Anyone But Nick (Anyone But... #3) - Penelope Bloom Page 0,14

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 bastard 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