Anyone But Nick (Anyone But... #3) - Penelope Bloom Page 0,39
this back. It’s going to build up and build up, and before you know it, you’ll be a hopeless mess around her. All you’ll be able to think about is how badly you want to do the deed with her.”
“Your problem is you can’t understand that not everybody operates with the same mental deficiencies you do. Even if you were right about how I feel—which you’re not—I could control my emotions. I can be an adult and put the business first.”
“Right. Because being an adult is so great. Except, wait a second! I almost forgot that having billions of dollars practically exempts us from needing to be adults. You know what an adult is? It’s a slave to the system. It’s those poor people who have to spend more time working than they do sleeping, eating, fucking, and enjoying life. And you know why they do that? Because they have to. Because adults have responsibilities, but responsibilities are just code for bills.”
“You don’t think your child counts as a responsibility?”
“Bear is a privilege. And he’s a well-trained privilege. You train them right, and they practically operate themselves. He can wipe his own ass now,” Cade added, as if that was a completely reasonable and interesting bit of knowledge I’d need.
“Okay, but you do realize I enjoy the work. Right? We obviously don’t need the money anymore, but I still work because it’s important to me.”
Cade blew a raspberry and flopped back into his chair. “To be young again,” he said wistfully. “So young and so innocent to the world. It’s cute, really. But you know, when you grow older and wiser, you’ll realize that people don’t exist to work. We exist to make a minimum of one baby. But really two is ideal. And if you have genetics as good as mine—and yours, to a lesser extent—you’re honestly obligated to make as many babies as you can. That is your divine purpose. Not feeding dogs under the table.”
I shook my head as I stared off toward the mountains. “You do know the world is heading toward overpopulation, right? If everybody keeps making babies like there’s no tomorrow, we’re all going to starve in a century.”
“I plan to be happily dead in a century, thank you very much. And I didn’t say everybody should make babies. I said people like me who won the genetic lottery are obligated to.”
“Sometimes, I can’t tell if you’re actually being serious or if you’re just trying to get a rise out of me.”
“Why can’t it be both?” Cade asked.
Once I realized relaxation was not going to happen with my brother within fifty yards, I headed back to my cabin. It was situated on top of one of the many rolling, grassy hills in the resort and part of a line of maybe twenty other nearly identical cabins in a row. I stopped at the foot of the hill when I saw who was getting out of a car beside the row of cabins up above. Miranda carried a small handbag down the path to her cabin. An athletic-looking guy, maybe in his thirties, followed behind her. He was pulling a big cream-and-gold suitcase I had to imagine wasn’t his own.
I clenched my fists. I thought back to the voice I’d heard in the background when I called her and how short she’d been with me. I didn’t get it, though. Miranda had hardly left the office since I’d hired her a few days ago. I couldn’t figure out how she would’ve had time to meet somebody. I also couldn’t figure out how she’d managed to get him in, considering I’d paid a great deal of money to keep the resort exclusive to only Bark Bites employees.
Logistics aside, I didn’t understand why. The timing made no sense. Yeah, sure I’d let her go on thinking what she’d seen between Laine and me was whatever she’d assumed, but . . . shit. I had to stop letting myself go down that line of thinking. What was I going to hope for? That she’d been secretly saving herself for me, even while I was busy going out of my way to make her think I wasn’t interested?
If I was strictly following the whole boss first, friend second, boyfriend never plan, I would’ve patiently waited for her and the guy to go inside. I’d stay right where I was and keep my mouth shut.
But there was another angle to this whole thing, and it was one I planned to