Anyone But Nick (Anyone But... #3) - Penelope Bloom Page 0,40

exploit. “Hey!” I shouted. I started climbing up the hill but immediately regretted not walking the short distance to the side, where there were perfectly good stairs cutting up the steep incline. Instead, I was forced to duckwalk upward with both Miranda and the mystery guy staring down at me. “This is an employee-only retreat,” I said. I’d made it halfway up the hill and was starting to breathe heavily.

Miranda and the guy waited patiently until I got to the top. I fought the urge to rest my hands on my knees. I was in perfectly good shape, but that was a steep-ass hill, and I was too pissed to be breathing properly.

“This is Max Frost,” Miranda said.

I tried and failed not to laugh out loud. I calmed myself, closed my eyes, and straightened my features. Then I broke into another burst of laughter.

Max watched me with a look that said I wasn’t the first person to laugh at his name.

“Sorry. Sorry,” I said again. “It’s just that I was pretty sure there was an old Arnold Schwarzenegger movie with a bad guy who shared your name. But he wore spandex and shot ice out of his hands.” I felt my lips quivering and threatening to break into another smile, but I finally held it back.

Miranda was glaring openly at me. “Max is a news anchor. He heard about Sion’s acquisition of Bark Bites and thought I’d be a great starting point to research the story.”

“The story?” I asked.

Max stepped forward and reached to shake my hand. I took his hand in mine, and we both tried to squeeze as hard as we could. I locked eyes with him and squeezed a little harder. He squeezed back until I was sure either my knuckles or his were going to pop out of our hands any second. His thick black eyebrows drew together as we locked eyes.

Miranda cleared her throat. Max’s eyes darted to her, and then he let go of my hand.

I stood a little straighter. That’s right, dick. Then I felt like a child a moment later. Since when did I get into masculine pissing matches? Since you started trying to deny your feelings for Miranda Collins.

Max Frost—I still could hardly even think the name without wanting to laugh—looked exactly like a news anchor. He had a thick, well-groomed beard, masculine features, and bright-blue eyes. He looked like he probably liked to wear turtlenecks and drink eggnog when it got cold out, and he was also probably the type of guy who could get into a passionate argument about the merits of charcoal grilling versus propane or natural gas. I immediately hated him, and I didn’t think it was just because he was obviously trying to move in on Miranda.

“The story,” Max said. He had a deep, ridiculous voice too. “Like it or not, when a billion-dollar company headed by three of the country’s most well-known faces does something out of the ordinary, it’s a story.”

“This is hardly out of the ordinary,” I said, even though I knew exactly what made him curious about this. I wanted to disagree with him just because agreeing with him would’ve left a sour taste in my mouth.

“Bark Bites was valued at just over a million when you acquired it,” Max said. “Prior to Bark Bites, the smallest company Sion has acquired in the past four years was valued at more than fifty million.”

“That’s all very interesting,” I said in a bored voice. “But this is also an employee-only retreat. So if you don’t mind, you could drop off my vice president’s bags, collect your tip, and head back to wherever you came from, because there are no available rooms for you here.”

Miranda’s glare was practically molten now, and it took a serious effort not to flinch away from the heat of it. “Do you mind giving us just a second, Max?” she asked.

Even the sweet way she spoke to him made me want to break something.

“Sure,” he said, smiling.

Miranda took me by the arm and pulled me a few feet away from him. I was painfully aware of how good she looked and even smelled standing this close. “Why did you give me this job?”

“What?” I asked.

“Did you give me the job because we have a past, or because you believe I can help you turn this company around? And don’t give me some bullshit answer. Tell the truth.”

I stared right back at her. The full truth was complicated, but I knew