Anyone But Nick

by Bloom, Penelope

  “It doesn’t, because you don’t have a love life,” Rich said. “And you never will, at this rate.”

  “Good. Then I’ll be able to stay focused on work.”

  He gave me an obnoxious look, like a grandma who was planning to patiently hold her tongue so I could learn a lesson for myself.

  “You know what? Why don’t you save me some leftovers? Tell everybody I couldn’t make dinner tonight.”

  Rich raised an eyebrow. “You couldn’t make it to dinner. At your own house.”

  “Yes. I need to head to Bark Bites and look into something.”

  “Miranda’s eyes?”

  I gave him a dry look. “She has been off work for a few hours now. It’s just going to be me there.”

  “All right. Whatever. I’ll throw some of this in Tupperware, but my pasta isn’t as good left over. Just warning you.”

  “It’s not that great fresh either.”

  “Asshole.”

  Chapter 9

  MIRANDA

  I rubbed my throbbing temples and let my forehead thump down on my desk. I wasn’t sure what I was trying so hard to prove by coming in late. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I was here because when everything felt complicated and confusing, I could always count on work to be simple. I could come in, find something meaningful to do, and do it.

  Except I was hitting dead end after dead end. I didn’t have access to the complete financial records of Bark Bites. I had the publicly reported data as well as what their accountants officially compiled. I didn’t have the unofficial data, which was what grabbed my interest the more I looked into the numbers.

  I was almost certain those would be in Nick’s office, just like I was almost certain the security guard who had let me in was still watching a movie on his phone at the front desk. I doubted he’d even think to come back to this wing of the office.

  I scooped a paperclip from my desk and headed across the hall to Nick’s door. I tried the handle, but it was locked. Of course it was locked. That was why I’d grabbed a paperclip.

  For a few moments, I stared down at the innocent little scrap of aluminum. Was I seriously considering this? Yes. Was I seriously going to do this? Yes.

  With a sigh, I carefully unbent the clip and started my amateur attempts at unlocking the door. I slid the long end of the clip with the tiny hook I’d fashioned into the hole on the doorknob. After a little fishing around, I thought I felt the groove I was looking for. When I turned it, I felt the lock slide open.

  A cold thrill ran through me. I knew how to unlock doors like that only because the bathroom in my house sometimes locked itself and had the same kind of lock. Picking the lock to a door I wasn’t supposed to open was an entirely different experience.

  It would be fine, though. I was just trying to do my job, and my boss happened to not be in the office to give me the documents I needed.

  I walked behind his desk and couldn’t help feeling the sense of foreboding wash over me. I had to be imagining it, but I thought I could smell the faint scent of his cologne behind his desk, like some kind of stupid, sexy ghost lurking over my shoulder.

  I convinced myself that I didn’t need to feel guilty for snooping through Nick’s desk. I doubted he had even bothered to move anything personal inside yet. I was basically snooping through Dan Snyder’s desk. Besides, I was pretty sure if I looked up the definition of snooping, there would be some specific language about trying to find personal items. I was just looking for some boring old financial papers. If I saw anything weird, I’d . . .

  I frowned at what appeared to be a massive stash of some kind of trading cards in his desk. I flipped a few over and saw pictures of fantasy creatures with a bunch of statistics on how much damage they would do and how many “mana” they cost to summon. I grinned. I wondered if they were Nick’s or Dan’s.

  I had to blindly reach toward the back corner of his drawer because of the awkward angle. I felt around and was about to give up when my fingers touched a small folded piece of paper. When I pulled it out, I couldn’t help feeling the strangest pang of familiarity. It looked old and well worn, like it had been folded and unfolded so many times that the creases were as soft as cloth.

  When I opened it, my breath caught. I recognized every word. It was a poem. A sappy, embarrassing, loaded-with-clichés poem written by the hand of a teenage girl. Even as full of cringe as it was, I couldn’t help feeling a deep sadness as I read through it. The vocabulary was definitely from a young girl, but there was no denying the emotion practically bleeding from the page.

  At some point, the paper had apparently gotten soaked by something—maybe a drink spill in his locker or any number of things that could’ve happened afterward. But the part that made me frown was when I noticed the bottom of the page. The combination of spilled liquid and the paper being folded over had left a ghostlike imprint of random letters at the bottom, almost like a signature.

  I’d written the note anonymously, but when I squinted down at the fuzzy, water-smeared letters, they seemed to say ira. When I folded the paper a few times, I realized it had come from part of a sentence: “I ran from my feelings for long enough.”

  My frown deepened when everything clicked together. I’d known Nick was smart enough to figure out who had written him the note from context. But I hadn’t planned for what would happen if he thought somebody had signed it.

  I was so absorbed in the note that I didn’t even realize he’d been standing in the doorway.

  “This is a surprise,” Nick said. “Not exactly what I was thinking when we set the boundaries, though.”

  In a moment of rare hand-eye coordination, I discreetly tucked the note into my palm and turned my wrist to conceal it. I knew I’d need to find a way to replace it soon, or he’d likely put two and two together, but I could worry about that later. “Oh God. This looks so much worse than it is. Seriously, I can explain.”

  He walked into the room and planted his palms on the desk. He leaned forward, eyes boring into me. God. I’d never known a man with eyes that carried so much weight. I thought Nick could’ve likely carried a conversation without ever uttering a single word. All he’d need were the various stages of his glares.

  “I was just looking for some documents I thought Dan would have in his desk.”

  “Yeah? Well, this isn’t Dan’s desk anymore.”

  “I realize that. I just thought you might not have had time to move his things out yet, and—”

  “And you didn’t think it would be a good idea to ask me in the morning. So you broke into my office instead?”

  I opened my mouth to object, but he held up his palm, silencing me.

  “Miranda. If I can’t trust my vice president, then she’s useless to me. What would you do if you were in my position? Give you a slap on the wrist?”

  I had to resist the urge to let my head hang. Getting lectured by Nick like this was mortifying, but I couldn’t let that show. I knew I’d cry if I admitted how this made me feel, and crying in front of Nick was not going to happen.

  “I would,” I said, then I had to stop to swallow hard. Get it together, Miranda. “I would give my vice president a chance to show me what she thought was important enough to break into my office for. And then I’d decide what to do with her.”

  “What to do with her,” Nick mused. His voice sounded deeper than usual, darker.

  Chills raced across my skin. Why was it so hard to focus? My job was on the line, yet my stupid brain was trying to twist his words into some pathetic fantasy. “Yes,” I said. “What to do with her.”

  “All right.” He stood up and crossed his arms. “What documents did you need?”

  “The internal financial reports. The ones that came straight to the accountants before they filed their reports.”

  Nick walked calmly to a cabinet on the wall, pulled it open, and scooped out a folder. “This is last year’s report. Good enough?”

  “Yes,” I said shakily.

  He handed
me the folder. “You have twenty-four hours. Show me something important, and we’ll forget about this. Fail to do that, and we’ll have a conversation.”

  A day. Why did people always think it was more intimidating to set ominous deadlines by the hour? I nodded. “Can I go?”

  He stuck his arm toward the door and dipped his chin, never taking his eyes from mine.

  I wish I could say I walked from his office in a calm, controlled way—that I showed my spirit by holding my head high and keeping it together. But it took everything I had to hold back tears. I walked out of there as fast as I could and shut the door to my office as soon as I was inside. I sank down on the ground and buried my head in my hands.

  I was an idiot to think I could work for Nick and pretend it was a normal job. Even as driven as I was, I’d never have been so desperate to prove myself that I would’ve broken into my boss’s office to do it. I’d also never take a little scolding so personally. My past with him was clouding my judgment. And now . . .

  My fingertips ran over the note in my hand. Now I didn’t even have a reason to hate the old Nick. After all this time, I’d been the idiot. I’d given him the note and waited for him to come talk to me about it. Instead, he’d avoided me for three days and eventually asked out Kira. The poem was full of references that he would’ve known had to be from me if he had half a brain, so I’d assumed the worst. I’d thought he was asking Kira out to shut me down in some cowardly, nonconfrontational way. Then I’d decided it was even more sinister than that. I’d thought he was laughing about the poem behind my back, and asking Kira out had been a calculated stab in the back.

  I shook my head as I turned the folded-up paper over in my hands. It was hard to believe that I’d wound up sitting right where I was today because of a childish decision to write him an anonymous poem instead of simply talking to him about the way I felt. Things might have been different if I’d just had the guts to sign the thing, but I’d told myself I was making it so obvious that I didn’t have to.

  Idiot.

  There was a soft knock at my door.

  I stood and rubbed at my eyes, trying to clear any evidence of the tears that had been welling up without ruining my makeup. I opened the door and did my best to look annoyed. “Has it already been twenty-four hours?”

  “I wanted to . . .” Nick blew out a long breath. He looked uncharacteristically uncomfortable with his hands in his pockets and his eyes down. “Can I come in?”

  “You own the building. I’m pretty sure you can do what you want in here.”

  His eyes flickered up at that. The moment I saw his face, I knew his mind had taken my comment to a dirty place. I blushed, even though I hadn’t been trying to imply anything.

  “Within reason,” I added.

  Nick didn’t say anything as he slid past me, crop-dusting me with that intoxicating smell of his. He planted his hands on the chair in front of my desk and hung his head. “I’m trying my best to keep things professional. If it ever seems like I’m being more of a dick to you because we have a past, I want you to say something.”

  That was what this was about? I almost felt disappointed. “I think getting pissed that I broke into your office was a reasonable reaction, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  He nodded but still didn’t turn to look at me. “Actually, what I wanted to say was that I booked cabins for the entire company at a resort out west called Julian Ridge.” He finally stood up, straightened, and regained his ability to look me in the eyes. “It’s an all-inclusive kind of thing. Racquetball courts, tennis courts, an indoor and outdoor pool, horseback riding, bowling, shopping, a free movie theater, and even buses that’ll shuttle you around the grounds, running all day and night.”

  “Uh . . . okay.”

  “I got us neighboring cabins so it’ll be easier to go over our findings during the trip.”

  “Our findings?” I asked. Why was my stupid heart beating so fast? Logically, I already understood what he was getting at. He’d mentioned that people were often the reason a company failed. It was why he’d thrown the party before. This must mean he still suspected there was something to be found from getting to know the staff better. I knew all of that, but I needed to hear him say it so my stupid heart would stop jumping to conclusions.

  “Everybody else will be there to have fun. You and I are going to be discreetly investigating our employees. I’ve seen some numbers in the records that have me convinced somebody was embezzling money from under Dan Snyder’s nose when he ran this place.”

  I nodded. It was the same trail I’d been hoping to look into. “How likely do you think it will be for somebody to admit they’re embezzling money from the company to their bosses?”

  “To me? Probably not very likely. But to somebody new to the company who is looking for a way to pad her pockets, maybe not so unlikely.”

  I scoffed. “No way. You want me to go around implying that I’m looking to get in on something illegal to a bunch of people I barely know?”

  “I want you to be the Miranda Collins I thought I was hiring. The one who does what it takes to get the job done. So, tell me. Did I hire the woman I thought I did?”

  Chapter 10

  NICK

  Julian Ridge was as beautiful as the pictures had made it out to be. The drive from the airport was loaded with mountain views, glimpses of pristine lakes, and winding forest roads. Once we’d driven through the gates, we were in the middle of hundreds of acres of the perfectly maintained resort grounds.

  I found a handful of employees already checking in and making themselves at home in the lobby of the main building—a massive thing that looked like a distant relative of the White House. Inside, all the decor seemed to be aimed at an eighteen hundreds aesthetic with checkered floor tiles, lavishly carved wood furniture, and gold-flecked wallpaper as far as the eye could see.

  Two young women I didn’t recognize rushed over to me when I stepped inside. I tried to suppress my annoyance at the distraction. The truth was I just wanted to see Miranda and make sure she’d found her way here okay. I had arranged for a car to bring her after debating whether having her share a car with me would send the wrong message. Now I was just imagining all the ways a vehicle could’ve lost control on the winding mountain roads we’d taken from the airport to get here.

  “Mr. King!” said the blonde one. She was pretty. Both of the women were, I noticed.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  The woman exchanged a giddy glance with her friend—a brunette.

  “The guy at the desk said our cabin is going to be on the same row as yours. So”—she shrugged and bit her lip—“we just thought that was such a coincidence. And if you—”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I hope you two enjoy this place. It’s supposed to be really nice. Sorry to be rude, but I’ve really got to go check on something.” I trailed off as I walked away from them and headed back outside. She wasn’t in the lobby, it seemed.

  I wandered through the gardens and past the stables, where at least a dozen horses were walking beneath the shade of huge oak trees, and I even checked the bowling alley and arcade. I wasn’t sure what I thought I was going to find. Miranda Collins was hardly the type to show up at a work retreat and throw on her bathing suit immediately. If anything, she would probably sneak into her room and start working right away.

  All I found were more and more Bark Bites employees, along with their dogs, starting to fill out the amenities. Some were already making use of the outdoor and indoor pools, and a couple were skill-lessly whacking tennis balls around while a little bulldog chased after them. One pair was even getting geared up for a horse ride. Everyone seemed extremely grateful and wanted to stop me to say thanks, but I found myself increasingly impatient with it all. I knew how it would look if I called Miranda to check and make sure she’d arrived safely, but it had been almost an hour since I got here, and I knew she should’ve made it by now. We’d come in on the same flight and left at roughly the same time.r />
  I sat down on a bench overlooking a playground in the middle of a sloping, green expanse of grass. A guy in his twenties and two women were goofing around on the swing sets, spinning each other until the chains were wound tight and letting go.

  I called Miranda’s cell phone. It occurred to me that this was the first time I’d actually called her. She’d listed her number on her résumé but had never officially given it to me.

  “This is Miranda Collins.” She sounded so businesslike and professional. She also didn’t sound like she was trapped in a crushed car or in the process of being abducted, or any of the other hundred things my idiotic brain had decided to wander to. If I was smart, I would simply hang up and let her write it off as a spam caller. I’d already gotten the information I needed.

  “It’s Nick,” I said.

  Pause.

  “Oh, wow. Hey,” she said.

  “Who is that?” a man’s voice asked from the background.

  My throat tightened, and I felt my fingers clench around the phone. “Was that the driver?” I asked. Remind me to fire the nosy bastard.

  “Uh, no,” she said. “Just—hey, would it be okay if I catch up with you when I get there?”

  What the hell? I took a deep, calming breath. I needed to remember what I’d said. If I wanted to believe I cared about Miranda and not just about sleeping with her, then I needed to also remember to keep out of her personal life. Getting romantically involved with her, or even implying I wanted to, would tarnish everything she’d worked for and everything she cared about. She’d think she got the job only because I liked her, and what kind of asshole would I be to put my dick before her dream? “Sure,” I said. “Later is fine.”

  “Thanks. Bye,” she said, then disconnected.

  I hung my head and blew out a shuddering sigh. Damn it. This was going to be harder than I thought, and I already expected it to be hard. I guessed I just needed to think of this as the new challenge. I’d thought winning Miranda over was the Mount Everest for so long, but the real Everest was setting aside my feelings for her best interests.