was looking for my phone, actually,” she said. There was a cold flatness to her voice that made my stomach feel empty.

  For the millionth time, I reminded myself that I was only getting what I wanted. I had been the one to decide I was going to push her away, and, go figure, she was thoroughly pushed. “You enjoying yourself so far?”

  “Ready?” asked a deep voice from inside her cabin.

  Miranda turned, nodded quickly, and gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Gotta go,” she said.

  Max Frost stepped outside wearing a button-down shirt and so much cologne I caught a whiff from where I was standing. I bet the dickbag was wearing his favorite underwear too. He probably thought he was going to score tonight. Maybe he was. Maybe he already had, and tonight would just be the extra-point attempt.

  A strange, stifled groan came from my throat. I coughed, cleared my throat, and waved back. “We’ll catch up later,” I said.

  Then I went back in my room and tried to clear my mind. There were a few ways I could handle this. The least productive, but most satisfying, would be to grab a heavy object and go give Max Frost and his stupid name a concussion so he couldn’t try to worm his way into my vice president’s pants. The most pathetic would be to skulk around and try to spy on them so I wouldn’t have to sit here and imagine the worst. And the smartest thing to do—the thing I was going to do—was to sit my ass down and go to sleep.

  The hardest things to do were usually the ones that were the most worth doing. And if that saying held any truth, then staying inside my cabin was going to be one of the most worthwhile things any human being had ever done since the beginning of time.

  Except I didn’t sleep. I flicked on the TV and tried to find something to watch. It took me several minutes to find a channel that wasn’t on commercial break, which meant I was stuck watching some sort of dog beauty contest. I leaned against the headboard and watched with glazed eyes. At least it meant I could take my mind off what Miranda and that jackass were probably doing right now.

  Chapter 13

  MIRANDA

  Max and I sat down at one of the many bars throughout the resort. This particular bar was a beautiful outdoor space strewn with dangling white lights and a stone patio that overlooked the mountains in the distance. There was a pleasant chill to the air, and it should’ve been a perfect night. No, it was a perfect night.

  I’d been doing some soul-searching and decided that I needed to do more than just shove Nick to the back burner in my brain. I needed to aggressively get over him, or it was never going to happen. That meant I had to do something, like say yes when Max asked me if I wanted to go grab a drink with him. Maybe I hadn’t felt any spark between us, but that was the whole point of going on a date, right?

  So here I was. A handsome man was sitting at the bar beside me, the view was breathtaking, and I was basically on a free vacation.

  “I’m glad you agreed to come,” Max said once the bartender set our drinks down. We had both been pleased to learn that even the alcohol was covered under the company tab. I was never much of a drinker, but tonight, a little liquid courage sounded like a good plan.

  “Me too,” I said. I sipped the wine I’d ordered and made an appreciative noise.

  “Your boss is kind of an asshole, isn’t he?” Max asked.

  I took another sip of my wine that was admittedly more of a gulp at his question. “Sort of,” I said. “I mean, it depends on how you look at it.”

  “Then tell me how you look at it, then.”

  I sighed. I’d come out here tonight to get Nick off my mind, not talk through my feelings for him. “I don’t know, exactly. Like he has always sent me extremely frustratingly mixed signals? One minute I think he’s romantically interested, and the next he’s actively trying to make me not like him.”

  Max looked at his drink thoughtfully, then smiled in a way that made me think he hadn’t really cared about my answer, after all. “You deserve better than that,” he said.

&nbs
p; I smiled, but it felt forced. I drained the last of my glass. I could already feel a slight buzzing in my head that told me I was right about where I should stop drinking if I wanted to keep my mind sharp. I hadn’t really eaten since that huge breakfast, and I was already a lightweight to begin with.

  “She’ll have another,” Max said.

  I shook my head. “No, it’s okay. I think I need to eat something before I drink any more.”

  “Hey,” he said, leaning in. “What are you worried about? That asshole reprimanding you for having too much fun? If he’s going to be a dick either way, why stop yourself from having fun at his expense?”

  I thought about that. There was a certain satisfaction in the idea of doing something to spite Nick, even if it was petty. “Just one more glass,” I said.

  An hour later, my head was thoroughly spinning. Max was about ten minutes deep in a story about some locker room confrontation that had led to a fistfight back in his high school days. He had stood up and was acting out the story, punching, ducking, and weaving to the side.

  My phone buzzed from inside my purse. “Hey,” I said, stopping Max. “I’ve got to run to the bathroom for a sec, sorry.”

  “Oh,” he said, deflating a bit. “Okay. I’ll order you another drink for when you get back.”

  I stood, nearly fell sideways, and then tried to not look as drunk as I felt on my way to the bathroom. I checked my phone once I was inside and alone in a stall.

  Nick: You two planning to stay out all night? Do I need to remind you this is a work event, not a personal vacation?

  I glared down at my phone and thought up a response that would be witty and biting—and teach him to stop trying to control me. In my drunken haze, I pulled up the camera app and snapped a shot of my ass in the black dress I was wearing and captioned it, Drinks are on the company tab! Kiss this! I added a bunch of random emojis and fired off the text before I had time to think it over.