Anyone But Nick (Anyone But... #3) - Penelope Bloom Page 0,29

for saying something I knew was motivated by pettiness, but at least Nick had no way of knowing what I really meant.

“Yeah,” he said. He flashed a genuine smile that told me he’d completely misread what I’d said. “And thank you for that. I know it’s probably not easy.”

“You’re not the worst King brother, at least,” I said.

Nick laughed. “Cade doesn’t set the bar very high, but thank you.”

“And sometimes you can be kind of nice, when you’re not actively trying to be an asshole, at least.”

Nick lowered his eyes. It looked like he wanted to say something but was stopping himself. “And your reputation as a business badass is well deserved.” He patted the report on the bench beside us. “If this is what I can expect from you, I think I’ll need to consider a raise.”

I smiled, and in an instant his innocent compliment felt like much more as we met each other’s eyes. I could see that same desire I thought I’d seen back in my office just after he’d pissed me off.

“You know,” Nick said softly. “I think—”

“Maybe we should jump into the financial report I made for you?” I suggested quickly.

Nick pushed his glasses up his nose. He was too perceptive to miss anything, and I knew he was looking straight through me. But he nodded and smiled politely all the same. “Of course. Can we start with this quarterly report? I wanted to know how you—” Nick’s eyes focused on something behind me.

I turned, following his gaze, and saw Bear approaching us. Bear was Cade’s five-year-old son, but because of a complicated series of events, he’d only been living with Cade, and now Iris, for a few months.

“Bear?” I asked. “What are you doing by yourself?”

“I’m not. Daddy is playing hide-and-seek with me. He gets sad if I find him too fast.” Bear pointed matter-of-factly toward a bush about ten yards away, where I could now clearly see Cade’s huge body curled up and barely concealed. “He thinks he’s good at hiding.”

Nick nodded. “Cade thinks he’s good at everything.”

“Mm-hmm,” Bear said. He was an adorable kid, if you were into the whole children thing, at least. I’d always had a hard time wrapping my head around it, personally. It wasn’t easy for me to grasp why people would willingly bring small people into the world before they’d achieved all their goals. Chasing a dream was hard enough when you had to think about only yourself. Doing it while trying to balance cooking dinosaur chicken nuggets and managing tantrums seemed like it might as well be impossible.

Still, he was cute, and he did occasionally say things that made me get a strange, pulsing kind of longing in my chest. But that was just biology, and I was perfectly capable of ignoring that, just like I could ignore the way my belly got warm, swimming feelings every time I was around Nick.

“Daddy says you two are in like,” Bear said.

“We just work together,” I said. I held up the folder to show him. “See? This is work. Sometimes grown-ups have to talk about work.”

“Daddy said you’d say that. But he said that’s a ‘prop.’” Bear even paused to use air quotes. “He said you’re using it to pretend this isn’t a date. And he said Uncle Nick is pretending he doesn’t want to hold your hand.”

“Cade!” Nick said loudly. “Come out of there.”

Cade straightened and brushed some debris from his clothes. “Iris,” he said. “We’ve been made. Come on.”

Iris, with a mischievous glint in her eyes, popped up from behind a small hill.

“What the hell is this?” I asked.

“Well,” Cade said as he plopped down and sat cross-legged in front of our bench. Iris sat down beside him, and Bear distracted himself by chasing after a little bug that was scuttling on the sidewalk. “When I was in the service, we called it reconnaissance. Hear, but don’t be heard. See, but—”

“You were never in the military,” Nick said dryly. “And we could both see and hear you the whole time. You breathe louder than a pug when you’re excited.”

“Okay,” Cade said. “I haven’t been in the service physically, but I’ve watched Band of Brothers at least three times. And Saving Private Ryan. I also had to do jury duty once because those bastards wouldn’t accept a generous bribe. I could go on, but I don’t want this to get embarrassing for you.”

Iris cleared her throat. “What he’s trying to say is we were curious. So we