Anyone But Nick (Anyone But... #3) - Penelope Bloom Page 0,19

orbit.”

Traitorous goose bumps tingled across my arms and legs. I had to clear my throat, but my voice still sounded quiet and a little scratchy. “I’ll see you in the morning. Yep.”

Chapter 4

NICK

Today was Miranda’s first day at Bark Bites, and I guessed it was mine too.

I fidgeted with a paperweight on what used to be Dan’s desk while I waited for Miranda to arrive. The paperweight was shaped like a neat pile of dog poop, and once I realized I’d been idly running my fingers over it, I pulled them back and sighed.

I would normally be diving into the work by now. Instead, I was sitting here tapping my fingers because I was anxious to talk to her again.

She knocked softly at my door.

“Come in,” I called.

As soon as Miranda looked at me, her back seemed to straighten, as if I could literally see the stick inserting itself up her ass. Distantly, I could hear the scratching paws of Thug scurrying around as he banged into things in Miranda’s office across the hall.

I had become so used to seeing Miranda look like she was in control. The way her eyes slid uneasily from mine to the floor wasn’t like her, and I couldn’t help feeling responsible for it. Ever since she’d walked into the interview yesterday, she had seemed off balance. Sure, there had been flashes of the old Miranda, but it seemed like she was teetering. I admittedly knew I had something to do with that by giving her the job of taking care of Thug, but perfectionism was like a phobia. And what did you do to cure someone of a phobia? You exposed them to the thing they were most afraid of, little by little.

I’d felt an odd, hard-to-describe bubble in my throat from the moment Miranda had stepped back into my life. Until now, I’d assumed it was just anticipation. After all, she was the Mount Everest of challenges for me. But I was starting to realize the truth was something else. The strange feeling wasn’t there because I wanted to sleep with her so badly—though, admittedly, that thought wasn’t far from my mind.

For as long as I’d known her, Miranda had always been put into a box by everybody. They all saw how intelligent she was and how driven she could be, so they naturally assumed she’d basically conquer the world one day. In high school, it had driven her to study more and spread herself impossibly thin with extracurricular activities that would look good to colleges. Now I could see she still wasn’t free of those expectations. They’d shaped her into the woman she was today, and I suspected there was only one way she could ever put it all to rest. She needed to “win.” Somewhere along the line, she had clearly decided that conquering the business world was her definition of a win, and that was all that mattered.

She sat down, swallowed, and then looked up at me with those big blue eyes of hers. God, she was so distractingly beautiful.

“Tell me something,” I said suddenly.

“Okay . . .”

“What is it you want out of this job?”

A few heartbeats passed before she responded. “Am I interviewing again?”

“No. I’m just trying to understand something.” I shook my head. “To understand you, I mean.”

“I want to be useful,” she said slowly. “To be needed and to live up to expectations.”

“And where does that desire come from?” I asked.

“Why does it have to come from somewhere? Can’t that just be what I want?”

I studied her body language, noticing the way her fingertips had gone white on the armrests of the chair. Clearly, I was close to touching a nerve. It meant I was near the answer I wanted, but I’d need to tread carefully to get it. “You know, my parents expected my brothers and I to do something like this. Once they squandered the family fortune, I mean. They were so used to things just lining up perfectly to take care of them, so why wouldn’t my brothers and I find a way to save their cushy lifestyle, right?”

“They must be proud of what you guys have accomplished, then,” she said.

I chuckled. “No. I don’t think so. Pride is for when people do things you thought they couldn’t do. What happens when everybody already assumes you’ll do it all?”

“Then all you have is the fear of letting everyone down,” she said. She opened her mouth to say something, then shook her head and